Sue

Yes, Sue Klein also attended that Bible College in Cleveland, Tennessee. I remember hearing that. Funny how those Tennessee people always treat us AG people like garbage, like there is some kind of law requiring me to like them when actually I don't. Sorry but I cannot tell a lie. I never liked Sue and her manipulative little tricks, the way she would sit there in choir Sunday School class and throw verbal darts at me, as if I did not notice, as if there were any reason for me to dignify such an abusive attitude with any kind of response from me. Better for me not to say anything so that their rotten attitudes will have no excuse, no cause to put the blame on me. They do a very good job of acting like horrid monsters without any help from me.

Shelley

Yes, Shelley who used to attend our church in Fort Lauderdale had formerly attended that Church of God Bible College in Cleveland, Tenn., and talked about the members of 4Him, a Christian musical group, who are her personal friends and college classmates and who went big-time as professional Christian musicians after college. Shelley also talked about attending a concert of Rich Mullins who I am not sure if she knew from college or not but said she thought was very weird. I remember reading that he had epilepsy so that might have something to do with it, I told her. And why are all these Cleveland, Tenn., people attending an AG church here when they think we are not good enough for them anyway? I don't know. Maybe they just don't have enough churches. They are a Pentecostal denomination that sees itself as holier than us by virtue of their slightly different doctrinal positions on certain issues but they are also much smaller with fewer churches. They grow mostly by stealing people from our churches. They come to our churches and try to make us feel like being AG just isn't enough. We're missing it by not switching to Cleveland, Tennessee. However, we cannot all move there to find a good church to attend. There are 50 states and we should be able to find a good church in any state wherever we may have to live for work or school. Nevertheless it does not always work that way. If we are all going to evacuate the coast and retreat to the Midwest, isn't that a serious problem rather than a solution? Just living in the Midwest does not make you holier than me regardless of what you might think. In another 100 years will there be no Pentecostal denominations left for the great-grandchildren? It does make you wonder.

Stuff

Yes, Aunt Cindy ended up with great-grandmother's piano so should I be upset? It was never my piano anyway so whatever. I have my own piano. And anyway, the aunts and uncles are such materialistic people, so intent on snatching up the goods when, really, these things don't matter that much. They never really understood what China was all about. It was the people who count or, well, don't count. It was about the mission, the Great Commission, not anything to do with World War II, but they always thought that religion was for old people, that rules were for losers, that church is just a big joke, that war was the whole end-all and point of being and, well, they just lost sight of the original reason why. They just think that it's all about them so they just don't get it.

Canada

O Canada! That is the national anthem of Canada and might have been the song that we used to sing at school assemblies at MK school, San Salvador Christian Academy, for the sake of our teacher Mrs. Grace Richardson and other Canadians among us. We also "God Save the Queen" for the New Zealanders and "The Star Spangled Banner" for our own sake. "O Canada!" is also the name of an attraction at Disney's Epcot Center if you ever have a chance to visit Orlando. The Circle Vision movie gives some nice glimpses of Canada's snowy vistas. I have never been to Canada but it is interesting to note that my great-great-grandfather was Canadian. He died in 1895 so we do not know very much about him. He did visit my great-grandmother once when she was 10 years old and gave her a beautiful piano. However, she was raised in Pennsylvania by her grandmother Caroline and various aunts, uncles and cousins, the Smith clan. I have the impression that it was a miserable life for an orphan with the whiny Smith clan until she was able to escape to Ohio and marriage in 1899. And what was her last name anyway? Levines? Levins? The spelling is not clear. Nevertheless, we are pretty sure that he had another daughter with his first wife, Miss Little, who died in 1880. I only learned about this other daughter in the last two or three years of doing genealogy. His other daughter's name was Esther, not to be confused with my grandmother whose name was Esther Barth, born 1906. I have no clues for Esther Levins, born 1873, and whatever happened to her. We just have no idea.

Our Nellie

It seems that my great-grandmother's mother was Ellie Keith Smith, which sometimes may appear as Nellie. Miss Smith married Mr. Archibald Levines. Now, was Mr. Levines Jewish? The name certainly sounds sort of like it might be Jewish. I do not know enough about his ethnic composite to say anything about that but I do know that he was actually Canadian born and bred. His mother's family, the Speers, apparently immigrated to Canada from Ireland in the early 1800s. Some of the relatives probably know more about this than I do. Anyway, Miss Smith was his second wife and she died not long after the birth of their one and only daughter, my great-grandmother. He also had a daughter from his first wife. He apparently later married a third wife and returned to live in Canada. So how did my great-grandmother get a passport for missionary travels when the application form of one-hundred-plus years ago required that she declare her father to be a U.S. citizen born and bred or else the date of his immigration to the United States? Well, her husband was able to get a passport and so his wife and children were attached to his passport so really it was not a problem. So there is really nothing else to say about this. It's not a big deal, really. You could ask lots of questions but I would not know the answers.

Nordic Nellie

Yes, one of the pleasures of watching "Little House On The Prairie" was to watch Laura Ingalls Wilder give bad Nordic Nellie (think Sue) a swift kick to the curb. These nasty little rich girls pretend to be spiritual and yet have never seemed to read in the Bible the Apostle Paul's parting words to the church: "In everything I did, I showed you that by this kind of hard work we must help the weak, remembering the words the Lord Jesus himself said: 'It is more blessed to give than to receive.' " These rich people need to stop tripping poor little me when actually they are the ones with the millions of dollars in the bank to give away and I am the poor person who needs the money. I am just saying this to set matters straight. They are the ones who need to practice what they preach.

Prairie Dogs

There she is on television, blond Nellie from "Little House On The Prairie" all decked out with those hideous curls and bows in her hair, all those ruffles and lace, a truly villainous caricature if there ever was one. All that finery and yet there she is hissing and spitting as if we were the problem. Ha ha ha! No, we are not the problem. No one ever said that Swedish women have any taste. They just fake it with sugary cutie-pie stuff and then expect us not to notice. Ha ha ha! We noticed. Sorry.