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We're going to dispense with our usual format
for this month and use this opportunity to
share our CHRISTmas
letter with you, our special friends.
But first, some house-keeping. Many
of you received, among other things, pictures
of the bikini-clad women (some had four of
them!) in our last newsletter. Some of
you had none (sorry!). We were
absolutely mortified at what had happened, and
nearly all of you were very understanding in
realizing that we would never have done such a
thing on purpose. Thank you for that.
So we consulted our son Brian, our computer
expert, and he told us this: When some
people have images on the Internet, they set
them up to "change" periodically
when in use. Why - who knows? So
Brian told us how to avoid that problem.
He said, "When you find the image you
want, simply right click your mouse button and
'Save Picture As' to your computer. Then
when you are editing your newsletter, simply
select 'image' from where you saved (possibly
to your desktop), and insert it into your
document." We tried that, and it
does work. Maybe this will benefit
someone else along the way.
And now on to our CHRISTmas
letter.
January
- We ministered in nine concerts in Kansas,
Oklahoma and Texas. We had to cancel one
concert due to an ice storm in Texas, but went
ahead with another one there and about 20 folk
braved the icy roads and sidewalks to
attend. The Holy Spirit was there,
nevertheless, and all were blessed, including
Frankie and me. We tell people, it goes
both ways.
February
- We actually had scheduled
nine Valens-tine banquets/concerts, but due to
another ice storm, had to cancel six of them,
so our concert schedule for this month
included only six concerts in Kansas and
Oklahoma. We had presented three of the
concerts, and were heading to Missouri when we
were alerted to a huge winter storm
headed their way. We called the local
pastors and were advised not to come to Iowa.
As one pastor succinctly stated, "You
might get here, but you wouldn't get
out!" And another pastor
understandingly advised, "You shouldn't
have to risk your lives to come here."
So we literally made a u-turn in Missouri and
headed back to Kansas, grateful to the Lord
for a safe trip home.
March
- Kansas and Oklahoma were again our
venue for six concerts this month.
We also attended the ordination of a pastor
friend of ours, Pastor Bill McCary, who is in
Slaton, Texas.
April
- Our eleven concerts this month were
in Oklahoma, Kansas, Arkansas and Texas, and
included a revival in Bellafonte, Arkansas
with Pastor George Box and other
wonderful folk of First Baptist Church.
It was before one of the meetings that I fell
in the sanctuary, tripped or something (I
don't know), but God totally protected me and
I just got up and was none the worse because
the angels were there keeping me safe.
We had a wonderful reviving time, and several
gave their hearts to the Lord, while others
decided to re-commit their lives and service
to Him.
This was also the month that we went to
court to get my then 87-year-old mother out of
the nursing home in Heavener, Oklahoma. I became
her legal guardian, and we were able to free
her from the awful situation she had been in
for nearly five years. It was a great
day of rejoicing for all of us.
Our old 252,000 mile van pretty much "died"
this month while we were in Heavener, OK
working on getting my mother free, but Pastor
David Gordon of the Poteau (OK) First
Church of the Nazarene blessed us greatly by
loaning us his car to go to our week-end
concerts. And other friends let us stay
with them for nearly two weeks while we were
going through everything concerning my
mother, and what an extreme blessing that was.
The following week, friends from the Derby
Church of the Nazarene drove all the way down
from Derby, KS, towing a car trailer, and
loaded up our old van and drove it and us all
the way back to Derby - 300+ miles one way -
and we were told that all of our expenses for
that trip had been taken care of! What a
blessing they were.
We then took our van to my cousin's
mechanic shop lot in Wichita, and he told us a
few days later that he had sold our van (which
had new tires and a new air conditioner) for
more than we asked for it, and it was going to
Mexico! I called it our
"contra-van"! Guess someone
had more money to spend on oil to keep it
going than we did!
Ultimately, ministry friends came through
for us and purchased a 1997 Chevrolet
Astro Van, which is doing us a good job now.
