40 Years

I spent the morning flipping through old photo albums. There have been so many changes in the last 40 years and nothing makes those changes more evident than looking at the past. The snapshots I came across show a relatively happy family who have been on many adventures together.  

This past Sunday, my parents celebrated their 40th Wedding Anniversary. I've been feeling a little guilty that we weren't all together to celebrate this milestone, but when your family is spread out it's not always possible to celebrate in person. But that doesn't mean that I am any less proud of them.

Forty years is hard to wrap my head around. Fifteen years ago my siblings and I threw our parents a 25th Anniversary party. It was our first such party and thankfully it was a success. Our family makes a big deal about the 25th, but really every year that people choose love and decide to stick it out is cause for celebration.

In their 40 years of marriage, my parents have lived in three countries, raised three children, and helped countless people during the course of their marriage, starting when they were missionaries. They have seen all of their children graduate from college and pursue careers in different fields, and have also been blessed with four grandchildren.

I want to take the time to share about my parents non-traditional engagement and wedding. If you know this story, feel free to skim or just look at these old photos. 

Forty years ago my dad was a missionary in Africa. He was single and after three years working on his own, he was ready for a change. He made plans to return home to America, presumably in search of a wife. On his return trip he made plans to travel around the world, stopping in Papua New Guinea (PNG) to see his Aunt Rosabelle and Uncle Joe Cannon...

At this same time, my mother and her family were working as missionaries in Papua New Guinea. They had left Canada several years before to pursue working with the indigenous people of this large island. My mom had raised her own support and was working and serving the people alongside her parents, Ray and Elizabeth Lock.

When my dad arrived in PNG, my mom was just returning from a week-long trip in the bush (back country). The story is that she was flea bitten and dirty, having just traveled some distance. My parents met and immediately took to one another. During my dad's three months in PNG, he wrote a letter home to his mother saying that he met a girl. He wrote a second letter saying that he was getting married.

Basically, my parents met, got engaged and were married by the time my dad's visa ran out and he had to leave the country. My mom's family was working in PNG, so they were able to attend the wedding with my dad's uncle officiating the ceremony. My dad's mom (my grandma) received the "I'm getting married" letter first! She had no idea who my dad would be returning home with.

This whole scenario blows my mind a bit – the fast engagement, the difficulty with communications from the other side of the world. In this day and age, my Nana in Canada and my parents in Arkansas have a day-to-day glimpse of my life and their grandkids!

Back to the story...
So, in PNG the custom at the time (I don't know if or how much this has changed), but at the time, women were purchased for a bride price. The price would typically be livestock – pigs and chickens and maybe some money. After the price was negotiated, the two families would celebrate with a mu-mu (cooking a pig in the ground) and a big celebration.

For my parent's wedding, they did a mock ceremony where my dad came to purchase my mom. One of my uncle's acted as the family negotiator. As part of the ceremony, my parents said they would marry for love and not for a price. The PNG people thought this was very funny. After the antics, they celebrated with the traditional mu-mu.

Later, for their real Western wedding, most of the local people did not attend because they considered my parents to already be married! Also, the day of the wedding, someone decided that the open-air church building should have walls. So my parents were married in the tropics, in a building with no breeze, and no air conditioning! 

So that is the gist of the story of how my folks met and got married. I have given several speeches about this event with lots of fun props and photos (in Jr High and also college).

It's a fun story to tell and really gives you a glimpse into my parent's life and my own roots. I like to say that adventure and spontaneity are in my genes!

Happy Anniversary, Mom and Dad! I love you and am so very proud of you! Thank you for choosing to stay married every day.
 

Celebrating My Grandpa

Exactly one week ago we said our goodbyes to my Grandpa Lock. It seems like a hundred years. I have had a lot in my head, but between being sick and traveling almost 2,400 miles to get there and back, I just haven't had the energy to pull my thoughts together.

Two years ago, much of my family traveled to see my Grandpa as he battled Stage 4 Colon Cancer. Things didn't look good. It was a very difficult time for our family on many levels. Daniel and I had been living in two separate states and it seemed like everyone that was related to me was under a great deal of personal stress. I think God intentionally gave Grandpa two more years so that our great big family could have some time to heal. Two years ago, it would have been too much to lose Grandpa.

