The Journey - Winter 2017

The

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Journey 10 Year Anniversary Edition Part 2 • Winter 2017

The Healing Legacy of Ruth & Billy Graham

Inspirational Stories By People You Know

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Holy Things Are Often Hidden

Welcome to part two of our 10 year anniversary edition of The Journey. As you read this magazine, please ponder the following questions in your heart:

How’s your own journey been in 2017? How’d you fare in the floods, the fires, the hurricanes the earthquakes, the mass shootings, the terrorist attacks, the political atmosphere, the breaches in cyber-land, your own personal challenges, and so on?

Is it well with your soul? Could your soul actually be faring well in the midst of the aforementioned world events and your personal circumstances, too?

The short answer is, yes! Not because you’ve succeeded in deluding yourself but because of the Christ, the Messiah, the Savior whose advent we are about to celebrate in the coming Christmas season.

My prayer for you, for me, for the High Country, and for our world is that the purpose for His coming might be realized in deeper ways throughout the coming year. The Lord longs to bring light into our darkness and peace to all our hearts, to strengthen our faith and renew our hope, but He won’t force it. He comes gently, quietly, but with relentless compassion and powerful love that can transform us in ways that we ourselves could never attain.

Anyone who takes time to dig deep in the Holy Scriptures or to pay attention to the wonders of nature will attest to God’s subtle yet brilliant ways of communicating truth that can change people’s lives for the better. Recently, I heard a pastor say, “A lot of, if not most, holy things are hidden.” This is certainly the case with the events surrounding Jesus’ birth.

Ben Cox - Owner/Publisher/Editor

You know the story. Shepherds watching flocks by night awakened by an Deck Moser - Business Development angelic choir singing “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will Alex Stewart - Graphic Designer Amber Bateman - Office Manager toward men.” (Luke 2:14) And then there were the three wise men who traveled Connie Cox - Distribution Manager from a distant land because they were attuned to the signs in the heavens and Heather Cotten - Account Manager received divine direction.

Yozette “Yogi” Collins - Asst. Editor

May you be encouraged in your own life’s journey. May you realize anew how much the Lord loves you and longs to help you navigate through the challenges and dramas that we all face in life. May your hearts be warmed, and your burdens be made lighter as you consider the Savior who longs to bring peace on earth and goodwill to all who will truly receive Him.

In a world where so many things vie for our attention and trouble abounds, Jesus longs for us to attune our hearts to Him and allow Him to be our burden-bearer, our strength in weakness, our light in darkness, and our way forward when we think there is no way. With those things in mind, allow me to urge you to quiet your souls in meaningful ways on a regular basis, to slow down, to be intentional in tuning in to the beauty that is all around you, and to engage your heart and your mind in the reading of these stories.

Our stories are intended to communicate the difference that the Lord’s presence, love, and power can make in the lives of mere humans like us. It has been a great personal blessing to me to work with our talented team to present this special edition of The Journey. I pray that you will receive a blessing, too.

BEN COX Owner, Editor, & Publisher

Online flip-through version available at: MainStreetMarketingBoone.com & HighCountry 365.com

828.263.0095 • mainstreetmktg@gmail.com • 324 Highway 105 Ext. Ste. 14 (Carriage Square) • Boone, NC 28607

Cover Photo: Billy and Ruth Bell Graham on their 50th wedding anniversary in Montreat, NC, 1993 Photo Courtesy of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association. Used With Permission. All Rights Reserved.

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The Journey Winter 2017

[TABLE OF CONTENTS]

9

The Great Commission and the Graham Family Legacy Ben Cox

15

The Healing Legacy of Ruth and Billy Graham Ben Cox

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23

31

35

41

47

It’s All About Christ: Graham Legacy Intro Ben Cox

Ashton Caton: Beauty From Ashes Glen Deuel

Dr. Richard Furman: A Willing Vessel Yozette “Yogi” Collins

Bonnie Church: Friendship Evangelism with a Vivacious Spirit Yozette “Yogi” Collins

Kayleen Lundstrom: Doing Unto Others Yozette “Yogi” Collins

Jason and Jaylynn Byassee: Missing Boone While Embracing God’s Call in Vancouver, BC Jason and Jaylynn Byassee

Photos Courtesy of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association. Used With Permission. All Rights Reserved.

The Journey Winter 2017

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It’s All About

Christ

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Ben Cox

Right to Left: William Franklin Graham II, III, and IV at a 1994 Crusade Photo Courtesy of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association. Used With Permission. All Rights Reserved.

When I first felt led to feature the Life and Legacy of Billy Graham in my 10th anniversary edition of The Journey, I had no idea what an adventure this was going to be. I also had no idea of where to begin!

I knew I wanted to highlight the local roots of Dr. Graham’s international ministry while still communicating his worldwide impact, but that’s about it. I also reasoned that since Franklin and I have lived in Boone for 40+ years and have known each other for many of those years, my local knowledge would come in handy, and it has. What I have been surprised to learn, however, is that there is so much I didn’t know about Samaritan’s Purse, the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, and the Graham family.

Seventeen years ago, as the pastor of Living Water Christian Fellowship in Boone, I was on the committee that worked alongside SP and the BGEA to bring High Country Festival 2000 with Franklin Graham to Boone. We held evangelistic meetings at Kidd Brewer Stadium that were powerful in their impact on those who attended and unifying for the churches of the High Country.

Then, in 2001, when our nation was shocked by the terrorist attacks in New York City, Washington, DC, and Pennsylvania, I volunteered to go to NYC to serve as a grief counselor to traumatized residents of the city. That, in turn, led to my being hired for 3½ months to work as the Prayer Coordinator for the Billy Graham New York Prayer Center. The experience was profoundly life-changing for me and helped me appreciate Billy and Franklin Graham in a whole new way.

Now, all the research I have done for these two legacy editions has made an impact on my soul that I didn’t even realize I needed as badly as I did.

That impact goes far beyond an appreciation for SP and BGEA: my relationship with the Lord has been strengthened significantly! Furthermore, as world events seem to be intensifying daily and the pace of change is quickening, I have come to understand the urgency with which SP and the BGEA is working.

I’m thrilled to report that we have had many positive responses expressing the same sentiments that I just expressed. People were brought closer to the Lord through our legacy stories in our last edition (and our other stories, too), and they were also pleased to be informed about SP, BGEA, and WMM in ways that deepened their appreciation for the work of these two organizations Franklin Graham leads.

We also experienced some responses that weren’t so positive. A few people, in my presence, looked at the magazine cover featuring a photo of Billy, Franklin, and Will from a Billy Graham Crusade in 1994 and made pointed, negative comments about Franklin.

These comments were rooted in their disagreement with the public stands Franklin takes in regards to some of the hot-button political and social issues of our times.

Personally, I make it a point not to get involved in discussions about political issues and faith unless I’m talking to someone who is willing to have a reasonable conversation. Therefore, I chose to sidestep controversial statements with these words: “The magazine isn’t about Franklin and it’s not about

The Journey Winter 2017

Billy or Will, either. It’s about Christ, His Kingdom, and the difference His love can make in our hurting world. These three men are just sinners saved by grace who feel called to proclaim that.”

As I’ve done my research for these two special editions of The Journey, I hope readers can feel how inspired I am by this. I’m incredibly grateful that the Holy Spirit is alive and well on planet earth, working in miraculous ways as He’s been doing from the beginning of time. I’m also grateful that God the Father sent His only Son to earth to show us what He’s like and to make a way for us to come into His kingdom.

