Mary Frances Bailey Stoops, April 13, 1920 - Oct. 28, 2015

I think this may be the last picture we took of Mother. Dinah is in the photo above with her daughter, "Tia." Mother passed into eternity to be with God at 95 ½ years. We thank God for each day He gave her to live. Mother lived for God and loved her family and the people around her.
Her favorite Psalm was 103. We love it and love to sing it too.

Dad and Mother raised seven children in the Lord. They were faithful in their Mon. -Sat. 6-7AM daily family devotions to the Lord. Mother was our church janitor. We all joined her on Saturday to finish the job. She saw it as something she did for the Lord. I knew her input in us was much more valuable than all her other work.

Stoops Family April 2, 1961

Norval 46, Mary 41, Fama 18, David 16, 

Mary 14, Stephen 11, Daniel 8, Esther 6, Samuel 2

Mother washed clothes then put them through a ringer. I prayed that those old ringer washers would be extinct before I grew up. My sweet little brother got his arm caught in the ringer when he was four years old. We were away at school. Mother heard Sam screaming, then when he stopped to catch his breath, she thought for a moment that he was fine. Amazingly, Sam had no long-term problem with his arm. I prayed those wringer-washers would be extinct before I grew up.

We had a milk cow, which was usually good when mother was milking her, but once when mother was moving her to another pasture, I saw old Gurnsey break into a run. Mother was holding on to the chain and dragging on the ground behind the run-away cow. [Our brothers had their time to milk her as well.]

I took milk to neighbors who gave us 30 cents per gallon. Mother was faithful to visit all the neighbors surrounding us, and prayed with some at the end of their lives to receive Christ. I pray God had mercy on them.

April 13, 1920 - Oct. 28, 2015

Mary Frances (Bailey) Stoops was born April 13, 1920 and passed away in Clovis, CA October 28, 2015 at the age of 95.

Mary was born in Alto, New Mexico to James and Mary Bailey, the 15th of their 16 children. She was raised on the family farm and after her parents' divorce when she was very young, she picked cotton along with her siblings to help provide for her family.

At age 16, Mary moved to El Monte, CA to attend Holiness Evangelistic Institute Bible School, where she met one of the professors, Darwin Norval Stoops. They married on February 21, 1942. Norval and Mary were blessed with seven children, 29 grandchildren and a growing number of great-great grandchildren. Norval and Mary were dedicated members of Visalia Nazarene Church for over 60 years.

Mary is remembered for her kindness, hospitality, cooking, gardening, faithful family devotions and prayer.

She was survived by her sister, Virginia Bailey, age 101 in the photo above, by her children, Fama Nelson, David Stoops (Sharron), Mary Willbanks (John), Stephen Stoops (Lenora), Dan Stoops (Shari), Esther Seppi (David) and Samuel Stoops (Ruth). 

Elisabeth Elliott Gren

Elisabeth Elliot (née Howard; born December 21, 1926) died June 15, 2015 at the age of 88.

I once wrote to Elisabeth Elliot. Her handwritten response was this: 

"For the Seppis, 

with gratitude for your 

encouraging words. 

Elisabeth Elliot Grim”

and imprinted on the reverse side was her prayer: 

Loving Lord & Heavenly Father I offer up today all that I am, all that I have, all that I do, and all that I suffer, to be Yours today and Yours forever. Give me grace, Lord to do all that I know of Your holy will. Purify my heart, sanctify my thinking, correct my desires. Teach me, in all of today's work and trouble and joy, to respond with honest praise, simple trust, and instant obedience, that my life may be in truth a living sacrifice, by the power of Your Holy Spirit and in the name of Your Son Jesus Christ, my Master and my all. Amen. 

Elisabeth Elliott Gren

Here’s a conglomeration of what I’ve found on the internet about Elisabeth Elliott today:
http://www.desiringgod.org/articles/peaches-in-paradise

“We are women, and my plea is Let me be a woman, holy through and through, asking for nothing but what God wants to give me, receiving with both hands and with all my heart whatever that is.”   

Christian higher education, trotting happily along in the train of feminist crusaders, is willing and eager to treat the subject of feminism, but gags on the word femininity. Maybe it regards the subject as trivial or unworthy of academic inquiry. Maybe the real reason is that its basic premise is feminism. Therefore it simply cannot cope with femininity.

Elisabeth Elliot is a Christian author and speaker. Her first husband, Jim Elliot, was killed in 1956 while attempting to make missionary contact with the Auca (now known as Huaorani) of eastern Ecuador. She later spent two years as a missionary to the tribe members who killed her husband. Returning to the United States after many years in South America, she became widely known as the author of over twenty books and as a speaker in constant demand. Elliot toured the country, sharing her knowledge and experience, well into her seventies.

“God never withholds from His child that which His love and wisdom call good. God's refusals are always merciful ― 'severe mercies' at times but mercies all the same. God never denies us our hearts desire except to give us something better.” ―Elisabeth Elliot

Submit radically to God, and do what is right no matter what. Put your love life on the altar and keep it there until God takes it off. Suffering is normal. Have you no scars, no wounds, with Jesus on the Calvary road?

“Pursue obedience with all your might.” ~EE

 Elisabeth made famous an anonymous poem that seems to describe her own life of perseverance, as two of her three husbands preceded her in death:

At an old English parsonage down by the sea,
there came in the twilight a message to me.
Its quaint Saxon legend deeply engraven that,
as it seems to me, teaching from heaven.

