DD Date 1984.01.11

January 11, 1984

Well, I survived another year. My birthday turned out rather nicely yesterday as Debbie and some friends put together a surprise party for me down at Freedom Baptist Church. Some BJ grads had worked with Debbie's brother Chuck to work things out. They called it a Bible Study and I couldn't resist checking it out since they had said there would be baby sitting for the kids.

There was even a cake -- 31 candles actually is quite a few to blow out at one time, but I did it! The ladies at the church had done their best to fix the dinner of green beans, pork chops and mashed potatoes using the facilities in the church kitchen. The families had called in some favors and collected some books and things from the campus bookstore at Bob Jones. They were cheering me on in my search for a church even though I'm a Presbyterian and they're all Baptist! But these last few months I've learned that the BJ community here in the Berea area is quite strong.

One of the men from the school works in the shop and he helped me set up the bicycle I got for Christmas to turn the car alternator and recharge the battery. It takes quite a bit of work, but it's like those exercise bikes -- peddling as fast as you can and getting nowhere! But I keep in shape while in the house while the kids are napping. Of course, I have work I could be doing, but I can do some of that at night to use up some of the battery!

Oh yeah, one of the birthday presents was a ream of notebook paper, a binder and a pack of pencils! I'm set to keep a record of this surreal adventure for months to come. Perhaps one day these pages will be read by civilized folk with electricity and automobiles of their own. I hope those people aren't Russians, though. That's the one thing that bothers me about this whole adventure -- the probability that the enemy is coming any day to clean up the mess they have made. The fact that we have not received any word from the federal OR state government is highly disturbing. Of course, we may have got them before they could completely destroy us - that "MAD" thing, "Mutually Assured Destruction!" I guess we'll know some day what really happened.

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