When Nanci had been working on the Colorado River for her stepfather’s company, Canyon Tours, she had gotten into the habit of being very early to bed, and very early to rise. Even though the days were pretty long this time of year, the sun was barely up when her internal alarm clock told her it was time to get up.

One of the reasons she had gotten into the habit of getting up very early was that on the river, it had been about the only chance she had all day to be truly alone for her devotions. That had held true when she was at Hickory Run Seminary working on her qualifications for ordination. She still made a point of doing them as soon as she got up in case she didn’t get time to do them later in the day.

Her personal devotions were especially important to her on Sundays, because she knew she would be leading services, and wanted to feel comfortable in what she said to her congregations and be sure she was doing God’s Will. Still, she was aware that Amber was asleep in the other bedroom, and she hoped the girl had slept comfortably.

It was also Nanci’s habit to do her daily exercises as soon as she was done with her devotions, before she took her shower and got ready to face the day. She went to the kitchen, got a pot of coffee going, and started on her normal routine of pushups, sit-ups, and standing toe touches. Though she tried to keep quiet, the activity must have wakened her guest, for she was getting close to the end when she heard, “What are you doing?”

“Just getting my daily workout in,” Nanci explained, not breaking the action. “It helps me wake up.”

“Why do you do that?”

“Back when I went to work for my stepfather at Canyon Tours I was pretty thin and frail,” she explained. “I mean, really out of shape, and wrestling a heavily loaded raft takes muscle. It took me a year of serious exercising and gym time to get strong enough to do it, and along the way I decided I liked feeling strong. So it’s worth the effort to stay in shape.”

“Well, I guess you know what you’re doing,” Amber replied dubiously.

“I’m almost done. As soon as I am, I’ll grab a shower and get started on breakfast. You can get one while I’m doing that, and after we eat we can get ready for church. There should be some coffee hot if you want some.”

“I thought I smelled it, and it smells really good. I don’t get it very often, though.”

“Well, enjoy yourself,” Nanci replied, deciding that even though she wasn’t quite done, enough was enough for one morning.

In a few minutes Nanci was in the shower, thinking about the night before. It had been fun and enjoyable to have the girl present the previous evening. Nanci had tried to stay away from anything heavy with her, mostly to put the girl at ease. They had talked for a while about nothing very important until it was time to eat, when they had warmed up some pulled buffalo and made a meal out of that.

When she moved into the parsonage she’d noticed that the controller box for the satellite television was one thing Reverend Anders had left behind when he moved out so precipitously. She hadn’t thought much about it when she moved into the place, but Mrs. Johnson’s old television set had been one of the things that had been “borrowed.”

Nanci hadn’t had any interest in television for many years, not that she’d had much time for it since college, but after they ate, she and Amber hooked up the TV. After some searching they found a comedy movie aimed at teenagers. It proved that Amber hadn’t watched much television either, but it was the perfect thing to help them get comfortable with each other. They’d settled onto the couch, later with a bowl of popcorn and some cold sodas, and had an enjoyable evening laughing at some of the stupid things that happened in the movie. By the time the movie was done, Amber was a lot more comfortable with her, and they were well on their way to being friends; at Nanci’s urging, Amber was calling her by her name, rather than her title.

There was no point in getting dressed up while she was making breakfast, so once Nanci was out of the shower she just pulled on a robe and went out to the kitchen, where she found Amber sipping at a cup of coffee. “Your turn for the shower,” she told her guest.

“Great. I’ll try to hurry up.”

In the week she had been living in Tyler Nanci had taken to eating breakfast at the Prairie Dawn most days, but she figured it wouldn’t be a good idea on Sundays, even in normal circumstances. She gave some consideration to just having some cereal with her coffee, but realized that Amber would probably appreciate something more substantial, so started making some scrambled eggs and link sausages, along with toast and jam.

In a few minutes she heard her hair dryer going; things were just getting ready when Amber appeared, wearing the large Canyon Tours T-shirt Nanci had given her to sleep in. The girl definitely looked fresher than she had the day before.

“Wow, that felt good,” Amber exclaimed. “I don’t get showers very often. I can sneak one in the girl’s locker room at the school now and then. I usually have to get along with a basin and water I can heat on the wood stove.”

“I know how that works,” Nanci smiled, starting to serve their breakfasts. “On the river we go over two weeks without taking a shower. About the only thing we can do is wash in the river, and it’s usually only about fifty degrees, so we don’t take very long at it. But I’ll tell you that when we got off the river a shower was just about the first thing we looked for. I usually stayed at my stepfather’s house and sometimes managed to run the water heater cold.”

