A Tribute to Two Dear Friends

By Nicole Hearn

I distinctly recall the first time that we attended our church, Christian Family Fellowship. July 6, 2003. My mom suggested that we ‘try that little home church that we heard about’ and my dad said, ‘Hey, you know, we might give it a try’. I inquired as to the details, and they said that they knew only that the church, located ‘somewhere in Apple Valley’, started at 10:30 on Sunday mornings. Not a lot to go on. We knew that it was a Vision Forum church, and so my parents had the novel idea of running home, getting on the internet, somehow finding the Uniting Church and Home site (which we had never visited before), locating the church address, and obtaining directions. The only problem was that at the time they made this decision it was 10:15 a.m. For those of you who know me well, you know that I hate being late places. Punctuality is one of my pet peeves. I immediately presented the obvious reasons why we should not take this course of action. “First of all, we’re going to be late. Who wants to be late on their very first Sunday? What kind of impression is that, huh?! And plus, I’m not sold on this home-church idea. Just because we meet some lady in the orthodontist’s office who is wearing a skirt does not mean that we are automatically going to find perfect bliss in membership at her church. Mom? Dad? Are you…listening?” They weren’t. They were too busy jumping out of the van, running for the computer, trying to get hooked up to the internet (we had sloooooow dialup then) and going onto visionforum.com. I started getting frightened. They were really serious about this thing! Church-hopping was not something our family had ever really done at all, so I was not used to visiting ‘foreign’ churches. Before I knew it, they had come out, waving a slip of paper with directions to the church. “We found it!” I didn’t ask how, but inwardly I groaned.

The real reason I didn’t want to go to CFF was because I was afraid of what the people there would be like. For all of my nearly-16 years of life up to that point, I had attended a church where our family didn’t ‘fit in’ and I wasn’t friends with anyone. However, since there was a membership of several thousand people, it was much easier to blend. I thought, ‘What if the people at this church are just like the people at the other church, only…there are fewer of them?” I was worried that I would stick out like a sore thumb.

As these thoughts were pulsing through my head, and as 10:30 came and went, we were busy driving towards Apple Valley, trying to stumble our way through the directions from the website. Finally, we turned onto a road where I saw two fifteen-passenger vans pulled up near a house. Oh, no. That’s gotta be it.

We stopped, and immediately saw lots of people come out and begin staring at us. Conspicuously absent was the lady who had invited us. She probably isn’t even here this morning. Well, I’d better prepare for a lot of embarrassment over the next few hours!

Lots of children. Now that, I could get to love. At our ‘old’ church there had been at best an apathy towards large families, and, being fond of them myself, I had always desired to be in a congregation that shared my thoughts on that. Had I know that all of the children staring at us from the front yard were from only two families, my fears of the church probably would have evaporated at once. However, I didn’t know that.

I saw a lady wearing a pretty flowered blue dress, holding a baby, and thought she looked nice. She was basically the first person I actually noticed. My dad was at the picket fence, clearing his throat uncomfortably.

“Um…hello. Is there church here this morning?”

The lady in the blue dress spoke up immediately. “Yes, there is!”

“May we….come?”

“Yes! You may!”

I think I was blushing to my hair roots. A quarter of an hour late, crashing a church service. Not exactly what I do for fun.

We went inside, and one lady, who apparently owned the house, started apologizing all over herself. “We’ve never been this late before! We are so sorry! We’re just getting ready to start services!”

Not late after all. I couldn’t believe it. Now where was the lady who had invited us?

Not there. Uh-oh.

I plopped down on the couch, silent, looking around. The house didn’t look scary. The people really didn’t look scary. But who could tell those things? We’d only been there five minutes.

The service began. We shared some hymnbooks. A guy stood up and talked. The preacher, I guessed.

After the closing prayer, there was a momentary silence and then everyone was hustling and bustling about, preparing food. Of course. We didn’t bring any food.

I, being the shy person that I am, hardly helped a lick, but mostly just looked wide-eyed at the people around me. They all looked very nice, but I think we were all shy of eachother.

Suddenly, without cue at all, the entire room burst into song. They were singing, well, “different” words to the doxology. I was confused.

We thank Thee, Lord, for this our food!

But more because of Jesus’ blood!

Let manna to our souls be giv’n

The bread of life sent down from heav’n.

Amen!

Everyone started eating. I guess that was the universal call to Lunch.

Finally, the lady-with-the-blue-dress-and-the-baby came up to me. “Hi,” she said, “I’m Beth.”

No last name. Well, okay. If she doesn’t want me to call her ‘Mrs. So-and-so’ then I won’t!

“I’m….um…Nicole.”

“It’s nice to meet you! You’re the oldest in your family?”

“Yes. I’m…fifteen.”

“Oh, that’s nice! I’m thirteen.”

