Good Heavens (5 page)

I knew I wasn't interested in buying donuts, so I thanked him and was again about out the door when he added, “Every day when Mary closes shop, she throws away tons of those good donuts. You go down there at closing time, and she'll be glad to give you all the donuts you can use.”

Now that was a different story. I thanked him again and said I'd be sure to check that out.

After I bought the bread, I went looking for the donut shop. I saw the post office but was in the wrong lane to make a turn. I tell you, I had a mischief of a time finding my way back. The streets in that town were something else! They twisted and turned and backtracked like you wouldn't believe. It looked like to make the streets they just paved over the trails the pioneers had made going across the mountains. Made me laugh; they probably done that on purpose to discourage tourists from settling in Rockville.

Mary and I hit it off right away. She was about my age, sixty-something-or-other. She said we could have all the donuts, Danish, and cream horns left over at the end of any day—that she had back trouble and it would be a help to have us unload all that stuff. I could not believe my ears!

On the way home, I thought of a way we could give a little back for the donuts. On the days we came for the leftovers, I'd bring a couple of the Priscilla girls, and we'd help Mary clean up of an evening—wash those heavy trays and mop the floor.

Driving back up the mountain, my heart was so full I just kept singing and saying, “Thank you, Jesus! Thank you, Jesus!”

By the time I got to Priscilla's it was nearly lunchtime. The girls swarmed around the car to help me unload.
Seeing all the groceries seemed to break the gloomy spell that hung over the place.

I asked them where Ursula was. One of the women, I think it was Linda, said Ursula was having a counseling session. I left it to the girls to take care of the groceries, and I climbed the stairs to my room.

I hadn't read the Bible all day, so I welcomed a little quiet time before the lunch bell rang. After I went to the bathroom, I plopped down in that easy chair. It didn't fit me like my old recliner, but I thought maybe in time it would. I got out my prayer list and opened the Bible at the bookmark.

I had hardly got started reading when Ursula called me into her office.

3

Ursula sat down behind her desk, looking very disturbed. “Esmeralda, by what means did you procure all these foodstuffs?”

“For the most part I paid for them.”

Those eyeglasses slipped down on her nose, and she peered at me over the top of them. “We can't do that here. We cannot spend our own funds to finance Priscilla Home.”

“Why not? I can't ask the Lord to give us groceries when I have the money in my pocketbook to pay for them.”

“That will not work here. There are always many needs at Priscilla Home, and you could spend every penny of your income and still not meet all the obligations.”

She was so matter-of-fact, so sure of herself, I could see how easy we might lock horns. Ursula was a stringy woman and didn't fit in that big office chair. She tried leaning back in it but that didn't help. Then she started fooling with a paper clip, bending it out of shape. “When
I first came here as director, my father instructed me meticulously about how to bring Priscilla Home up to professional standard.”

At her age, is her daddy still running her life?
I wondered.

“My father is a learned man, and I respect his judgment,” she was saying. “Fund-raising is the board's responsibility, he said, and he forbade me spending my money on needs here. That would lead to my financial ruin.”

“Is the board doing the fund-raising?” I asked.

“No,” she said, a bit put off by my asking. “It hasn't worked out that way.” Leaning forward, shuffling a stack of papers, she appeared to be looking for something. “Here, this is what I'm looking for,” she said as she handed me a Priscilla Home prayer letter. As I was reading it, she informed me, “This is a faith ministry. We depend on donations from our constituency and from grants given by foundations. That letter you have in your hand was mailed to our contributors two weeks ago. We should soon begin receiving contributions in the mail.”

It was a prayer letter, all right—like so many of those letters I would get and have to throw in the trash because it took all I had to support my own church. “You send out letters?”

“Yes, we send out letters. That informs the public of our financial needs—”

“And you ask foundations for charity?”

“Yes, of course.” She looked provoked. “That's the way all nonprofits are funded.”

“Nonprofits?”

Annoyed, she threw the paper clip in the wastebasket and started toying with another one. “Yes, nonprofits like hospitals, research centers, and so forth. Any such organization can apply. I spend hours writing proposals for grants, and since I came here two years ago, we've received one, a grant of fifteen hundred dollars. I have eleven proposals in the mail and am in the process of writing six more.”

