Christmas Treasures (9781101558720)

by Kinkade, Thomas; Spencer, Katherine

  “Excuse me, Grace. Carolyn would like to meet Reverend Lawrence.” Sophie edged her way into the little group and pulled Carolyn along, like a little tugboat.

  “Reverend Lawrence, this is Mrs. Lewis,” Sophie said in her most social tone. “Reverend Ben’s wife.”

  “Yes, of course. How nice to meet you. Please, call me Isabel. I’m not the formal type.” She put out her hand and shook Carolyn’s hand firmly.

  “You can call me Carolyn. I’m not the formal type, either.”

  “How is Reverend Lewis? Reverend Boland said he might be out of the hospital soon.”

  “He should be out tomorrow or Saturday,” Carolyn reported. “He wants to meet you very soon. We’d like to have you over sometime this weekend. Maybe for coffee?”

  “That’s very kind of you, but I don’t want to cause you any extra work or trouble. He might not be up to visitors.”

  “It’s no trouble. Ben is eager to meet you and talk about the church. It’s hard for him to be forced to stay away like this,” Carolyn confided. “Especially during Christmas.”

  “I understand,” Reverend Isabel answered with a serious expression. “I can stop by whenever it’s convenient. Reverend Boland has told me such wonderful things about this church and your husband’s work here. I’m very eager to meet him.”

  It wasn’t so much what she said, but the way she said it. The warmth and compassion in her eyes and her tone of voice. I like her, Carolyn decided. Ben will, too.

  Before they could talk further, Tucker Tulley came out of the kitchen and drew everyone’s attention.

  “I just want to thank you all for coming out on such a cold night. We’re going to bring the supplies out in a minute and get started. We’ll be making two hundred bagged lunches tonight, and also sending out lots of fruit and hard-boiled eggs.

  “If you haven’t done it already, please wash your hands and put on gloves. We need people making sandwiches at this end of the table and baggers down at that end.” He pointed to the different stations at the folding tables that had been set up along the length of the room.

  “And last but not least, I need a few people in the kitchen, washing apples and watching the eggs.”

  “I’m going to go wash up and get my gloves on,” Carolyn told Sophie and Isabel. “Be right back.”

  “Where do I get gloves?” Isabel asked.

  “In the kitchen. Just follow me,” Carolyn said.

  Isabel followed Carolyn into the church kitchen, where pots of eggs covered every burner on the big stove. The kitchen was large but crowded. Isabel dodged a woman carrying a platter of sliced cheese and another carrying a case of apples.

  “This is quite an operation, isn’t it?” she said to Carolyn when they met again at the sink.

  “Oh, it is. I haven’t volunteered here for a while,” Carolyn admitted. “They’ve really expanded lately. It’s wonderful to see.”

  “Where does the food go?” Isabel asked.

  “It’s given out to children mostly. They take it over to two or three youth centers not far from here. Most of these kids get free breakfast and lunch at school, but there’s not enough food at home and they’re always hungry,” Carolyn added. “You’d be surprised. Even the nicest-looking neighborhoods, never mind the poorer ones, have kids in need.”

  Isabel knew that child hunger was a hidden problem and could be found anywhere. But she had come here from a place where need was so obvious. She never expected that her first interaction with this church would involve this kind of ministry.

  “Volunteers do this every week?” she asked Carolyn as they each snapped on gloves.

  “Every Thursday night,” Carolyn confirmed. Then she glanced back with a little smile. “Though they rarely get this large a turnout. I think a certain new volunteer is a big attraction tonight.”

  Isabel laughed. “Since everyone is watching me, I’d better get to work. You might decide you got stuck with a lazy minister.”

  As they walked back out together, Isabel noticed that the noise level in the room had risen considerably, with everyone talking and laughing as they worked on the sandwiches. It was all a bit overwhelming, but heartening to see that energy and goodwill in motion.

  “Jump in anywhere,” Carolyn advised. “I like the far end, the brown-bagging post. It’s less crowded.”