May
- A quieter month for us. We
presented four concerts in Kansas and
Oklahoma.
June
- Fourteen concerts in Oklahoma and Iowa kept
us busy, including some "make-up"
concerts that had been canceled in February. And
our very dear pastor friends, Neil and Debbie
Montz from Knoxville, Iowa, hosted us for
several days during our extended stay in Iowa.
We met them a good many years ago, and each
time they move, they "bring us with
them." They have blessed our
ministry in so many ways.
July
- We don't do many extended tours
anymore, but we began one to the east coast in
July and finished it in August. We were
in Iowa, Colorado, Kansas, Arkansas, and
Indiana for 10 concerts during this month.
One of the highlights of one of those tours
was a concert for the Lost Cherokee Nation in
Marshall, Arkansas. And Frankie made a
special CD for them that included the songs
"Cherokee Nation" and "Spirit
In The Sky." He had a good time
doing that, especially because Frankie is
about one-eighth Cherokee, so it had further
meaning for him.
August
- We continued our eastern tour to
Tennessee, North Carolina, and South
Carolina, and including other tours to
Missouri, Minnesota, Iowa, and Arkansas, we
presented thirteen concerts for the month,
including a concert at a Community
College in West Des Moines, Iowa, during the
students' lunch hour, where they came and went
as we sang.
While in South Carolina, Frankie was
reunited with his son Brian he
hadn't seen in 35 years. Brian and his
sister Jennifer drove from New Jersey to South
Carolina for the reunion. And Frankie's
youngest daughter Heather flew in from
Colorado for the reunion, never having met
Brian. It was a wonderful time of
happiness and tears, and much "remember
when?" and much else of "I didn't
know that." His son now calls him
every Friday, and they are definitely making
up for lost time.
While Brian and Jennifer were waiting for
us to do our concert in Inman, South Carolina,
looking around at the large crowd, Brian
asked me, "Did all these people come to
see you?" When I said yes, he
asked, "Would they have come
anyway?" to which I also responded,
"Probably some of them." I
think he couldn't believe his dad (and wife,
through the Holy Spirit) could draw a large
crowd like that!
We saw many workings of the Holy Spirit
during this tour as well, and one pastor
commented that the Holy Spirit had been more
powerful that night we were there than they
had experienced in a long time. All
praise to our Heavenly Father.
September
- Our thirteen concerts in Nebraska,
Kansas, Missouri, Illinois and Oklahoma
included a very memorable experience with
Michael and Cheri Price and the AmeriKids in
O'Fallon, Missouri. This is a Christian
daycare, and what an experience we had with
them. See our October e-newsletter on
our website for details. Who can forget
our singing Happy Birthday to precious
seven-year-old Dakota as he burst out in
tears on the stage?
This was also the month that Pastor Steven
Hultengren at the Elysian, (MN) Assembly of
God took along ten pictures we had
autographed, to give to the inmates for his
prison ministry, and all ten of those men got
saved! Glory, glory!
And we met Joseph and Mary in Macomb,
Illinois. We visited 91-year-old Joseph
in the nursing home, and his precious wife Mary
was able to attend our concert. She said
she was very blessed, not only by our visit to
see her husband, but also by our music.
October
- We stayed closer to home again this
month for the eight concerts in Oklahoma and
Texas. We were music evangelists for a
revival with Pastor David Gordon and the First
Church of the Nazarene in Poteau, Oklahoma.
The Holy Spirit really did His work, and many
were at the altar each evening.
We also presented short concerts during a
week-end seminar with the Northwest Fort Worth
Seventh Day Adventists.
November
- This month began a period of
rest for us that God ordained, and we only
went to Miltonvale, Kansas for one concert but
we had such a great time with those people
(and what a Thanksgiving "spread"
they provided!), and it was at this concert
that our "roadie" attended.
Marie Kugler, who lives in Red Cloud,
Nebraska, has been to nine - yes, nine - of
our concerts. If we're anywhere within
250 miles of Red Cloud, she will come to our
concerts! She is truly a special
ministry friend. We love you, Marie.
