The Bear In The Little White Trailer

The Bear In The Little White Trailer

Lions, and tigers, and bears, oh my! Well, not so much the lions and tigers, but definitely bears. Bears are this week’s blog topic.

As I have mentioned in previous stories, I’m from PA. That stands for Pennsylvania, for all those who are not from the Keystone State. Nobody calls it Pennsylvania; it’s always  “P. A.” I grew up just within the city limits of Williamsport.

Side Note: When we moved in to this house when I was a kid, we had no running water or plumbing. In fact, we had the last standing outhouse within the city limits. The local newspaper the Sun Gazette did a feature story on it before it was taken down. Of course, we had indoor plumbing by then.

Our house was built by my Grandpap Hunter. It sat half-way up a mountainside. Directly behind our house, was an overgrown vineyard that had long since been cared for. It had been overtaken with thick brush and trees, just as the mountain started to incline. We has gorgeous evergreen pine trees that ran all the way up to the top of the mountain.

Side note: I’m saying that we lived on a mountain, which to anyone actually from PA would say “Aw, that’s just a big hill. The mountains are on the south side of the Valley.” And that would be true. But those who live in the Midwest, where I now reside… they would say we did live on a small mountain.  

I had the run of all the area growing up. It was great. I spent summer days exploring and playing, just my dog and me. We encountered many things throughout the years, and I heard a ton of stories about what lived in those woods. Some scary things, and some were just ridiculous.

One such story was about the night my mom was walked home by what she claims to have been a bear. She worked 2^nd shift, and got a ride home late one night. The driver dropped her off at the bottom of our long driveway. Halfway up our drive, she was greeted by something big and furry. She thought it was our pet St. Bernard, Brandy.

All the way home she talked and walked with it, giving it encouraging pats on the head as they walked. When she reached our house, whatever it was ran off. She went in the house only to find Brandy asleep on the floor. She swears it was a bear. I don’t know.

That was not the only encounter we had with bears. My mother-in-law hit one with her car once. The car was totaled. She was ok, but the bear didn’t survive.

Another time, which I think is the best story, is when Chrissy and I were living in the real mountains. Our small mobile home sat at the bottom of a mountain close to her grandparent’s home. A small brook ran right behind the property.  In this little community called Proctor, there may have been a population of 150, perhaps a bit more. Our little neighborhood had 4 houses within a stone’s throwing distance from ours. We had two of our kids then, Ben and Tori, and stupid dog named Pepper.

Where we lived, trash pick-up only happened every 2 weeks, perhaps 4, depending on the time of year. So, we had 3 cans sitting out by where we parked our cars. We had been told that sometimes bears would wonder down the mountain and get into things. We had never seen this happen since we had lived in the trailer. The only things we had seen were the occasional deer, rabbits, raccoons, opossums, and a flock of turkeys.

One summer night, Chrissy woke me from a dead sleep. This was normal.

She said, “Did you hear that?”

I said, “No, don’t worry, it’s probably a raccoon getting into the garbage.”

She said, “No, it’s not, listen! It’s grunting and snorting whatever it is!

We lay very still in our bed, and I listened. All I could hear was my heart beating and my breathing.

I said, “Nope, nothing.”

Then she said, “There!” as she sat up in bed.

I said,  “Okay, I’ll get up and see.”

So, I got up and got the spotlight. Everyone who lives in PA has a spotlight.

Side note: Spotlighting. It’s a verb. That’s what you did for fun on a warm Saturday night. You drive around shining this huge 100,000,000 candlelight powered spotlight out your car window to see how many deer or other species of wildlife you could see. That, my friends, was a wild night!

I grabbed my spotlight, and I opened the drapes to look out the window. I could see nothing. I shined my light out the window, but all I could see was our cars.  I moved back through the trailer to our bedroom windows. I pulled back the curtains to shine the light out. And there it was as plain as day. The biggest, hairiest, monster I had ever seen with it’s teeth bared looking right back at me through my window. It was a Sasquatch!