I won't say that I was prepared to lose him when it happened. It was sudden. But again, I believe God took care of things. My sister, Angela, and I (and our kiddos) happened to be visiting my parents and were with my mom when she received the sudden call that Grandpa had been admitted to the hospital and only had three days to live.

We were making dinner when my mom answered the phone. I could sense something was wrong and I mouthed the words, "Is everything ok?"

"No. It's Grandpa." She mouthed back. 

Nana and Grandpa were supposed to come down to Tennessee for Christmas in only a few short weeks so I certainly didn't expect this. 

I sat with mom while she finished the call with her older brother. I informed my sister. I called my brother. We called our husbands. My head was spinning. We helped mom prepare for a trip. A last trip to see her dad. Unfortunately he died peacefully right as she boarded her plane. Thankfully she was still able to go ahead and be with her family while the rest of us scrambled to get things in order so that we could make the long drive to get to Canada to mourn with her.

My dad and brother, Mark, drove up first. Straight through the night.

Angela panicked about not having a birth certificate for Levi to get him into and out of Canada.

Daniel called to tell me he had a fever and wasn't sure if he could make the trip.

Everything was a bit nuts.

I think that I must deal with high stress by getting into an organizing mode. I got people where they needed to go. I navigated plane tickets and had Daniel find us a house. I researched the birth certificate thing and tried to ease my sister's fears that she would be able to take her son to Canada. I washed and repacked cloths and shopped for supplies for our drive. And I worried a bit about everyone. I guess that is what the big sister does. 

Three days after finding out the news, we made the long drive to Canada. Fourteen hours in a car with a 13-month-old and our dog. Somehow neither Jack nor Sophie complained or fussed too much (that was mostly just me and Daniel). We arrived in the middle of the night and collapsed in our beds.

The next morning we met with my mom's immediate family (with kids, spouses, grandkids and great grandkids this group numbers 44 in all). Everyone came. This was a first ever. I haven't seen many of my cousins in years. We are all getting older and going our separate ways. It is getting harder to see them with each passing year. Grandpa would have loved to see us all together.

We cried. But we laughed too. A lot. Grandpa would have liked that. Maybe that is how we deal with our grief, we laugh. Maybe it is inappropriate, but I think Grandpa would have been proud that we were able to all be together and to celebrate his life.

Grandpa led a good life. He was a good man. He loved many. He had a heart for missions. He loved the Lord. He loved his children and his grandchildren and his greats. He especially loved our Nana. Things were not perfect. Relationships in this life never are. But I think Grandpa had peace in the end.

The memorial service was Friday evening. I really thought that I would go and bawl my eyes out. You're supposed to do that at a funeral, right? I have only been to a handful of funerals. They were sad occasions. 

Except for my Great Grandma Hotchkiss's. I was twelve. Her funeral was a celebration. I remembering laughing. A lot. I also remember that her pallbearers were her granddaughters (including my mom). Grandpa Lock's funeral was a lot like Great Grandma's.

My Uncle Mike was the main speaker. My aunts both spoke. They asked the grandchildren to speak. I had lost my voice almost completely and Angela didn't think she could talk. We wrote up some notes and Mark added to them. Of course Mark had us all laughing. But it was memories that we wouldn't want to forget. According to the cousins that did speak, it seems that Grandpa made most of the younger boy cousins pick a lot of dandelions over the years.

Part of the remarks my siblings and I wrote for the funeral:

As the southern extension of the Lock Flock, we have been blessed with grandparents who have made every effort to not let the miles between us (1,036 miles/1,667 km) prevent us from staying close. Whether it was holidays or summer vacations or graduations or weddings, Grandpa and Nana tried their best to always be at the important events in our lives.

Grandpa always enjoyed his one on one time with his grandkids. Nana invented Special Time, but as the years passed, Grandpa made sure to get special time of his own. He liked taking us to Timmies but also loved to go for breakfast at Sambo’s. All of those talks made us feel special and loved.

Seeing how Grandpa loved Nana and always treated her with respect and love and made sure that she was happy, has helped us as adults to know how to treat those we love. 

My life is richer for having my Grandpa in my life. He didn't always talk a lot. Especially not in a huge crowd. In our family that is a difficult thing. There is always a huge crowd. But if you could get a few moments with him, alone, then he would talk. He had a sense of humor that I see in my cousins. Jokes that we all share. I always think of it as Lock humor. I have it too. 

