When we evacuated Zaire from Ara, we were privileged to have a place to come to, a place we called home, in our own country. God had taken care of all the details. When we arrived in New York our children met us at the airport and we all returned to the farm. To have a place of our own was something I never had as a child.

When my parents worked as medical missionaries in the Belgian Congo they had no home in the States. If five years, of living nine months of each year in one place, defines home, then Rethy Academy was my home in Africa, but my parents were at Banda.  I went home to be with them for a month after each three-months at Rethy, so Banda was really home because my mom and dad were there. After every five-year term my parents returned to the States for furlough. Each time they traveled a lot to visit people, and lived in different places, so I had no place I referred to as home.

We are blessed now to have a home, where any of our family can come at any time. There is always room. God provided a place for us. This is how the farm became our home.

The first time Ellen and I returned from Africa with our two little ones, and another baby expected in seven months, we had no place to go, other than to her parent’s place on their farm in New York. When we arrived at the airport, they were there waiting for us, to take us to their home.

When we had gone to Africa four years earlier, Ellen’s dad was raising Angus, planning to build up his herd and make a living selling beef. It hadn’t taken long to find out that the income from the Angus was insufficient. With all the dairy farms in the area, marketing the beef was difficult and to make it work he needed to have a much, much, larger herd.

His eldest son, Eric, offered to stay on the farm to work with his dad and they decided that they needed to sell all the Angus, buy Holsteins, and convert to dairy. Farming is always hard work, but during the time we were in Africa they accomplished the changeover and were shipping out milk every other day. They had also decided to lengthen the milking barn to accommodate more animals and increase production. Finances demanded it.

The milk check was divided many ways, to pay off at least a little on each of the accumulated invoices and make payments to the bank. Ellen’s mom took a housekeeping job at the hospital, in order to have something with which to buy food. Of course Eric needed to be paid in order to care for his family living in the old Jouben farmhouse down the road.

Then everything changed. Eric shot himself in the foot when dismounting from the big Case tractor. He had taken the hand gun with him in order to shoot any woodchucks that he might encounter during the daily chore of spreading manure. Ellen was a nurse and she was coming home. Maybe Paul could help on the farm as it would be a long time before Eric’s ankle and foot healed. As members of AIM we still received gifts from those who wanted to support us, even if we weren’t in Africa. While on furlough we were permitted to supplement our income, if we could, to meet the higher cost of living in America. I was happy to agree to work for $125 a week.

The hospital caring for Eric was willing to allow Eric to come home when they understood that Ellen was a nurse and could daily cleanse the deep hole in the side of his foot, treat it with antibiotics, pack it again with sterile gauze, and rewrap the area. It needed to heal slowly from deep inside. We needed a place to live nearby.

I’m sure the current building code would not approve of our parking a twelve-foot-wide house trailer behind Ellen’s parents’ farmhouse and sharing their electric service and septic system. I don’t recall getting a permit to park it there. They might even judge such a dwelling to be unsuitable for a family of four, but that was our home.

When our twins arrived a few months later Ellen and I followed a slowly moving snow plow along the narrow road by Lake Otsego until we could take a side street to the Bassett hospital. When we got there I told them Ellen needed to go directly to the delivery room. They forgot all about me. It was obvious why she wanted to go to maternity, but after all, the young dad was just nervous, so they put her on the elevator and headed upstairs.

I had no idea how to find out what was happening, but did realize that I couldn’t just follow her. Someone suddenly thrust a gown into my hands, showed me a place I could go to put it on, and took me to the delivery room. Laura was born a few minutes later and began to cry lustily. Eleven minutes later Amy was in the doctor’s hands, but was quiet at first. The medical staff surrounded the baby at a nearby table and then I heard her cry. She had received some kind of injection. I was then very grateful that we had come to the hospital, though we had thought to have a midwife come to our home before we knew we were expecting twins. How would we ever pay the hospital bill?

I had checked on the medical insurance in which we were enrolled by AIM. The coverage we had in Zaire had been changed to a different policy, with the same insurance company, when we arrived back in the States. I found that maternity expenses were included in the coverage, starting nine months from the date the policy was activated. We had to leave the hospital as soon as we could!

The twins were healthy, both eagerly accepting the life and love their mother gave them. They were each a little over five pounds. When we told the hospital we were leaving the next morning, they were initially reluctant, but again, Ellen being a nurse, knew she could sign herself out. She also wanted the special meal the hospital served to new mothers. She demonstrated her readiness to go home and was soon dressed and ready to go.