As you read through the part of this edition that’s dedicated to celebrating the local roots of the Billy Graham legacy, consider this powerful passage of scripture written by the Apostle Paul to the church that existed in Rome approximately 30 years after Jesus had ascended to heaven:

“How, then, can they call on the one they have not believed in? And how can they believe in the one of whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone preaching to them? And how can anyone preach unless they are sent? As it is written: ‘How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news!’” (Romans 10:14-15, NIV)

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The Great Commission &

The Graham Family Legacy Ben Cox

Will Graham Preaching in China. Photo Courtesy of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association. Used With Permission. All Rights Reserved.

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The Journey Winter 2017

Will Graham is certainly a chip off of his grandfather both in physical appearance and in gifts of preaching. Growing up in Blowing Rock, NC, Will’s parents sheltered him from the pressures and fame Franklin experienced as the child of Billy Graham.

Will experienced a “normal” life and was allowed space to establish a personal relationship with Christ. While Franklin attempted to keep him from feeling the pressures of going into the ministry, Will had a strong desire to tell people about Christ. Will was in a pastoral role for about eight years before starting work with the BGEA. He loved the church he was pastoring and was happy there. But God was working in ways he did not see or understand at the time and that were preparing him to join his father and grandfather in the ministries He had established through them.

Now years later, Will is experiencing the grace and power of God in meetings called Celebrations, similar to his grandfather’s Crusades and his father’s Festivals. While it can’t be easy to walk in your calling while being compared to a legend, Will humbly holds his own, even making current in-roads in China.

Our impression as Americans is that China controls religious thought and expression. According to the nonpartisan think tank Council on Foreign Relations, while the Chinese constitution allows “freedom of religious beliefs” and the government is atheist, tolerance of religious activity has increased over the past 40 years.

Will has been given great freedom to speak at his Celebrations, both evidence of religious tolerance as well as evidence of the country’s reverence for Will’s family, going back as far as his great-grandparents who served as medical missionaries in China, only to flee in 1941 due to the anti-Christian sentiment of the fledgling Communist Revolution led by Mao Tse Tung.

It was during that time that Mao Tse Tung combined his Communist Army with the Nationalist

government to help defeat the Japanese in World War II. He became the founding father of the People’s Republic of China, ruling as Chairman Mao from 1949 until his death in 1976. Chairman Mao is now regarded as one of the most important individuals in modern world history.

Though Mao successfully modernized China and built it into the world power it is today, he shed much blood in the process. Religious groups were regarded as a potential threat to his new government, therefore his army either repressed or controlled religions in China, including Christianity.

Will shared with The Journey his experiences in China:

“This was my fourth trip to China. I was preaching in churches there who had invited me to come. There is a misconception about China that is rooted in the past, but my personal experience has been that China is very much open to religion.

“China recognizes five religions. That means they work with five different religions and they regard Catholicism and Protestantism as two different religions.

To be honest, I can’t tell you what the other three are. I think Muslim is one and Hindu and Buddhist are the others. So China recognizes Christianity and they even help support it in some ways.

“China believes in freedom of religion. You have a right to worship any way you want. That is the first thing people need to know because here in the West you don’t hear that. In China you have the right to freedom of worship, but here is the other side of the coin that complicates that: you have freedom of religion, but your neighbor has the right not to hear you.

So, in other words, there’s the freedom from religion.

That’s where it gets complicated.

“Therefore, in the same way that there are places in the U.S. that are supportive of Christianity— like what we call the Bible Belt here in the South—

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China has good parts and bad parts in relationship to Christianity. Beijing, the federal government, will tell you that they’re pro-religion and that they’re trying to get some of these places more aligned with that.

“Where I go in China is called Jiangsu Province which is where my great-grandparents served as missionaries for 25 years. In 2015, when I first went to this area, it was the 99th anniversary of my grandparents’ mission work there. I preached to some of the churches in the Province, including the church where my grandmother would have gone when she was still in China.

“Unlike places here in the U.S. who sometimes have tried to restrict what we can and cannot say, China has never tried to restrict anything I’ve said or wanted to say. Now, I’ve been advised by a friend of mine what not to speak about, which is Tibet, Taiwan, and Tiananmen Square. Well, I’m not preaching on these three things anyway; I’m there to preach the gospel.

“So, I have had the privilege of getting to preach and see people come to know Christ in China, and I’ve done that three years in a row. This last time, I was preaching in Suzhou at an open-air evangelistic crusade. This was a little bit unique because they’ve got this massive church on a lake with a huge park. The park was packed with all these people having weddings in the park and coming to look at all the beautiful flowers that were blooming there.

“The church building was a gorgeous cathedral and it was Protestant. In China, they don’t have

denominations like we do here but the churches we went to do have certain denominational tendencies in accordance with the missionaries that served those areas. This church was simply named Lakeside Church and the people [in the park] were free to come hear what I had to say if they wanted to, and I was free to preach as the Holy Spirit led me to.”

As evidenced in Will’s words, BGEA is experiencing great freedoms in its China outreach.

God’s bigger plan and faithfulness has been shown through the freedom Will has experienced 99 years after his own grandparents planted seeds in a country that rejected their efforts. Will has experienced the power of God’s love being poured out in China in ways his great-grandparents probably never experienced. But, we know that the work they started and the prayers they prayed even after leaving China has paved the way for Will and his ministry to flourish there.

Will has had the pleasure of seeing Chinese worship services with hundreds of people coming to the altars in response to his invitations to receive Christ as Savior. I encourage you to go to the BGEA website to view some of the footage from the Celebrations Will has led in China. God is using him in powerful ways.

Will recalls, “As I look back, I see the calling of God in my life and the first instance was in Blowing Rock Elementary about the 2nd grade. The teacher said to draw a picture of what you want to be in life. I drew a picture of David Clark headsets that aviators

Will preaching at Hudson Taylor Memorial Church in Zhenjiang, China Photo Courtesy of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association. Used With Permission. All Rights Reserved.

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The Journey Winter 2017

used in their airplanes and I drew a picture of an open Bible. I wanted to fly around and tell people about Jesus.

I wanted to be like my dad. Fly in an airplane and go around and tell people about Jesus. I didn’t feel like it was a mission field, I didn’t feel like I was going to be an evangelist. I just wanted to go tell people about Jesus.”

Two thousand years ago Jesus gave His followers this command known as The Great Commission: “‘All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”

(Matt. 28:18-20, NIV). He also prophesied that His Church would take His good news “to the ends of the earth” (Acts 1:8, NIV).

I’m grateful for ministries like the BGEA, WMM, and Samaritan’s Purse who join their imperfect human efforts with the Lord’s presence and power to obey His Great Commission and to reach the ends of the earth with the God’s love!

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The Healing Legacy of

Ruth & Billy Graham Ben Cox

Photo Courtesy of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association. Used With Permission. All Rights Reserved.

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The Journey Winter 2017

After researching the history of the Graham family, and particularly after my interview with Will Graham, I wanted to learn more about Ruth Bell Graham, Billy’s wife.

The daughter of medical missionaries, Ruth aspired to be a missionary, too. She intended to train for and go to the mission field of Tibet after completing her education at Wheaton College until she met Billy Graham who had already received a clear call from the Lord to be an evangelist in the United States.

Even when Billy proposed marriage, Ruth considered not marrying him because of her own calling, however, after much prayer, she felt she could fulfill her call to be a missionary through helping with Billy’s ministry. What they didn’t realize at the time was the special role her parents would play in helping support she and Billy in both their ministry and in raising their five children. With Billy’s long absences from home, Ruth’s parents lent a stability to the family that Billy and Ruth appreciated.

In fact, in Billy Graham: God’s Ambassador, the only authorized biography of him ever made, Billy says, “One of the great influences on our children when they were young was their grandparents, Dr. and Mrs. Bell, Ruth’s parents. They lived just across the street and, later, down the hill. Dr. Bell didn’t mind telling them exactly what was right, either. They kept them, they taught them, they loved them. They made it part of their ministry to help Ruth raise our children. They took them in many weeks at a time when we would be gone.”