Nana and Grandpa would have been married for 60 years next summer. They leave a great legacy of strong marriages. An example of persevering even when things are hard. Of showing love and respect to the end. 

Saturday we laid Grandpa to rest. It must be a Canadian thing because the cousins were pallbearers, including me and two other of the girl cousins. It was cold and rainy. A gloomy day in December. It might be said that God was weeping for Grandpa. I think that while our tears were sad, God's would be tears of joy in welcoming Grandpa into heaven. After my Uncle David's remarks, my cousin Joel led us in a pidgin song. This probably caused me to tear up the most out of anything else during Grandpa's celebration. I will forever miss listening to Grandpa's booming voice when we sing songs in church or as a family. I look forward to seeing Grandpa in heaven some day. I am sad that he won't be coming for Christmas this year...

-- Raymond Mont Lock 1931-2012 --

Obituary 
LOCK, Raymond Mont - Peacefully, at Douglas Memorial Hospital in Fort Erie on Tuesday, December 4, 2012, Ray Lock, aged 81 years, of Port Colborne. Beloved husband of Elizabeth. Dear father of David and Dorothy (North Bay), Lois and Larry Voyles (Searcy, Arkansas), Michael and Barb (Mississauga), Becky and Malvin Allgood (Nashvilloe, Tenn.), Bethany and Chris Wirkkunen (Welland) and daughter-in-law, Karen Lock. Also survived by 16 grandchildren and 11 great grandchildren. Brother of Elwyn (Alberta) and Hugh (Saskatchewan).

My Great Uncle Joe

My great uncle Joe Cannon went home to heaven yesterday. He lived a long, good life. He meant a lot to a multitude of people around the world. He served as a missionary to many countries for the entirety of his adult life. To many he was a hero of faith for our time. And I believe he was.

However, this man was something more for me... 

Without Joe Cannon, I don't know if there would be a Cheree Voyles Moore.

You see, when a young, foolhardy Canadian grew up and went to Harding College in Searcy, Arkansas and married a quiet girl from Oklahoma, it set a chain of events in place that allowed my parents to meet.

In 1947, this young man and his bride boarded a ship for their honeymoon that was bound for Japan to become missionaries. In 1971, Joe and Rosabelle moved their work to Papua New Guinea {PNG}. This primitive country was in need of more missionaries so Joe went back to North America to recruit.

In Canada, he sat down with Ray and Elizabeth Lock. They were considering moving their family to Africa. Joe talked to them about PNG. Their daughter, Lois Lock {Voyles} was in Switzerland for the summer. She came home and heard of the plans about PNG and told her parents, "We need to go there, and if you don't go, then I will."

So the Lock family packed up and moved to Papua New Guinea.

On the other side of the world a young, single missionary in Africa was getting lonely. Most of the other missionaries were married and single life was taking its toll on Larry Voyles. He decided to pack up for home and not come back unless he had a wife. His Uncle Joe, persuaded him to come visit in Papua New Guinea on his way back to the States.

In March 1976, Larry met Lois. He sent a letter home to his mother saying that he had met a girl. Three months later, he sent another letter saying he was marrying this girl. His mom received the second letter first. On June 26, 1976 my parents were married. Joe Cannon officiated the ceremony.

Of course there are other people involved in the story of how my parents met. There are many more stories that could be told. Joe was an amazing missionary. He loved people. He loved to laugh. He loved to make you laugh. He had faith that could move mountains. And without him, my family might not exist as it does today. And for that, I will be forever grateful.

*Being that I am the great niece, some of my facts may be slightly off. This is the story as I remember it.
**I don't have a copy of a photo with Great Uncle Joe marrying my parents -- if you have access to one, please send it my way.

2012 Book 21: Lost in Shangri-la

Lost in Shangri-la by Mitchell Zuckoff is an account of a rescue mission during World War II to save 3 survivors who were stranded in the mountains of New Guinea during a sight seeing trip. At the time, this area was unchartered territory full of war-oriented tribes who had lived untouched by the outside world. It was an area full of dangers like cannibals and enemy Japanese troops. The plane that crashed lost 21 people, one of the survivors, John McCollum, lost his twin brother.

This was an interesting story for me since I have a personal connection to New Guinea: my parents {and much of my extended family} were missionaries there in the 70s and 80s. I lived in the Mount Hagen {which is referenced in the book, but the area the plane crashed was more remote} until I was six. My family returned for a visit when I was 13 and then my husband and I visited again in 2004.