No, I’m just kidding. All I could see was the hoods of our cars. Of course, by this time Chrissy is pushing me over grabbing for the light, so naturally I wouldn’t see any thing. Then, all of a sudden, I thought I saw something moving on the far side of the car by our garbage. Then it moved out in to plain sight. It was a big black bear! He was enjoying himself some dinner on us.

I think this is when Chrissy looked at me and said in Scooby Doo fashion “It’s a bear!” I think she may have peed a little too! She jumped from the bed, ran into the kids’ room, and scooped them up. The next thing I knew everyone was in our bed. Chrissy had the covers pulled over her head, asking is it still there?

I said, “Yep, it’s still there.”

This bear was not little-- he had to have gone a few hundred pounds. I thought it would be cool if he stood up, but he didn’t. He just kind of meandered around by the garbage cans.

I finally coaxed Chrissy out from under her bear proof covers to watch the bear with me.  We watched him for what seemed like hours, but I’m sure it was nowhere close to that. Then Chrissy said to me, “What if he tries to get in the house?”

Now that thought hadn’t crossed my mind, but she said, “Won’t he smell the food in our house?”

 That’s when I started to be a little concerned, but being the brave man of our small family, I said, “Aw, don’t worry he can’t get in, and besides I have the 12-gauge.

She said, “You should get it.”

So, I grabbed the gun and carefully laid it on the bed.

Side Note: Now, at this time in my life I had only shot this gun maybe once or twice when I went turkey hunting as a teen. Boy, is that a story, but for another time. Honestly, the thing I remembered the most about that gun was that it kicked like a mule. I probably could have better defended our family by beating the bear with the gun.

Then Chrissy said, “You know the front door doesn’t latch very well.”

I knew that front door needed fixed, but I hadn’t had the money or the time to fix it. The more I thought about it, I started to worry. All you really needed to do was push hard on the door, and it would fly open.

As any brave husband would do, I thought fast and said, “We should move all the furniture in front of the door to barricade it. He’s not going to come over here, but, you know, just in case. So we frantically pushed our couch and chair over in front of the door, as well as anything else heavy we could get in front of the door.

When we were done, we scampered back to the bed to see where our furry friend was, and what he was up to.  I shined the spotlight over by the car and nothing. I stared to look around, where did he go? That’s when I heard a snort right in front of the window we were looking out. I quickly pointed the light down to where I heard the snort, and sure enough there he was. He was making his way over to the trailer. We watched as he waddled past us and then over by our front porch. We tiptoed out to the living room, and peeked out the window just in time to see Mr. Cuddles waddling right up our porch steps. Our porch was more of a stoop. It had three steps and then a 4x4 square deck. Not very big at all.

I ran back to the bedroom and grabbed my gun. With trembling fingers I put a slug in and closed the chamber, I was ready. If that bear welcomed himself into our home it was on. As I stood with my heart racing looking out the window. He came up the steps got on the porch. I though this is it, get ready. Then he just turned around and sat down on our porch like he owned the place. I had Chrissy go back to the bedroom with the kids and cover up with her bear protectant sheets as I stood guard.

Again, I watched for what seemed like an eternity. Then all of a sudden he sniffed the breeze and grunted. He flopped forward and jumped off the porch. He waddled across the yard and out of sight to the neighbor’s house.

I thought, I’m leaving the barricade up, just in case he comes back. I walked back to the bedroom with my gun clenched in my hands and pronounced that the bear has left the premises.

The funniest thing was that the kids slept through the entire ordeal. That night we all slept together in our full-size bed with the shotgun within reach. This was a crazy night that will not be forgotten. And that is the story of the bear in the little white trailer.

Pranks!

Pranks!

Over the years, Chrissy and I have been known to pull a few pranks. Mostly on our best of friends. These little mischievous acts are meticulously planned out with the greatest of attention to details and timing. Here are a few that we have successfully pulled off over the years.