Dr. Nelson Bell and his wife Virginia began

their medical mission work in 1916 at the Love and Mercy Hospital in Qingjiangpu, Jiangsu Province.

According to Gary Lundstrom, International Vice President for the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association (BGEA), Dr. Bell “was the one that developed a cure for the Black Fever and literally saved the lives of thousands of Chinese people.” The Bells served in China for 25 years until they and other Christian missionaries had to leave the country when the Communist Army fought for control of the Chinese government and Japan waged full-scale war against China.

With the turmoil of world events boiling over into a world war, the Bells must have wondered, What now? They obviously felt strongly about spreading Christ’s love through their medical mission work, but little did they know how much greater their impact would become through supporting the ministry of the American evangelist that their daughter Ruth would soon marry.

Billy Graham preached his first public sermon in 1937 as a student from the Florida Bible Institute (now Trinity College of Florida) and was ordained as a minister in 1939. In 1940 he enrolled at Wheaton College outside Chicago where he met Ruth Bell whom he married following graduation from Wheaton in 1943.

The pair married at the Montreat Conference Center in Montreat, North Carolina where Ruth’s parents had settled after leaving China. After a honeymoon in Blowing Rock, North Carolina, they

Dr. Nelson and Virginia Bell, Ruth’s parents, 1972 Photo Courtesy of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association. Used With Permission. All Rights Reserved.

The Bell Family in China (Ruth is standing on the left) Photo Courtesy of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association. Used With Permission. All Rights Reserved.

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returned to Illinois, where Billy took the first and only pastorate of his long career in ministry.

Six years later, at 31 years old, Billy was thrust into the national spotlight as a result of his revival meetings in Los Angeles, California. The meetings had a huge impact on the city and resulted in great media exposure for Billy and his ministry. In order to put the Graham family’s remarkable impact on the world scene into perspective, I’m compelled to consider where it started when God sent His son to be the savior of the world.

Approximately 2000 years ago, a 30-year-old Jesus launched His public ministry and mission at His hometown synagogue in Nazareth. Here’s the way the Bible tells us what happened: Jesus returned to Galilee in the power of the Spirit, and news about Him spread through the whole countryside. He was teaching in their synagogues, and everyone praised Him. He went to Nazareth, where He had been brought up, and on the Sabbath day He went into the synagogue, as was His custom. He stood up to read, and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was handed to Him. Unrolling it, He found the place where it is written:

“The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because He has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”

Then He rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant and sat down. The eyes of everyone in the synagogue were fastened on Him. He began by saying to them, “Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.” (Luke 4:14-21, NIV)

From that point, until He was crucified three years later, Jesus traveled throughout the tiny nation of Israel proclaiming His good news and healing everyone who came to Him for healing. The lame walked, leprosy was healed, blind eyes were opened, and even the dead were raised.

But most of the religious establishment and the political powers of Jesus’ day weren’t responsive to His message. In fact, they were so engrossed in their own self-serving agendas that they were threatened by His message, His ministry, and the followers He attracted.

At Jesus’ birth, the Bible tells us that King Herod tried to kill baby Jesus by cruelly ordering “to kill all the boys in Bethlehem and its vicinity who were two years old and under”. I point this out to draw attention

Photo Courtesy of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association. Used With Permission. All Rights Reserved.

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to the fact that from Jesus’ birth until His crucifixion, His life was under a constant death threat.

Even though He taught us about and demonstrated love by healing the sick and responding with kindness, compassion, and generosity to everyone who requested His help, many people rejected Jesus.

There’s more to this rejection than mere human stubbornness: it’s a spiritual thing, with spiritual forces of evil preying upon our selfish tendencies to keep us from receiving the healing we need for the brokenness we all have. The spirit that does this is the spirit of the antichrist who is alive and well today, stirring up racism, hatred, and conflicts as he’s done for thousands of years.

But there’s another spirit at work in the world today: the Holy Spirit. Though the antichrist spirit is strong, it’s no match for the power of the Holy Spirit.

According to Jesus’ own words before His crucifixion and after His resurrection, He promised to His followers that they would receive the same Holy Spirit that enabled Him to do miracles and change lives.

Immediately prior to Jesus’ crucifixion, He tried to comfort His distraught disciples with these words: “And I will ask the Father, and He will give you another counselor to help you and be with you forever—the Spirit of truth.” (John 14:16-17a, NIV)

After His resurrection, when He was having dinner with them, He gave them this command: “Do not leave Jerusalem, but wait for the gift my Father promised, which you have heard me speak about. For John baptized with water, but in a few days you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit... you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” (Acts 1:4-5 & 8, NIV)

At another time, while explaining to the twelve about who the Holy Spirit is and what they would be able to accomplish with the Holy Spirit’s help, Jesus said, “Very truly I tell you, whoever believes in me will do the works I have been doing, and they will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father.” (John 14:12, NIV)

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into the Graham family history.

Through Ruth Bell Graham’s spiritual heritage as the daughter of medical missionaries, we see how healing the sick, clothing the poor, welcoming strangers, and reaching out with compassion to the downtrodden are central to the ministries they pioneered. These virtues that Jesus taught and demonstrated have been woven into the very fabric of Billy and Ruth Graham’s mission and purpose. Now, through the ministries of Samaritan’s Purse, World Medical Missions, and the BGEA, that dimension of the Graham’s legacy continues and is amplified in powerfully significant ways.

The souls that have been saved, the lives that have been changed, and the nations that have been reached through Billy and Ruth Graham’s partnership in ministry has happened through the power of the Holy Spirit. This invisible, powerful presence has

been at work in and through them, their parents, their children, their grandchildren, and hundreds of ministry associates and staff who have come alongside them since Billy’s ministry officially launched in the 1940s.

Besides this, hundreds of thousands of others in the worldwide body of Christ have cooperated with them either directly or indirectly to spread the good news of Christ.

Jesus brought grace and truth to this planet when He came to Earth over 2000 years ago. Today, via stories like those we share in this magazine, we see how He continues to bring grace and truth through the Holy Spirit who works in and through imperfect humans. I contend that just one Christ-centered person or family can join together with other followers of Christ to do even greater works than Jesus did just as He promised.

Billy and Ruth, in her original wedding dress, on their 50th anniversary Photo Courtesy of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association. Used With Permission. All Rights Reserved.

Billy and Ruth on their front porch, 1972 Photo Courtesy of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association. Used With Permission. All Rights Reserved.

The Journey Winter 2017

For more information on Billy and Ruth Graham, please visit: www.BillyGraham.org

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The Love Project Pastor Morris Hatton of Morris Hatton Ministries & High Country Bible Fellowship invites you to consider this 21-Day Challenge

Read aloud twice a day for 21 days; once in the morning and the last thing at night before sleep. If you miss a day, START OVER. This will change your life. Don’t try to “make anything happen,” JUST READ! The word of God has the power to bring itself to pass.

1 Corinthians 13:4-8 (AMPC) Love Endures long and is patient and kind; love never is envious nor boils over with jealousy, is not boastful or vainglorious, does not display Itself haughtily. It is not conceited (arrogant and inflated with pride); It is not rude (unmannerly) and does not act unbecomingly. Love (God’s Love in us) does not insist on its own rights or its own way, for it is not self-seeking; it is not touchy or fretful or resentful; it takes no account of the evil done to it [it pays no attention to a suffered wrong]. It does not rejoice at injustice and unrighteousness, but rejoices when right and truth prevail. Love bears up under anything and everything that comes, is ever ready to believe the best of every person, its hopes are fade-less under all circumstances, and it endures everything [without weakening]. Love never fails [never fade out or becomes obsolete or comes to an end]. As for prophecy (the gift of interpreting the divine will and purpose), it will be fulfilled and pass away; as for tongues, they will be destroyed and cease; as for knowledge. It will pass away [it will lose its value and be superseded by truth].

