Lord, Did I Misread Something?

A Sequel to: God Does Meet Our Needs When We Ask Him – With a Sincere Heart – EV Blog series May 2017

“Now the Lord said to Abram, “Go forth from your country, And from your relatives, and from your father’s house, To the land which I will show you” (Gen.12:1-2).  “Jesus said, all authority has been given to me, GO!” (Matt. 28:18-19).

Hey Gang:  After re-reading the six previous ‘God Meets Our Needs’ blogs, I felt it was like an open book with no beginning or end.  I also mentioned - that I pray there will never be an end- but I also felt the need to address the series of events that led to Eagle Boys Village becoming a living reality.   One might sub-title this epistle “Are Your Sure, God?”

As I began to dig into the recesses of my brain about what transpired from the night they brought Dennis into the Juvenile Hall and I booked him in for murder, I felt the need to type the following with one hand and my other hand on the Holy Writ.  For, as I have shared what I am about to share with you, would qualify for the ‘Believe it or not file’ with a strong emphasis on the ‘not. I want you to know up front, the following is the truth, the whole truth, nothing but the truth, so help me God!” 

WE lived about halfway between San Jose and Sacramento.

That night, the night Dennis was booked in, was the beginning of a journey that, unless you were there, would be hard for you to think I have not embellished the story to gain some sort of accolades.   When I arrived home that night I announced to the bride-of-my-youth, “I am either going to find a way to help these kids or become a plumber’s helper!

Keep in mind that in the previous three years I had seen hundreds, perhaps even a thousand or more kids go through my South-Side Section; kids that I had seen on a regular basis and kids that I watched develop into hardened delinquents.  I had to read Dennis’s ‘history of stays’ in Juvy and found he had been through the Hall on eight separate occasions for minor offenses, and on every trip his request was the same, a cry for help!  

If you are a steady ‘Gramps Morning Thoughts’ reader, you will remember several blogs titled “Don’t Get to Comfortable”; they told the story of how God led me from the Air Traffic Control Field to working with children.   I believe that night, as I locked Dennis in his cell, was the next step in “Don’t Get to Comfortable”. 

Several months later I felt the need for a break in the action and we traveled to Michigan for a week of rest and recuperation.  God does control the weather, right?  Do you know what it means to be stir-crazy?   It rained for several days straight and my family of six, four under the age of 8, were in a twenty-four-foot-square friend’s cottage!  We began to learn what stir-crazy was all about.

To reduce the anxiety level, we visited a family friend of my bride - who just happened to be a disabled farmer.   After he had heard my story, the story of Dennis and my decision to do something to help these kids or become a plumber’s helper, he suggested I use his farm. We had talked about the possibility of Foster Care.  A seed was planted, a seed that would face many pitfalls before it could break forth from its shell into life; but, for the first time in months I felt that God had heard the cry from my heart  -to do something to help these hurting kids. 

Vacation time ended and we returned to California.  Shortly after we departed, Mr K, our friend with the farm, made contact with a Court of Appeals Judge, who made contact with the juvenile judges in the area.  All were in agreement that a treatment center for boys was critically needed. (Our thoughts of a foster home was not God’s thoughts!)

This soon led to a meeting, involving five local business men, to test the water and see if there was interest in taking on the challenge of establishing and helping to finance a project of this type.  And so, stage one - of what was to be the development of Eagle Boys Village- was begun. These five men committed to coming together as a Founding Board of Trustees and begin the legal process.

We were rolling, right?  Not without a ton or two of frustration and pain over the next three years.  More than a year passed while we waited: I was still employed in the Juvenile Hall in California and Jean doing some home-bound teaching for the county.  It was during that time when two Scriptures became very important and engrained in my mind and heart:

The first, Psalm 40:1-2, “I waited patiently for the Lord, and He included to me and heard my cry.  He brought me up out of the pit of destruction, out of the miry clay, and He set my feet upon a rock making my footsteps firm”.  

The second, James 5:11,  “We count those blessed who endured.  You have heard of the endurance of Job and have seen the outcome of the Lord’s dealings, that the Lord is full of compassion and is merciful”.

Tune in tomorrow for chapter two and learn what a real live miracle looks like.   

Blessings,

Gramps