Reconnecting

This retirement trip has brought us back together with so many people. Sometimes those people have been relatives – siblings, nieces and nephews, cousins and their families. Those family times have been rich and precious ones, catching up on one another’s lives and stocking up on hugs because they do not happen often enough.

Sometimes those people have been friends with whom our lives connected sometime along our journey but whom we rarely get to see. If you’ve been reading the blog, you know that we got to spend time with a seminary friend, Dave McConnell, whom we’d not seen in 30 years. This weekend, we will get time with another of those seminary classmates, Richard Ketchum, and we can hardly wait! (Added later: we had a wonderful time with Ketchums this weekend. Neil was honored to do the dedication of their youngest daughter, Sarah Jade, at worship on Sunday. See picture.)


Sometimes those people have been our former seminarians, students for whom we have been mentors or even surrogate parents as well as with some of my (Patty’s) former Fuller student wives. With all of these young people, we have been honored to walk their seminary journey, sharing the ups and downs of seminary life as they prepare to go into ministry.

Sometimes those people have been ministry couples, friends who have encouraged us, and hopefully whom we have encouraged in return, in the challenges and joys of ministry life.

Sometimes those people have been former parishioners whose lives connected with ours in our civilian parish in Sylmar, where we pastored during our seminary years in the early ‘70’s, or from chapels in our military career.

One of our most special evenings was spent in the home of Beverly and Marty Hoffman in Sequim, WA. (Pictured to the left: Marty & Beverly with Frank and Chris Bru.) There is quite a group of former DoDDS (Department of Defense Dependent Schools) teachers who have retired in that amazingly beautiful corner of our country, and who can blame them? It’s gorgeous there!

Marty and Beverly’s sunroom overlooks the Juan de Fuca Strait. As six of us sat visiting just before sunset that evening, we watched in awe as a pod of 30 – 40 seals swam by, catching dinner enroute, with the birds swooping down to get the leftovers.

That evening, there were five couples gathered at Hoffmans to reconnect and enjoy fellowship again. Most of us had taught together, with Marty as our fearless leader/principal, and most of us had worshiped and sung in choir together at the Ft. Espinar Chapel on the Atlantic side in Panama -- great memories with truly fine folks. (Pictured at right: Wallace Teal & Beverly, Neil & Patty, Randy & Donna Grubbs.)

What a joy to reconnect!

Reading the Directions (Day 45)

In an effort to understand better how to use our digital camera, I actually got out the instruction book and skimmed it the other night.

In an effort to turn off the camera’s flash to capture better the deep wine burgundy color of a flower, I pushed the wrong button and apparently deleted all the pictures of our visit with Aunt Nellie, my amazing 93-year-old aunt in Oregon, and her family, including a great picture of my cousin, Art, holding his twin 15-month-old grandchildren, one in each arm.

My heart hurts that I messed up so badly. If I had read the directions more carefully, if I had studied them and practiced with the camera instead of skimming the instruction book, this likely would not have happened.

What a lesson for us as Christians! It is easy to skim the direction book (aka the Bible), to go on with our lives in our own way and under our own power, bumbling along pushing the wrong buttons . . . and messing things up instead of really reading and studying the directions, seeking the best and right way to do things.

P.S.
For obvious reasons, this post will not include pictures of my aunt and mentor, Nellie Greer, or cousin Art and the twins. :-(

Going the Distance (Weeks 1 - 6)

Because some of the readers of the Frey Family blog live outside the United States, my very wise older sister, Merrilyn, suggested I give them some idea of the distances we are traveling, so for those of you who like statistics and are curious or who live far away and would like a perspective of distances in the U.S. , here are some of the travel details.

Week 1 -- drove from Pasadena, across Arizona, through New Mexico to Las Cruces, NM/El Paso, TX : 1,409 miles

Week 2 -- drove from Las Cruces, NM to Colorado Springs, CO, but this was the week we took " . . . Another Way" (see blog entry for days 9-10) and detoured through Ft. Worth, TX,which added quite a number of miles: 1,502

Week 3 -- drove from Colorado Springs and Denver across Nebraska to Brookings, SD: 923

Week 4 -- drove from Brookings to Rapid City, SD, but the mileage includes a lot of driving around in both areas, sightseeing, of course!! 1.064

Week 5 -- drove from Rapid City through Yellowstone, doing a lot of meandering through that beautiful area, then on to Montana, down through the Grand Tetons, and across Idaho: 1,469

Week 6 -- drove from Idaho, into Oregon, and on up to northeastern Washington state, then across to Seattle, where we are currently enjoying this beautiful area: 1,233


GRAND TOTAL . . . so far? 7,600 miles

I told Neil the other day as we drove towards my sister and brother-in-law's home in a beautiful valley in northeastern Washington that we had to stay with them forever. Neil, of course, looked at me as if I was totally crazy and asked why that might be. It's so logical! It's because we had originally figured the trip would be around 7000-7500 miles, and we were almost at our quota, so we had to stop.