1 Corinthians 13:13 and so faith, hope, love abide... of these three; but the greatest of these is love.* Scripture taken from the Amplified Bible, Copyright © 1954, 1958, 1962, 1964, 1965, 1987 by The Lockerman Foundation. Used by permission of Zondervan.

*Agape - Unconditional Love

Hatton, a native of Boone, NC, has been preaching the Word since 1974; after attending The Mennonite Brethren Seminary in Fresno, California. Hatton is the pastor of High Country Bible Fellowship. He is also a talented musician that currently travels throughout the United States and Canada spreading the gospel in song while also teaching the word of God. Every morning at 7 a.m. EST, Reverend Morris Hatton conducts a live-stream through Facebook Live. During this live-stream, Rev. Morris Hatton plays some music on his keyboard and delivers Daily Devotions for at least 30 minutes. “I call it cell phone evangelism,” says Rev. Hatton, “we must use the technology of today to touch the World for Christ. I am speaking to the people who would never have the oppotunity to hear the Gospel preached.” Rev. Morris has been utilizing online-based ministry for 2 years, but has been involved in ministry for over 42 years.

To participate in our live-stream, visit us on Facebook at: Morris Hatton or High Country Bible Fellowship.

Visit Us At: Morris Hatton Ministries P.O. Box 212 • Boone, NC 28607 MorrisHattonMinistries.org morris.hatton@outlook.com MorrisHattonTV.org HighCountryBibleFellowship.com highcountrybiblestudy@yahoo.com

Pastor Morris Hatton The Journey Winter 2017

22

Dr. Richard Furman

A Willing Vessel Yozette “Yogi” Collins

Left to Right: Billy Graham, Richard Furman, and Lowell Furman at Billy’s home in Montreat, NC

With today’s worldwide scale of Samaritan’s Purse and it’s medical arm World Medical Mission, it’s easy to forget that the people at the birth of these ministries didn’t have a large-scale vision as much as a desire to meet needs and follow the Lord’s leading, even when the Lord’s involvement wasn’t clear until seen in hindsight.

In fact, it’s with that hindsight that Dr. Richard Furman of Boone, one of the founders of World Medical Mission (WMM), sees the ways the Lord shaped him and used his awareness and knowledge at the impetus of WMM.

Growing up in a Christian home, Furman accepted Jesus while in 5th grade during a revival week at his Baptist church, the same church where he heard visiting missionaries speak. “We had missionaries who came to our church, so I was familiar with the mission field,” he explains. “I remember talking to my mother about it, that maybe I ought to be a missionary, but I never really felt the tug on my heart that I should be a full-time missionary. [With] World Medical Mission we realized you can get a lot more doctors on the mission field than if you went yourself full time. We send 600 doctors a year short-term, and I’ve realized that when I was young and first felt that feeling that maybe I should be a missionary? This is a hundredfold better than just 23

The Journey Winter 2017

me being over there by myself.”

In the previous edition of The Journey, Dr. Furman shared memories of the formation of WMM and the role Billy and Franklin Graham played in establishing it. Now, he shares other memories from those early days.

“First of all, we didn’t start World Medical Mission; it wasn’t our plan,” Furman recalls. “We look back and see the Lord’s hand there and it’s just unbelievable. Knowing what man can put together versus what God can put together is no comparison.”

One “coincidence” Furman recalls from those early days embodies World Medical Mission’s goal in a nutshell: Furman had the opportunity to minister to a man’s medical needs which, in turn, opened the door to share God’s love.

“I had been on a World Medical Mission trip and had an overnight flight to London. In the middle of the night they asked over the speaker that if there was a doctor on board to please come forward. So, I went up and this fella had had a heart attack. I needed to get medicine in his vein to try to stimulate his heart, so I asked the crew to ask if anyone had nitroglycerin.

Several people brought forward little bottles, so I laid the man out across the seats with his head in my lap and about every ten minutes I’d put a pill under his tongue

where he’d absorb the medicine fastest. His heart was hardly beating and it wasn’t pumping effectively, but after about a half hour or so, the man was coming around and the captain came to me and said, ‘We’re ten minutes from the halfway point. Should I turn back or go on to London?’ I told him that the sooner we got the man on the ground, the better chance he had of living. The captain didn’t say anything, but turned around and walked back to the cockpit. I’ll never forget looking out the window and seeing the moon and the stars start moving the other way back to Newfoundland.

As the man was being loaded onto the ambulance, he pulled his card out of his suit coat and handed it to me.

He was Jimmy Hoffa’s lawyer; he was president of [The Dunes] hotel in Las Vegas; and he was Jewish. Morris Shenker was his name.

“I got back on the plane and was [overseas] for a month and didn’t know what had happened to Mr. Shenker, but when I got back to the U.S. they had sent word that he had survived. [After that], he’d send me Christmas presents and kept asking Harriet and me to come out to Las Vegas as his guests. One time, Billy Graham was having a crusade there in about a month and it dawned on me and I said, ‘Mr. Shenker, we’ll come out if you’ll go to the Billy Graham Crusade.’”

That particular Las Vegas crusade was held in November 1980, the year of the MGM Grand Hotel fire in which 87 people died and 700 were injured.

“The first morning of the crusade,” Furman continues, “Franklin came by and said the hotel across the street was on fire and that I needed to get over there. I went to one spot where there were six ambulances and they had stretchers but no doctors because the medical set-up was on the other side of the hotel. The firemen were bringing so many limp bodies out and placing them on the stretchers where I was that I grabbed a handful of endotracheal tubes, intubated the unconscious people so I could “breathe” for them,

and in a few minutes they’d be breathing on their own.”

Later that day, Billy Graham asked Furman to speak at the crusade about the fire. It was the same night Shenker had been invited to come. “I’ll never forget; we were in the big auditorium and I was going to speak and was up on the platform. Mr. Shenker came in late, but I saw him come in the middle door, and he walked way down toward the front and sat down and listened. I got to speak a little bit about the passage that says wood, hay, and stubble will be burned by fire, but the ones that accept Him will get into Heaven. But the main thing was that he heard Billy Graham’s message.

Later, Billy Graham gave him a Bible where he’d written a verse from the Old Testament and the New Testament in the front.”

Though he believed the Lord was at work, it wasn’t until the third year of WMM that Furman clearly recognized that while man had started the ministry, God’s hand was in it and He was blessing the efforts of His children. “I took my wife and our three kids to Kenya with Franklin for a month. I spent more time with them that month than I did the whole year back in Boone. It was good family time. We went to Tenwek Hospital which now is the biggest missions’ hospital there is but at that time was a 40-bed hospital with three to a bed. Dr. Ernie Steury was the only doctor working there and he was getting ready to go on furlough for a year. When we came, he looked like a little whipped puppy because he had just gotten a letter that his replacement couldn’t come.

“He asked us if we could get a doctor a month to come and take his place [for the year]. So, we stood in the hospital and put our arms around each other while Franklin led a prayer asking the Lord to send a doctor a month for the next 12 months. After the prayer, Ernie was smiling; he was so relieved. But, later, I told Franklin, ‘You gave him false hope. You have no idea how long it takes to get doctors to go. Last year we

The Journey Winter 2017

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sent seven doctors and it takes a long time.’ I just went on and on.

“When we got back to the hotel, there was a note to call Becky Williams at the WMM office. We called and she said she had gotten a call that afternoon from a doctor in Pennsylvania who was going to take his family on vacation for a month starting in three weeks. He was wondering if there was a need for him starting next month,” Furman recalls, chuckling. “We called Ernie and told him to keep packing because we got the first month covered. After that, we got a doctor a month. That’s when I realized the Lord’s hand was in it. It wasn’t us, it was Him. From then on, we didn’t try to plan or organize anything, it just happened.”