The book was intriguing. The only way to reach the survivors was to parachute in. The rescue team was a group of Filipino Americans who had little experience actually jumping. To get the survivors out, they had to wait until wounds healed and then they used a technique of landing a glider in the mountainous terrain and then the plane that "dropped" the glider off had to come back to "catch" the glider using a rope hung across a sling attached to the glider and a hook attached to the plane in order to pull it out. The alternative would have been to actually march out through a completely unknown area.

Definitely an interesting story. Especially considering that two of the survivors had extensive injuries.

I think I probably read too many true accounts of adventure or maybe it is because I have traveled to and stayed in remote villages in PNG, but I didn't feel like the telling of the story was as interesting as it could have been. Over the years I have heard some pretty crazy stories from various family member's wild experiences in PNG. I even have a couple of my own stories. Odds are if you have visited this country you have a good story to tell... 

This book felt like it was mostly fact telling, which is a shame because in New Guinea, to tell your story is a very important part of the culture and I don't know that this book did justice to the story.

Excerpts from the book:

The island was a gift-box assortment of inhospitable environments... The New Guinea terrain was so forbidding that the most common experience for its inhabitants was isolation. Pockets of humanity carved out small places to survive, fighting with anyone who came near and often among themselves...

"Probably after the war the Dutch government will send an expedition into the valley or missionaries may penetrate it, so until then the natives... will know nothing of the white man except that he flies a big bird that makes lots of noise. Who knows, maybe they are much better off the way they are. At any rate, I am sure if they knew of the turmoil in which we are now engaged (WWII), they would be happier to stay ignorant of the 'civilized' world."  – letter home from William J. Gatling Jr.

New Guinea's jungles were boundless cemeteries of unmarked military graves...The weather and terrain account more more [downed] airplanes than combat flying.

Margaret, McCollum, and Decker had crashed-landed in a world that time didn't forget. Time never knew it existed.

Saying Goodbye to Missionary Friends who are Cairns Bound

The Morriarty's: Zoe, Jason, Callum and Sheryl

Back in 2010, I wrote about how Daniel and I came about meeting our missionary friends, Jason and Sheryl Morriarty, in 2004; how we put them to work renovating our house in Charlotte during a weekend visit in 2006; and how {surprisingly} they came back to Charlotte in 2010 {a family of four} just as we were preparing to move. We didn't make them work on their second trip to Charlotte.

Two years have passed and a lot has changed. Daniel and I now have a baby and we live in another state. Meanwhile Jason, Sheryl and their two children are making preparations to leave for Cairns, Australia.

The Morriartys and the Moores

I'm bummed that our only group shot was blurry and I didn't check for clarity :(

Before they left the country, we all wanted to get together for a visit. After all it may be a few years before we see them again. It turned out that the best way for us to see each other was to meet in Atlanta {approximately half-way between where we all live}. So this morning we packed up Jack and a bunch of gear for a day trip and made the trek over to ATL for lunch at Chick-fil-a.

We enjoyed getting caught up with our friends and introducing them to Jack.

After lunch, we headed to the Whitewater Creek Trail {part of the Chattahoochee State Park} for a short {1.35 mile} hike and more visiting.

This place is apparently a mecca for dog lovers and young adults who want to float the river on a lazy weekend. First off, we had a bunch of huge dogs run up to the kids in our group {all under the age of 5}. The dogs were a little over zealous and one actually put Jack's leg "gently" in it's mouth. Umm – we were not exactly ok with that. So we left the area with the dogs and abundance of people and enjoyed a nice walk in the woods. The kids all fared pretty well,  though Callum was getting weary towards the end and his sister, Zoe, got tired of being carried in the kid carrier. Jack was a trooper in our BOB stroller and was fast asleep by the end of our walk.

We enjoyed catching up with our friends and were surprised when they gave us a certified boomerang from Cairns. We wish them the best as they move back abroad and that God blesses the mission effort that they are about to begin.

I may have to work on convincing Daniel that we need to make a trip down under.

When we were getting ready to leave, Daniel put the stroller in the back of our Subaru and I noticed a lovely odor: dog poop. With a 3-hour drive home, we were not thrilled at the prospect of riding with a smelly stroller INSIDE our vehicle. Thank goodness our Yakima basket was attached to our roof rack.