  “I’ll join you then,” Isabel said.

  She followed Carolyn to the end of the table, where a group was focused on a platter piled high with ham and cheese sandwiches in plastic bags. The sandwiches were put into brown bags and passed to another station, where an apple and a bag of cookies were added to each one.

  “Here’s a spot for you, Reverend.” Isabel’s new landlady, Vera Plante, stepped aside and made room for her. Isabel squeezed in between Vera and another woman she had met earlier, Emily Warwick, the town’s mayor.

  “Just dump a sandwich in and pass it on,” Emily advised, handing her some brown bags.

  “It’s all so well-organized,” Isabel said, starting in. “How long has the church been doing this?”

  “A few years,” Vera answered. “We started off slowly. Some church members were visiting after-school centers to help the kids with reading and homework. They started bringing sandwiches and fruit because the kids were so hungry, they could barely concentrate. You can imagine the sort of junk food those places give out, like chips and candy.”

  “Pretty soon, a few of us got together and began meeting once a week,” Emily continued, “making food and bringing it to different places where we knew there was need.”

  “I’m impressed,” Isabel said honestly. “A lot of congregations donate money to those in need, but too few have real hands-on ministries.”

  “Oh, we do a lot of that here,” Vera said. “Reverend Ben is very big on hands-on outreach and involving the community. He’s been here so long, he has a big network in town. We could never do all this work without finding volunteers outside the church.”

  “Reverend Ben lights a fire under us,” Sophie said plainly. “He makes us go out and practice what we preach.”

  “Practice what he preaches,” Emily corrected her with a laugh.

  Isabel laughed, but she was also impressed. The congregation seemed to have an unusually close relationship with their minister. They clearly admired and even loved him. She was glad that she was only a temporary fill-in. Reverend Lewis would be a hard act to follow, she thought.

  “Reverend Isabel,” Vera said, “tell us about yourself. Did I hear you say that you grew up in the Midwest?”

  “In Minnesota, a town called Minnetonka. It’s not too far from Minneapolis. But it was a pretty rural place when I was young—a lot of open land, farms, and horses. A lot of snow in the winter,” she added with a short laugh.

  “Sounds lovely.” Sophie Potter stood nearby, adding apples and cookies to the bags.

  “Sounds a lot like right here,” Digger added. “You’ll fit right in.”

  “I hope so,” Isabel replied. She was a country girl at heart, and no amount of travel or living in distant places could take that out of her.

  “Where did you serve before coming here? Did you have your own church out in . . . Minnesota?” An older woman down at the end of the table addressed her now. She named the state as if she were talking about deep outer space.

  Tucker Tulley had introduced the woman earlier. Lillian Warwick, the mayor’s mother, Isabel recalled.

  The Warwick matriarch pinned her with a cool gray stare. Isabel was reluctant to make assumptions about people, but she had read somewhere that the first three seconds of a meeting were the most important, that people gathered information quickly on an unconscious, even intuitive basis. Isabel had a feeling that this woman had already judged her, and the judgment was not flattering.

  Would she win over Lillian during her tenure here? Isabel had no idea. She did know that she wouldn’t make any special efforts to do so. Lillian Warwick was a certain type—and so was Isabel.

>   “I’ve never had my own church,” Isabel replied calmly. “After being ordained, I served as a youth minister and then an assistant pastor at a small church in Minnesota. For the past four years, I’ve been part of a ministry down in Haiti. We rebuilt houses and schools that were lost in the hurricanes of 2008 and after the 2010 earthquake.”

  Her reply was enough to give even Lillian pause for thoughtful reflection.

  “It’s hard to believe that one tiny island has suffered so many natural disasters,” Sophie said. “It doesn’t seem fair.”

  “It’s the poorest country in the western hemisphere,” noted Dr. Ezra Elliot, Lillian’s husband. “It’s amazing to me how those people carry on and have any hope at all.”

  “It is amazing,” Isabel answered quietly. “But they have hope and faith.”

