The Improbable Pilgrimage: A Memoir

By Everett Stenhouse

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• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Mar 30, 2009
• ISBN: 9781462801152

Everett Stenhouse

About the Author… Everett Stenhouse has traveled widely visiting and ministering in more than sixty-five countries. He has served his church as: Pastor, Evangelist, Missionary, District Youth President, District Superintendent, General Council Executive Presbyter, and General Council Assistant General Superintendent. He has been a featured speaker for five General Councils in the U.S., several foreign councils, forty-eight District Councils in the U.S. an Amway Convention, and numerous Ministers Institutes and Retreats. His writings have been published by several national and international newspapers, as well as a variety of periodicals including Today’s Evangel and the Catholic Digest.

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Copyright © 2009 by Everett Stenhouse.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This book was printed in the United States of America.

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Contents

INTRODUCTION

PART ONE

THE EARLY YEARS

CHAPTER ONE

HUMBLE BEGINNINGS

CHAPTER TWO

ONCE UPON A TIME

CHAPTER THREE

BLESSINGS IN BUNDLES

PART TWO

THE VENTURESOME YEARS

CHAPTER FOUR

ON THE MOVE

CHAPTER FIVE

DOMICILING UNDER A DICTATOR

CHAPTER SIX

PASSPORT TO THE WORLD

CHAPTER SEVEN

BACK TO THE MEDITERRANEAN

PART THREE

THE ECCLESIASTICAL YEARS

CHAPTER EIGHT

PASTORS ARE PEOPLE TOO

CHAPTER NINE

THIS IS MINISTRY TOO

PART FOUR

APPRECIATING THE PAST ANTICIPATING THE FUTURE

CHAPTER TEN

PEOPLE WHO HAVE

TOUCHED OUR LIVES

CHAPTER ELEVEN

THE IMMEASURABLE CRISIS

CHAPTER TWELVE

CLOSING WORDS FOR THE WISE

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INTRODUCTION

There ain’t nothing that breaks up homes, country, and nation like someone publishing their memoirs.

—Will Rogers

While it might be ego expanding to think that the scribblings of these pages could pack such a wallop they are highly unlikely to change anything or any person—Much.

This is not a plea for a ton of glorifying verbiage when I have faded from life’s landscape. However, in the event that the reverend preacher, whomever he might be, is tempted to limit my final service to a 12-minute excuse-me affair with 10-minutes of music, I offer this brief basket of reminiscences as an amiable protest.

Robert Frost said that half the world is composed of people who have something to say and can’t, and the other half who have nothing to say and keep on saying it. Others will have to judge as to which side of the fence this meandering composition falls.

I never knew my paternal grandmother. Memories of my maternal grandfather are scant. He died when I was very young. My maternal grandmother, Mama Dean as she was known to the family, was a Godly woman. When I was young in the ministry she was my major prayer support. She was a Bible toting, tithe paying, church going, praying saint. She is buried in Riverside, California. My paternal grandfather, at the other end of the spectrum, was a pistol toting, cigar smoking, beer drinking, holy terror of Oakland, California, where he is buried. I have innumerable memories of both of them.

While this brief memoir will be an attempt to explain why the Stenhouse family is the way it is (assuming there might be someone who wants to know!), where they came from, and how they got here from there in this improbable pilgrimage, it will reflect only briefly on any of the above. It will include much about the beautiful woman God gave to me who is, as the immediate family knows, the very center of my life and universe. Without her there is no me.

It is not my intention to in any way suggest that my life has been more notable than that of any other member of the Stenhouse family. Indeed, when weighed in the balances it will undoubtedly be found wanting. I note simply that I cannot write objectively of any of my siblings or my children. I know each of them quite well but there is so much about them that I do not know. I know the most about my own frenzied and, in some ways, indefinable life. I have been abundantly blessed by God and for anything I might have accomplished with my life to Him belongs all the credit.

My decisive plan is to say nothing unkind or hurtful to any person, living or dead, as I lay quill to scroll. Does that mean that I will be less than honest? Not at all. Remember Thumper’s counsel from his mother, If you can’t say somethin’ nice—don’t say nothin’ at all. I will attempt to at least marginally abide by that prudent admonition. The result of that attempt may mean that there could well be some notable names of people I have known missing in these musings.

My purpose is to show how abundantly blessed I have been to have parents, family, and a host of friends to offer positive influence and encouragement in this pilgrimage.

Anyway, life is not about the days of yore, except for the value gleaned from their experiences. The Philosopher/poet George Santayana said, Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.

But forward looking Thomas Jefferson said, I like the dreams of the future better than the history of the past. The Scriptures agree. In speaking through the prophet Isaiah, God said to Israel:

forget about what’s happened; don’t keep going over old history. Be alert, be present. I am about to do something brand-new

—Isaiah 43.18-19. TM

And so for the generations following I wish you God-speed in your tomorrows as you earnestly seek the fulfillment of His will for your lives.

