PODCAST TRANSCRIPT | Episode 33 – What About Book Parties?
Episode 33: What About Book Parties?
Rocky: Welcome to the podcast FROM OUR HOME TO YOURS w/ Nancy Campbell, founder and publisher of Above Rubies.
Nancy: Hello ladies. We are up to number 33 podcast. It was way back in the beginning, at number seven podcast that I introduced you to Chalice. Chalice is Serene and Sam's eighteen-year-old daughter, but they have another eighteen-year-old daughter, and she is with me today. Her name is Cherish. I often get mixed up with Chalice and Cherish because they are both the same age, and their names sound quite similar.
Cherish comes all the way from Liberia, but you wouldn't know that because she is so part of our family. She was adopted into the Allison family and our whole extended family when she was only five years old. Cherish is eighteen now, and she is so much a part of this family, as if she was born into it as a little baby. We love having her apart of this family.
I think I did tell you, if you ever listened to number seven podcast, that we have something rather unusual or quite interesting on the hilltop, where a number of us live here. It's what we call CNN. Well, I never listen to CNN, and I doubt whether you do also because, as we know, it is fake news and who would want to listen to it? But we actually have CNN news here on the hilltop, but it's not fake news. It stands for COUSIN NEWS NETWORK, and it's quite amazing.
Somehow all the grandchildren, the cousins, find out about everything that's happening. When there's a new romance coming in the family, well, they know everything, and of course, they tell their parents, and then I ask them, and then everybody's whispering, and everybody knows what's happening. It's rather exciting because no one can do anything on the sly here. Cherish, I would say, is head of CNN on the hilltop. Cherish usually knows what's going on, so if we want to know something, we'll ask Cherish. Cherish is our social girl. When I introduced you to Chalice, I think you would have noticed that she is a little shy but cherish is the opposite. Cherish, it's so good to have you here today.
Cherish: Well, thank you for having me, Nana, and I'm so glad that I can be on this podcast.
Nancy: That's great. Well, Cherish loves to talk. Now Cherish, I know, like Chalice, you also love to read, don't you? They are always coming over to Nana's and ordering books on Amazon, getting the new books that they want. There's a set of books that recently all the young girls on the hilltop were reading. They were a series of books by Tricia Mingerink. Tell us about them. What was the name of the first one?
Cherish: The first book was Dare, and it's amazing. You have Dare, Deny, Defy, and then Deliver.
Nancy: Is that what you're reading at the moment?
Cherish: Yes, I've only got a little bit into it, but so far, it's amazing. It's so good.
Nancy: You're a little bit behind because everyone was borrowing your book; you couldn't even get it. I think the books, they were just going, and I got in on it. Because, often, when they're getting into some books, they tell me all about them, and I think, I have got to get in on it. I've also read Dare, Deny, Defy, and Deliver and everyone got better. Can you tell them what it’s all about?
Cherish: Oh, my goodness, I'm not really good at explaining books. I read the books, but Chalice loves to explain it a lot more, but all I can say is they are amazing. As soon as you start, you won't be able to put it down.
Nancy: Yes, and it's about these, they were called the Blades, and they are very evil, but the book brings out how some of them, not many, came to know Jesus and how He changed their lives. I loved, as I was reading the last book, Deliver, to see that these most wicked men, they were actually just taken as children by this wicked king, trained to kill and so on, but it was amazing how when Jesus came into their lives, how they changed. God can change anyone, can't He? Now, number five is out, so you ordered it today.
Cherish: I just ordered it today, and I'm so excited even though I'm still on the fourth one. But I read really quickly, so I'm really excited for the fifth.
Nancy: It's fun when all the young people, and all the cousins, there are so many cousins just round about the same age, and they get into a series of books, and they all read them so they can enjoy them together.
In fact, something very special that we do here at Christmastime, that is us adults, the couples, we have what we call our ANNUAL CHRISTMAS BOOK PARTY. It started years and years ago when the grandchildren were young, and our Christmas would be bedlam with little children running everywhere. I thought, we need to have something that's quieter and more sedate and a special evening. I got this idea that we would have all the couples, the parents, would come, and we would have a book party. Each one of us would buy a book, and it had to be a decent book because we would play the white elephant game where we would put all the books in the center, and each person would take a turn to either choose a book or fight for one that someone else has got. It's a bit boring if everybody brings books that are ordinary or pretty boring.