  Jessica Morgan turned to her. “What demanding work that must be.”

  “Very impressive,” Dr. Elliot agreed. “We can all write a check and send a donation, but it takes a certain kind of person to work hands-on in a place like that. My hat is off to you.”

  He glanced at his wife a moment. She didn’t look up at him, focused on counting the brown bags that were going into a larger one.

  “Were you there when the earthquake struck?” Carolyn asked.

  “Yes, I was, but not near the epicenter,” Isabel explained. “Still, it was terrifying.”

  “Oh, it must have been,” Vera agreed, looking afraid to even imagine it.

  “How brave of you to stick with it so long,” Emily said. “Four years is a long time in such a challenging environment. Was there some term of service you fulfilled there?”

  “I never planned to stay that long,” Reverend Isabel admitted. “I went down for a two-week visit with some members of our church, a service trip with a youth group. We were there to help build houses and restore clean water systems. But when I saw all the need, I felt a real calling. I went back to Minnesota briefly to resign my position, then returned to Haiti.”

  Isabel paused and took a breath. She picked up a paper bag but didn’t open it. “The year before that, I had a great personal loss . . . My husband died of lung cancer. It spread very rapidly. We didn’t have much time together after the diagnosis,” she said simply. “My family and friends, even the minister at our church, all thought I was still in shock and acting impulsively. But I knew it was the right thing for me to do. I needed work that would totally consume me.”

  A certain hush fell over the group, and Isabel wondered if she had said too much. They wanted to know about her; they’d asked so many questions. But maybe this disclosure had been too personal?

  Then she felt Emily’s light touch on her arm. “I’m so sorry for your loss,” she said sincerely. “I lost my first husband when I was twenty. It’s hard to pick up the pieces and keep going.”

  Isabel smiled gratefully at her. She could see that Emily understood, and she appreciated her words. She still missed Steven every day. She always would, no matter where she went, what she did, or who she met.

  “That takes a lot of character, to take your grief and channel it into something good,” Sophie said. “A lot of people just curl up and give up after a loss like that.”

  “I’m not sure it was a question of character,” Isabel said truthfully. “I felt lost, overwhelmed. As if I were drowning in my sorrow. I asked God to help me, and that was the rope He tossed down.”

  “Maybe so, but a lot of folks wouldn’t have seen it that way. A lot of folks wouldn’t have grabbed that rope,” Digger replied. “They would have prayed for another one.”

  The old fisherman’s observation broke the somber mood and made everyone laugh.

  “Maybe so,” Isabel agreed. “But it didn’t seem like I had a choice, which was a blessing. I felt an irresistible need to go back there and work.”

  “You were filled with spirit,” Grace said quietly. “That’s what happened.”

  “I hope our church doesn’t seem boring after all you’ve been through, Reverend Isabel,” Vera said, stuffing another sandwich in a paper bag. “Reverend Boland only told us that you were coming off a medical leave and weren’t currently attached to any particular church. We had no idea that you have such an interesting background.”

  “If you don’t mind my asking, what made you return?” Emily asked curiously. “Did you need a break from that environment?”

  “I took a fall . . . and then a break,” Isabel said with a small smile. “I fell off a ladder and fractured my right leg. I needed an operation and decided to come home for the surgery and rehab. My family was happy to see me,” she added.

  “I’ll bet,” Sophie said. “I’ll bet your folks are bursting with pride to have you as a daughter.”

  “And we are, too, to have you as our minister. Even temporarily,” Tucker said.

  “Very true,” Emily agreed, “but I think we have to let poor Reverend Isabel out of the hot seat for a little while so we can get these sandwiches done. It’s getting late.”

  A teenage volunteer had just put down another large platter of bagged sandwiches and cleared away the empty one. Isabel wasn’t sure how many they had packed so far, but on the next table, large clear plastic bags stood filled with lunches.

  It still amazed her, the sheer abundance that surrounded her in this country. In this room and kitchen alone, so much meat and cheese and eggs—enough to feed an entire village in Haiti for a year, she thought. Well, maybe not that long. But she wondered if these good people realized how scarce such stockpiles of food were in some places.