They lingered over breakfast for a second cup of coffee, but it was soon time to get dressed for church. Nanci had put some general thought into how she wanted to dress. Based on what she had observed the previous Sunday, she didn’t want to be too overdressed for Conestoga, but at the same time what seemed about right struck her as being a little too casual for the Tyler church. There wasn’t enough time to stop and change between services, so she had decided to strike a happy medium. This morning, that seemed to call for one of the outfits she’d normally worn at Hickory Run Seminary, but those would be a little too warm later in the summer. It seemed likely that sooner or later she was going to have to run down to Carondelet to do some clothes shopping, and maybe even make a major trip into Colorado Springs or Denver.

There wasn’t as much of a selection for Amber to wear, but there was a skirt Nanci had occasionally worn at Hickory Run that seemed to fit her guest, even if it might be a little long for her. There was a blouse that didn’t fit too badly, and a sweater with enough stretch that it would hide that the blouse was a little on the large side. It took a little while to get everything together, but in the end Amber was adequately and demurely dressed for church at either place.

They were soon out on the highway heading for Conestoga Methodist. “I sure hope this goes all right,” Amber said when they were about halfway there. “I hope this is the right thing to do.”

“You mean about people looking down on you?”

“Yeah. I mean, I know people don’t think very much of me, and I don’t have any idea of what I’m supposed to do or anything. I’m afraid I’ll do something wrong.”

“As far as what to do, just try to follow along with what everyone else is doing. I’ll give you some hints from the pulpit and say things like ‘Turn to hymn number so-and-so in your hymnal.’ The fact that you are there and look like you’re trying ought to mean something to people. Whether it will make any impression on Keith’s folks, well, there’s no way of knowing. The Bible doesn’t say right out that all people are created equal, but it does say that all are created in God’s image. I take that to mean that God is the Creator and He sees all of His creations as equals. I know that sounds good, but have to admit there are many people who don’t believe it down in their guts. I doubt if anyone will say anything, but if the issue comes up we’ll have to deal with it.”

“We’ll have to deal with it?”

“That means you and me both, Amber. I’d say just stay quiet and don’t start anything.”

After the practice run the day before, the church was easy to find. There were several pickups parked around the little building when Nanci and Amber drove in. If anything there were more than had been there the previous Sunday, so with no other evidence it appeared that the gathering at the Westbrooks had done some good.

A few people were standing around outside talking while they waited for the service to start, and among them was Art Gamble. “How are you this morning, Reverend?” he asked.

“Not bad. The Lord has given us a glorious day.”

“It is pretty good. So who is the young lady you’ve got with you? I remember her from yesterday, but I didn’t talk with her.”

“This is Amber,” Nanci replied. “She wanted to see what church was like out here, so I brought her with me.”

“Well, I’m pleased to have you with us today Amber,” Art replied genially. If he actually knew who she was – and Nanci thought he might not – he gave no sign of it.

“Thank you,” she replied politely. She didn’t say anything else as Nanci talked with the church members a little.

After a few minutes there came the sounds of the poorly tuned piano inside the church being played, although being played pretty well. “It sounds like we’d better get busy,” Nanci said as she turned toward the door and followed the people heading inside. She got up close to Amber and whispered, “Go ahead of me and find a place to sit. You don’t have to be near anyone, and there will probably be room.”

Nanci waited right inside the door for the late-comers to find seats in the rows of folding chairs, and noticed that Amber was in the same row as the Gambles, though at the other end. She was not close to Keith and his parents, and she could see the two kids exchange glances that seemed to say a lot with no words being exchanged. Of course, Keith’s parents also noticed her, and Nanci could see they weren’t very happy to see the new church visitor, though again nothing was said.

As the tones of the prelude played by an older woman at the piano died out, Nanci walked down the aisle and stood behind the pulpit. “Good morning, everyone,” she said. “I’m glad to see everyone here today on a beautiful morning.”

Then, she got more formal and began the call to worship from the church bulletin she’d run off on the copying machine in the parsonage a couple of days before.

“Trust in the Lord and do good.”

“May the Lord give strength to the people!” the congregation repeated, reading from the bulletin.

“O taste and see that the Lord is good!”

“God is our refuge and strength.”

“Our opening hymn this morning will be O Master, Let Me Walk With Thee, number 430 in your hymnal,” Nanci announced.

