Counting this morning as twice, this was only the third time Nanci had been in Tyler, Colorado. It was a small town, though she had known smaller. Like almost any place else she had seen in Walke County, it clearly had once been more than it was today. Many of the houses they passed on the way into town were obviously empty, and some were past merely empty – they were obviously abandoned, with doors standing wide open, often with broken glass, sometimes leaning or falling down. Few houses were close to each other, and while there were occasionally trees, there was little in the way of shrubbery. Here and there were lawns that showed signs of grass, but many were brown and weed-grown.

Downtown didn’t look much better. There were half a dozen commercial buildings on the main street, and even then two of them were boarded up and had been for a long while. Across the street was another small two-story commercial-type building that housed the county offices. There was a small grocery store, a gas station, a bank, and a couple of other businesses, though only the bank seemed to be in reasonable repair. “The school is on out on the far edge of town,” Reed explained.

Tyler United Methodist Church was a moderately sized brick building with a tall steeple just past downtown. On their way into town, Larry Reed told Nanci that it had been built ninety years before, when it still looked like Tyler and Walke County had a growing future in front of them. It had perhaps twice the seating capacity of the Conestoga church or maybe more than that, though like Conestoga no one could remember it being filled to capacity.

The Fellowship Hall next to the church was newer; it was a nondescript cinder-block building dating from the fifties, or so Reed told her. The ceiling was lower, but it was brighter inside. It was nowhere near full when Reed accompanied the new pastor into the building, but there were faces Nanci remembered seeing from Conestoga along with a good share of the congregation that had been at the Tyler services, which had ended not long before. Just eyeballing the crowd, she estimated that there was somewhere around a hundred people there, perhaps a few less; in any case, a significant percentage of the county’s population.

People were standing around talking about all sorts of things – friends, relatives, days gone by, and gossip. One thing was clear to the new pastor: these people were not strangers to each other, but people who had known each other all their lives. It could be hard to really become part of this community, and it could take a lifetime to be accepted as such. However, Nanci wasn’t worried about it – she’d had plenty of experience in the last few years of making friends out of strangers, although this situation was about as different as it could be.

Art Gamble and his wife Shirley, who Nanci had met at the combined Pastor-Parish Committee meeting the previous Tuesday and again at Conestoga earlier this morning, were there, along with some others she remembered from the smaller church. There was a long trestle table filled with various covered dishes, and a couple of the church ladies were busy uncovering them. Larry walked up to a short, heavy-set older woman with short gray hair. “Everything ready, honey?” he asked.

“Just about,” the woman said. “Maxine and Julie are carving the roasts. They could use about five minutes.”

“Reverend Chladek,” he said. “I don’t think you’ve met my wife, Bernice. She slipped out early to make sure everything was ready over here.”

“No, I haven’t,” Nanci replied apologetically. “But I’m pleased to meet you, Mrs. Reed.”

“It’s good to have you here, Reverend Chladek,” Bernice replied. “That was a really nice sermon. You acted as if it weren’t the first time you’ve given one.”

“No, it wasn’t my first,” Nanci replied. “But I’m glad you enjoyed it.”

“Uh, folks,” Reed raised his voice. It took him a few moments to get everyone’s attention and the babble in the room to die out. “I’m glad you could all take the time to welcome our new Pastor, Reverend Nanci Chladek. I have to admit she surprised all of us by getting here this quickly and made things happen much faster than we’re used to. When Reverend Anders left so suddenly, I was dead sure that it was going to take months to get a replacement here. Bishop Ennis told me the week before last that she didn’t have anyone from within the conference she could send to us on such short notice. She called me back a couple of days later and said the bishop of the Desert Southwest conference had a candidate available who he thought would do well for us. We met with Reverend Chladek last Tuesday evening and were very impressed with her. We were surprised when she told us she could be here for church services today. Reverend Chladek, we’re very pleased that you could join us so quickly, and we’d like to extend our thanks and our welcome from both churches.”

“Well, Mr. Reed, I thank you for your warm welcome,” Nanci replied. “Though I’m new to the area, I’m impressed with both of the churches, and I’m looking forward to getting to know everyone much better. As far as getting here quickly, I was available and don’t believe in dawdling when the Lord has work for me to do.”

“Reverend, I think the food is close to ready, but we have time for you to take a minute or two to tell us a little about yourself.”