When we were in college, it seemed like we were always involved in some sort of prank, whether it be covering someone’s white Chevette with Oreo cookies to make it look like a Dalmatian, or awarding someone for being the 100,000^th visitor to the Historical Duck Decoy Museum that, they recently had visited.

That was when we awarded a dollar store lint brush in the form of a duck as a trophy. Upon delivery, the recipient opened the package to find a very official-sounding letter from the duck decoy historical foundation, along with the major award of the duck. The best part of a prank is watching how it unfolds. For us it was sheer joy to enter this person’s home to see the letter, along with the trophy, displayed in a prominent place in their home.

One of my absolute favorites was the Mickey Premium Ice Cream bar wallpapering.

This was where we took a few wrappers that I had saved from Disney’s most awesome ice cream treat in the world and photocopied them to make 10 x 8 sheets of Mickey Premium Ice Cream Bar wallpaper. We covered our friend’s office with our wallpaper while he was gone on vacation to Disney World. He actually loved it. We have a short video of this prank on YouTube. https://youtu.be/psBUDfRDmEA

Then we had another friend who highly disliked snowmen. So we did a prank called “The Game.” We used left over garbage bag snowmen from a series I had done, and we strategically placed them in his office. We staged them as a scene from a mob movie. Again we made a trailer of this one too. It is also on YouTube. https://youtu.be/irdEB77gCbM I’m not sure why we did all the trailers. And I’m not so sure that he appreciated my humor on this one.

There have been so many more, that I just can’t think of all of them. But not all pranks go as planned or as you may expect. We had one such prank that we pulled with friends of ours. I will keep their names anonymous. I don’t want them to feel like I’m ratting them out or anything. Let’s just call them Dana, Bruce, and the twins who owned the gorilla suit.

Well, we were sitting around playing cards one night as we did often with our friends. This night was special because some of our children were gone on a camping excursion. The Hunter Boys were out with their cadet group.

Side note: The Cadets are a church-sponsored organization that is like a Christian Boy Scout group.

This overnight camping trip was serving a purpose. Our church was having an outdoor service the next morning, and the cadets camped out to guard all the equipment at the church in the yard. These brave boys ages 8-12 would fend of any unwanted, ill-willed intruders.

So, as we were playing cards one of us got the itch to be mischievous. That’s all it takes to set things in motion. We sat playing hand after hand, throwing out ideas as to what we could do to some poor, unsuspecting victim. Eventually, someone said we should prank the cadets!

The ideas starting coming, but we knew we didn’t want to go overboard and do something that would scar them for life. So, we finally cooked up the idea of launching water balloons onto and around their campsite. I have a launcher, and to make it even better, we thought let’s make it seem like a gorilla escaped from the zoo and was throwing the balloons at them. Dana made a call to the twins, who just happened to have a gorilla suit. The plan was in motion and could not be stopped. We made plans to meet the twins after we filled the balloons.

We parked in an area that was not conspicuous, and rallied the team for one last briefing on how this would go down. The four of us would launch the balloons and make gorilla noises as one of the twins would dance around acting like he was throwing water balloons in the parking lot under a security light. It was fun and not too scary, or so we thought.

The balloons started to fly and the gorilla danced, but we didn’t get much of a reaction. So we aimed for the tents trying to make direct hits. As we rained down our balloons of fury, a few of the boys woke up, most just kept sleeping. This is where it kind of went too far, remember the comment about not scarring the kids for life?

Well, the gorilla was told to charge, someone said attack, and we had balloons flying everywhere. The gorilla was shaking tents, and before we knew it, that jungle beast was unzipping tents and surprising sleeping campers. There were arms and legs going every which way. Screams of boys echoed left and right.  Then the gorilla came to one little boy who wouldn’t wake up so the gorilla entered his tent, bent down and gave a resounding gorilla growl. Unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately, this was a Hunter Boy. He sat straight up, screamed, and started crying hysterically.