Oh, not to forget Frankie's big SIX-FIVE
birthday! I had to go to the
dentist that day, so I called ahead, and the
girls there sang Happy Birthday to him when he
came in. Knowing that we'd also be going
to our Credit Union, I called them ahead, and
the girls there sang the HB song to him, too,
as we came in. He's so cute with a red
face! We capped the night off with
a surprise birthday party with some friends.
Besides the traditional birthday cake, the
baker had made four smaller round cakes with
black frosting, with the names of four of
Frankie's songs on them. They looked
like 45 rpm records! He'll not forget
the SIX-FIVE!
December
- And here we are today. Our CHRISTmas
season was quite different this year. We
only had two CHRISTmas
concerts, but one of them was with the Senior
Adult Ministries of the First Church of the
Nazarene in Poteau, Oklahoma, and we sure felt
right at home there. We've not only
ministered at that church several times, but
we're Seniors, too, so we fit right in.
Most of our ministry this month has been in
the form of special music in different places,
and we have enjoyed the continuing rest God is
ordaining for us.
We want to thank all of you who have sent
cards and newsy CHRISTmas
letters and pictures. We enjoy the
"staying in touch." It does
mean a lot to us.
We will spend part of CHRISTmas
Day with our oldest daughter Debbie and family
(see picture below), and we're definitely
looking forward to that. They live in
Wichita and her husband's parents live just a
mile from us here in Derby, so they'll spend
the first part of the day with them, and the
second half with us. Sure works for us.
And now we'd like to include some
family pictures.
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Our
oldest daughter Debbie and her
husband Meredith, with Garrett-19,
Grant-17, Clarissa-16, Masha-16,
Spencer-13 and Wyatt-12. |
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In front
is daughter Jennifer with Lucy, her
dog; behind her is James - 4 1/2,
Christine (mom) and Marshall - 4 1/2;
then Eric (Jennifer's boy friend) and
our son Brian |
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Our
youngest daughter Heather with Cody,
nearly 3; Heidi - 12; Tyler
- 6; Haley -14; Heather's boy
friend Mikee. |
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Our granddaughter
Zanna - 2 1/2, daughter of son
Mark, with her mother Dawn.
Guess it was nap time! |
As we ponder on this most wonderful of all
seasons, and the reason for that season, we
want to join with those who have made a
decision to stand for CHRISTmas,
instead of Holidays.
We
had our own experience with
our determination to declare Merry
CHRISTmas
when we exited the turnpike
the other day. The toll
booth attendant said Happy
Holidays, so Frankie answered
back with Merry
CHRISTmas.
Apparently that gave him the
freedom to respond, and he did
so with Merry
CHRISTmas.
The Truth About Shepherds
 "And
there were in the same country shepherds
abiding in the fields, keeping watch over
their flocks by night." (Luke 2:8 KJV)
What do you picture when you read this
familiar verse? The squeaky-clean children of
a hundred Sunday School Christmas pageants,
self-conscious in bathrobes, with towels
draped around their heads?
Cute, perhaps, but not accurate.
Let’s try another version.
"And there were in the same country
street people, huddled over a heating grate by
night, passing around cheap wine in a paper
sack..."
Closer to it! The shepherds belonged to one
of the "despised trades" of Jesus’
day...folks that proper people scorned and
avoided.
Why? Well, dirt, for one thing.
I remember the time I helped sheep-ranching
friends pack fleeces after shearing. A fleece
is the sheep’s wooly coat freshly clipped
off his body - sticky with lanolin, smelly,
loaded with dirt. To pack it for shipping, you
gather it in your arms and throw it into a
tall burlap wool bag supported on a stanchion.
Because of their size, my youngest son and
our friend’s daughter had the dubious honor
of standing in the bottom of the bags and
stomping the fleeces down tight, one by one -
the dirtiest job of all.
