Lord, I'm Coming Home

 

I Come To The Garden Alone and Chief Lone Eagle

 

My thanks to Phil Gambrel who brought back this memory.

According to an article in the NW Indiana Times, quoting his Native American historian nephew and namesake Lone Eagle, Chief Lone Eagle, of Hammond, was a popular wrestler who was world heavyweight champion from 1948 to 1952.http://www.nwitimes.com/…/article_d1d01342-db9a-5fa4-bccf-1…

In the early 60's he worked with my uncle Art Cummings in the steel mills. Uncle Art was a construction welder. Chief Lone took advantage of his great physical condition to work as a laborer. Uncle Art invited him to Gary Aetna Church of the Nazarene, where the Bill and Carol Dittmer family also attended . Uncle Art had lived Hammond, Indiana when Chief Lone Eagle could be seen wrestling on Chicago TV, and Uncle Art was an avid wrestling fan. He was very excited about Chief Lone Eagle attending our church.

In 1964 or so, I was there when Chief Lone Eagle prayed to receive Jesus. He called my Dad Bill Dittmer to come by his home and pray because Chief recently learned that his wife had cancer. I got to go with Dad on this call, and Dad prayed with him to receive Jesus, then helped Chief pour all his liquor down the sink. It took a while. Chief had a large collection of liquor. Soon after, Chief Lone Eagle's wife was healed of cancer. Pretty cool, huh?

Chief Lone Eagle loved to sing about Jesus, and I was his accompanist on the piano. I Come to the Garden Alone was his favorite song. He was asked to sing at several churches, and when we went out, Chief Lone Eagle went out in full regalia, just like the picture. That full sized head dress is real eagle feathers, and Chief Lone Eagle was an authentic Chief. He would have a kid from the audience come up and punch him in the stomach, Chief let me hit him in the stomach once. It was like hitting a cement block.

Chief later drifted from God. He was working on the dike as a laborer that went out a mile into Lake Michigan, the end of which was a huge water inlet for city water.

I worked next to that dike as an electricians apprentice and saw how the cement trucks would unload cement onto the fork lifts, and the drivers would hurry to end of the dike. The drivers couldn't see out the front because that's where the load was. They drove like mad men.

A fork lift loaded with wet cement hit Chief Lone Eagle, went over the edge of the dike and into the lake with him and pinned him to the bottom of the lake in 60 feet of water. A crane operator dropped a hook to where they guessed he was. The water was too murky to see. They pulled up the hook, and had fortunately snagged the fork lift, with Chief Lone Eagle clinging to it. Chief asked God to save him while on the bottom. He stayed true after that.

I saw Chief Lone Eagle after that, in the early 80s, at a week long Zone Rally and Youth Revival at Hammond 1st Church of the Nazarene. I had just taken the role of pastor at Griffith Church of the Nazarene a few weeks earlier. At the Zone Rally I was helping on the piano. There were several hundred people from multiple Churches of the Nazarene in the area attending the services.

I loved playing Nazarene hymns. I played the evangelistic style with octave melody and octave bass notes that alternated with chords in a strong rhythmic style, similar to honky tonk. I added in double octaves, triplet runs, Floyd Cramer. The more stuff I put in, the louder the crowd sang. The louder they sang, the more stuff I would put in. At the Cross, Power In the Blood, When the Roll is Called Up Yonder, they hit all my favorites that week.

Rev. Crawford Howell, pastor of the !st Hammond Church of the Nazarene host church, led the singing every night and told jokes. He said one time he and I were at a revival when somebody hollered THE PIANO PLAYER IS A JERK! A moment later a drunk stood up and "I don't know who said THE PIANO PLAYER IS A JERK, but what I want to know is WHO CALLED THAT JERK A PIANO PLAYER?!

Chief Lone Eagle was there every night. When I'd pass him walking down to the piano, he'd say HI MIKE!, loud enough for everyone to hear, then announce to everybody "He played the piano for me!!"