This was a prank gone wrong. Luckily, most of the boys were laughing-- all except for Jonah. He had just had the pee scared out of him. The good thing was that his  mom was right there to take care of him and help him out of this awkward predicament. Mom somehow just happened to be there to rescue her baby boy.

We still have a good laugh about this one, well, most of us do. We learned not to mix gorillas, water balloons, and cadets together in the middle of the night, unless you want to have gremlins.  

We do still do a few mischievous acts from time to time, but nothing harmful that may cause anyone years of counseling.

Shorts on the Ground

Over the past few weeks I have been feeling a bit nostalgic, so like any dad who feels like reliving the past, I went out to my garage. Now, why would I go to the garage you may ask. Great question! I went to the garage because, if you know me for any period of time, you will know that, no matter where I live, I have a magic garage.

Side Note: I have a reputation for keeping things. I’m not a hoarder, but I could be. My garage holds some of the most amazing treasures. I had a friend that used to say “Whatever you need just ask Butch to see if he has it in his garage.” Yes, sometimes I did have things that people needed or we needed for ministry. I didn’t get the title of Kid Ministry MacGyver for nothing. That, my friends is another story itself, for another time.

So, I went to my garage and found a box of old video tapes that held our family history. Looking though these tapes made me realize that we could have had a video on America’s Funniest Videos every week for an entire year. It also jogged my memory of our first video camera and the time we took it on vacation.

Our oldest son, Ben, was just turning two. This would have been our first real family vacation. So, Chrissy and I decided to go back to the place where we spent our honeymoon, Assateague Island, in Maryland, close to Ocean City. Since we enjoyed the area so much, we wanted to go back to the place where we created some very special memories camping on the beach.

Side Note: Honeymooning on the beach sounds super romantic, and we thought so too, when we planned it. Let’s just say, sand plus newlyweds in a small pup tent on a beach teeming with wild horses while a hurricane heads inland creates a situation that could test even the strongest of marriages. I almost forgot about the pesky state bird, otherwise known as the mosquito

Back to the vacation. We made plans to vist Assateague Island for a day while camping on the mainland at a nice wooded campground in Ocean City, that sprayed for mosquitoes.

Packing for our big day at the beach, I kept in mind that this was our two-year-old son’s first time to the ocean. All the things that my mom had warned me about ran through my head. “Watch out for the undertow, when you were a baby you got rolled so bad that you had sand for days coming out of you.” And Chrissy’s Nanny, “Don’t forget to put a lot of sun screen on.” With all these voices in my head, I could hardly hear myself think. The biggest thing in my mind was making sure we had the cameras, the regular one and the video camera too.

On this special day, I thought to myself (louder than all the other voices), “I want my boy to have a great time at the beach. He needs a boogie board! Yeah, he’ll love a boogie board!” I really don’t know why I thought that. Still, we stopped on the way to the beach at a small store to buy the cheapest styrofoam boogie board I could find because things were tight on this vacation. Once I had boogie board loaded in the car, we were set to go. Whoo-hoo off to the beach! On the way into the beach area, we saw the wild horses, this was a plus. They just roam anywhere and everywhere they please; it’s very cool! We even have a picture of one sticking its head in our car window!

Finally, at the beach, we grabbed all our stuff and headed down to the water to pick our spot for the day. It was great, the sun was shining, temperature was perfect with a nice cool breeze blowing. As the wind blew off the waves, it picked up salt that you could taste from the mist of the crashing waves, it was a gorgeous July day. The best part was that the beach was not very crowded.

We did all the things you would imagine parents doing with their child at the seashore for the first time. Ben loved playing in the lapping waves of the ocean. Chrissy took pictures and occasionally, we would use the camcorder to capture some priceless moments for our little family.