However, after much serious debate (NOT!), we decided to continue the trip, enjoying the visits and scenery along the way, and head on home as scheduled, which means we'll be on the road for two more weeks.

For those of you who are wondering: yes, we are enjoying "going the distance"!!

Sharing the Road (Days 33-34)

The last couple of days were absolutely amazing. We left Yellowstone to drive to Bozeman, Montana, to visit two couples -- my nephew and his wife, Nate & Nikole Greer, (technically, Nate is a second cousin, but he feels like a nephew) and their adorable black and white long-haired chihuahua named "Diego el Doggo", and an old seminary friend who pastors in Bozeman and whom we had not seen in 30 years, Dave McConnell, and his wife, Sally. (See picture above.) Those two visits alone would have been well worth the drive, but the drive . . . oh, the drive!! It was magnificent!!

We have fallen in love with the Gallatin National Forest -- especially the Gallatin Mountains and the Gallatin River. The river runs alongside the highway, another of those two-lane jobbies that most of our SoCal friends rarely see. In most places, the river doesn't look deep, and the water rushes over rocks a few inches below the surface, bubbling and bouncing over the rocks as it dances downstream making music that touches the soul. I loved that river!

Bozeman is an absolutely delightful town, and it captured our hearts. We can see why people leave the crowded cities and head for those hills and the "Big Sky" of Montana!!

Leaving early yesterday in the chilly morning air, we drove back down alongside that lovely river, beside the frost-tipped Gallatin Valley to cut across the southwestern corner of Yellowstone, again seeing some magnificent creatures. We stopped to watch a beautiful bull elk drinking from the river while the five females with him continued across the river and onto the bank, grazing and waiting for him. On the other side of the road, one young female grazed not twenty feet from our van, seeming to be totally oblivious to those of us who gazed at her beauty.

As we drove on we got the thrill of sharing the road . . . with a buffalo. Looking down the road, I saw this big brown hulk moving towards us in the oncoming lane of traffic and could hardly believe my eyes! Here he comes, this massive creature, head down, plowing his way down the road -- calomp, calomp, calomp. Believe me when I tell you that nobody argued with his right of way!!


When the three cars ahead of us finished getting pictures and moved on, this great creature continued to trudge towards us, veering every-so-slightly to his left and the middle line, which meant he was heading our way. Much as we wanted great pictures, I admit to a moment of panic when all I really wanted was to get out of his way before he plowed into our trusty Toyota Sienna. As the buffalo passed our car, I believe he was close enough that Neil could almost have reached out the driver's window and touched him -- almost!!

From Yellowstone we drove through the Grand Tetons. Grand Tetons is an apt name, for they truly are grand -- tall, sharp, craggy mountains jutting into the sky with serene lakes standing at their feet. Again, we were humbled and awed by the beauty of God's handiwork.


As if the Tetons weren't beautiful enough, God painted from His special pallette yesterday, adding wild splashes of yellows, golds, and deep orange to the mountainsides as we drove on past the Tetons and through the mountains into Idaho. Since most of the trees have not yet begun to change color, the contrast of the deep greens with occasional bright color splashes in splotches here and there on the mountainsides was incredibly beautiful.


The day ended with dinner and a lovely visit with two others of "our kids" -- one of our Talbot grads, his wife, and their four children who recently moved from pastoring in Southern California to a church in Blackfoot, Idaho. Nothing like a visit with special people in our lives to top off a perfect day!

P.S. Once again, this is a "To be continued . . . ", so check the blog again in a few days to see pictures. Because for some reason the cord to download photos from camera to computer was not in our camera bag, we have to wait until we can get Kodak CD's made before we can put pictures onto the computer and blog.

More of Yellowstone (Day 31)

Neil is not fond of heights. Some of you can identify with that quite well, I am sure. There were parts of our day today that were a challenge to someone who loveth not heights. We drove a huge loop through Yellowstone, seeing an amazing variety of landscpes including the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone, which is absolutely beautiful. The picture above was taken by yours truly leaning just slightly over a ledge to get a better shot. All of a sudden, I felt someone grab the back of my pants. It was Neil, thankfully. I turned and said, "Neil, I'm perfectly alright!" to which he responded, "You might be, but I'm sure not!"

In addition to the beauty of the rugged rocks that make the canyon walls, the waterfalls are awesome. We decided to take the 3/8 mile walk down to the overlook at the top of Lower Falls and learned something absolutely mind-boggling: a 3/8 mile walk down somehow turns into about a 1 1/2 mile walk back up. Go figure! The path, which is narrow and has no railings, is the ziggiest, zaggiest path we have ever walked, but the views at the bottom are worth even the climb back up. Although the falls are magnificent, my favorite picture (below) is the splash. If you look carefully, you will see the rainbow.

