Totally Wonderful, Completely Heartbreaking

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    Our church is a bit different. Instead of having Sunday night church services, we meet at homes in small groups. Like the first church. We meet, break bread, fellowship, study the word and pray for each other. Then we often have a campfire, roast marshmallows, and explode bamboo bombs, or the like. A few brave souls have even chosen to ride my zip line, sight unseen, down into the totally dark reaches of the lower woods. Toward that big tree at the bottom nicknamed “splat.” A few brave (or foolish ) ones have even volunteered to try to climb to upper reaches of the haunted tree house near by. But then, the tree house is another story. More on that later. Then they go home.

    This gives us the opportunity to really get to know and love these students. I cannot describe to you how great that is for us, and what a blessing this is to us. We have the opportunity to almost be substitute parents to these wonderful students for years. They become tightly woven into the fabric of our lives. But then, they graduate, and they often are soon gone, some forever, at least in this world. Many are reluctant to leave Arkadelphia, and work at jobs related to the universities for a time, or whatever they can find. But Arkadelphia has few job opportunities of the type they can hang their hats on, and raise a family around. Sooner or later, we lose almost all of them. It breaks our hearts, again and again, to see them go. We like to think of them as young people we have had the opportunity to know, love, have an impact on for several years, then send them out as Fellowship's missionaries to the world. Our loss is the world's gain. That's the wonderful side of it, but it does not stop the heartache.

     But that is not the end of our story.

     I'm almost certain Griffin and Stephanie fell in love in our living room, many years ago. They now have three wonderful boys. We not only correspond, but visit occasionally. Griffin called us on Christmas night. They were coming through Arkadelphia during one of our very rare snowstorms, the road was getting bad. They asked about spending the night, and I told him our home was always open to them. But in all honesty, I had to tell him. Barbara and I were both flat on our backs with a bad stomach bug. Your choice. After a short discussion, they sadly chose the slick highway, instead. But they will be back, and we will be there, from time to time.

     Candi and Jeff had graduated, but they chose to stay around awhile. And, they were in love. Candi was a nurse at Hot Springs. Not just a very good nurse, but the one the hospital chose to deliver very bad news to the family about a patent, when those times arose. That kind of nurse. Jeff was temporarily training HSU students to be  pilots, while waiting for a real job. Candi was ready to marry, start a family. Jeff seemed to have some reservations about being able to support a family, at that moment. I took Jeff aside after our group meeting, told him that if he missed out on this girl, he would never, in this lifetime, find another like her. He just smiled. Seems he had the ring in his pocket at the time. They have two wonderful youngsters now, and Jeff is a commercial airline pilot in Houston.      CONTINUED IN FOUR DAYS. Thanks for your time and your attention, the most valuable things one can ever bestow upon  any writer who writes for the love of writing.