After a while, I took the boogie board down to the water for Ben to ride. I placed him on it, sitting down. I don’t know what I expected to happen, but here’s what did happen. A wave came in and knocked him right off. Epic dad fail on this one, I thought. So, I marched my sand-covered, squalling son up to his mother, so she could comfort him. After all, I had just let him get tossed around by the ocean tide.  

                              

So then, me being me, I decided to show my son that boogie boards could be fun. I said, “Ben, watch Daddy do it!” I grabbed the boogie board, and ran down to the water. I waded out into deeper water and waited for just the right wave to roll in. I looked out to see if Ben is watching, and I saw Chrissy getting the camcorder ready.

And then it was now or never; the water sucked back and I knew it was going to be a big one. I readied the board and jumped as high as my short legs would take me and landed on the crest of the wave! I remember thinking, “This is awesome! I’m riding a wave! Yes!”

I jumped off the board just before the wave crashed down onto the sandy beach. I ran up to Chrissy and Ben, out of breath, and exclaimed “I did it!  Did you see that! I was great! Yeah baby!”

Chrissy said, “Sorry, I didn’t get it you’ll have to go do it again.” I now believe she secretly knew what would happen next and just wanted to egg me on to make sure it happened. I was, oh, too willing. I was like a dog playing fetch with his favorite ball. You know right before the dog’s master tosses the ball, he’s so excited to get the ball. Yup, that was me.

So Chrissy readied the camera, ben sat playing at her feet. I galloped down to the edge of the ocean with the boogie board over my head like I was some champion surfer ready to rip some gnarly swells. I made my way through the crashing waves out quite a bit further than before. I positioned myself, and waited for the perfect wave.

I could see Chrissy recording as I waited for my dream wave. I waved to her with a thumb up. I was ready for this epic moment. Just then the water powerfully pulled quickly past my legs sucking my feet into the sand. I looked over my shoulder this was a huge wave! It was quickly rolling towards me, building momentum. Higher and higher it went.

I bent at my knees and with all I had jumped into the air at just the right moment to be caught on the top of the wave. Cowabunga dude! I was riding on top of this wave! The rush of water around me was exhilarating, the adrenaline was pumping though my body. It was like the rush you get when riding a smooth roller coaster, but a 100 times better. The wave was accelerating, and with every foot it got closer to its crashing destination.

Then, just before I could jump off the boogie board, the wave took me by surprise curling under me only to drop me, fast and hard head-first onto the shore. I hit the sand with an audible crunch. I was involuntarily rolling through the water, gasping for air. I could feel my heart pounding. I clawed at the shifting sand to get my balance and pull myself up out of the water. I shook off the water from my head and wiped the salt from my eyes. I could feel sand in places you never want to feel sand.

What seemed like an eternity only took seconds. I crawled to my knees. Still being pummeled by aftershock waves. The tide rolled out enough for me to get to my feet and somewhat get my bearings.

I desperately looked for my wife on the beach. I thought to myself well, that was definitely spectacular! Though blurry eyes, I saw Chrissy laughing hysterically all the while frantically tring to get the camera lined up with where I was now standing. I waved to her laughing all the while trying to get some forward motion going.

There are those times in life when things happen, and you know you just came through something that could have had disastrous results, only to realize the worst had not hit yet.

That is when I felt it. The cool breeze and water lapping bare skin in a place, well, a place that should have been covered. I looked down and terror struck me to the core only to realize that my swim trunks were gone. I quickly threw myself down into the shallow water. Fumbling around like a fish out of water. I was flopping around as I tried to grab my shorts that had luckily got hung up on one of my feet.

I quickly maneuvered my other leg into my swim shorts and pulled them up, filling them with even more sand in the process. I embarrassingly looked around to see who else had caught an eye full of me in all my God-given glory. To my surprise, I didn’t see anyone running in horror or pointing and laughing, well, no one  except Chrissy.

