DISCOVER CHALLENGE
Adventure
Choose your own, then render it in your favorite medium.
My grandfather Charlie Wayrynen was born in Finland In 1868. He came to America at a young age, seeking his adventure in a faraway land. He ended up settling in South Dakota, a town called Lake Norden. Shortly after arriving in America. He bought himself a steam engine, a big Reeves Steam Engine. He used this for turning the sod, breaking up virgin prairie for young farmers to start farming on. When he wasn’t turning sod, in the fall they were threshing and harvesting the grain that was already being grown here. That steam engine turned and moved many threshing machines. During the freezing winter months. He used the steam engine to move buildings over the frozen ground, They would put a big old barn on some skids and slide it along the frozen ground, sometimes for miles. One winter he moved a church that was 5 miles out of town, moved it across the railroad tracks and into town.
My grandfather Charlie was approaching 30 years old and I imagine he started having thoughts of different adventures. Besides his steam engine business. I can almost see him walking up to a big man named Isaac Erick Grape. Charlie was very fond of Erick’s daughter Minnie. In those days he no doubt went and asked Eric if he could have his daughter’s hand in marriage. Eric must have thought Charlie was an okay young man, and he gave permission for his daughter to marry my grandpa Charlie. They were married in 1905.
They bought a little farm west of Castlewood South Dakota and started their married life out as young farmers, working together. In the years that followed Minnie gave birth to seven sons and four daughters. One of the daughters died as an infant. Young farm families soon learned that everyone pitches in and helps do everything that has to be done. My mother Frances was the oldest one of the girls, and she recalled quite often about helping her mother do many different things in the house and also milking the cows.
Minnie and Charles had six of their sons serve in the military service during the Second World War and the Korean War. They all came home after the war and found different jobs and livelihoods all over the nation. Minnie Grape was born in November 1885. She died of breast cancer in 1938. She still had three of her younger children attending school. Those three children ended up living with her husband, Charlie and their oldest son Edwin his wife Alice and their two small children at Edwin’s farm. All three of the children graduated from Castlewood High School and went on and found their livelihoods in other parts of the country.
Charlie’s family was always close together and stayed in touch with each other. Whenever someone was traveling through they stopped to see Ed and Alice and spent some time there. This may not sound like an adventure where in most cases people find fame and fortune. The adventures of everyday, ordinary people, who fall in love, get married, raise a family is where it is at though. People committed to each other, making each other’s lives better, doing the best they possibly can.
When you look at this wedding picture you can see the love that Charlie and Minnie have for each other, shining in their faces.
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Excellent writing, Lee….This is the kind of story that I love to read. You did a great job finding all the details etc. Have you a copy of the charge to the L.N. church for the moving? I have it in the church anniversary papers..and will try to make a copy of it for you for your files. Did you know he lost money on that job? Wonder how that happened? Thinking of you and remembering good times in S.D. But Mn has it’s beauty also and I so enjoy my home here. Wild turkeys come to graze below my bird feeders every day and the deer come walking by my patio looking for new green grass and on to the trees a ways off. I couldn’t ask for anything more satisfying. Greetings and love to you and Rose. Arlyce
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We are very happy to hear that you are living in a comfortable place, you have the wildlife coming to visit you and a Covenant Church in driving distance. Harlan told me that you were staying very active. That’s what we have to do, keep on moving, use it or lose it.
That would be great if you could send a copy of that bill, I’ve never seen it, wish I had a copy of the picture, where they are moving the church. I sent my home with Harlan several years ago, along with many of my other history books from Canada and the Hamlin County book. I was supposed to be the one leaving the earth first, not Harlan! We sure do miss him. There’s no words really to describe it. I lived this long to learn what grief was all about. If you have a file picture of the old steam engines moving the church and you can send it, that would be great. I could update that post because I don’t even have the right steam engine on it at this time.
Thank you for the kind words. Were still managing in our little apartment. When I consider living in a care center. I get much incentive to do my chores, exercise, etc.. To stay in the best possible condition. I find myself talking to the Lord on a daily basis, praising him and asking for the strength to continue on. HE has been very very good to me. I am very fortunate indeed.
Love, Leland and Rose
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O Leland! You have so much wholesome true stories to relate. It’s refreshing! Me? Man! Well? My stories are not wholesome at the beginning but? At the present time? The power of love from on high is descending upon us all opening our eyes to see good & evil and the results of both. For what purpose? For us all to reconsider our ways and? Whether good or bad ways? Throw them all under the feet of our Messiah. Ha! That just occurred to me. How ’bout that? Have you checked my latest? http://www.thia-basilia.com/ Food for thought. 🙂
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Dear Thia, You wrote,
“At the present time? The power of love from on high is descending upon us all opening our eyes to see good & evil and the results of both.”
For what purpose? It could only be because the Lord is returning soon to round up his tattered, wayward flock, with poop stuck on our rear ends! He would love to see us join him at the big sheep pen in the sky. Now that is where my education shows a few discrepancies, there is no way to compare the Holy City, New Jerusalem, or Heaven with a sheep pen.
I prefer your style of writing much more than mine. Keep up your good work.
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Brother, You are right. The problem is cut and dry simple but? We have complicated the matter. From the beginning is was a matter of don’t eat or you will die. Eve & Adam ate and they died spiritually. They ate because that is what seem good to them. We are still doing the same thing. We do whatever seems good to us according to what our parents & teachers told us. Our parents & teachers told us what their parents & teachers told them and on and on we do until death do us part.
What is happening now? This thing about going to heaven is a lie. We are not going to heaven. Heaven is coming to us But? Before Heaven or the Kingdom comes, Father is straithening out our thinking. He is doing it in a one to one basis. Just like it is written He was to do. Once He does His work on each one of us? Yahushua will come back and establish the Kingdom in Jerusalem just like it is clearly written that He will do.
I have quit ‘teaching’ or telling anyone what to do because we are not supposed to do that. I am doing what you are doing in a different setup. Telling all about our lives. That is exactly what Father will use to make others think about changing their lives. How it is all happening? Beats me! I know noothing! Like Shults used said.
Your life is a beautiful life. My life? A Dysfunctional life but? Father is using both to show others the results of both lives. In the end? He has dealt with you and quicken you to do the blog and He has quicken me to do the same. Phew! That was a long spill. Hope you still with me. 🙂
The book I am working on shall be a hit because? Father is leading me to tell it all the good, the bad, and the best=His victory in my life to make a ‘functional woman’ out of the dysfunctional woman that I used to be. Does that make sense? 🙂
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thia, you make train loads of sense. You are so right, you clearly see that the kingdom is coming that the changes are underway, where most people have scales over their eyes. Everything is blurry and they would rather have it that way. Like you say the word will get to them and change them, the process is underway. It is moving forward, slowly but people are going to change. There is really no more room in this world for hatred, loving one another will have to come shining through. And why not? It is so much easier to forgive others of their deeds and pray that they see soon.
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Thanks my Brother! I needed that I guess but? Read the latest? it might made you chuckle and smile at my skims because Father? Makes nothing of such whims! I ‘am going on , on with smile in my face & joy, hope & trust within my heart by the power of love from on high! 🙂
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