In Corona, I was asked to work with the Church Youth Group. My first project was to teach the boys and girls social dance. What fun. "Give me a couple of weeks," I said.

As with the puppetry series at Center Junior High in Manhattan Beach, I developed a curriculum. I spent a a week in selecting basic dances, such as two-step, waltz, and polka, and also dances popular in the high school, jitterbug, bunny hop, rumba and cha cha cha. Finding the right music was a bit of a challenge, but I was ready by the scheduled evening. However, when I showed up with my tape recorder, photos, etc. I was told that the youth leaders had taken the boys shooting. Apparently the youth leaders thought dance lessons was a good activity, but the boys did not.

I went home and complained a bit to the Lord. I was disappointed. I had put in so much preparation time. I was really looking forward to it. Why Lord? The Lord asked, "Mimi, who were you doing it for?" "You Lord," I answered. His response was "Well?" The simplicity of His response was clear. Who and why was I serving? The results did not matter. That principle has helped and guided me through life, family, and many, many of the community and church projects in which I have gotten involved.

If the desire of your heart is to serve the Lord, be grateful for being used. Do your best and leave the results and the credit in His Hands, a "workman that need not be ashamed." There is no room for disappointment. We stand as observers.

I did have fun with the youth, directing a musical Road Show production and writing a play for the Spanish teacher, whose students performed, "Señor Sin Dinero." Aury played, El Señor. I laughed so hard during the performance, I almost fell off the chair.

Receptive to DREAMS . . . . warnings. The second spiritual lesson was that dreams are a means by which God communicates with men, to warn, to guide. There are many examples of dreams guiding the activity of individuals in both the Old Testament and New Testament, but as with everything, the lesson can be spiritual or physical health.

One evening early in our move to Corona, I had a very vivid dream, with bright, deep colors, like an oil painting, not a watercolor. In the dream, when I cracked opened the eggs they were each filled with white sugar. I always thought of eggs as particularly healthy. I was really perplexed. To me the dream meant that eggs were not good for you.

The very next day, a neighbor welcoming me to the neighborhood told me about several bargain grocery stores. In particular, she mentioned one store which sold fresh eggs at very low prices. She said, some of the eggs sometimes have small cracks, but she said she bought and used them all the time.

I quickly realized the dream the night before was a warning that cracked eggs were not healthy. I researched it a bit and found out that cracks in the shells of the egg can allow bad bacteria to get inside. Special care is needed in cooking with cracked eggs. Concerned with the risk, I never did buy any.

DREAMS . . . the future. The job with the Navy was terminating, Win got a job offer with McDonald Douglas. We looked in the Orange County area and purchased a house in Westminster. The house seemed to be waiting for us. It had sat empty, and did not seem to be on any local listings. The realtor who had it listed, was not local. He was a friend of the owners who had moved out of state. Our realtor, whom I contacted through my church, found the house by driving around within the radius that Win had outlined. We purchased our Westminster house in 1971 and got it way below market, before the big jump in housing prices.

The strange thing was that the day we moved in and I finally sat down amid the boxes and confusion, I looked around, and said, "Oh my gosh, Win, I dreamed this house." It was the exact perspective in my dream, which had perplexed me when I dreamed. What I remembered from my dream was that the room I was sitting in had a very low ceiling, but looking out the sliding glass door I could see that the house was tall, at least two stories. (The house is tri-level.) I told Win that the house was meant for us. It has served our family well.

RAFTING DOWN the GREEN RIVER in UTAH

We started attending church right away and found that a wonderful youth trip was being organized, wild water rafting down the Green River in Utah. Once again I was called to work with the church youth.. Fortunately, it appeared, teen-agers Aury and Tawn were not embarrassed by my presence. I helped with the fund-raising booth, selling firecrackers!! It was an adventure, and a wonderful family memory. 

Everyone was required to bring a sleeping bag, good hiking shoes, clothes and personal items. I brought a flashlight. The meals were prepared by the tour guides. Three large inflated flat, square, raft-like boats, pontoons, carried the supplies, managed by the guides and ridden by those who did not want to paddle their own canoe.

We were about thirty youth and 10 adults. We traveled in member vans and cars. Along the way we made stops, one was an abandoned ghost town. With permission to explore, we did. As the adult leader, I was leading the way of one little group.

The Black Widow

We approached one house, which had a root cellar. We found it and unlocked and swung open one side of a the wooden two-door entrance. I started to walk down the dusty, musty steps. Straining to see in the darkness, I yelled "please open up the other side of the door. I can't see." It was perfect timing, because if I had taken another step down, I would have walked right into, and become entangled in a web with the largest Black-Widow spider I had ever seen. It was directly in front of me. That was the end of looking into dark spaces in crumbling houses.

The Lion

Next morning, I had another near miss, but I was not leading. I was bringing up the rear end of the group. We were exploring the area, walking alongside a bubbling stream. Something in the stream must have attracted my attention, because when I looked up, I could not see anyone in the group. I was totally alone.

I looked down where I was standing. Right on the edge stream, in the wet sand were the fresh foot prints of a mountain lion. It was the freshness of the footprints which made me suspect that he had to be close. I could not understand how the group had not trampled on them. I begin to feel that I was being watched and got goose-pimples. (Like the bear experience in the Trinity National Forest, Chapter 14.)