Side Note: Thinking back to this experience, all I can think of is the You Tube song, “Pants on the ground, Pants on the ground, look’n like a fool with your pants on the ground!” That was me. I was a naked fool!

My attention then turned to retrieving my white Styrofoam boogie board. After paying good money for it, I wasn’t going to lose this thing. Right at that moment, I felt something smack me in the back of my legs. I turned to see what it was-- it was a piece of Styrofoam. I bent over and grabbed it for a closer examination. It looked like a piece of someone’s boogie board, I wondered who broke their boogie board.  As I look down the beach, I saw 2 more white pieces being pushed up on the beach and it sadly occurred to me that it was my boogie board.

I gathered my wits, picked up what was left of my pride, and retrieved the rest of what was left of the board. I than sheepishly slogged up to Chrissy and Ben. Chrissy was reviewing her newly captured footage of my major wipeout. She looked up at me, snickering all the while and said “This is going to get us 10,000 dollars!” Then she disappointedly said, “Oh no! I missed you losing your shorts! I guess I just couldn’t find you in the camera. Darn, that would have been awesome,” she said. We both laughed, and I sat down to nurse my wounds.

Not only did I lose my shorts, demolish a boogie board and hurt some of my pride, I also had bright red welts across my chest and under my chin where the board had hit me when it exploded under the impact of the wave. I was a washed-up man.

Life has always been an adventure with the Hunter Clan-- even at the very beginning!

Brother Ray and the Pearls

Brother Ray and the Pearls

I know that last week I said I would tell you all about “Turkey Breast, not Turkey Roll,” but I’ve changed my mind. That is just going to have to wait; for some reason I feel the need to tell you a different story.

A few years back, our family had started selling “Sandy Candy” to make some extra money and teach the kids about running a business. The tag line was “Art you can eat!” So, it was like sand art, except it was colorful, powdered candy. We traveled around to different kind of events, festivals and such to raise money to go on mission trips to Honduras with our family.

While doing this, we met a lot of interesting people and had some crazy experiences, and well, why not? We’re the Hunter Clan, right?

One time we booked ourselves at an alternative Christian music festival called Cornerstone. We actually tent camped all week while we worked. The kids got to go hear some great music and meet some great people.

Side Note:  This is the event at which Silas, age of 9, managed to crowd surf during a rocking Hawk Nelson concert. One of the band members got scared for him and pulled him up on stage! Here is my parental disclaimer: His mother and I had no idea what was happening.  Silas was “being chaperoned” by his oldest brother, Ben, and the rest of the kids. But that is another story for another time, though it was pretty cool!

Anyway, the best part for this mature 80’s Christian rock fan was that our booth was set up right next to the retro band tent. The retro band tent that featured such artists as oh, Degarmo and Key, The Lost Dogs, The 77’s and more. Some of you older people might recognize these names.  

It was great! We discovered some cool bands we’d never heard of, like The Glen Clark Family, which played cool blues-rock, folk music. It‘s a great jam. Chrissy and I obviously fell in love with their music. At some time during the week, we made our way to their merchandise booth.

 As we walked up to their table, we were greeted by an older man. Looking at him you could tell he had lived some hard years. I remember looking into his well-tanned, worn face, as he smiled a partially toothless smile that gave way to soft wrinkles across his face. I was drawn to the sparkle in his caring, icy blue eyes. His shoulder-length, unkempt hair and his clothes reminded me of pictures I had seen of the hippie Jesus people of the 6o’s. 

He introduced himself as Brother Ray. He asked how our day was, and without missing a beat, he asked if he could tell us a story? He said, “I love to tell stories, and I have one just for you. 

Not knowing what we were getting into, my wife quickly replied that we would love to hear a story as she thoughtfully smiled back at him. We leaned in a bit to hear his words as he began his tale of a little girl and her treasure. It went like this.

There was a little girl who loved her daddy with all her heart. This little girl’s daddy’s work would take him away from time to time, and when he returned he would often have gifts for his precious little girl.