“Sure, I don’t believe in letting food as good as I’m smelling get cold,” Nanci smiled. “Although I’m originally from the Chicago area, for the last several years I lived in Flagstaff, Arizona. I might as well say right up front that when I was younger I ran pretty wild, but several years ago I accepted Jesus as my savior, and it changed my life. About a year after that my brother-in-law, who is also a minister, suggested that I take a hard look at becoming one myself. He’s a Baptist minister though, which makes his recommendations somewhat questionable!” She got some smiles out of that. “After considerable thought and prayer, I accepted God’s leading. I spent three years at Black Mesa College in Phoenix, and the last two years at Hickory Run Seminary in Kentucky. In my spare time I serviced the pulpits in several churches in Arizona and Kentucky, and for three years I was the Associate Pastor of the Hillside Methodist Church in Flagstaff. I was packing up my things at Hickory Run to head to Flagstaff when I was told that I was needed here instead, so here I am.”

“Reverend Chladek, that’s very modest of you,” Reed grinned. “But you left out something that told us last week just how unusual you are.”

“You mean that I had to work my way through college? Well, I did, with some help from grants and scholarships and my family.”

“Yes, but how you worked your way through college is what I was talking about,” Reed laughed.

“Oh, I just worked for my stepfather in the family business,” she smiled, knowing what Reed was driving at. “He’s in the business of running raft trips through the Grand Canyon. I’ve made forty-two trips down the Colorado River, at the oars for most of them. In fact, if I hadn’t received the assignment here I’d be packing my gear for number forty-three right now.”

“That’s what I was fishing for,” Reed smiled. “Friends, that told me that this young lady is a little more than she seems on the surface. In fact, it told me that she is quite a bit more. She’s more than just an academic; she’s a strong young woman who knows what it’s like to use her muscles and to get her hands dirty. Reverend Chladek, once again, we’re glad to have you here, even though there’s nothing much that ranks as a river for many miles. Why don’t you ask the blessing, and then we can get down to business.”

“Sure thing,” she replied. “Let us pray.” She waited for a moment, then intoned, “Heavenly Father, we thank You for Your blessings this day, and thank You for the friends and fellowship that has come together on this occasion. Lead us to be better servants of Yours, and guide us to work together in harmony. Bless this food to our bodies, that our spirits may grow closer to You. This we ask in Jesus’ name, Amen.”

A chorus of “Amens” was heard around the room.

“Reverend Chladek,” Mrs. Reed said. “Since you’re the pastor, why don’t you go first?”

“Oh, no, I couldn’t do that,” she protested. “I’m not here so you can be my servants. In fact, I’m here to serve you. As far as that goes, there must be something I can do to help you with the serving.”

“You’re serious, aren’t you?”

“Of course I’m serious. To me it’s the same thing as being on the river. The customers come first, then the crew.”

“I guess Larry was right,” Bernice shook her head. “That’s not something we would have heard around here in the last year, that’s for sure. This is pretty much self-serve, but there are probably a couple of people who could use some help.”

At such events there is usually much more food than necessary, so as the line at the food table dwindled down there was still plenty of food remaining. As people filed through, Nanci did what she could to help, such as helping an older woman with a walker carry her meal. In between times she tried to greet as many people as she could. It seemed to her that she was being received warmly by everyone.

Finally almost everyone had been through the food line except for Bernice and Nanci. “Reverend Chladek, the way we usually do these things is that people bring their own table service and a dish to pass,” Bernice said. “But I’ll bet you didn’t bring either one.”

“No, I didn’t,” she admitted. “But I wasn’t aware that this was going to happen until Mr. Gamble mentioned it out at Conestoga this morning, and by then I didn’t have any time to prepare anything.”

“I doubt very much that anyone will fault you for it, especially since this meeting and potluck were put together pretty quickly.” Bernice smiled. “Let me get you some things from the kitchen.”

There was still plenty of food left, and Nanci made a point of at least trying to take a bit of everything; some of it held promise of being very good indeed. There were two roasts on the end of the table, and Bernice explained that one was cooked rare, and the other one well done. In the spirit of trying all she could, Nanci took a bit of each. Even going easy on the portions, because of all the different dishes, she had a very full plate. “I take it you don’t like anyone to go away hungry,” she commented to Bernice.

“We try not to,” Bernice smiled as she led Nanci to a nearby table, where Larry was sitting with Trent and Cathy Westbrook and another couple from Conestoga whose names Nanci couldn’t remember in the rush of all the strange faces she’d met today. “I hope you have space for the pastor,” she said to the table.

“Sure thing, sit down, take a load off,” Trent said. “Reverend Chladek, I sure hope you’re going to like it here.”

“I think I am, given what I’ve seen so far,” she smiled. “It’s going to be different from what I’m used to, but I’m looking forward to it.”

“I hope you’re not disappointed that we have such a small church,” Trent said, almost defiantly.

