Tuesday, January 31

Three young couples from our church felt led to challenge the people of our congregation – White Oak Church of the Brethren – to spend 2017 in blessing our preachers.

Cerwin and I knew immediately that we wanted to participate by choosing a specific week to pray for each of our nine preachers and their wife by signing up on the online spreadsheet.

The second part of “Operation Bless” was choosing a month to bless each preacher and his wife.

That is how we found ourselves traveling to Oregon Dairy on Monday evening during a pretty sunset.

The first preacher on the spreadsheet was Sam Cassel and his wife, Miriam.

When we talked to them the other Sunday morning, and told them our plan to take each preacher and his wife out for a meal and have them choose another couple from church – that they don’t know very well – to go along.

Miriam chose Oregon Dairy as her restaurant of choice. They told us to choose the other couple.

Because she has Parkinson’s Disease, we had offered to take a meal to their house, but she chose to go to a restaurant.

Sam and Miriam are on the right. (Our waitress took the pictures for me.)

Our congregation is fairly large, so it is easy to never get to know some people. Vernon and Jeana Martin (left) are one of those couples. I didn’t even know their names when I talked to Jeana on Sunday morning. 🙂

Vernon owns his own excavating company, so this was a good week for them to go out for supper. Winter is not always busy for excavators. Jeana and I discovered that we have a lot in common. Cooking is not one of our favorite things to do and we enjoy counted cross stitch. Cerwin and Vernon enjoyed talking about some of their hunting experiences.

Of course we all talked about children and grandchildren.

My supper was lobster stew in a bread bowl. Yum!

We had a great evening – learning about each other. We were still there when most of the other diners had gone home. 🙂

It was interesting to learn about Sam and Miriam’s challenges in living with her Parkinson’s Disease and fun to hear some of Sam’s experiences in learning to cook. (Ask him about making lemon sponge pie.)

They are certainly living their journey with grace.

Sam is retired from preaching, but fills in for someone now and then or takes a turn in preaching during a specific series.

My coconut cream pie.

Our plan was to bless Sam and Miriam and learn to know Vernon and Jeana, but I think we were the most blessed.