What a Day! (Days 29-30 - Part 1)

This day was so cool! After a cold, wet day yesterday during which we drove from Rapid City to Buffalo, Wyoming, we woke up to a clear, gorgeous, crisp 43 degree morning. The drive towards Yellowstone was beautiful -- snow covered mountains in the distance, snow sprinkled pine trees along the roadside and covering the hillsides, and sun shining on it all. We even got to see about 30 antelope grazing on one of the hillsides as we drove along.

To make things even better, we had two interruptions, both were interruptions that would be most uncommon on Southern California freeways and both necessitated that we stop and wait. The first was a herd of cattle that just could not quite decide on which side of the road they most wanted to walk, so they walked on the left, right, and middle, back and forth, but finally cleared the road enough for cars to slowly drive through.


Not long after that, as I was driving along the highway, I noticed movement in the field to our right, so I slowed down, then stopped and watched a group of 8-10 antelope bound over the bank, across the road, and up the hill. Starting to drive on, I looked one more time and was thankful I had because one last little guy needed the break to dash across the road and catch up with the others before we headed on down the highway.

We arrived in Yellowstone this afternoon, driving the miles from the east entrance through to the west exit and West Yellowstone, with many stops along the way. Yellowstone is gorgeous with many lush trees, switfly flowing rivers, and a magnificent lake . . . and it is sad. There are so many areas that have been devastated by fires over the past few years, and the scars of those fires are stark. The encouraging thing is that you can see small, new trees (knee high to just over your head) growing to reforest the areas devastated by fires, with the burned trees standing tall and spindly against the skyline.


Late this afternoon, after seeing some buffalo and what we think was a gray fox, we enjoyed watching Old Faithful erupt, something that Neil had never seen before. It was quite impressive!

What a Day! (Days 29-30 - Part 2)

And then?? Then I got the most amazing opportunities to get pictures of some of God's creatures. I was just across a two-lane road from a mother elk and her baby, although a grossly noisy truck drove by and spooked them. Actually, I'd been walking toward the pair when the momma elk began walking towards me, but as she got closer, I began to question the wisdom of getting too close and chose to cross the road in case she didn't like my being in her path and to get a better picture of her since straight-on head shots don't show much.

Not long after viewing Old Faithful, I got even closer to a gorgeous female elk, and not much farther down the road we saw a bull elk with great antlers calmly grazing in a grassy median, despite the fact that he was surrounded by cars and people. Driving on down the road and around a curve, we came upon a HUGE buffalo that was munching on grass at the side of the road, so we got a picture of him as we drove by. Frankly, I was thankful we could see him from the car, because the information we received on entering Yellowstone says that those big guys weigh up to 2,000 pounds, are quite tempermental, and can sprint at 30 miles per hour, which is a whole lot faster than I can sprint!


To keep things truthful, the big guy above was not the buffalo we saw our first night at Yellowstone, to whom we actually got closer than we did to this one, but we loved that you can actually see this guy's tongue, licking his lips, if you look closely.

P.S. How could I forget this sighting? I woke up in the middle of the night and realized I had forgotten to mention one more adventure. Driving down the two-lane highway -- for you Southern Californians who might have forgotten these, a two-lane highway means one lane in each direction and a center line designed to tell you whether you are allowed to try to pass the slower-moving vehicle in front of you. Anyway, we were driving down the two-lane highway between Cody, WY, and Yellowstone, enjoyng the gorgeous mountains and rock formations. At the Bill Cody Dam, the rocks are so massive that stopping to look back, the tunnel opening for the highway looked like a mouse hole.

Rounding a bend and heading into a straight-away, we saw maybe a dozen cars stopped along both sides of the road and a bunch of people clustered on one side. We figured there was either an emergency of some sort or something exciting, so we stopped, too, only to realize that someone must have spotted something because nobody was moving or saying a single word, and the people all had cameras -- surprisingly, some of the the biggest camera set-ups we have ever seen, tripods and all. When we joined the watchers, one Native American woman was nice enough to point into the woods to show me the huge black bear who was oblivious to all of us sneaking a peek as he ate lunch. Wow! Our camera definitely is not powerful enough to catch a black bear in the shaded woods, nor did I hear the click of other cameras going off, although we all would have loved proof of that sighting and a great picture for our memory books. Unfortunately, a few seconds later, Mr. Bear either laid down or went down a bank, so we headed on while most of the others waited patiently and hopefully for a good picture of the big black hulk.