In many ways, the formation of WMM began to take shape when Dr. Furman and his brother Lowell were invited by a friend to the Billy Graham Crusade in Asheville in 1977. Though Furman already knew Franklin from riding motorcycles in Boone, it was at the crusade that he met Dr. Graham who asked the

brothers if they would help with a medical need in India. While Furman can’t say WMM wouldn’t have happened without meeting Dr. Graham at that place and time, he is very certain the Lord used the crusade, the people involved, the timing, and the place in the formation of the ministry.

“Billy Graham played a big role in the start of World Medical Mission,” offers Furman. “Our relationship with him has been great. I’ve always looked to him as a spiritual leader and the main thing I’ve learned from him and something we go by at World Medical Mission and Samaritan’s Purse today is from one of his favorite verses, Psalm 115:1. After the crusades, he’d go over [the verse] with the staff. It’s, ‘Not to us, O Lord, not to us, but to your name goes all the glory.’ I just think that so much with World Medical and Samaritan’s Purse is that you can look back and see the Lord’s hand in all that has happened. That’s the good part.”

To learn more about Dr. Richard Furman and his book, Your Cholesterol Matters, visit his website: www.prescriptionforlife.com

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The mantel in Billy and Ruth Graham’s home contains a German inscription that reads, “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God,” from the hymn by Martin Luther. Their home was dedicated to God, and this phrase served as a reminder.

All Photos Courtesy of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association. Used With Permission. All Rights Reserved.

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The Journey Winter 2017

“I know it was lonely many times for us children not having Daddy at home more, and there were times we would ask questions.

But today as I travel around the world with the work of Samaritan’s Purse and World Medical Mission, I meet people who tell me they came to Christ through one of Daddy’s meetings. Then I think back on those lonely times and say it was worth it all to sacrifice that time with Daddy so they could come to faith in Christ.”

- Franklin Graham

From Billy Graham, God’s Ambassador Gigi, Anne, Ruth (Bunny), Ruth, Billy, Franklin, and Ned at Billy and Ruth’s 50th wedding anniversary in 1993

All Photos Courtesy of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association. Used With Permission. All Rights Reserved.

The Journey Winter 2017

30

Kayleen Lundstrom:

Doing Unto Others Yozette “Yogi” Collins

Kayleen Lundstrom and Dr. Warren Cooper performing surgery in Mosul

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The Journey Winter 2017

It’s human nature to try to avoid pain and sadness in life, yet despite our best efforts our days are filled with ebbs and flows of happy and sad. In hindsight, we often see that these tides were turning points in our lives. Some are big, some are little, but all are points that hone us, forcing us to grow, change, and, hopefully, move towards God.

In many ways, that’s Kayleen Lundstrom’s experience. Kayleen was only 21 years old when she experienced two massive turning points in her young life and though she recognized the scale of them at the time she didn’t understand the impact the experiences ultimately would have. They have shaped her, however, and have been a type of guiding beacon since then.

She was living and working in her hometown of Bristol, Connecticut, when her close family friend (and sister of her husband Gary) Jane died in a car accident at the age of 20. It was a devastating blow to the Lundstrom family and it caused Kayleen to question her faith in ways she hadn’t before in an effort to determine where she stood in her beliefs.

“It was a major turning point in my life,” Kayleen recalls, her expressive blue eyes divulging the pain she still feels at the memories. “Jane was an example to me. Here was this beautiful person who wasn’t afraid to share her faith, who was going on a mission’s trip that summer, and who just radiated. She wasn’t afraid to share her faith; why would the Lord take someone who was so willing to share and to serve Him? It pushed me that much more in my own faith, looking at where I stood and what I represented.”

When Kayleen’s father died a month after Jane following a prolonged illness, her questioning reached an all-time high. But, the Lord welcomes questions and uses turning points in our lives for good. “I watched the strength of the Lundstroms and how they showed a love for others even in their own grief.

Here, they had lost someone so precious to them, yet through all of their pain they were able to reach out and meet me. It helped me know I wanted to do something of service that would represent the Lord.”

These are words spoken in hindsight, remember, when it’s possible to get a glimpse of how the Lord may have been working. At the time, the dayto-day clarity wasn’t necessarily so evident, but she and Gary, having dated for a while and having been friends even longer, did have enough insight at the time to marry each other the following year, 1983.

During the early years of their marriage,

Kayleen, Gary, and, eventually, daughter Eliza moved frequently following Gary’s ministry-centered jobs.

As anyone in ministry can attest, it can be lonely to be married to someone working in a ministerial career. While Kayleen experienced that, it drove her to harness her passion to serve people into a career that goes hand-in-hand with that desire.

“I was always intrigued by doing something in the medical field,” Kayleen explains. “I started out working in a dental office and then became an at home mom doing volunteer work. When our daughter Eliza got to be in 5th grade and with Gary traveling as much as he did, I really needed to find myself, so I went to the Cambridge College Technical Institute where we lived at the time in Colorado and became a Surgical Technician.”

Kayleen has worked at Watauga Medical Center for almost 17 years and has really loved it.

“Honestly, I think it’s more than just serving the patients. I like to think of myself as a team player and to help my co-workers as much as I help the doctor and patients. It’s a bigger picture than just collecting a paycheck. I think of it as a ministry, not just a job.”

While Kayleen also has served on many medical missions’ trips, she recently spent three

Kayleen Lundstrom The Journey Winter 2017

32

weeks on the most emotionally challenging one for her to date when she traveled with Samaritan’s Purse to Mosul in Northern Iraq. Not only did Kayleen, a group of doctors, nurses, and other surgical staff spend three weeks near the front lines of war, but they were at times attending to the wounds of political and ideological “enemies”. It was definitely an emotional experience for them all.

“Each trip has been so different,” Kayleen says. “We were bringing healing to children in the Children’s Heart Project. In South Sudan, we walked away and a child had a new smile. These are rewarding missions [to repair] birth defects. Mosul was different.

It was people who were maimed and lives that were destroyed by another person’s hand. It’s unbelievable that someone can do that to someone else. It was terribly heartbreaking.”

The team was housed in buildings similar to shipping containers, each with two windows, a door, bunks, and heat and air conditioning, in a compound surrounded by a tall, concrete wall beyond which only a distant mountain and the sun and moon risings could be seen. Bombs landing nearby rattled the buildings, making it hard to sleep even when on call

24 hours a day, seven days a week, ready to work in the compound’s operating room at a moment’s notice.

“We were serving soldiers, but not only Iraqi soldiers, ISIS ones, too,” Kayleen remembers. “It played on your emotions. We were there to help the country and you had to come to grips with the fact you’re serving the enemy. You always wonder how you will handle this when you face it and I think for all of us, we were there to help people. It’s not our job to bring judgment; it’s to bring healing and show love.

And sometimes showing love isn’t the easiest thing to do. It’s a supernatural thing.”

At one point the team treated a man who, with the signature beard, was definitely a member of ISIS. “He was scared just like anybody else, you know? And he was at our mercy,” Kayleen recalls. “My job was to stand by his side and hold him forward. At that point, he’s a man, a human being just like everyone else. He was kissing my hand and then kissing his own hand and placing it on my forehead as a way of saying thank you and, of course, recognizing he was at our mercy and trying to atone for some of the functions he had committed.

“I remember whispering into his ear, ‘It’s going

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The Journey Winter 2017

to be okay’. I don’t know if he could understand me and at that time I thought it would be okay but I didn’t know what would happen to him after they released him to the hands of the Iraqi forces. At that moment, however, you realize that God is bigger than all of that.