When I saw the bill I wasn’t willing to sign it. I had told them my insurance didn’t cover maternity and I wasn’t ready to sign for a two-day hospital stay. We had arrived at 3:45 pm the previous day and were leaving before 9:00 am. Each day cost more than my weekly salary!  I didn’t then know how billing worked at hospitals. The one who offered me the bill, said she couldn’t change it. Of course I asked, “Who could?” 

Those two babies and their determined, beautiful mother, had no doubt impressed the lady. Maybe the ignorant young man, who didn’t know that hospital bills aren’t negotiable, had somehow seemed reasonable to her. Ellen was in a wheelchair (as required) and we were approaching the exit when the lady showed up again to say, “We got it for you!”  She seemed like a mom delighted to have twin grandchildren. She was also reasonable. I signed the invoice.

Our leaving Bassett hospital less than eighteen hours after we had arrived was apparently considered irresponsible and unreasonable. New York Public Health people arrived to check on the babies in the tan trailer behind the old Redjives farmhouse. Our home shared her parents address, still known locally by the former owner’s name.

When the public health women came to see the tiny babies they also saw our home. The sunny living room was a little wider than our couch was long. Sitting in one big chair, and leaning back, one could rest his feet on the other big chair that faced it. From the kitchen table Ellen could reach back behind her, and care for things on the stove. The utility room had some built in cupboards Ellen used for pots and pans, that didn’t fit in the kitchen. We added a small dresser under the cupboard. The bathroom had two doors because it was also the hall. In our room the three-quarter width bed, pushed against the side of the trailer, left enough room to pass to get to Beth and Tim’s room at the back.

Ellen met the visiting nurses. I was working in the barn with her dad, probably shoveling gutters, after the morning milking. I’m sure they saw the twins because Ellen said that they had remarked on the color of their skin and the whites of their eyes. I think they were interested in setting up a regular visiting program to care for the health of our babies. They certainly noticed the two little beds we had prepared on the dresser for them in the utility room. I had cut up a ¾ inch sheet of interior plywood to construct two open ended beds, lined with crib padding foam from K-Mart. Ellen explained to the nurses that she wasn’t concerned about the skin color, it was only three-day jaundice and would soon fade. She reassured them that, “yes, she was a nurse, and appreciated their visit but, no thank-you, we didn’t need them to add us to their schedule”.

It was our home for the year we were on furlough and we sold it when we returned to Zaire. It hadn’t cost much, only $3,000, and we sold it for $2,000. The old trailer is gone, but that part of New York was where our twins were born, where we shared everything with Ellen’s family, and made many memories with those we learned to know in the local church.

Now, the Jouben land had been combined with the Redjive land when Ellen’s parents had moved to New York so he could raise Angus. Eric and his family lived in the Jouben farmhouse while he worked with his dad for seven years. Ellen and I were in Zaire with our five children. Eric’s younger brothers, and sister left home. When Eric left it was no longer possible to operate the Bearce family farm. The Jouben house was being rented. Ellen’s dad became a milk tester for Cornell University. Her mom still worked at the hospital. The place we thought of as home was to be sold.

In Zaire, Ellen and I were thinking of her parents, thinking of the good year we had had with them, making our young family’s home in their back yard. Could we buy the now vacant Jouben farmhouse from them?

We received a reply by return mail, about four weeks later, that they would be glad to sell that old farmstead, with some surrounding land and the woodlot up the hill to us. The flat eleven acre piece across the road from the house, was however, included with the dairy farm he had put on the market. My parents gave us a $25,000 loan, which we paid to Ellen’s parents when we were next on furlough. Our families had helped us get a place which we have called home ever since.

After the evacuation we had been assigned to help out at the AIM retirement center, and were working in Florida when we heard of the change in our daughter, Debbie’s, wedding plans. Alan and Debbie had decided to move up their wedding date from August to the end of May since we were back earlier than expected. We said goodbye to my parents and left Florida before it got too hot.

The Kitenge material, bought at the Bunia market place during Debbie’s earlier visit to Zaire, needed to be sewn into wedding dresses. Ellen had saved it, bringing it with her when we evacuated, and the material was at the farm. We were heading home so we bought a carrier for the new mountain bike God had given Jeff, loaded what little stuff we had in Florida, and headed home. Jeff’s pellet gun from Porhelio was in the car too. Debbie wanted Jeff to be her best man, and the entire family was soon to be at the farm for her wedding on the front lawn.

When Jesus said there are many dwelling places in His Father’s house, and if He goes to prepare a place for us, He will come again to receive His own and His home will be ours too so we can be together.