I Now Pronounce You . . . (Day 28 -- some more)

This is what started our whole retirement trip. It was just over a year ago that we got a lovely announcement from our great niece, Loni, to let us know she would be getting married this month to Chris.

You know, of course, that Neil had already notified our ABTC Board that he would be retiring this summer. I was going along for the ride, so to speak, but my contingency was that we would not be in Pasadena when the academic year began -- when our seminarians and my Fuller student wives gathered to start another year. I didn't think I could handle being in town but not being part of the excitement of the new year beginning.

Loni's announcement was the catalyst that got us started planning a trip for September, which turned into a trip from mid-August until early October.

Held in scenic Spearfish, in the Black Hills of South Dakota, Loni D and Chris's wedding was Saturday afternoon. It was a cool and breezy day, with a sudden cold wave bringing the temperatures down from the 80's and 90's to a high of 46, with some drizzle here and there. Weather.com was so encouraging: "The current temprature in Spearfish is 46, but it feels like 40." Oh, joy!

But joy there was!! Nobody let a little chilly dampness lessen the warmth and joy of the occasion as Loni and Chris were married. It was wonderful to be with our family members and Loni and Chris's friends to celebrate God's love for them and their love for one another.

The picture above shows Loni and Chris in the horse drawn carriage that took them from the site of the ceremony to the reception. The picture below shows the entire Frey/Cregut/Williams Clan at the celebration.

Majestic, Awesome, Amazing! (Days 26-28 -- a.m.)

Breakfast overlooking Mt. Rushmore -- that's what happened on Saturday morning this week. I suppose it might be more accurate to say that Mt. Rushmore overlooked us as we ate breakfast at the restaurant which sits in the visitors area beneath the majestic, awesome, truly amazing carving of four of our greatest presidents.

With Neil's sister, Bunnie, we drove the 20 miles from her lovely new home in Rapid City to Mt. Rushmore on Saturday morning, which dawned clear and crisp and beautiful. The wind was blowing, but the view was tremendous as we gazed up at the most magnificent carving of all time, in my opinion.

When you stop to think what it must have been like to hang, suspended over that gigantic expanse of granite, carving this massive monument with small chiseling tools all those years ago, it is hard to believe that Mt. Rushmore was ever completed. There were many, many brave men who worked together to create this National Monument, and we were humbled and awed as we gazed up at it in the wild and beautiful surroundings of the Black Hills of South Dakota.

Congratulations Are in Order! (Days 20- 25)

A triple 40th wedding anniversary celebration? Yep, that's what it's been this Labor Day weekend!

My cousin and her husband, Lew & Peggy Greer Christensen, my sister and brother-in-law, Merrilyn & Jack Cramblet, and Neil & I have gathered here in South Dakota at Peg & Lew's lovely home just feet from the shores of Lake Campbell to celebrate the 40th anniversary of each of the three couples. The anniversaries have taken place over the past year, but this was our first chance to get together to celebrate. What joy it's been to spend this time with these two special couples and with Peg & Lew's kids and grandkids!

Miles and Miles and Miles (Days 17 - 19)

Miles and miles and miles of beautiful, rich farmland passed by the windows of our van as we trekked across Nebraska and South Dakota. When you live in Southern California, even though there are some agricultural areas there and some rich farmlands in Central California, you do tend to get used to mile after mile of metropolitan morass. What a change it has been to drive through miles of fields of corn, soy beans, and a multitude of other crops! It's also been great fun to see the new generation of animals, little calves nuzzling their mothers and baby horses standing on tall, spindly legs.

It's been so good to be able to gaze out the windows and see multiple miles of farmlands, with the fields laid out so neatly across the lush rolling hills, precise squares and rectangles of multitudinous shades of green -- the breadbasket of America! We tend to forget where our sustenance comes from when living in the big city. We simply expect that what we want will be in the grocery stores whenever we want it. We take way too much for granted!!


We also had the treat of seeing many miles of yellow as we passed field after field after field of sunflowers. What a gorgeous site!

At the end of our two days in Nebraska, we came to the home of two of "our kids". I know, I know. Most of you think we only have two children, but in a different sense, we truly have many "children", seminarians or Fuller student wives whom we've been privileged to support and mentor over the past ten years of our ministry at ABTC and Fuller.


Two of those "kids" are Anissa and Craig Huffman. What a joy it was to be with them again, to meet their little son, Graham, and to see where they minister in Christian camping there in Nebraska! The picture shows the Huffman Three and Neil, as Craig drove us around Calvin Crest Christian Retreat and Conference Center where they work and live.

Craig, Graham, and I went for an early morning walk the next morning and saw wild turkeys with their little turkey babies running after them and beautiful deer bounding across the fields and into the woods at our approach.

Neil and I are soaking up God's beauty -- the beauty of nature and the beauty of relationships!