He could intervene and change these folk’s lives and it was a chance to show this man some love that I’m not even capable of offering,” she says emphatically.

Kayleen’s eyes sparkle when she talks about the medical missions trips she loves to take and they darken when she speaks of the sadness she has witnessed. She knows as much as anyone that God can harvest beautiful fruit from the darkest moments as well as the darkest lives.

“Ultimately,” she says, “everybody matters.

Everybody has a soul. These folks have been brainwashed, you know? Some of them were taken as children and fed and clothed by ISIS and given a gun and told this is what you do. That’s all they know.

Here you have these young men who have been so deceived and doing only what they know. But we’re a team serving people’s needs. Even if we reached only a handful of people, we planted the seed.”

There’s no doubt that had any one of those ISIS soldiers met the team members, especially the women, under different circumstances the ISIS members would have tortured and/or killed the team in a heartbeat. Instead, the men were shown love that likely surpassed their understanding.

It often seems God’s command to “do unto others” is like the chicken and the egg conundrum.

We are called to treat others the way we wish to be treated, but if they are treating us poorly, could that be the way they wish to be treated? Certainly, that’s not what God has in mind, and the equal treatment of Kayleen’s team towards ISIS soldiers is a testament to the love He wants us to share.

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The Journey Winter 2017

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Glen Deuel 35

The Journey Winter 2017

In April 2015, Boone, North Carolina residents Ashton Caton and Nathan Jackson boarded a plane for a month-long backpacking trip in Nepal, specifically trekking the Annapurna Circuit and the Everest Base Camp Trail. Ashton and Nathan began planning their trip over seven months prior with the intent of finding adventure and pushing their limits in some of the toughest terrain on earth. For Ashton, this trip was also a personal declaration of a simple but difficult philosophy: Do not delay the dreams inside of you.

Roughly 40,000 people annually take the beautiful trek the duo was embarking on, but this particular trip would be remembered for far more than adventure and beauty.

The two friends landed in Katmandu, Nepal and embarked on the first phase of their journey along the Annapurna Circuit, a route which typically takes 15 to 20 days on foot. This trail is the more diverse of the two trails the men aimed to trek through forests of Fire-Blue Pines and East Himalayan Oaks, over rivers spanned by wooden suspension bridges, and through scenic alpine meadows through several different climate zones. It took Nathan and Ashton 14 days to complete the circuit.

After a couple days of rest, the two friends flew into Lukla, Nepal and prepared for their second, more grueling hike to the Mount Everest Base Camp.

Unlike trekking the Annapurna Circuit, hikers on this trail, upon reaching the end, must turn around and take the same path back. The terrain here is both bleak and majestic. Mountain peaks tower above as hikers dare themselves forward. Nathan and Ashton reached Mount Everest’s Base Camp on day five, savoring their accomplishment and witnessing a view only dauntless explorers are blessed to behold.

On day four of the return journey as the men passed through the small village of Phakding, something akin to an alarm rang through the valley.

Ashton first thought it to be a fleet of fighter jets as the sound echoed all around them and the ground shook back and forth like an ocean making it impossible to stand. Buildings in the village cracked and crashed; the second level of a nearby building flew out onto the road a few feet from Ashton. In this moment he doubted he would escape the narrow street alive. Within a few moments, the roar dissipated.

Ashton looked for Nathan who had been a few minutes ahead of him but couldn’t find him.

Cries from people in the village began ringing through the air, sorrow in a language he didn’t speak. Yelling

for Nathan, Ashton sprinted down the trail, finding him quickly and, like Ashton himself, miraculously safe. Bewildered, the pair continued the two hour stretch back to Lukla where, upon arrival, they learned the breadth of what just occurred: a magnitude 7.8 earthquake had hit Nepal and Katmandu had been hit the hardest.

Ashton’s flight was scheduled to depart from Lukla and land in Katmandu for a connecting flight.

Meanwhile, estimates for the death toll in Kathmandu were over 1,000 with many people unaccounted for and likely trapped underneath rubble. With no running water and most communications down, tensions were escalating and rumors circulated that Kathmandu was turning more chaotic and dangerous every minute.

When Ashton and Nathan finally reached the Lukla airport, they witnessed body bags being carried off of the plane Ashton was scheduled to board. Upon hearing that the hospital in Katmandu had no room left for the deceased and bodies were being brought to Lukla instead, Ashton realized he wouldn’t be able to board the plane. The duo searched for a safe place to stay, but most buildings were too unstable as aftershocks continued both day and night. Each aftershock was equally traumatic, bringing a constant stream of uncertainty as well as an alarm that awakened the primal impulse for survival.

During the night, as Ashton attempted to sleep, the earth again rumbled. It was only a tremor but before any logical thought could process, Ashton’s body

Ashton Caton The Journey Winter 2017

36

was moving through the doorway, down three flights of stairs, across the ground floor dining area, and out the main entrance. Amazingly, his body reacted to the threat of another earthquake before his mind had a chance to realize what was happening. Ashton recalls, “I could never move that quickly again in my life. In that moment, I felt like I met another side of myself.

And I saw other people’s survival mode taking over as people were robbed, beaten up, and even gruesomely murdered for [something as simple as] a plane ticket.

Everyone was acting out of a part of themselves that is usually hidden. I became brutally aware that although people go around with cordial greetings in regular life, this primal instinct to survive by any means necessary is in all of us. There were no masks here, for better or for worse.”

Later, this awareness would make Ashton wonder if faith and primal impulse could coexist. At that point, however, he and Nathan just needed to keep their heads low and wait for a way home. It took nearly a week, but Ashton was able to secure another flight back home. Nathan’s flight was already secured as his departure had been originally scheduled a week later.

Once home, Ashton began the journey of recovery which arrived slowly through rest and quiet.

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The Journey Winter 2017

His mind and heart were disheveled as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and sleepless nights became ongoing battles. The aftershocks were still rumbling through his life. Upon a friend’s suggestion, he began reading Victor Hugo’s Les Miserables and in the silent space of reading this redemptive work, Ashton started to feel whole again. Songs began forming within Ashton and as his journal filled up, songwriting became a self-prescribed therapy. To move forward, Ashton knew all of his songs would need to be completed.

Staying true to his philosophy, Ashton brought together a group of friends who could help him realize this vision. This was the formation of the band Royal Nature which would culminate in Arcane, an 11song album. The word ‘arcane’ means to be known or understood by very few—mysterious or secret.

Initially, this word signified the way Ashton felt about the experience he went through. “The destruction and primal instincts that I faced made it hard to find anyone who could understand what I went through,” he explains. “But after time, the word also began to symbolize the path that the human spirit takes to heal after enduring immense tragedy.”

Royal Nature focused on reflecting these qualities in their music by starting with sounds that

were ominous, dark, and sometimes disturbing. Over the course of the album, the music gradually transitions into redemptive anthems with lush and beautiful sonic landscapes. Although the music never quite resolves into complete serenity, it does land on a sense of hopefulness in the midst of mystery.

Looking back on the surreal experience, Ashton reflects, “I don’t know why so many lives were lost or why I am still here. You can’t reason yourself out of the suffering we all have to face or the animal instinct that exists in us. But in the struggle to make sense of it all, I found that beauty healed my soul in a way that sleep, food, and logic could not. Beauty serves a purpose and brings healing.”

In Les Miserables, the character Bishop Myriel has a garden plot in which he planted flowers. He is questioned one day why he doesn’t make his garden more useful or practical and he responds, “The beautiful is as useful as the useful,” adding after a pause, “More so, perhaps.”

“All praise goes to God, Father of our Lord Jesus, the Anointed One. He is the Father of compassion, the God of all comfort. He consoles us as we endure the pain and hardship of life so that we may draw from His comfort and share it with others in their own struggles.”