“Not in the slightest. Conestoga is not the first small church I’ve preached in. I’m used to conducting services for small congregations. While I was in college, I was a supply pastor at a church in Flagstaff that’s no larger than Conestoga, and they have a very close, warm fellowship. Then the last two years I was at a place in Kentucky on the average of every third week or so that again was very similar in size. I always enjoyed speaking at either place. Conestoga seems much the same, and I think I’m going to enjoy it.”

“I’m glad to hear you say that, Reverend,” he smiled. “The last pastor we had acted like it was beneath him to even bother to drive out there.”

“Trent!” Cathy spoke up.

“So I’m telling the truth, so what?” he snorted. He turned back to Nanci and said, “I’m afraid I’m not the most diplomatic man to ever come down the road, but I call ’em like I see ’em. Reverend Anders didn’t exactly cause tears in many people’s eyes when he left, if you know what I mean.”

“I’m afraid Trent is right,” Larry said. “He may have been all right in the right place, but this wasn’t the right place for him and there were some feelings hurt. Now, you’re going to have to overcome some hard feelings.”

“Mr. Westbrook,” Nanci said. “If you see anything that you think I should be doing differently, or if you think I’m headed down the wrong track, I hope you’ll come right out and tell me. In spite of all that experience I’ve mentioned, I know I’m new to this, and I will probably make mistakes. I just hope I don’t make too many of them and that they’re not too serious.”

“I sure hope you’re right, Reverend. If you can keep that attitude you’re going to go a long way here. So long as you can learn different ways when you need to, you ought to do all right. I had to learn that the hard way myself.”

“You know, I think you and I are going to get along just fine,” she smiled, cutting a piece of the meat on her plate. It was tender, almost falling apart. “I appreciate honesty, even if it’s in something I’d rather not hear.”

“You know,” Cathy Westbrook said, “I was really surprised to hear that you’d rowed rafts in the Grand Canyon. That’s not the sort of thing you’d expect a minister to be doing, especially a woman minister. How did you get into doing that?”

“Fairly simple,” Nanci replied. “It’s a family business and I sort of fell into it.” That was vastly understating a very difficult period in her life, but why she’d started doing it in the first place was something she didn’t want to get into at the moment. “All boatmen learn to row a raft a little at a time on the quieter sections and work up to easier rapids and then the bigger ones. It took me a year before I had a raft of my own, and that was a little quicker than normal.”

“I think it would scare me,” Cathy shook her head. “I mean, all those rapids.”

“It’s something you learn to handle,” Nanci shrugged. “I never had any problems on a trip. Oh, we’d have a customer twist an ankle or get sunburned or something. We had something like that happen just about every trip, but never anything serious. I think it must be like learning to ride a horse in that you get into it a little at a time, and then look up and realize you’re comfortable with it.”

“You’ve never ridden a horse?” Cathy asked.

“I’ve never had the opportunity. I pretty much went from being a city girl to being a boatman, that’s the term that’s used for both men and women rowers.”

“We’re going to have to do something about that,” Trent grinned. “But if you can go from a city girl to a boatman, I don’t suppose it’s going to be any great trick to go from a preacher to riding a horse. We’ll have you out to the place sometime so you can give it a try.”

“I’ll take you up on that,” she smiled. “I’ll be looking forward to it.”

She settled down to eating for a few moments. She knew from experience that such church dinners were often very, very good, but talking with people at this stage was even more important. It was clear that there were going to be some fences to mend in these churches, and this was a good time to start mending them.

“I’m sorry,” she said to the couple down the table from her; they were in their forties, at a guess. “I’m usually pretty good with names but I’ve had so many thrown at me in the last few hours I’m afraid I’m a bit overwhelmed.”

“I can imagine how that could happen,” the medium-height dark-haired woman replied. “I’m Margie Griffin, and this is my husband Paul. We’re both pleased to meet you.”

“And I’m pleased to meet you. What do you do?”

“Oh, I’m the assistant manager at the bank,” Margie said. “We have a farm out north of town.”

“Is that a wheat farm?”

“Partly,” Paul replied. “We have about twelve hundred acres, and it’s in a four-crop rotation. We only have about two hundred acres in wheat this year.”

“I’m afraid I’m going to have to plead total ignorance. I don’t know much about farming, and I can see I have to learn. Is two hundred acres a lot of wheat?”

“Actually, it’s a darned small planting, even for here,” Paul told her. “It’s about a third of a square mile, so it’s not much, especially compared to some of the fields you see a few hundred miles to the east. It’s winter wheat, which means that it’s planted in the fall and harvested in the early summer, say around the first part of July. What wheat we have is looking pretty good since we had some moisture this winter. An awful lot will depend on what rain we get over the next month to six weeks or so.”

“It’s a chancy business, there’s no doubt about it,” Larry put in. “One of the problems is that if you have a good year, it also means that most everybody else is having a good year, which means the prices go down the tube. If you have a bad year, then everybody else is having one too, which means the prices go up. You can’t win either way.”