By the end of that hot afternoon, we all
wanted nothing so much as a bath. Packing
fleeces is such a messy job that most ranchers
have machines do it.
The shepherds outside Bethlehem worked with
sheep up close and personal, all day, every
day. In dusty desert country, water was scarce
and precious. They had little opportunity to
bathe. Moreover, as they followed the animals
from place to place, I’d guess they rarely
even changed clothes. Keeping the kosher
laws--much less the elaborate cleanliness
rituals of the faithful Jew--was out of the
question.
Add to that the shepherds’ less than
kosher scruples.
Because they moved their flocks from place
to place, they often used other peoples’
land without permission. And most certainly
they were not above appropriating sheep from
other flocks if they thought they could get
away with it.
Yet God by-passed all the upright, faithful
Temple-goers who had arrived in Bethlehem to
announce His Good News first to these smelly,
scruffy outcasts.
God surprises us with His grace. He
delights in showing us He is bound by no human
expectations of convention. He will always do
things His way.
Beyond that, however, His action shows us
very clearly that we don’t earn the Good
News. The shepherds were not "good
people." If we had been in charge, there
is no way we would have rewarded those
shepherds with the honor of being the first to
hear about the Messiah’s birth...which is
precisely why God did so. His love is a free,
glorious gift, not a prize to be won.
By choosing the outcasts of society, God
declared there is no one beyond the bounds of
His love. No one is too dirty, too sinful, too
despised. There is no place too ugly for His
presence, whether a sheep pasture or a cross.
("The Truth About Shepherds"
as printed in the Christian Reader,
November/December 1997, from Together
by Wynne Gillis.)
On the lighter side, we'd
like to include the following that came to us
in several different e-mails.
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GOLD, COMMON SENSE AND FUR
My
husband and I had been happily (most
of the time) married for five years,
but hadn’t been blessed with a baby.
I decided to do some serious praying
and promised God that if He would give
us a child, I would be a perfect
mother, love it with all my heart and
raise it with His word as my guide.
God
answered my prayers and blessed us
with a son. The next year God blessed
us with another son. The following
year, he blessed us with yet another
son. The year after that we were
blessed with a daughter.
My
husband thought we’d been blessed
right into poverty. We now had the
four children, and the oldest was only
four years old. I learned never to ask
God for anything unless I meant it. As
a minister once told me, "If you
pray for rain, make sure you carry an
umbrella."
I
began reading a few verses of the
Bible to the children each day as they
lay in their cribs. I was off to a
good start. God had entrusted me with
four children and I didn’t want to
disappoint him.
I
tried to be patient the day the
children smashed two dozen eggs on the
kitchen floor searching for baby
chicks.
I
tried to be understanding when they
started a hotel for homeless frogs in
the spare bedroom, although it took me
nearly two hours to catch all
twenty-three frogs.
When
my daughter poured ketchup all over
herself and rolled up in a blanket to
see how it felt to be a hot dog, I
tried to see the humor rather than the
mess. In spite of changing over
twenty-five thousand diapers, never
eating a hot meal and never sleeping
for more than thirty minutes at a
time, I still thank God daily for my
children.
While
I couldn’t keep my promise to be a
perfect mother - I didn’t even come
close - I did keep my promise to raise
them in the Word of God. I knew I was
missing the mark just a little when I
told my daughter we were going to
church to worship God, and she wanted
to bring a bar of soap along to
"wash up" Jesus, too.
Something
was lost in the translation when I
explained that God gave us everlasting
life, and my son thought it was
generous of God to give us his
"last wife."
My
proudest moment came during the
children’s Christmas pageant. My
daughter was playing Mary, two of my
sons were shepherds and my youngest
son was a wise man. This was their
moment to shine.
My
five-year-old shepherd had practiced
his line, "We found the babe
wrapped in swaddling clothes."
But he was nervous and said, "The
baby was wrapped in wrinkled
clothes." My four-year-old
"Mary" said, "That’s
not wrinkled clothes, silly. That’s
dirty, rotten clothes."
