Days 220-222, Sept 2-4, Ventura, CA

My goodness but Southern California is one crowded environment. Grocery shopping at Walmart and Costco and even just navigating traffic is an exercise in crowd management. Prices are so dreadfully high, however, that it quite befuddles me as to why so many choose to live here. Aaron suggests perhaps it’s because of job availability, but there are job openings all over this country, so I still don’t get it. But when engaged with one-on-one, we find that individuals are quite pleasant for the most part. Hopefully the same is said of me. 

Take for example the lovely experience we had attending church today. It was a small older ward with only a handful of children or teens.  But my oh my were they a friendly group of people. Being Fast and Testimony Mtg, one of the members spoke about how God orchestrates opportunities for us to meet people we’d not otherwise run into who need us or whom we need. Seems that’s just what happened today. The elderly man in front of us struck up a conversation after church and showed us the funeral program for his lately deceased wife of 61 years. He seemed lonely and sad and a wee bit lost, and we were able to commiserate and share some insight we have about being widows. We chatted with this kind gentleman for almost an hour before parting ways, then met and chatted with still more members after that, one of whom even extended an invitation to dinner. We meet such  lovely saints everywhere we go, all of them striving to be Christlike.  It has been an unexpected joyful experience to attend church with a different congregation somewhere in America each Sunday. 

Yesterday we explored Ventura:  the Channel Islands Visitors Center, Ventura Harbor, Ventura Pier, and a wee bit of the town. Bambi is parked up canyon from Ventura in a city named Ojai where the sea breezes don’t reach.  California is experiencing a heat wave just now; temperatures reached 112 today. Poor Bambi’s small AC struggles to keep us cool. We anticipate Santa Cruz Island tomorrow will prove hot and dry in the  high country and cooler and breezy at the beach. We’re excited to explore the island tomorrow which we can see tantalizingly just offshore. 

Good deeds: Pride, selfishness, rash judgments of others, these are traits which plague me and which I continually struggle against.. The last night at our campsite in Kings Canyon/Sequoia, a group of men & boys came in quite late and set up tents incredibly close to us despite there being plenty of room to spread out, no need to crowd. They were very loud, had bright lanterns which ruined our cozy campfire, they used crude language, and my blood pressure ratcheted upwards. Later that night, however, I felt badly that I am so impatient with the shortcomings of others when I expect and hope for mercy from the same. So in the morning, I approached one of the men and offered him two excellent local maps which we had relied on as well as a package of tasty RX trail bars for his ever-hungry boys.  I smiled and wished them well and did my best to purge the anger I’d allowed to poison me the previous evening. At least I felt a wee bit better about myself. Gosh, it takes constant vigilance for me to thwart impatience. 

In the Costco gas line on Saturday, I offered a $25 gift card to an ancient man, but he was unimpressed and just shrugged at me although he did accept my offer. So I’m not counting this as a good deed; seems he neither needed nor appreciated it. But I did plug $10 worth of quarters into the laundromat change machine where I’m sure one of the many Hispanic customers will appreciate the small find. 

Proverbs 3:27 - Withhold not good from them to whom it is due, when it is in the power of thine hand to do it.

Aaron and I had a discussion tonight about how many things we could be doing to show goodness to others. How short we fall. We vowed to praise the conscientious store clerk, to speak kind and uplifting words to those who help us, to be polite and courteous and gentle with others, and to generally be more deliberate to “withhold not good.”