Unbeknownst to me, the zone was taking up a love offering for Lynne and me and daughters Rebecca and Wendelyn. Becky was in first grade. Wendy was still in a stroller. We had not told anybody we had just run out of food. The week before, Denny and Jeanie Middleton, fellow Nazarene Bible College students and pastor at nearby Gary Aetna Church of the Nazarene had invited themselves over for the evening.

We made sure there was food for the girls, but we had just run out of everything else that night, except for the ingredients for a cake. I had been promised a good job, but it hadn't come through yet. Lynne and I determined not to tell anyone.

After we had cake and coffee with the Middleton's, Jeanie started asking a lot of personal questions about how we were doing financially, then got up and went through all our cabinets and refrigerator. The next day groceries were dropped off at our house.

Jeanie also passed the word on to the zone. On Saturday, after the Zone Rally, they presented us with a pickup truck load of groceries and a $600 love offering. Chief Lone Eagle was there in the front row. He was beaming.

The groceries filled all the cabinets. We arranged the surplus on the floors.

Chief Lone Eagle died in 1988.

Supper Time

 

Marvelous Grace

 

Morning Mission Accomplished

 Today was a typical morning routine. I slowly stirred around first, setting up the room first. I laid out dry clothes for Mary, and a fresh set of heavy duty absorbent panties. As I stirred around, Mary woke up, and together we changed her clothes and panties.

After we changed her clothes, I had to also change the bedding. I pulled off the wet sheet and the ultra absorbent protector pads nickname "chucks". When you're done with them, you just chuck em. The mattress is very heavy, so I get a workout lifting up the corners. I noticed today my back didn't hurt, so I am getting stronger.

I give her something to drink because she's very thirsty, and if her tummy is upset, I'll give her a dose of pepto bismol and a relaxant called Lorazapam. When I say Lorazapam Mary and I use jazz hands like weird Al Yankovick cause the name sounds jazzy.

I then tuck Mary into bed, cover her with a dry blanket, go out into the hallway, start the warshing machine. add the soap, Lysol, and Oxyclean, pick up the wet laundry and stuff it in the machine. After ti fills and runs for a minute, I'll shut it off. After checking communications, I'll lay down for a power nap. Morning mission accomplished.

Hello to my new friends

 I must confess, my daughters and my friends agree that I often shut them out when I get busy. I am working on that. Thank you for your patience.

Rather than chatting, I try to update everyone simultaneously . It saves me an immense amount of time. I've always tried to imagine the questions you might ask, and answer them as I write.

You're welcome to respond to my posts which greatly encourages me.  If you post the country and city it arouses my fierce curiosity and also encourages those who are tuning in. 

I am disabled to the point I no longer drive. I care for my Alzheimer's stricken wife. I am very busy with her care, but I do have lots of help from my daughters and son in laws, especially my oldest daughter, and her good friend Rachel. Rachel stops in almost daily. I have regained my strength to the point where now they just help me to catch up or get ahead.

I have tons of stories to tell, so every free moment I have I devote to writing them  out. I feel especially compelled to share my stories of miracles called The Rain Parables by Mike Dittmer on Amazon. The theme is God's Amazing Grace. It is available worldwide on a free Amazon Kindle App for $0.99.

I pray constantly for you, my friends, in the Spirit in the name of Jesus that He would rain His infinite grace on you and yours, and the rivers of grace would flow out of your hearts until the knowledge of the Lord covers the earth like an ocean. I am convinced that as more brothers and sisters in Christ join with me in constant prayer we will see both unprecedented opposition and unprecedented  repentance and change for Christ

Amazing Grace Project: Pass Me Not O Gentle Savior

 

The Story Parable

 

The trailer that our family of 6 lived in in Pete's Trailer Court, Portage Indiana. Terry and infant Ted slept on the top bunk in the hallway bedroom in the middle of the trailer. Dad built a safety cage for Ted on half of the top bunk while Terry had the other half. Tim and I shared the bottom bunk.

The Story Parable

How did God break into your life with one of His messengers? I was a boy that lived with my family in a little trailer in the woods of a town called Portage. The trailer court was among the sand dunes behind the grocery store own by “the Greek” called Peter. The store was just off U.S. Highway 20 on a curve that went over railway tracks called “dead mans curve”.