One such time, the father gave his daughter a set of faux pearls that she loved. She wore these pearls everywhere she went; she didn’t even take them off at bedtime. She didn’t allow anyone to touch her special pearls. They were her prize possession. If anyone tried to remove them or even touch them she gripped them tightly saying, “No, no, no!” With resolve in her little-girl voice, she would proclaim, “These are my pearls!”  This went on for months.

Another tradition the Father had with his little girl was when he was home, he would spend time cuddling with her as he tucked her into bed. Saying prayers with her, ending with a goodnight kiss, telling her that he loved her more than anything.

One night the little girl’s father came back from a trip, and he had started their bedtime ritual.

He tucked her into bed, looking into her little eyes, he asked, “Honey, can daddy have those pearls?  Quickly sitting up, gripping her necklace, the little girl exclaimed “Oh, no daddy, not my pearls! I can’t give you my most special pearls!”

The father smiled and comforted her by saying, “Okay honey. Settle down, it’s okay.” He tucked her in and prayed with her, told her “I love you more than anything,” and left the room.

The next night, bedtime arrived. Again, the father tucked her in and looked at her with loving eyes asking her,

“Sweetheart, won’t you give daddy those old pearls?”  With tears welling up in her eyes, she tightly clenched her eyes shut and shook her head, holding tightly to the treasure around her neck. With her voice quivering, she said “Oh daddy no! Please don’t ask me for my pearls. You can have anything else. Take my teddy or my dolly, but please don’t take my pearls”

The father smiled, and calmly said, “Okay, baby, don’t worry, I won’t take your pearls.” He tucked her into bed, prayed with her, told her “I love you more than anything,” and left the room.

This went on for what seemed like weeks. Over and over again, the father was met with resistance from his precious child. Night after night, the father would graciously accept her refusal to his request.

Then one night when the father entered his daughters’ room to tuck her into bed, he found his darling girl sitting knees to chest on her bed.

With one glance at her daddy, the tears burst forth like water from a dam, spilling down her face. Her arm flung out to her daddy with a tightly gripped fist holding her treasured necklace; through sobs he heard her trembling little voice as she mustered.

“Take them, daddy, please take them! I can’t take it any more! Please take my pearls, they’re yours!” The father sat down slowly next to his little bundle of joy.

He took his thick finger, placed it under her quivering chin, and he slowly lifted her face till their eyes met. Looking deeply into her eyes, he said, “oh sweet child, thank you.”

Wiping away the tears rolling down her soft cheeks, he spoke again, softly with love and compassion in his voice.  “Honey, because you gave me your treasure, I want to give you something that is more valuable and precious than those old, worn out, fake pearls that you have been so tightly holding on to.

As he said this, he reached into his pocket and revealed a long string of the most beautiful real authentic pearls.  He carefully placed them around his child’s neck and said, “You make them look so beautiful!” She leapt from her bed into her daddy’s arms, kissing his face and squeezing his neck, saying over and over again, “Thank you, daddy, I absolutely love them!”

It seemed like time had stood still as Chrissy and I were intently listening to the old man’s story. Brother Ray looked into my wife’s face and smiled and said, “That is the way our Heavenly Father is, you know? He loves you so deeply; you are His precious child, a child that He loves more than you will ever know.  Reaching out and touching both of our hands, looking intently into each of our eyes, he said with a big smile that lit up his entire face, “He has amazing things in store for you, but you must hand over the old pearls.”

I’m really not sure what took place after this; I can’t remember, but I have never forgotten the story and the lesson that Brother Ray shared with us. I thank God for this brief life-changing experience.

I hope this story has blessed you this week. Lastly, please give up whatever cheap fake pearls you’re holding onto so tightly. Willingly hand them over to the Savior, and let the Father pour His unconditional love out on you.

Next week's blog title will be a mystery one!