And all through the hours the quiet words ring,
like a low inspiration, ‘Do the next thing.’
Many a questioning, many a fear,
many a doubt hath its quieting here.

Moment by moment, let down from heaven,
time, opportunity, guidance are given.
Fear not tomorrow, child of the King,
trust that with Jesus, do the next thing.

Do it immediately, do it with prayer,
do it reliantly, casting all care.
Do it with reverence, tracing His hand,
who placed it before thee with earnest command.

Stayed on omnipotence, safe ‘neath His wing,
leave all resultings, do the next thing.
Looking to Jesus, ever serener,
working or suffering be thy demeanor,
in His dear presence, the rest of His calm,
the light of His countenance, be thy psalm.
Do the next thing.

Here is her brief testimony, told in her typically understated way:
My parents were missionaries in Belgium where I was born. When I was a few months old, we came to the U.S. and lived in Germantown, not far from Philadelphia, where my father became an editor of the Sunday School Times. . . .

Our family continued to live in Philadelphia and then in New Jersey until I left home to attend Wheaton College. By that time, the family had increased to four brothers and one sister. My studies in classical Greek would one day enable me to work in the area of unwritten languages to develop a form of writing.

A year after I went to Ecuador, Jim Elliot, whom I had met at Wheaton, also entered tribal areas with the Quichua Indians. In nineteen fifty three we were married in the city of Quito and continued our work together. Jim had always hoped to have the opportunity to enter the territory of an unreached tribe. The Aucas were in that category—a fierce group whom no one had succeeded in meeting without being killed. After the discovery of their whereabouts, Jim and four other missionaries entered Auca territory. After a friendly contact with three of the tribe, they were speared to death.

Our daughter Valerie was 10 months old when Jim was killed. I continued working with the Quichua Indians when, through a remarkable providence, I met two Auca women who lived with me for one year. They were the key to my going in to live with the tribe that had killed the five missionaries. I remained there for two years.

After having worked for two years with the Aucas, I returned to the Quichua work and remained there until 1963 when Valerie and I returned to the U.S.

Since then, my life has been one of writing and speaking. It also included, in 1969, a marriage to Addison Leitch, professor of theology at Gordon Conwell Seminary in Massachusetts. He died in 1973. After his death I had two lodgers in my home. One of them married my daughter, the other one, Lars Gren, married me. Since then we have worked together.

She embraced the secret to practical Christianity, the very thing we today are most disinclined to: “Truly, truly I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit” (John 12:24).  Oh, may we not lose our way but follow this woman into the death that cannot die! ~Ray Ortland

"“The routines of housework and of mothering may be seen as a kind of death, and it is appropriate that they should be, for they offer the chance, day after day, to lay down one’s life for others. Then they are no longer routines. By being done with love and offered up to God with praise, they are thereby hallowed as the vessels of the tabernacle were hallowed–not because they were different from other vessels in quality or function, but because they were offered to God. A mother’s part in sustaining the life of her children and making it pleasant and comfortable is no triviality. It calls for self-sacrifice and humility, but it is the route, as was the humiliation of Jesus, to glory.” -EE

http://www.generationcedar.com/main/2015/06/portrait-of-a-courageous-woman-of-god-elisabeth-elliot.html?utm_campaign=shareaholic&utm_medium=facebook&utm_source=socialnetwork

Thankful For the Years God Has Given Mother

The "halo" over Mom is just an eye-brow window behind her. She is a saint as are all Christians, though we will be glorified only when we see God.

Mother [Mary] was born in 1920, now has an oxygen tank full time since her hospital stay last week.

We enjoyed a visit with her on Friday at the home of her eldest son, David & Sharron, where she is to stay till a possible operation to receive a stint near her heart on Tuesday evening.

Please pray Mother and for her descendants as well.

12-11-12 at 8:40 PM update: Praise God! When they checked Mom, she had no clogged arteries, so did not have to get a stint put in. The pain in her heart is evidently from high blood pressure. 
She waited since 3 PM today for the surgeon who arrived around 8 PM.

Remember good ol' Johnny Appleseed, who died this day in 1845.

‎"70-years-old, he visited his friend William Worth one evening, ate some milk and bread, read out loud from the Bible, laid down on the floor to sleep and never woke up. This was how John Chapman, better known as Johnny Appleseed, died on MARCH 18, 1845. Johnny Appleseed's father, Nathaniel, was a Minuteman who fought the British at Concord in 1775. Johnny Appleseed collected seeds from apple cider presses in western Pennsylvania and planted nurseries from the Alleghenies to central Ohio, giving thousands of seedlings to westward bound pioneers. He lived at harmony with Indians, bringing them medicinal plants. During the War of 1812, Johnny Appleseed heard the British had incited an Indian attack, so he ran 30 miles from Mansfield to Mount Vernon, Ohio, to warn settlers. Bare foot, wearing a mush pan over his eccentric long hair and an old coffee sack over his shoulders, Johnny Appleseed had a unique devotion to nature and the Bible. He called an apple blossom a "living sermon from God" and often quoted the Sermon on the Mount. Poet William Henry Venable wrote: "Remember Johnny Appleseed - All ye who love the apple - He served his kind by word and deed - In God's grand greenwood chapel." from Bill Federer