PART ONE

THE EARLY YEARS

Humble Beginnings

Once Upon a Time

Blessings in Bundles

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Westmorland—First Pastorate

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With Roy Sapp and Howard Bush

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The Family Grown

Andrew, Brenda, Everett

Alice, Judy, Steve

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The Family Growing

Steve, Judy, Everett

Brenda, Alice, Andrew

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With Thomas F. Zimmerman

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General Council Executive Presbytery

1985

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Stenhouse-Miller Team

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President George H. W. Bush

And Barbara

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With Missionary

Paul Finkinbinder

CHAPTER ONE

HUMBLE BEGINNINGS

"Nothing from our past is thrown out;

it’s all composted and assimilated

into a growing life."

Eugene H. Peterson

The 1929 Erskine bounced along Historic Route 66 Highway (The main street of America). As an eight-year-old I was huddled with my younger brother and sister in the open air rumble seat. It was 1939 and we were California bound. Inside this coupe was my hardworking father and devoted mother with two more younger sisters. If John Steinbeck had known about this family he quite likely would have added another chapter to The Grapes of Wrath.

It’s necessary to go back eight years to 1931 to a little white house setting on a knoll by a country road between Minco and Pocasset, Oklahoma to find the place where my Mother introduced me to this world. It was a world that seems in retrospect to be not akin to the world of today. A first class postage stamp cost 2-cents, Refrigerators were just being introduced to households, and the Empire State building was just opened. The unemployment rate stood at 16.3 percent and that was quite likely a contributing factor and related directly to the marriage union of my parents. Mother was a farmer’s daughter. My father met and wooed her while he was working on the farm for my maternal grandfather.

It seems to be human nature to try always to have our Sunday-go-to-meetin’ clothes and faces on. And that’s not a bad thing. We want people to like us and to think well of us. But to write of one’s life without including anything inauspicious would not be honest. As Flannery O’Conner said,

The truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it.

And truth can sometimes be unpalatable and even painful.

It may be terrifying for some of our family to contemplate but the paternal side of this family could have been Australian. Not that being Australian is terrifying but the very thought of it raises some bizarre and unanswerable questions as to where we might have been and, in addition to that, who we might have been. Lest we become hopelessly lost in the fog of that fathomless perplexity we forge ahead.

My paternal grandfather, Thomas Stenhouse, was fifteen years old and carousing in a pub in Glasgow, Scotland with friends. As they downed pint after pint they talked of escaping from the motherland. They could go to America or to Australia. They couldn’t agree. They flipped a coin and it came up the U.S. At that beardless age Granddad boarded The ship Anchoria and headed to America and a new life, docking at Ellis Island on December 26, 1903. And with one generation between us, there I am.

THANK YOU TEXAS

The Great Depression had not yet ended for us. Times were hard. Our parents struggled to keep the family fed. After having been born in Oklahoma and living there through most of the depression, and then moving to Denver, Colorado and Great Bend, Kansas for short periods of time we were now leaving West Texas. The great state of Texas had bankrolled the family’s escape to California.

The cash came from the West Texas cotton fields of Earth, Texas. West Texas was known for its oil fields, cotton fields, and rattle snakes. The eldest three of us got into the cotton patches with our cotton sacks and worked with our daddy like the Okie migratory workers we were. But none worked as hard and as long as our dear daddy. I can still see him dragging that long cotton sack growing increasingly heavier down the rows with great effort. But the fuller the sack the more money it represented. We worked by the pound.

Added to the drudgery of Hard work was the fact that we weren’t just picking cotton. We were pulling boles. That was pulling the cotton off with the bole. Nasty work! Hurtful and cutting to the fingers. But we did it from dawn ’til dusk and when the crop was finished we piled into that Erskine and headed West. Riding in a crowded open air rumble seat was a picnic compared to pulling boles.

Except for our daddy-driver we were all free to catnap when we wanted to provided our fellow travelers allowed it. The sound barrier is not broken by the speed of a 1929 Erskine. It was a long trip. A couple of nights dad found a place to park safely off the highway and we made beds on the ground and committed ourselves to God. Not a problem! At the streak of dawn, after Dad had hand-cranked the Erskine, we were trucking our way again down old Route 66.

HELLO CALIFORNIA

That trek of a lifetime ended on Fir Street in Montebello Gardens on the East side of Greater Los Angeles in the driveway of our Mother’s sister, Velma. She had four kids of her own. I can only imagine the jubilation Aunt Velma must have experienced at seeing that Erskine loaded with seven unwashed and hungry kinfolk pull into her drive way. I really don’t know how she felt. I never did ask her. She’s in heaven now. She was a faithful bell-ringing Salvation Army lass and she has her reward. But, the title of a song comes to mind as I think about it: Why me, Lord?

My first introduction to the unsavory side of California happened almost immediately upon our arrival in Montebello. There was a park nearby and the kids were told we could go there to play. Being eight I was the oldest. Down the street we encountered the neighborhood bully. He stood in the middle of the sidewalk and in an ungentlemanly manner announced that we were not permitted to pass.

We turned around and went back to the house. Dad, who was standing in the yard, asked why we were back so soon. I told him that there was a boy down there as big as Goliath and as mean looking as Satan. Dad resolved that problem by telling us to go back and that I, as the oldest kid, would deal with that chap or we could come back and I would have to deal with him. Now that will put steel in your spine! We went back.

The brat kid blocked the sidewalk again. I wrestled him to the ground and started pounding the daylights out of him until