The first church we went to was The Bonner's Ferry Assembly of God. It was very similar in belief to the church we'd been going to rior to leaving California. We sang happy songs, praised the Lord loudly while others prayed, waved our hands in the air, and felt the Holy Spirit moving among us. If someone was sick, they were coaxed to the front of the church and people with the gift of healing would lay hands on them and pray for Jesus to heal them. Almost every Sunday, someone either gave their heart to the Lord or rededicated their life to Him by kneeling at the front of the church and praying with the pastor. There was a lot of speaking in tongues (which, if you haven't heard it before, sounds like emotionally charged gibberish), a lot of prophesying. It was a very charismatic, New Testament church.

The pastor was John White, and our parent's friend, along with his wife Jan. John and Jan were really nice people. My mom told us how they'd lost one of their two sons in a car accident. That was sad. John and his remaining son were both accomplished hunters and fisherman.

Bonners Ferry was quite a bit bigger than either Deep Creek or Naples (another small town). They had a regular grocery store, a variety store, the Pink Lion, and a laundromat where we washed our clothes. The best part about the laundromat was being able to run over to the Pink Lion and look at what they had there. There was a store called the Black Sheep, that my mom seemed to think was just the greatest store in the world. I'm not sure, because to be honest, I never got to see. Times were tight now. We didn't get something as soon as we wanted it anymore, and we didn't eat strictly whatever we felt like eating. One night, my mom made clam chowder (yuck! Seafood!) and I was hungry enough that I actually have pleasant memories of eating it. More often than not, the fare was ramen noodle soup or other canned goods. Not only were we short on money, we had no way to cook food other than a Coleman camp stove that Dennis had set up in a makeshift cooking area in the motel room. And they were still unsuccessfully searching far and wide for a place to live.

My hair started to grow out a little, and I made the mistake of letting my sister Lisa cut it for me. The sides and back were growing long, but she cut the top ridiculously short. It was bad enough that people thought I was a boy (they apparently hadn't encountered girls with short hair), now I looked like a stupid boy. I still wore the city slicker clothing that I'd had in Chicago...there was nothing else to wear.

That is what I looked like when we met Bonnie and Lowell Carlson. I had a stupid haircut, blue jeans, and big city mannerisms. We drove out to a place....but in all seriousness, it looked like just a firepit, a barn, and a silo to me. They were working on a house there, and it wans't built yet. People were sitting around the firepit eating. Lowell had gray and white hair, longish for a man, and his face was weathered and friendly, eyes crinkled in behind his glasses. He exuded friendliness. Bonnie had shoulder length dark hair, was quieter, and also wore glasses. Their foster son George was there. He was 16, with blond hair and blue eyes gleaming with mischief. He was about the same height as me, short, which made me like him almost immediately. He had a plumpish brown-haired girlfriend that I was already jealous of. After the routine of greetings and introductions, we sat down with them, and I was appalled to discover that what they were eating was goat ribs! Could people actually eat goats? It seemed positively barbaric. What kind of people were these? They held some out to me, but I made my disgust tactlessly clear and emphatic. Then they offered us some pasta. It was spaghetti...sort of. The noodles were broken up and thinly covered with something red and sticky, which was probably plain tomato paste. I could not conceieve of anyone doing this to spaghetti! I ate it though, and marvelled at the people in this area and the odd things that they cooked and called food.

I was relieved when George came by and wanted to show us around the place. The silo: it was being made into a bedroom for George! I had no idea that people could live in silos. I looked up. There was a center post with rafters radiating to the sides of the silo above us. Fascinating. Outside the barn: cages of hardware cloth, full of small velvety-brown ducklings. I didn't know ducklings could be brown, I thought they were always yellow. There was a dead duckling in the cage, and it was crowded in there. The other ducklings ran around on top of the dead one, and that bothered me. There were 6 or 7 more dead ducklings set on top of the cage. I didn't understand that. First of all, why did they die, and secondly, why were they all laid there on top of the cage? The inside of the barn: goats. I was afraid of the goats, so I kept my distance. I had seen all too many story book pictures of children getting knocked down by a nasty goat with wicked looking horns. A corral behind the barn: it held a huge gray Percheron draft horse, Prince. He was massive. I don't think I'd ever seen such a large orse before. George boasted that he could leap onto Prince's back and ride him without a saddle. I couldn't see how... Another horse: this one, Lady, was considerably smaller. George said we could ride her, and encouraged us to stand on a fence. All four of us climbed on, with difficulty. We clung to one another. He walked us around slowly. It was very hard to maintain our balance on the slippery, swaying horse. One of us leaned slightly, slipped a little, and plunk! we all landed on the ground, in the dirt. We got back on, each hotly accusing the other of making us fall off. George seemed to think we were the most amusing sight he'd seen in some time. My eyes began to itch. I sneezed. My eyes started watering. They swelled up. I couldn't see. I could hardly breathe. My entire face was puffy and I sneezed uncontrollably. I could hardly make my way to the truck, where I curled up in disgrace. I was allergic, very allergic, to the horses. The disliked girlfirend peered in at me in the truck and expressed her sympathy. I hated her. I hated being allergic. I had wanted so badly to ride the horses by myself, without a bunch of sisters hanging on me, pulling me down. Instead, I had to hide my awful, running face in the truck, while everyone else visited and kept riding the horses.