The trailer that we lived in was 8 by 40 feet. My father worked in construction building the steel mills around the Lake Michigan shoreline. There were 6 of us in that tiny trailer. Along with me, my two brothers Tim and Ted and one sister Terry slept in bunk beds on one side of a narrow aisle that divided the master bedroom from the kitchen and living room. A small furnace in a closet and a set of drawers that went clear to the ceiling were on the other side of the aisle.

My dad was a genius when it came to making a shack into a castle. The bunk beds had a cage on top that was my baby brother Ted's crib. I had a train set on a 4 by 8 foot board that was lowered onto the bottom bed with rope and pulleys. The bed in the master bedroom rose up into the wall so that mom could get out her ironing board and sit and iron while she watched her soap opera’s on TV, which was at the end of the trailer.

The tiny television was in the front room facing the couch at the front end of the trailer. Dad had strategically placed a huge mirror above the couch so that mom could watch it while she ironed. They would sometimes lie in bed and watch TV, and I would lean slightly out of my bed and watch TV also. I loved Steve Allen as the host of the late show. I learned to read the letters of “What’s My Line” backwards in the mirror. I made the mistake of laughing out loud, whereupon my skeptical mother said, “You can’t read those letters backwards?” But I could.

One day a man stopped at our little trailer to invite us to church. Someone had told him that my parents had both attended Nazarene churches before they were married. He invited the whole family to attend church the next Sunday. I remember him standing in our tiny living room, by the door, no room to sit down. I remember him saying there was Sunday school for the children.

We went to the small white Nazarene church on Central Avenue in East Gary, now Lake Station. Rev. Luther was the pastor, and he preached an interesting sermon about hell and sin. He told me of an eternal hell with burning flames and painful suffering for those who rejected the Son of God. The story fascinated me, and I thought to myself that it would really interesting to be there.

But then he started to tell about the dying man on the cross, who looked right at me and told me that he loved me. I did not know it was 2000 years earlier. I did not know it was on another continent, in a city near the eastern edge of the Mediterranean Sea in a city called Jerusalem. I did not know that the dying man spoke in Greek and Hebrew and Aramaic and Latin, and that I spoke in English. I did not know, and I did not care about those details.

I did know that my heart was already condemning me for the times I had lied, and the times I had disobeyed. The preacher said that the man on the cross had forgiven me of my sins, and all I had to do was ask for that forgiveness, and it would be mine. 

I was the first one in my family who made the move towards God. I went down to the altar, and confessed my sins. The man on the cross somehow, miraculously came down from the cross and came to live in my heart from then on, till this very day.

I am now 74 years old. I have told this story, or something akin to it, every time I got a chance, any time someone would stop and listen. I rearranged my entire life so that for over 35 years every Sunday, in song and in word, in some way I told about the amazing love of a God who sent His only begotten Son to be lifted up on a cross and looked at you and me, and as He was dying, said to us that He loved us.

God has been with me these many years, and has led me through many adventures, all of which make great stories. Sit by me and I will tell you a story. Walk with me and I will tell you a story. 

The stories are sometimes amazing, and sometimes miraculous, sometimes funny, and sometimes sad.

But the story that is the most miraculous, and the most amazing of all is the story of a dying man hanging on a cross in a different millennium, on a different continent, in a different language who looked across the centuries into the face of a skinny boy in a sandy woods in a tiny trailer, and said, “I love you!” #rmdo

Granddaughter's College Graduation

 

My granddaughter graduated from Alaska Fairbanks University yesterday, Suma Cum Laud. She chose this university because they have a degree program in Homeland Security, which is her area of interest.

This is not surprising, because both her parents and her grandfather were in law enforcement.

What may be surprising to some is that she was homeschooled, as was her mother, my daughter.

We found what our children were passionate about, then helped them find the resources they needed to learn about it and got out of the way.

Perhaps I should add she earned that degree while working full time as a dispatcher. Her hard work made this grandpa very proud!