I straightened my back and with my head up, started walked slowly, calling out in my yell-leader voice, non-stop. In as low and deep as I could, my shouts filled the air, I kept a stream of sound flowing. Where are you? Hello? Hello? Hey, somebody? I also added to the noise. I picked up a couple of branches and start cracking them against each other.

If there was a lion, he/she probably never heard such noise and was surely long gone. But, I continued the yelling, just in case.

An additional oops was . . . I came to a fork in the road. "Oh my, which way did they go?" Fortunately it occurred to me to examine the trails. Looking at the mix of footprints in the dirt, I fortunately took the correct path and finally caught up to the group. Can't image what I was looking at in the water, which had initially, foolishly separated me from them.

"Mom, what were you yelling about?"
"You heard me?"   . . .  hu m m m m

What I have learned in the last few year is that I was guided, inspired to react correctly in both situations.  Without knowledge, I did the right thing.  When I saw the fresh bear footprint in the Trinity National Forest, and quietly walked away, the bear observed that I was not infringing on his area.   If I had done the same, quietly walking away when I saw the lion paw print in Utah, the lion who was watching me, would have attacked.  I was separated from the group and an easy prey.  Making myself bigger by walking tall, carrying sticks and making lots of noise showed strength.   

I want my descendants to know that I acknowledge the Holy Spirit's protection and guidance in my life. As I look back, even before I came to a knowledge of Jesus Christ as my Savior and Lord, His loving concern was watching over me.  

Every day we traveled a length of the river and then camped overnight. There were a few mishaps. Some sections of the river were pretty rough. A few campers fell out of their canoe and got scratched on the rocks. I was paddling alongside another leader, suddenly he capsized, but he did not swim away from it. The canoe went over him, and he apparently was caught underneath. I started panicking when he did not come up right away. Finally, he surfaced. He had been breathing from the air caught underneath the canoe, while attempting to untangle his life vest. 

We did have an incident which could have ended in tragedy. We were attacked by Indians!! 

The Uintah-Ouray Ute Indian Reservation is located on either side of the river from below Jensen to just above Green River, Utah. Apparently some members of the tribe were tired of tourists polluting their river and exploring sacred caves (which apparently we did). Tribal members had begun to harass the tours going through by stealing items and even cutting the supply-carrying pontoons loose.

One of the last days of our trip, we were told about the "Indian threat." That evening, a sleeping circle was set up, girls and women in the center, the youth around us and the men around them. The men were going to take turns being on watch and keeping a fire burning all night. I kept my flashlight with me in my sleeping bag.

Just as the camp settled down and all was quiet, I heard one of the tour guides (I will call him Mike) suddenly yell, "I got him. I got him." I jumped out of my sleeping bag and with flashlight in hand lighting my path, I ran in the direction of where I heard Mike yell. He was on watch where the supply-pontoons were moored.

As I ran towards him, I saw two men swimming away from our shore. When my light hit them, they quickly submerged. Because of the high cliffs, there was very little moonlight, but I could also see some of our leaders running towards the yelling and others standing by and in the pontoons.

I could hear the concern in the voices of the men, because they could not locate Mike. He was not in any of the pontoons. Just then I saw something moving in the water close to us.

I shone the flashlight between the two pontoons. Passing beneath the first pontoon and then going under the second pontoon was our guide. Mike was unconscious, floating, drifting, being carried by the river. "He is in the water, grab him. Look . . Look. . . He is in the water. . . . Catch him. Catch him. He is underneath the pontoon, underneath. Quickly, don't let him pass you. Grab him."

As soon as he passed under the second pontoon, I quickly ran to focus the light directly between the second and third pontoon. When he passed the second pontoon and slipped under the third pontoon. I got panicky. I ran to be on the other side of the third pontoon. Some of the leaders got into the river on the downside of the third pontoon. Moving the flashlight, back and forth, I was trying to make sure he did not pass us. If he had, he would have been lost. "There he is."

Gratefully, in spite of the flow of the river, they were able to pull him out. He was stunned, incoherent, with lots of blood streaming down his face. The men sat him next to the fire and covered him up. He was shivering and dazed, but alive.

Having the experience of being a camp counselor at two camps and a playground director at two locations, I took charge to calm the situation down. I sat directly in front of Mike and looked directly into his eyes. I gently wiped away the blood and asked him, "Where does it hurt?" Mike touched the back of his head. The blood was going down from his forehead. Again, I asked, "Where does it hurt? Again, he touched the back of his head. As I was slowly wiping and blotting the blood, I could see there was a series, a row of cuts, seemingly evenly spaced across his forehead. Fortunately, they were not deep cuts.

After Mike was cleaned up and someone recuperated emotionally, the men took charge and administered the needed first aid. The men concluded that he had been hit on the head, and received the cuts as he was swept under the pontoons, perhaps from the blades of the motor. Fearful he might lapse into a coma because of the blow to his head, they tried to keep Mike awake through the night. Very early the next morning, he was picked up by family and taken directly to a doctor.

It was a very, very memorable trip.