A
wrestling match broke out between Mary
and the shepherd and was stopped by an
angel, who bent her halo and lost her
left wing. I slouched a little lower
in my seat when Mary dropped the doll
representing Baby Jesus, and it
bounced down the aisle crying,
"Mama-mama." Mary grabbed
the doll, wrapped it back up and held
it tightly as the wise men arrived.
My
older son stepped forward wearing a
bathrobe and a paper crown, knelt at
the manger and announced, "We are
the three wise men, and we are
bringing gifts of gold, common sense
and fur."
The
congregation dissolved into laughter,
and the pageant got a standing
ovation. "I’ve never enjoyed a
Christmas program as much as this
one," laughed the pastor, wiping
tears from his eyes. "For the
rest of my life, I’ll never hear the
Christmas story without thinking of
gold, common sense and fur."
"My
children are my pride and my joy and
my greatest blessing," I said as
I dug through my purse for an aspirin.
Jesus
had no servants, Yet
they called Him Master.
He had no degree, Yet
they called Him Teacher.
He had no medicines, Yet
they called Him Healer.
He had no army, Yet
kings feared Him.
He won no military battles, Yet
He conquered the world.
He committed no crime, Yet
they crucified Him.
He was buried in a tomb, Yet
He lives today.
Frankie and I both feel
honored to serve such a Leader who
loves us so much.
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Here is our Itinerary
for the present month and the upcoming month,
so you can not only keep track of us, but also
pray for us.
Sat, Dec. 8 - 5:30 p.m. -
Senior Adult Ministries/Poteau Church of the
Nazarene (R) - Poteau, OK -
918-647-3470
Sun, Dec. 23 - 10:00 a.m.-
Fairview United Methodist Church (R) -
Fairview, OK - 580-227-4769
Tue, Dec. 25 - CHRISTMAS
DAY
2008
Sun, Jan. 20 - 6:30 p.m. - United
Methodist Church - Bushton, KS - 620-562-3334
I'd like to close this
special Christmas letter by quoting from
"A Note Of Encouragement for December
17" by Chuck Graham.
"Some
individuals denounce the very idea of CHRISTmas.
They argue that it wasn't the day Jesus was
born, the early church did not celebrate it,
the Bible does not instruct us to, or that by
celebrating CHRISTmas
we promote pagan religions because it was one
of their 'holy' days. And yet, I'm not
aware of any Christian who believes Jesus was
born on CHRISTmas
day. I've seen no evidence the early
church did not have a special day to honor the
birth of Christ. I can find no Biblical
command not to celebrate the coming of the
Messiah. And I've heard no explanation
for why my Heavenly Father, the Creator of the
Universe, must kneel in submission to false
religions and not allow His children to
worship Him on a day His enemies claim as
their own. Even good intentions can have
bad ends.
"My God is the Almighty King.
Each and every day belongs to Him and Him
alone! We have stood against
governments, kingdoms, organizations,
movements, and non-believers who have tried to
stop our celebration of the birth of the Son
of God. Should we not stand against some
churches or brothers and sisters in Christ who
try to lead us from doing the same? No.
Not against, but in their midst, with love and
respect, even when that is not shown towards
us. And as for me...
"I will join with others on that
special day and in this special season to
honor and praise the birth of my Lord. I
will use this special opportunity to share
what His coming into this world means for
those who don't know Him. I will take
this special time to let others see His love
in my life and know I follow the Living God.
With Him by my side, I will seize that day,
claim it for His throne, and worship Him and
Him alone. I will not be frustrated, and
I will not allow anyone to steal the joy He
has given me."
 We'd like to
invite you to click on the link below for
a beautiful
And finally, the CHRISTmas
story in a capsule:
"For
God so loved the world that He gave His only
begotten Son, that whosever believeth in Him
should not perish, but have everlasting life."
John 3:16 KJV
From
Frankie and Phyllis
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