The hymn was a good one, although at best the singing sounded uninspired. For no good reason Nanci had ever understood Methodists never seemed to put much soul into singing their hymns, and her brother-in-law, a Baptist minister, had commented that the Baptists weren’t much better. But Nanci’s sister-in-law had grown up in a black church in St. Louis, where enthusiastic gospel singing was a matter of course; she could take the same hymn, belt it out and rock the place with her rendition. Though Nanci and a good many other Methodist ministers she knew would like to see a little more spirit in the hymns, most agreed that it was unlikely to ever change much.

Once the hymn was over there were more preliminaries to run through: announcements, taking up an offering of course, a responsive reading, another hymn, and some verses from the Bible before Nanci got down to the sermon.

Since Amber had been nervous about how she would be received here, Nanci had given a little thought to departing from the planned sermon, which was about Simon Peter and Andrew throwing away their nets to follow Jesus. It was a fairly placid piece she thought would go over well both here and in Tyler. It would be possible to do something about Jesus reaching out to sinners, something that would remind people that everyone was a sinner in the eyes of God. But after some consideration during the preparatory hymn, she realized that it probably wouldn’t be a good idea, at least not now, so she stayed with what she had worked up earlier in the week.

From what she could tell, the planned sermon seemed to be well received, even if it was nothing special in her own mind.

The closing hymn followed – the singing again not very inspired in her own mind – and as it came up to the final verse, Nanci left the pulpit and walked back to the front door of the church, where she waited to greet people as they left. Again, there was handshaking, and a few words for everyone who had attended. Many people said they’d liked the sermon, and of course that made her feel good.

Amber came through the line about halfway through, along with the Gambles, and taking her cue from them said, “Thanks. I enjoyed that.”

“We’ll talk about it later,” Nanci promised. “There are some interesting points there I didn’t get into.”

Nanci noted that the Westbrooks were at the tail end of the line leaving the service, and she suspected she knew what that was all about. As Trent came up to her, he said in a low voice, “Reverend, why did you bring her here?”

“She wanted to come,” she replied and decided to cut off his protest before he could make it. “Look, you know her mother has disappeared, don’t you? It’s not good for a girl that age to be by herself, so I took her in for the night – it’s what ministers do. Tomorrow I’m going to see if there are arrangements that can be made.” She really hadn’t thought things out that far, but even as she said it she realized it was what she had to do.

“Oh, OK,” he replied. “I’m sorry I doubted you, Reverend.”

“I talked to her quite a bit last night. No matter what you might think, I think she’s a good kid in a bad situation, but she doesn’t seem to have given in to it.”

“Well, you may be right,” he said, but in a way that indicated that he didn’t believe it.

Once Nanci finished up she headed for the car; Amber was standing beside it waiting for her. “So what did you think?” she asked.

“That was interesting,” Amber said as she opened the passenger door and got in the car. “I don’t know what I was expecting, but there was more there than I thought there would be. What did you mean when you said there was more to it than what you said?”

“The thing of it is,” Nanci said as she got behind the wheel, “is that the story carries more to it than it says on the surface, and since you’re new to this you probably wouldn’t have picked up on some of the things carried along with it. In general, it means that when you find the right thing to do, the thing you should do is go ahead and do it.” She started the car and went on as she drove back out to the road. “The point is more spiritual than it is physical. Simon Peter and Andrew were offered the opportunity to better themselves, so they threw away their previous lives without reservations and turned to new ones. A lot in the Bible is about turning away from sin to follow Jesus, and that’s what they did.”

“You really believe that, don’t you?”

“Yes, Amber, I do. It’s something you have to believe in your heart and not just in your head. Oh, I think there are things in the Bible that some people take too seriously and ignore some of the other things it says that can be more important. Some of it takes some digging and understanding of the history to figure out the true meaning, but that story is one of the easier ones, which is why I selected it as a sermon for today.”

“I see now that I didn’t understand as much of it as I was hearing,” she said. “We’re going back to Tyler, right?”

“Yes, I have to give the service there in a little while.”

“Would you mind if I went with you there, too?”

“You’d be welcome,” Nanci replied, just a little surprised that Amber was showing this much interest. “I’ll tell you right now, it’s going to be pretty much the same thing. I may say things just a little bit differently because I work from notes rather than a prepared speech, and sometimes I just think of better ways to say something after I’ve said them once. I take it you’re interested in what I said.”

“Yeah, but maybe now that I’ve heard it once I’ll get more out of it when I hear it again.”