I froze.

 Thirteen?

She was still toting around the baby, and I had been convinced she was one of the mothers in the church.

“Oh. I thought you were….a mother. I guess it was…that you look…old…and…I guess…it was the….dress.”  (To this day, that’s my favorite dress on her, and one of my favorite memories).

Grace must have been introduced quite as unexpectedly as Beth sometime that afternoon. I’m sure it surrounded some type of spill that she was cleaning up, for my dad said, when we left later that evening, “That Grace girl sure has a servants’ spirit.”

That day something happened to me that I have never quite been able to put into words. I learned to love that church more on that one Sunday, learned to love those people more over the next three weeks, than I had loved church or fellowship in the almost-16 years of life before that.

And then came the fourth week. My dad said that he wans’t sure we would be going back. We had all loved the church, of course, but he wasn’t sure that he wanted to leave our then-church, Calvary Chapel, and there were some other tumultuous things going on in our lives. When that prospect came up, I realized how much, in three weeks, that the church, and Grace and Beth Tonning in particular, had come to mean to me. I wrote in my journal,

August 24, 2003

Last week we didn’t go to the Tonning’s church and I was really having a struggle leaving the whole situation in God’s hands. Monday night I spoke to Chance (from the church) at a Casino meeting, and he wondered why we hadn’t been in the service. When he left, he called, “See you Sunday,” and I said, “Okay”.

All this week mom said she didn’t think dad wanted to keep going there anymore. I was disappointed but wrestled with not showing my disappointment. Saturday, I asked dad (actually, I think it was Friday) if we could go to the Tonnings’ and he said, “No, I don’t think we’re going to be going there anymore.” I said okay and tried not to show my disappointment.

Wow! This was the same girl who, four weeks before, had been trying any and everything that she could to get her parents to stay away from what she was convinced would be impending doom!

God worked on our hearts, bringing us to a realization of what we truly had in CFF. I had always been surrounded by people who knew me, but I don’t think that, at that point in my life, I could call anyone true kindred-spirit friends, people who were as committed to God as I wanted to be, and who had a lot of fun along the way. Over those next six months, Grace and Beth Tonning came to be, unquestionably, the closest friends I have ever had outside of our family. I came to think of them with the highest regard, and came to enjoy their fellowship, seeing Sundays as the highlight of my week! Their family, so refreshingly unshackled from either legalism or liberalism, was like a breath of fresh air to me. The whole church revolutionized my perspective of Christianity, and of Christians. Our family came to cherish our times at CFF every week, feeling like we had become a big happy family.

In July I will have called Grace and Beth my friends for three years. They’ve been three of the best years of my life. We’ve gone through so much together. There is hardly a thing that I like better than our weekly strolls around the backyard, catching up on eachother’s week, sharing whatever is on our hearts, and laughing until we cry. We’ve become much closer than I had ever dreamed possible that first Sunday when I was hanging back by the now-so-familiar picket gate, hesitant to go in. Praise the Lord that my parents chose to visit the church. It has given me a great time of my life, great families with which to fellowship, a level of depth in my Christian walk that had been previously uncultivated. I praise the Lord for Grace and Beth Tonning, for the Tonning family, for all of the families, both past and present, who have been at CFF.

I have made so many memories with Grace and Beth, too many, and indeed to precious, to put into words. I love them so much! We’ve had our times of trial, and I am pleased to say that we’ve made it through each ‘crisis’ stronger, and more godly, than before. They’ve been great to grow with, and great to laugh with. From playing in the back yard, to watching foster kids together, to making gingerbread houses, to playing music together, to caring for sick children, to debating theological issues!

Grace, Beth and I are dissimilar almost as much as three close friends could be. Grace is quiet and demure, always serving, never requiring recognition for what she’s done, but she has a lively side, and also an adventurous spirit that sometimes surprises us all. She always knows what to say at the right time, and always stays calm in crisis situations. Unlike Beth and I, Grace has no trouble dealing with blood, and for that reason we usually call her when anyone has been injured. Beth loves the outdoors, can out-shoot and out-wrestle a boy twice her size anyday (or a couple of them) and can be intimidating if she’s headed for you with a switch raised. But she’s affectionate, and knows when to talk to me, or when just to hold my hand and remind me that she’s there for me. Both are feminine, without being at all mousey, and both have a meekness that radiates from them. They’ve counseled me, and have shared sweet fellowship with me, so often that I have come to rely on them as a part of my close circle of confidantes.

I am so grateful for them. More than I can say. They’ve been through so much with me, and, because of it, I have come forth a better person, one closer to the ideal of being like Christ.

To the lady-in-the-blue-dress and the girl-with-the-servant’s-spirit, thanks for being my dear friends, and my sisters in Christ. I love you!