Even at age fourteen, I understood I didn’t need to pause to consider such an incredible opportunity. This experience might never be offered again. “Janie, would you like to spend the summer with us, helping me with the children?’, Martha queried.

Our family friends, John and Martha Barre, the age of my parents left their comfortable lifestyle and beautiful new home in Ohio to become missionaries to the Navajo Indians in Thoreau, New Mexico. John had been an executive with a large corporation, but they felt the calling of God in their hearts and on their lives. They left behind their family, friends, and the stability of a middle-class background, taking their two young sons to an unknown land with an unfamiliar culture to serve others.

The Barres were now rearing seven orphaned Native American children on the Navajo reservation. Martha knew how much I loved babies and babysitting.  With seven infants and toddlers, under the age of three, she welcomed my willingness to assist.

Martha’s love for children was perhaps as great as mine. However, Martha had lost several babies before their birth or shortly thereafter. The only daughter she would have had, God called home before the baby was born. Thus, Martha and I bonded that summer in the 1960’s, not only in household chores, cooking, baking and childcare, but as a “mother and daughter.”

This was perhaps one of the richest times of my life with new and stimulating occurrences, but  there were no “lazy days” of relaxing. The Barre’s austere 2 story frame house stood among the cliffs where the wild horses roamed, and the cacti flourished. There were no porch swings, lush green grass, or welcoming swimming pools. There was not a single flower or blade of grass. Hardened gypseous soil and barren terrain surrounded their house on every side.

This was a missionary home. It was basic and the needs plentiful. Martha arose each morning by 4:00 a.m. to begin her day of baking and laundry. There was no local gourmet coffee shop, florist, or bakery. The closest town was thirty-one miles away.  Grocery trips were planned. There was also not a desire to put seven children in the car to “run to town.” This calling on the lives of John and Martha looked nothing like “living the American dream” they had practiced in Ohio.

When I awakened around 6:00-6:30 a.m. daily, it appeared Martha had already fulfilled a full day’s work. There were several loads of laundry ready to hang on the clothesline behind their house. “Be careful to watch for the rattle snakes”, Martha instructed, as I seized the heavy basket.

After hanging the dozens of diapers and baby clothes outside,  Martha’s large breakfast of homemade cinnamon rolls or biscuits, homemade jams, eggs, bacon, or ham would sustain us for hours of work. TO BE Continued: Matthew 25:40 NIV “The king will reply, “Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.”