Nanci was silent for a moment as she reflected on Amber’s words. It had been at best, a routine sermon, but she also knew that the words she spoke weren’t always the words that someone heard. Somehow, she had the vision that Amber had just put down her nets like Simon Peter and Andrew had done by the Sea of Galilee so many years before.

“Yes, you might understand it better,” Nanci smiled as she mentally sent a prayer asking to be led to speak words that might lead Amber to understanding. “I might as well let you know right now that there’s a lot to learn, and I certainly don’t know it all.”

Gerald and Leah didn’t go to church that morning. They might have if he had known that Conestoga Methodist was only a few miles away, but he didn’t know that. Besides, the two of them had a lot to do in his grandfather’s old house.

There was so much to do that he didn’t known where to begin. The two of them had started to make a dent on the mess the day before, but they were a long way from done with it. There was a washing machine there, and he’d washed the bedding from the one bedroom that had been made up so Leah would have a place to sleep. The bedding on Elmer’s bed was in bad shape and essentially ruined, so when he found some clean – and probably long-unused – sheets in a dresser drawer, he threw the old ones in a garbage bag, washed the new ones and put them on the bed. That gave them both a place to sleep for the night.

Once that was done, they started in on the kitchen. The garbage bag was soon full, but he had no idea what to do with it other than to just put it on the back porch and start filling another one. Though there was obviously a lot of cleaning that needed to be done, Gerald soon realized that he could make a big difference in the kitchen by just putting things away. A lot of dishes needed to be washed, but washing them and putting them away would improve things.

Leah was actually a lot of help, although what she could do was limited and she needed supervision. “Think of it as playing house,” Gerald told her. “We’re just doing it in a real one, that’s all.”

They couldn’t get done with the kitchen that day – given the need to wash everything down, it could take days – but they had made some progress by the time they both got hungry. Gerald scrounged up a dinner from things that were sitting around, and then the two of them went back to work. By the time the sun went down they were tired enough for bed.

The next morning they found a few things for breakfast, and then went right back to work, concentrating now on the living room. There was less there to put away but more to be hauled to the growing pile of bags on the back porch, and it would take quite a bit of cleaning, but they were making progress when they heard a vehicle drive in, so he thought he’d better go investigate.

He went outside to discover an older man and his wife getting out of the pickup. “Hi,” he called to them. “Can I help you?”

“Just wondering what was going on,” the man said. “We were coming by on our way home from church and saw someone was here. You wouldn’t happen to be Elmer’s grandson, would you?”

“I am,” he replied. “I’m Gerald Pepper, and this is my daughter Leah. The sheriff said it would be all right if we stayed here.”

“Guess so. It’s better if someone was here, rather than nobody being here. I’m Art Gamble and this is my wife Shirley. We live a ways up the road, and we’re your nearest neighbors.”

“I’m pleased to meet you. The sheriff said I ought to look you up, but I just haven’t gotten around to it yet.”

“You’re going to be living here?” Shirley asked. “The last time I was here it was an awful mess.”

“We’re getting it cleaned up a little,” Gerald told her. “It’s going to take a lot of work, but one step at a time, you know.”

“Are you going to live here full time, or what?” Art asked.

“I don’t know yet,” Gerald admitted. “I might put the place up for sale, but I can’t do it until my grandfather’s estate is taken care of, and according to the sheriff it might take months. Until then, Leah and I need a place to stay. I don’t have much money, so this is cheaper than anything else. But if we’re going to be here for months, I’m going to have to earn some money. You wouldn’t happen to know of anything would you?”

“Depends,” Art said. “You know anything about ranching?”

“Not a thing, other than a little bit I’ve seen on TV. This is only the second time I’ve ever been on a ranch, and the first time was here, maybe twenty years ago.”

“I don’t know, then,” Art replied, scratching his head. “There might be a few odds and ends here and there if you were willing to do some heavy and dirty work.”

“I have nothing against work,” Gerald shrugged. “I’ve done it before and I’m willing to do it again. I’ve got my daughter to take care of, as you can see.”

“I ought to be able to come up with something, if not at my place, maybe one of the neighbors,” Art replied. “I can ask around. It’s possible someone might want to rent some grazing land. I don’t think there’s been any cattle on here in a year or two.”

“It might be an idea, but I wouldn’t know a thing about it and wouldn’t know who to ask.”

“I think we can try to help,” Art smiled. “I don’t know everything about this place but I do know a little. We’re going to be having dinner in a little while. Why don’t you and your little girl come by our place so we can talk about it?”

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