Uncle Mahlon Geiger

 We celebrated Uncle Wally's life.  He lived well.

After Bible college, he and Aunt Wanda went to France and served as missionaries for 40 years with TEAM Missions.  Below is a picture taken before they left for France.  My grandpa and grandma are on the right; Monroe and Anna.

Here he is as a child.

Brothers

Brothers, grown up.

The picture below is from back in October, 2013, when my mother was still living.  Uncle Wally and Uncle Mahlon came to visit us in Kansas.

Now, only Uncle Mahlon and Aunt Anne are alive.  Wait, not true!  Mom, Dad, Uncle Wally and Aunt Wanda are more alive than ever!!!

Saying our good-byes.

Nancy, my cousin, spoke such gracious words at the service.  My cousin's son, Devereux, played the piano and his wife sang Great is Thy Faithfulness.  Nancy's husband, Rob, gave a sweet talk.  Rob is a Presbyterian pastor and he told the story of how Uncle Wally, who is Mennonite, once told Rob that he had a book called "What The Bible Says of Infant Baptism".  He was handed this book and when he opened it up, it was filled with blank pages!  We all got a good laugh over that!  Uncle Wally was quite a jokester!  

And he loved to whistle!  You would hear him whistle all the time!  Often not even a tune.  Just a straight long note.

When Uncle Wally and Aunt Wanda returned to the States, they debated about which church to attend.  Uncle Wally wanted to go to St. John Mennonite, where he grew up and Aunt Wanda wanted to go to her church, the Ebeneezer Mennonite Church.  Rob said that although they did attend St. John all these years, Aunt Wanda got the last laugh because they were buried at Ebeneezer!

I was surprised to see Rev. Tschetter's grave!  They were good friends of my parents.  He also pastored the church that Allen grew up in for a while.

I saw a pile of old cemetery gravestones in a pile.   The undertaker told me that the church had begun a project to clean these old stones and reset them.  Some were all broken apart.   Some are illegible.  They don't know who is buried in the spot where they were.  But the Lord knows who is buried there and one day He will come for His own!!  I hope it is a project that will one day be restarted so the people can get their headstones put back in place!

The church provided the family a meal for after the funeral at Uncle Mahlon's house.  The pastor took a family photo of all of us in front of the old barn.

"Nancy, let's go into the barn!"

There is nothing like the smells of that barn to bring back memories!!

We used to climb up that ladder when we were kids.

See the double-door?  

My mom had told me they used to jump out of that onto hay bales below.

It's a long ways down!!

A hand-crank drill that grandpa and great-grandpa used.

It was neat to see the toys that my great-grandpa Aaron made.

That evening, those who were still around went out to eat in Bluffton.

One fun memory of our time together is how some of the cousins ate a peanut butter and jelly burger.  Ever heard of this??

What a precious time to be with family!  And to thank the Lord for Uncle Wally's life and the impact he made for the Kingdom!

Life's unexpected turns

We got home from Arkansas and there was laundry to do and also the house to clean.  We often use our basement as a B&B for out of town guests.  A couple who work for CRU (initially known as Campus Crusade for Christ) were coming for a week to spend time with their children.   I guess I should just say B, not B&B.  Minus one B as these guests said they didn't need breakfast as they would eat with their kids.  

While I was cleaning, I got a phone call from my Uncle Mahlon, my mother's brother in Ohio.  Uncle Wally had passed away.  The funeral would be later that week.  That changed my week!  I would be taking an unexpected trip to Ohio!  We looked at airline tickets but we know people who have had trouble getting vehicle rentals at the airports, and many airlines are cancelling flights, so I decided to drive.  I like driving anyway.

I welcomed our guests when they came and then I left for Ohio.  I made a stop in Lawrence to see Allen's sister.   At a stop along the turnpike, I saw something that was a first for me.

I got as far as Decatur, Illinois just before dark.  The next day, I took 25 north to Lafayette.  How I love these nice country roads.  I will take these any day, compared to super fast interstate highways!  I purposely avoided Indianapolis, although that isn't a really hard city to drive through.

The road took me through Lafayette. What a pretty city!  I could never have navigated it without GPS!

I love these old buildings.

I took 24 to 224 and on to 30 and to Pandora, arriving around 4:00.

My mother's home place!

The people who live there have added on a garage to the house.  I loved the breezeway that was there, but can understand why they'd want a garage.  

Below is a picture of my parents and older brother, Dave, before they left for Japan, with the breezeway behind them.

Uncle Mahlon lives next to the old homestead, in a home he had built.  Below are pictures of my mom, her siblings and parents at the old home.  Uncle Mahlon is the "baby", the last sibling remaining.

I was so excited to see Uncle Mahlon and Aunt Anne!  After putting my suitcase in the guest room, we went to Findlay to meet the rest of the family.

What a good time I had with my cousins!  We haven't seen eachother in years!   And it was the first time meeting spouses and their children.

With Uncle Wally and Aunt Wanda missionaries in France and us in Japan, we didn't get to see one another much in our growing up years.

1956

1962

1969

(Good grief.  My mother cut my bangs so short!  How embarrasing!)

Wish everyone could have come!  There are many families who all live close to one another but we live all over the US, not easy to get together.  But, we are FAMILY.