Samantha provided such laughter and pleasure for us our first evening when we stopped at a motel. That kitten was so glad to be out of the car! It literally flew over the beds, under the beds, up on the dressers and to our chagrin, up the drapes clear to the ceiling, then down! Then she would do this all over again, sometimes barely missing our plates of dinner as she enjoyed the freedom of being able to move about. We were all having such a good laugh, and we too, were glad to be out of the long day of traveling in the car.
We visited Meteor Crater, the Petrified Forest, and Hoover Dam on the way to see my parents. Visiting Hoover Dam may have been a-once-in-a-lifetime experience for our boys. At that time they were taking visitors down inside the dam to where the turbines were creating the electricity. Dale and I had previously visited Hoover Dam, but this was the first time for Bruce and Mike.
After visiting my parents m Cornville and then Dale’s parents in Paradise, California, we finally arrived in Santa Monica.
We stayed at the Holiday Inn near the beach while looking for a house. This was not an easy job. We found one that was very old and with outdated kitchen and baths. We needed to get settled, so we made a deposit on it. Then the next day another house came on the market that was a little larger and appeared to be in better condition than the one where we had made the deposit. We looked at it, and all agreed this was a much better home and about the same rent. 1 particularly wanted this better home. We tried to get our deposit of several hundred dollars back on the first house, but the realtor would not give it to us.
Our small salary from the conference made it evident that I would have to find work. I did not want to work full time, but I could not find any part time work that would meet our financial needs. Bruce was now in the third grade and promoted to fourth that year due to the good foundation he had received from Miss Kaiser at the Andrews elementary school. Mike would be starting first grade. I wanted to be with the boys when they arrived home from school, but I would not be able to do this working full time. Dale agreed that he would arrange his schedule to pick them up from school and be with them until I arrived home in the evening.
I found employment at a life insurance company in Beverly Hills as the head cashier. I receipted in thousands of dollars of checks daily. My supervisor liked me and when summer came, I asked if I could have the summer off to be with our boys. I had already asked our head pastor’s daughter, who wanted summer work, if she would take my job for the summer. She was a business major and I felt she could handle the job. I would give her training before I was off for the summer. My supervisor agreed to this arrangement, and I was able to be home with Bruce and Mike for at least part of that summer.
However, two or three weeks into the summer, the head pastor accepted a pastoral position in Georgia. Dale learned he would now be the only pastor until a new pastor was found. He would have too many pastoral responsibilities now to care for Bruce and Mike. Dale had also just publicly announced he would be having a twenty-one night series of evangelistic meetings. I would have to return to work to save my job.
My parents were coming for a visit at that time and then were going on to Northern California. We called Dale’s parents who were both now retired, to see if they would be willing to take the boys for about a month, and they were happy to do this. We then asked my parents of they would take Bruce and Mike to Dale’s parents. Our boys were excited with this plan. Dale’s mother was a retired teacher, and she had many good storybooks to read to them. She would take them on long walks along a flume, and she cooked delicious meals for them. The boys tell us they have good memories of that summer. At the end of the summer, Dale and I took our vacation and brought them home.
In November Dale was asked to be the senior pastor of the Hacienda Heights church, on the opposite side of Los Angeles. Dale gladly accepted this position-it was not as if he had a choice. Until he was ordained, he was told that whatever he was asked to do, he must do. He was looking forward to beginning his duties there January 1.
My parents and sisters were at our house for Christmas. We had some fun times planned when the morning before Christmas-Christmas Eve-two large conference moving trucks showed up unannounced at our front door. The drivers told us they were there to move us to our home in Rowland Heights, (close to Hacienda Heights). We told them we had not been given any notice and did not have anything packed, and besides, my family was there for Christmas and this was Christmas eve. That did not matter to these guys. I tried protesting, but these men had been given orders to move us, and they just began loading our things into the trucks. They ripped blankets and sheets off the beds and took the clothes from the closets. I quickly packed the dishes and kettles before they could. It did not matter that gifts were under the tree and my family was present. We distributed gifts to the person named on the package and packed the ornaments. I cried as the tree was being carried to the garbage. My family all went other places.
In addition to this distressing situation, we received a heartbreaking call saying that my cousin Billy’s wife and two daughters had been killed in an auto/train accident.
Christmas Eve we arrived at our newly rented house in those two large moving trucks. Two trucks were necessary because they knew we had not packed, and these men were told to just load things in as quickly as possible. The new house was not that large and we wondered what the neighbors must have thought! We had been scheduled to move after Christmas.
The water and gas were on, but there was no electricity, and it would not be turned on until after Christmas. It was cold, and without electricity, the furnace did not work.
We did have the gas stove, and remembering the New Year’s Eve party when I was in the eighth grade, I somehow found ingredients with a flash light and made gingerbread. We sat in the dark on the floor in front of the gas fireplace and ate, wondering why we had been made to move so suddenly and feeling sad about my cousin’s family. My unspoken thoughts about moving were that the answer would have been, “Just because we said so.” I was neither bitter nor angry, but I was sad and disappointed. After all, we had committed to doing the Lord’s work, and I just accepted this must be part of the package.
We enrolled Bruce and Mike in the Adventist school that had a bus that picked them up and let them off about a half mile from our home. I found employment at the Glendale Adventist Hospital in the psychiatric department as the administrative assistant to the head psychiatrist. Because this was a hospital, I was able to work from 6:00a.m. to 3:00 p.m., so most of the time 1 was able to be home when the boys arrived home from school, even though 1 had to drive 35 miles on the Los Angeles freeways, which would take an hour or more.
In January 1972 Elder Harvey Voth, principal of Monterey Bay Academy, asked Dale to be the speaker for the Sabbath worship service on alumni weekend in February. Harvey Voth had been the boys’ dean when we were students. Dale and I had not been back to MBA since an alumni weekend when Bruce was about nine months old. Now he was eleven and Mike was nine. This visit brought back many wonderful memories for us. As we were saying good-bye to everyone on Sunday, Dale casually mentioned to Elder Voth that if he ever needed a Bible teacher to give him a call.
My Cup Overflows. Copyright © 2009 by Carolyn Ratzlaff. All Scripture quotations—except where otherwise noted—are from The New American Standard Bible, © 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1975, 1979, 1994 by the Lockman Foundation, used by permission. All rights reserved. Life Assurance Ministries, Inc.
Carolyn has always been a positive person enjoying life and outdoor activities such as hiking and gardening, and she and her husband currently raise a good portion of their own food in small grow boxes. She also reads many health journals and is often surprised at the contrast between what was taught through the writings of Ellen White on forbidden items of diet and health, and the beneficial evidence of these same items which is supported by a plethora of scientific studies.
She and her husband Dale Ratzlaff have two married sons and four grandchildren.
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