  It had been jarring to return to this land of plenty after what she’d seen and the way she’d lived in Haiti. Isabel still wasn’t entirely used to it and often missed the way of life she’d left in the Caribbean. Though it had been low on creature comforts, there had been certain freedoms and benefits that were hard to explain. Despite the many hardships, she wanted to return to Haiti, or some other area of the world, to continue relief work. While her leg was healing, she had applied to ministries in the Caribbean and Central America. She hoped that by the time Reverend Ben was ready to return to his post here, she would have a post in some distant land.

  Now she glanced at the four huge bags filled with sandwiches. “Tucker said we were making two hundred sandwiches tonight,” she recalled. “It looks like we’re almost done.”

  “Yes, we are,” Sophie said. “Many hands make light work.”

  “That’s true,” Isabel agreed. It was true in Cape Light or Haiti or Minnetonka. Wherever people came together to do good work.

  She was not sure what she had expected of this congregation. But Isabel decided that, so far, she liked them. Perhaps she assumed that these people would be spoiled or, at the very least, insensitive and unaware . . . unintentionally, of course. But they were none of that. In fact, they were just the opposite.

  God has sent you here for a reason. You may never know entirely why. But so far, it seems to have something to do with you being such a reverse snob, she chided herself.

  I won’t be here very long, but I’ll definitely learn something, she decided.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  “THE SHOP IS JUST UP THE STREET. YOU SEE WHERE THAT LITTLE house is? The one with the sign that says ‘The Bramble’?” Regina pointed down Main Street, a few doors down from the doctor’s office. It was Friday morning; Richard had driven her to work and was keeping the car. He had some things to do. The first on his list was meeting Sam Morgan to talk about a job.

  “There’s an old barn in the back,” Regina continued. “Sam Morgan’s shop is on the left side.”

  “I’ll find it. Don’t worry.” Richard forced a smile, trying to act more positive about this job quest than he felt.

  “Well, good luck. Let me know how it goes.” She stared at him a moment, and he thought she might kiss him good-bye. Just on the cheek, but that would be something.

  Instead, she reached over and patted his arm. Awkwardly.

  “Have a good day at work
,” he said. She nodded and slipped out of the car.

  He watched her walk up the path to the doctor’s office. She looked very pretty today, he thought. He wished now he had told her. But it wasn’t the sort of thing he said easily anymore. He felt as if he weren’t allowed to say things like that to her anymore.

  She looked pretty . . . and happy. She had seemed that way ever since she started her new job. Regina loved to work and loved to be productive. That was something he had always admired in her, even though it put a bigger load on her at home, with taking care of the kids and everything else. She rarely complained. He tried to help with the housework since he was there all day—picking up the house, doing laundry, cleaning the kitchen. But the kids still missed her and didn’t like his cooking.

  Regina is not a quitter. She never gives up, no matter what, he thought as he pulled away from the curb. He needed to take a page from her book today. Even if it was too late to keep the family together, he had to do his best to support them. There was never any question about that.

  He didn’t really want day work for some carpenter he had never met. It felt . . . humiliating, considering his experience and education. It sounded to Richard as if Sam Morgan was just doing his sister, Molly Willoughby, a favor by seeing him. Richard didn’t want to beg some guy for a day’s wages painting houses or sanding kitchen cabinets. He could stay at the house and paint or sand. They would be able to put it up for sale a lot faster then.

  Not that anyone was likely to buy it soon. The real estate market was weak almost everywhere. Then again, the longer it took to flip the place, the longer he and Regina would be living under one roof. They couldn’t go their separate ways until the house was sold. So in that way, Richard had been secretly happy that the house was in such bad shape and would take a while to renovate.

  It surprised him to find that he was hoping it would take longer. He was sorry now for all the harsh words, the arguments and recriminations. How he wished he could take it all back, wipe the slate clean. But that was impossible. Some things could never be undone.