Appointments of God

Sometimes a disappointment turns into joy when we see how God has planned a purpose for our sadness.  We had been invited to cancel our Marriott reservation in Florence Monday evening and stay with Laverne and Jean Buckwalter but it was too late to cancel it. Tuesday morning we discovered why.

We met Pastor Alena and her husband George in the breakfast room at the Fairfield Inn in Florence, SC. She serves a church in Jersey City, NJ, about 80 miles from her home in South Jersey. Alena has only been serving for about a year so the first thing she asked when discovering I was a retired 17 year full time pastor was, “What advice do you have for me?”

I had to think of the best I could give, but not long. “Develop a relationship with a Christian professional pastoral counselor you can take your most personal issues to and expect prayed over and real answers from.”

I thought of my experiences with my mentor, Larry Leister, and other good clergy and lay accountability partners but it was my long time relationship with Dr. Wally Fletcher that really grew me, and our church. He was the person who first suggested, “Get the church out of your home now.” Well, it was more than a suggestion, for everyone’s benefit.  And we did.

We left the hotel and hit the ‘Stockade’.  Well, it was a stockade in 1864-65.  This was the short lived but deadly Confederate prison which took as many of the Union soldiers as possible, maybe 12,000 or more, after Andersonville Prison in South Georgia, was threatened by Sherman’s march to the sea.

Over 2300 died here in horrible conditions as the nearly defeated south struggled to provide meager food and supplies to its own soldiers, much less prisoners.  Truly, though, the much wealthier north had horror stories of poor care in its camps of captured Confederate soldiers, and there was no excuse but sloth, greed, or hate, to explain that.

The camp has been covered with forest almost since its desertion after the war. Though the Union dead were moved to the nearby new National Cemetery begun for them in 1865-66. Sadly most of their names were lost in the camps closure so the bodies inhabit two large grass lawn areas with single markers at the head of each row.

Today a ‘Friends of the Stockade’ group of locals and Civil War amateur historians care for and are attempting to develop the site.  It is not well marked but you can get some sense of its structure, where the men lived and how from the work this group has done thus far.

We left the stockade for the Confederate Museum, in a residential section of Florence.  It was closed.  Mona just smiled.

Why did she smile?  Because next stop was the Florence library.  Now we don’t know why this is as it is, but Florence is not a big town, even though it is the center of Florence County life.  But their library is one of the largest we have ever been in.  We could have been in downtown 

                                                Washington DC!  Cool!

 Next stop, Fayetteville, North Carolina. No, we did NOT stop at ‘South of the Border.’  Been there, and never want to do so again.  It capitalizes the T in Tacky, and when we have stopped in the past its poor quality and empty buildings were creepy.  We are surprised it still exists.

My main objective in Fayetteville was not Fort Bragg, where our nephew Scott Crum trained in airborne tactics, but the Fort Bragg Airborne and Special Ops museum which is located conveniently downtown in the historic district.  It is HUGE.  

                                              And very interesting… for me.

Mona approached me to say she was going outside to read after walking it in 30 minutes.  I took nearly 2 hours and only read some of the displays.

The museum is ordered chronologically starting with the formation of the Airborne and the Rangers during WW2 after the models of the German and British army paratroops. The last war depicted is the one we are trying to finish now.  The one this display 

                                              called ‘The Long War’.  Afghanistan.

  

Beside the museum is the North Carolina State Veterans Park. Dedicated to every person who gave their life in war, each county is represented and the names of each person is on their counties pylon, dating back to the founding of the European settlement.  No state or county freedom fighter Indian names are here from their nations.  Those nations themselves are mostly lost to time and destruction by whites.

Whatever could be next on our agenda?  A library, of course!  We hit two and found this one just north of Fayetteville set up as a polling site.  Yes, its voting day here in North Carolina.  A dozen or more folks asked us as we went in if we were voting.  I said, “Yes.  For the books!”  That got a cheer from several pollsters.  When we came out a group walked up to us and wanted to tell us they were thrilled to see such obviously long term married folk holding hands as we walked.

I asked them how they new we were married, or old.  They stuttered and laughed and Mona told them a story about how our public affection for each other has attracted positive attention throughout our lives.

I simply said, “Come on Mona!  The back seat is waiting!” and we departed amid laughter and fun.

We drove to Holly Springs, NC, just south of Cary, NC so we could spend a couple of days with our nephew Tim’s family.  Tim is a long time IT guy, and his wife Crystal, a former school teacher, is a full time parent of their four.  Mackenzie, Landon, Chloe and Kendall.  The last pair are twins and KNOW it!

We had a great evening getting to know each other all over again and settled in before bed to watch FROZEN, the newest popular Disney movie.  They had seen it many times before but we had not.  They knew most of the songs by heart, of course.

Landon gave us his room for two nights.  TY Landon.  We slept well!

-Ken