(2​ ​Cor​ ​1:3-4, NIV) Hear Ashton’s journey expressed in music for yourself at www.royalnatureband.com.

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Bonnie Church:

Friendship Evangelism Yozette “Yogi” Collins

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Bonnie Church of Boone reminds me of a boxer taking the walk to the ring for a highly anticipated fight: energetic, firing up those around her, ready to work, and pumped-up with energy not often seen in everyday life. Bonnie “The Vivacious“ Church.

I met Bonnie through my parents, Hutch and Phyllis Sprunt, as a kid in the 70s, and she is still the same energetic, genuine woman I’ve known since the time I affectionately refer to as “Hippie House Church” days. It was a time of Jesus freaks, gospel tracts, and flower children, and the new expressions of faith, while likely scary to some Christians, brought Jesus to places outside of traditional church and to the people where they were, much like Jesus himself did.

While I have known Bonnie primarily in a personal realm, she has become quite successful in her work with Market America, a multi-level marketing company based in Greensboro, North Carolina. In fact, one time I was chatting with an employee in a toy store in New Hampshire and when the woman mentioned Market America and I mentioned knowing Bonnie, you would have thought I was talking about the Red Sox starting lineup, the Pope, and Princess Diana all rolled into one.

I caught up with Bonnie to learn about her faith journey and where she is on the path today. Growing up in Nedrow, New York, Bonnie, like many people in this country, grew up attending church. “I was taken to church and baptized as a child, but I certainly went my own way when I became a teenager. I pursued a counterculture lifestyle that was extremely liberal and the moral compass was a little bit skewed on occasion, but I came back to the Lord — I hate to use that cliché.

It’s more that I had a renewal of my faith in college,” she explains.

It was in 1974 during one of her summer breaks

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from Syracuse University that Bonnie came to Boone because she had an opportunity to stay with friends while working at Hound Ears Club making three dollars an hour cleaning houses and cooking

“It was during the time when all the baby boomers were looking for jobs in the summer and it was really hard to get them. I ended up meeting Michael when he picked me up hitchhiking. We fell in love, dropped out of college, and got married. “Then,” she laughs, “we went off to live off the land and wait for Jesus to come back, I guess. We were definitely Jesus hippies.

“I was an extreme evangelical at the time. I still consider myself an evangelical, but I used to go down King Street wearing bibbed overalls and braids with [daughter] Meredith in a backpack carrier on my back and hand out tracts, talking to everybody about Jesus.

So, I mean, I was in one hundred percent. I was willing to get out of my comfort zone and do things that could be highly embarrassing because of my love for the Lord.

“I probably alienated people because I was so upfront. Over the years, though, I have learned that the role of the believer is to bear the hope in their heart and to get close enough to other people for them to see it and ask the question. You know, that’s a really patient process that can take time, but I feel like most of us are called to that. I’m not going to judge anybody that’s called to extreme evangelistic efforts. Everybody, before their master, stands or falls, you know? You have to decide what God wants you to do. But, I see my faith being expressed by being a living love letter written by God and read by humanity than someone in peoples’ faces alienating them.”

It is this ‘friendship evangelism’ that I appreciate so much in Bonnie. Loving people where

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they are, just as God loves us where we are. As failed humans, we often feel “safer” comparing ourselves to those around us by what we do, say, or wear, but Bonnie reminds us that God gives us each unique spiritual gifts and wants us to be authentic in the expression of those to His glory.

“Michael and I,” she shares, “have gravitated to ministry in the past: Michael was a home group leader and I led a ladies’ Bible study or prayer group. But, it never felt right. It just never felt like us because it wasn’t our area of gifting. What I came to discover is that my ministry is in the marketplace. The ethos over my life is to work with all my heart as unto the Lord and from Him comes my reward. If you look in Scripture, a lot of it is about working humbly with your hands, working as unto the Lord, bearing the hope that’s within you, and being ready to give an answer for that…with a message of grace.

“I had a situation not too long ago where I went to a gala dinner for the company I work for. A man I’ve known for a number of years who is dealing with a serious health issue sat down next to me at the dinner and just asked, ‘Are you afraid to die?’ I felt for a minute like the dog that caught the train,” she laughs, “but I was able to share with him my utter confidence in my

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relationship with God. People are afraid to die, but when you have God’s love written on your soul, there’s no fear. I was able to express that to this man in a way that he was able to receive it. It’s just an example of how he saw the hope in my life. I’m not patting myself on the back with that. Believe me, if you walked around with me you’d find plenty of reasons to wonder about me! But the hope that shines in us does shine brightly when we allow it and it’s going to shine more brightly when we’re in places that are dark.”

Bonnie certainly shines. Even as a kid, I remember recognizing that Bonnie lifted up and pointed out the strengths and best qualities about people with whom she came into contact, seeking to be the expression of God’s love to people.

“If I had a faith tradition,” she summarizes, “it would be contemplative more now than it was before. Worshiping God by paying attention to what He’s doing, you know, in the lives of other people.

It’s like creation, getting out into nature. Nature is like a conversation from God sharing His love with us. Nature is like a living love letter, too, you know? I get out into places where I feel really, really small and realize He is God, and I am not. I don’t care anymore about impressing people with how spiritual I am. I started out as a rebel in the counterculture and I went into the Christian subculture, surrounding myself with people that believed exactly like I believed. And you know what? It caused me to want to comply and be accepted by the people I was surrounded with. But I’ve come to realize that Christianity is not a subculture, it is a counterculture. It’s where you live the life of God in integrity wherever you are. That doesn’t mean a holierthan-thou sort of piety; it just means walking in love, being ready to give an answer for the hope that is within you. That’s it. That’s pretty much it.”

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Jason and Jaylynn Byassee:

Missing Boone While Embracing God’s Call in Vancouver, BC Jason and Jaylynn Byassee

Left to Right: Jack, Jason, Will, Jaylynn, and Sam Byassee in Vancouver, BC, Canada

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As I write this I, Jason, am at home in Vancouver, but my wife Jaylynn is home in Boone.

She’s visiting for a weekend—taking in Watauga High and App football games, eating at Proper and Pepper’s, getting weepy at the beauty of the Blue Ridge. I’m back in the Lower Mainland of British Columbia where it is raining. Again. It won’t stop till April.

Boone is our heart’s home. We served Methodist churches in Watauga County from 2011 to 2015 and lived in the pearl of Appalachia. We loved it, and yet didn’t realize how bad we’d miss it when we left. British Columbia is glorious, too. They don’t award the Olympics to crummy cities. Everywhere you look here there is glass and sky and steel and water. It’s a city of dreams—a friend asked, in response to a Facebook pic, if we’d moved to Narnia. No, we thought, we’ve left it.

There are surprising similarities between Boone and Vancouver. Both are in temperate rain forests. There is a reason the trees grow so tall and beautiful—they’re well-watered, all the time. They’re both mountain towns with skiing within city limits.

They’re both ambitious towns: Vancouver was a sleepy middle-class beach village within my lifetime; Boone has had to work hard to resist excessive growth for just as long. The secret’s out on Vancouver—it’s the second-most expensive city to live in in the world and a million more people are coming by 2040. Boone’s secret still has a bit of a lid on it. I hope it stays that way, selfish as that is to say. We need a place to retire, after all.

There are also vast differences. Vancouver is a west coast city. It is Canada’s SoCal, San Fran, and Seattle wrapped into one: it has the best weather in the country (millionaires and homeless people want to live here for that same reason); it is the place’s movie hub, its lefty progressive headquarters, and its techand coffee-roasting capital. Vancouver has been a magnet for Asian capital for 30 years now and doesn’t know how to shut it off. I regularly see Ferraris and Lamborghinis parked curbside—folks can afford cars that cost more than any house I’ve ever owned but not a garage to put them in (the average detached home price is $1.6 million US).