The way this conversation was going made me uncomfortable. I didn't exactly know how to say what I wanted to, but I had to say something or I knew I'd regret it later. “Ursula . . . I don't think of Priscilla Home as just another nonprofit organization. It's a Christian ministry. To ask for money makes it look like the Lord can't take care of us.”

Ursula sat bolt upright, her elbows on the desk and her fingers twisting that paper clip to beat the band. “Do you consider that my appealing to a foundation and writing letters to our constituency makes us mendicants?”

“I don't know what you mean.”

“Mendicants are religious persons who live off alms. Do you consider that my appealing to foundations and sending letters to our contributors is begging?”

“What would you call it?”

The phone rang. She answered it and spoke briefly with somebody. As she was talking, I noticed the black circles under her eyes.
No wonder
, I thought,
she's probably up half the night writing them proposals to foundations
.

When she got off the line, there was an edge in her
voice. “Esmeralda, how do you propose we fund this ministry?”

“Just trust the Lord. Don't that seem like the most natural way?”

“Doesn't,” she snapped.

“Well, whatever. It seems to me that if we can trust the Lord to save and keep our souls, we ought to be able to trust him to provide for his work.”

Her face flushed. “Are you saying I don't trust the Lord?”

“No. I'm not your judge. I just think it's up to the Lord to keep Priscilla Home running as long as he sees fit, and when he's done with this place he will stop providing for it.”

“According to that, Esmeralda, it appears the Lord is indeed finished with this ministry.” Throwing the paper clip in the wastebasket, she reached in a desk drawer, pulled out a stack of papers, and slid them across to me.

They were all unpaid bills—all past due. Bills for electricity, propane, gasoline, hardware—I was shocked to see one in there from the meat market where I'd bought the hamburger meat. If I had known Priscilla Home owed that man money, I'd have never asked him for his best price. I thought of what a good man he must be not to have mentioned that bill to me.

“Esmeralda, we have forty-two dollars in our bank account. If we don't pay Mountain Power and Light this week, they're going to discontinue our electricity. What do you propose that we do, pray about it?”

If she wasn't sarcastic, she was close to it.

“Ursula,” I said, “when I was young, things were nip and tuck for me. Through those years I learned that the Lord always provides if I trust him and if I don't waste what he gives me.”

“Don't you think I have prayed?” she snapped. “I've prayed and I've done what I could to raise revenue, but Esmeralda, we are at our Rubicon! Yesterday I called the president of our board, Mr. Elmwood, to ask his permission to negotiate another bank loan. He approved, and tomorrow I'm going to the bank to borrow ten thousand dollars.”

“A loan against the property?”

“What else? After we pay our creditors, we'll have about two thousand dollars left for future expenditures.”

“How will you pay back the loan?”

“With monthly payments.”

I didn't say anything. I was hard-pressed to know how to speak my mind without getting her riled up even more.

“You disapprove?” she asked, her dark eyes snapping. “Do you have a better plan?”

“You must think I fell off a turnip truck.”

“A turnip truck? What are you talking about?”

“Never mind.” I waved my hand in the air. “Ursula, I do have a better plan. What would you think if I went into town, met all these creditors, and asked for a bit more time?”

“Oh, we could never do that! Besides, a few more days' delay won't change things. What we owe is much more than we could expect to come in within such a short time.”

I spoke softly so as not to offend her. “Splurgeon says, ‘He pleases God best who trusts him most.'”

“Splurgeon?”

The bell rang for lunch, but we still sat there, not saying anything. The smell of fried onions drifted our way. I heard the screen door banging as the girls piled off the porch and came inside.

Finally Ursula broke the silence. “You would do that? You'd go into town and ask all those creditors to give us extensions?”

I nodded.

“What if they say no?”

“Then we'll cross that bridge when we come to it.”

She shook her head disgustedly. “I perceive that your faith exceeds mine, Esmeralda.”

“No, we all got a pinch of faith, and it only takes a pinch if we put it in the Lord.”

Unconvinced and probably pitying me, she stood up and stacked her papers, muttering, “The mustard seed?” Not waiting for an answer, she said, “Very well, Esmeralda, you go into town and see what you can do. I'll delay asking for a loan until you report back to me.”