LUCILE!!!

I wanted to tell you about an unforgettable person named Lucile. Our girls were in grade school/junior high age and a new family came to our city and our church. He was an engineer and transferred to a manufacturing business that was located in our town.

He and his wife started attending our Sunday School class. We were in a new church building at the time and we had a class room that was quite unusual. Most rooms are square or rectangular, but this room was neither one of these. One of the walls was a mismatch of windows, etc. They asked for volunteers to work on what to do about these crazy windows and some semblance of continuity. Since I sewed a lot, I volunteered. Lucile said she would work on this project, also.

We got our heads together and started dreaming up things that we could do. She thought it would be wise to treat the wall as one large unit and make drapes for that wall. It would cost a lot of money to buy drapery fabric for this long wall. The only place I knew that wouldn't break our budget was to go to a store that sold "soup to nuts". They purchased things from stores that were going out of business. You could find everything in there, but you really had to be careful in your selection.

I asked her if she knew about this store. She said, "I sure do! Let's go see what they have in the way of drapery material." She was one positive lady and a gal after my own heart! They had Antique Satin material in bundles of different lengths. We purchased a batch of these bundles of fabric (enough that we thought would cover the wall). We unwrapped the bundles at my house and proceeded to sew drapes. I can still see her yet taking out these lengths of fabric (all different lengths) and saying, "When you are doing God's work, it will all fit together", as she was laying these panels over the doors until we had just the right panels that fit like a puzzle. We had just the right amount of fabric to cover the entire wall and the unusual windows looked like they belonged together.

The class wanted to reimburse us for the material (since it was obvious a lot of material). We told them that it was PAID FOR. The entire cost of this project came to $7.00. We stretched that dollar to the ultimate. We laughed about this many times.

We became friends for life! She was artistic and her home reflected her personality. In one of her bedrooms she had a family tree painted with her family pictures on the tree. She painted in one of her bathrooms a Murial free hand. Coming into her home was a foyer and steps leading to her basement. She had needle pointed each step depicting her husband and their life together. One step was double rings, another step was one of their homes, another step was the church, and memories of their past, and on down the steps it went. She was quite creative and she always did this on a limited budget. For instance, she needed a table between two chairs. She took an old suitcase that needed storing and made a round wood piece and sewed a tablecloth for it and Presto, she stored her suitcase and it became useful as a table when not in use.

Her heritage was Swedish and she created the most Divine goodies that ever was put in your mouth all on a faction of what these would cost if purchased at a bakery. Her spiritual gift was "Hospitality". She would invite people (no matter who) always to her home.

This was so true at Christmas time. Her picture window was decorated with "WISE MEN STILL SEEK CHRIST".

They are the family we visited 18 years ago back in Portland, Oregon. I will speak more about her and her family in some of my writings in the future.

Wisdom--WISE MEN STILL SEEK CHRIST!!!!! Oh how true this statement is!!! Seek your spiritual gifts and let God show Himself through you.