“True,” Paul smiled. “But what we always hope for is that farmers here have a good year while everyone in other parts of the country aren’t doing so good. Then we can catch up a little. I don’t know who it was that said, ‘You can’t win, you can’t break even and you can’t even get out of the game,’ but he must have been talking about farming around here.”

“If you’re smart, careful, and lucky it’s possible to break even, or even pull ahead a little,” Larry explained. “But it’s easy to fall behind. We know a lot more about farming dry lands like this than they did back in the days when this area was first settled, but I still don’t think we know enough.”

“Yeah, it makes me wish sometimes I hadn’t come back,” Paul sighed. “But it was either come back here or let the land go, and I didn’t want to do that. The place is in my blood.”

“I take it you moved away,” Nanci commented.

“Yeah, right after I got out of high school,” Paul explained. “Like most kids who grow up around here, I couldn’t see a future here, so I went down to Houston and had a pretty good job. That’s where I met Margie. But then Dad died and Mom couldn’t take care of the farm by herself and couldn’t hold onto it without help, so we didn’t have any choice but to move back. It wasn’t until I was back here for a while that I realized how much I’d missed it. I came to the realization that this is where I was supposed to be all along.”

“Margie,” Nanci wondered, “Did it take you long to adapt to living here?”

“Not really,” the older woman replied. “I grew up on a farm outside Amarillo, so a lot of things are pretty much the same. I was like Paul, I couldn’t see any future where I grew up so I moved to Houston after I got out of college. I wanted to be a city girl, and it took me a long time to realize I wasn’t cut out for that kind of life.”

“I take it that kids still don’t stay around after they graduate.”

“Oh, no,” Paul shook his head. “There were fifteen kids in my high school class here almost twenty years ago. There couldn’t have been more than one or two left a year after I graduated, and they left sooner or later, too. I’m one of the strange ones in that I came back.”

“Let’s face it,” Larry agreed. “There isn’t much here to keep a kid around once they get out of school. The ones who stay are almost always working with their families, and even that usually isn’t enough to support a family on their own. Reverend, once upon a time, back when it was possible to homestead land here, a young couple could get started in farming with close to nothing, or ranching with just a little bit more. It can’t be done these days. There’s just too much investment needed.”

“Very true,” Paul agreed. “Margie and I would still be living and working in Houston if it weren’t for the fact that my family already owned the place. I’ll admit that when I was a kid in high school what I really wanted to do was to stay here and farm, but there just wasn’t room on the place for me.” He let out a sigh, and went on, “And I hate to say it, but the same thing will probably be true for the kids.”

“Oh, I hadn’t realized you had children,” Nanci smiled. “Where are they?”

“In the back of the room,” Margie smiled. “It’s a little hard for kids to be friends with each other outside of school, so the youth group usually eats by themselves when we have one of these things, and it gives the adults a chance to socialize without the kids around. I wouldn’t be very surprised if most of them aren’t out in the driveway throwing a basketball around before too much longer. They really are a pretty good bunch of kids. A lot of them live on farms or ranches like ours, and it gives them a sense of responsibility you don’t often see in city kids.”

“I envy them for that,” Nanci sighed. “I’ll have to admit I could have stood to learn some responsibility when I was that age, but then I suspect that if I had I wouldn’t be here now.”

“I think you can say that for a lot of people,” Paul shrugged. “It may be one of the things that’s wrong with this whole country. At least youngsters growing up here have to learn what’s important in this life, things like family and responsibility, how to work for a living, and that you get out of things what you put into them. I don’t think we see enough of that anymore.”

“There may be some problems with living here,” Larry added. “But growing up here does produce some good, solid people. In spite of everything, I can think of worse places to live.”

“I can, too,” Paul nodded. “And Houston is the first place on that list, in my book.”

While they were riding to the church dinner Keith Westbrook had been thinking about Amber again, and with it being the weekend he figured she was probably hungry. So, when he went through the serving line at the potluck, he loaded his foam tray down heavily, and headed for the back of the room where he usually ate with the other kids at these affairs. But instead of stopping at the back table he went right out the back door and down a few blocks to the shack where Amber and her mother lived. Her mother wasn’t around, of course – that was normal. “Here you go, Amber,” he told her as he handed her the tray, knowing that he could go back and go through the food line again and get away with it. “I’ve got to get back to the church, but have a good meal anyway.”

“Thanks, Keith,” she smiled. “I don’t know what I would do without you.”

Neither did he. Summer was coming on now; school would soon be out, and that made him worry how Amber would feed herself then. There had to be something he could do, but he hadn’t figured out what it was yet.

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