We laugh at small differences. We miss the food in Boone, in the South, generally: barbeque and Bojangles’ and pecan pie. I sometimes describe Canada as a beautiful country full of amazing people who can’t make a proper biscuit. Every meal we’re served the waiter asks if we want hot sauce (including,

once, for pancakes!). We always want to say the same thing: if you make the food good to start with, it doesn’t need extra sauce. That’s what happens when Brits colonize a place.

Canada is a place highly attentive at the moment to its history with “First Nations” peoples which Americans would call Native Americans.

British Columbia has more indigenous languages than anywhere else in North America—people groups were funneled up this way as Europeans moved west. In my lifetime there were residential schools in Canada, funded by the government and often run by churches, that took native children from their homes against their parents’ will and tried to Canadianize them—forbade their native language and dress and names. The goal was to “civilize,” actually a progressive policy at the time, but a disaster rife with sexual and physical abuse, amounting to what Canada has officially recognized as “cultural genocide.” I know the history of the Cherokee and the Lumbee and other tribes in North Carolina, but the flash points of their interaction with European settlers was so much longer ago it rarely entered my consciousness.

Here, it’s a daily presence. Canadians are nothing if not good at saying “sorry”, accented appropriately.

Here, a whole nation is trying to say sorry, with massive governmental and ecclesial payouts. Every civic gathering in Vancouver opens with a little invocation like this, “We acknowledge that we meet on the traditional, unceded, and ancestral territory of the Musqueam, Tsleil-Waututh, and Squamish Coast Salish people.” It’s nearly a prayer.

A colleague of mine at the seminary where I teach is named Ray Aldred, a Cree pastor and theologian from Treaty 8, Northern Alberta. He is a gifted preacher and thinker from whom I learn daily.

He also supplied a surprising point of connection with Boone, of all places. He spoke of how when his family gathers back home they always turn on “Wagon Wheel” by Old Crow Medicine Show and turn it up. I nearly shouted out loud. OCMS is from Boone, North Carolina! We crank it up, too. It’s not just a good song; it’s a connector between a family First Nation and another European, between coasts, between countries, between us. Amazing what God can do through music.

And now, my wife Jaylynn would like to share her thoughts on our move from Boone to Vancouver:

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For me, Jaylynn, I can truly say that the move to Vancouver from Boone was the hardest thing our family has ever done. Boone is a unique place and a rare find and only those who have lived in it can understand the depths and character and charm of Boone. After four years and no intention of leaving, God called us out of not only Boone, but out of our country, too. Even though Boone was deep in our family’s roots and our kids still call it their ‘hometown,’ we moved because we felt called to do so.

How could we leave a place as beautiful and unique as Boone? You don’t. There’s a part of Boone that stays with you. Mind you, I didn’t know a soul when we moved to the High Country. Everyone was new to me.

I remember the week we moved away, I took a picture of my son with his friends and said, “That picture took four years.” They weren’t instant friendships; it was time together in a small town, with a vibrant university, incredible scenery, a spectacular outdoor playground, and a church we loved.

It was my husband’s job that moved us to Canada, but it was God pulling on all of us that taught us that we will be affected in ways we never expected.

For me, God used one question I asked in an interview for a job I didn’t get: Who helps the refugees that come to this city? Before long, I was serving alongside agencies who equip Vancouverites to welcome the refugee; I became friends with refugees

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from Kurdistan and ordered Bibles in Kurdish with the particular Sorani dialect; and I ate in the homes of Muslim families from Syria, learned their traditions, and listened to their stories. Often we have to travel around the world to engage with others of a different land, culture, or language. Here in Vancouver, the world is coming to us!

Our kids have experienced things in the city they had not been prepared for. One mentioned, as he was learning the names of cars he’d never seen before in his life, “How come I see a McLaren on one corner and then a homeless person on the next?” The city is a new way of life for them, but it has given them a chance to find their own way and wrestle with the questions that are right before our eyes.

With me working in a church and my husband working in a seminary, we realized quickly that our children were bumping up against non-Christians on a daily basis—much more than us! And the most wonderful thing is how they recognized the beauty in each of the friends they met. Not only were they learning about friendships with those who don’t believe in Jesus or have a faith, they were also engaging children of other faiths. There was a Jewish child in my youngest son’s class who mentioned Israel and my son responded with understanding. The child was astonished! “YOU know about Israel? No one ever knows about Israel—they keep saying you mean Italy,

or something, but they never seem to know Israel.

This is amazing!” This was a difference we didn’t plan or expect—unexpected friendships in unforeseen circumstances.

And now, Jason explains what we had been told and how we prepared our three sons to transition to Vancouver life:

The church ecology here is different. When we moved, Jaylynn and I told our sons they shouldn’t ask new friends on the playground, What church do you go to? as their first get-to-know question. One of our boys came home saying he’d disobeyed. “I asked a kid if he went to church.” Uh oh. What’d he say? “He said no, so I asked him if he believed in God.” The boy responded, “This is a lot of pressure, kid! I dunno if I believe.” Contrast this with Boone where the church I served, Boone United Methodist Church, was the third largest in town with 1500 members in a town of 20,000 permanent residents. This floors Canadians. A large church in British Columbia might be a couple hundred in a metro region of 2.5 million. In terms of congregational vitality and size, Vancouver is more like Seattle than SoCal. Folks first moved here for money in gold or timber or fishing or now real estate, not for faith, and that origin story sticks.

study, the academic inquiry that befits a university town, the entrepreneurial energy of a small business community, and the social justice grit of those who love and live among the poor. We don’t worry about it—it’s in stellar hands with David Hockett and a bevy of gifted lay leaders; we worry about us. Selfish, we know, but we can’t help it. We miss the place so.

Vancouver is stellar—let no one tell you otherwise. Come visit us if you can. But something about Boone gets up under your skin, won’t leave you alone, and calls you home. We hope one day to answer.

Quite a change from Boone, where there are more Baptists than people.

Our spiritual lives and leadership are quite different now. Jaylynn directs pastoral care for First Baptist downtown, a gray stone tall steeple place. I teach future preachers mostly for liberal denominations in Canada—Anglican, Presbyterian, and United Church of Canada (a 1925 amalgamation of Methodists, Congregationalists, and 2/3rds of Presbyterians). The lines between mainline (where I teach) and evangelical (where Jaylynn pastors) are farther apart here than in the U.S., but we’re bridgebuilding people, so we’ll keep trying to mend together what should have never been torn. Because the Lord Jesus is knitting all creation back together, starting with the church. Sometimes you can even catch a glimpse of evidence that this is so. We often had it at Boone Methodist.

It’s amazing how you learn what you had only when it’s gone. We miss Boone Methodist daily—a place with the energy of evangelical worship and Bible The Journey Winter 2017

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Need to Dispose of Unused or Expired Medications?

WHAT?

WHERE?

Prescriptions and medications can be dropped off at the following locations by using the permanent medication disposal drop box at the hours listed for each location.

Watauga County Sheriff’s Office

Boone Police Department

184 Hodges Gap Road Boone, NC 28607 Phone: (828) 264-3761 Hours: Monday-Friday 8am-5pm

1500 Blowing Rock Road Boone, NC 28607 Phone: (828) 268-6900 Hours: Monday-Friday 8am-5pm

Blowing Rock Police Department

Appalachian State University Police

143 Park Avenue Blowing Rock, NC 28605 Phone: (828) 295-5210 Hours: Monday-Friday 8am-5pm

461 Rivers Street Boone, NC 28608 Phone: (828) 262-2150 Hours: 24 hours a day, 7 days a week

What is accepted?

Prescriptions, Cold & Flu Medications, Pain Relievers, Cough Syrups, Topical Ointments, Vitamins, Pet Medications and other medications

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