Cherish: Don't you have to bring books that you want so that you can fight for it?
Nancy: Yes, that's a good idea. That's true. Well, you bring something that you know someone else will want, or if you can’t think of one that someone else will want, you bring something that you will want, and you'll fight for it. We had our adult book party just recently, and we've been doing it for so many years now that they've learned to get the best books they can because then everybody wants them.
The only thing is that it hasn't turned out to be this sedate, quiet evening. Well, it is wonderful when we arrive, and I make the place so beautiful, and the ambiance wonderful, and we have a glorious meal together, but then we start on our books. Then, it gets rowdier than with all the little children around. Everybody begins to fight over books, and we have wrestling matches and goodness knows what. It's all in fun, of course, because we are a crazy, outrageous family, and if we were going to sit there and just be boring people, well, none of us would enjoy it anyway.
At the end, there were still books waiting to be opened because everyone had been vying for books, back and forth. We don't even do the usual rule where if you get it three, that stops. No, we allow that you can have four times before it becomes your own. It gives chance for swapping and going after one-another's books, and it's a really exciting time.
You girls did something this time, didn't you?
Cherish: Yes, we did. Usually Tiveria, one of the cousin girls, will put on a Christmas party but then Chalice and I were like, well, we all love books so why don't we have our own COUSIN GIRL BOOK PARTY? It was exactly like you guys. You start off all nice and everybody's nice and sweet and then . . .
Nancy: Because you had yours in Chalice's palace. Now, this is something amazing. What is Chalice's palace? Well, this is a little house, well it was meant to be just a little room that Sam was going to build for Chalice for her library because she loves books. It was to be her Christmas present for about three Christmas year’s presents in a row. But the problem is with Cherish's dad, Uncle Sam, is that he can't do anything little. This little room that he was going to make as a library for Chalice ended up into a three-story place. So, we call it Chalice's palace. Anyway, they decided to have it on the third floor of Chalice's palace, but it's not all quite ready yet. You didn't get the heating on, did you? Tell them what happened.
Cherish: We got it all nice and beautiful, and it was going to be nice and warm, but then we forgot to put the heater on before everyone arrived. We put it on just before everybody got there, and instead of having a beautiful, warm place, it was freezing cold, so we all ended up just hovering over the fire. We could barely do anything for a few minutes because it was so cold. In the end, it warmed up, and it was fun. Next time, we are going to make sure the room is warmed up.
Nancy: So, it's going to become a tradition?
Cherish: It is. We really liked it this year so next year . . .
Nancy: I think it's wonderful how they've followed our tradition, and although you're listening to this in the New Year (a secret), we are actually recording this just before Christmas. We are also going to have one for all the young couples because we didn't know what to do because now we have all these amazing young couples who are getting married. Now, we have as many young couples as we do the older couples, so it was too many to all meet together, so Colin and I are going to host one this year to start off for the young couples.
Now we are going to have three book parties a year. They are all such fun. People don't just go out, and “Oh, I better get something.” No, we think about it all year, deciding what we are going to get. Evangeline came with two books this time, and she wanted them for herself, so she fought for them. She had to fight hard, and she actually got them.
Cherish: She got them? Oh, my goodness. Wow.
Nancy: Yes, and then your mom brought a book that she thought nobody else would want, just her, but no, Pearl was fighting for it too and others. I brought a trilogy of three books by Elizabeth Gouge (The
Eliot Family Trilogy). I wonder if you have ever read anything of Elizabeth Gouge? She is a wonderful writer, and anything by her we all devour, so that was popular.
I also brought a book that I had just read. This book is called The Holy War by John Bunyan. Now, we all know that John Bunyan wrote The Pilgrim's Progress. That's a very famous book; I guess you've got a copy of The Pilgrim's Progress, just about everybody does. The children's version is a wonderful version to read to your children. The original is sort of in Old English, but the children's version is wonderful.
I have to confess that I had never read The Holy War by John Bunyan. I also have to say that it's better than The Pilgrim's Progress. It is the most exciting book. I could not put it down. It's an allegory about this town called Mansoul, and of course, it's about the soul of man. There is the fight between Shaddai, who is God in this allegory and Emmanuel is His Son, Jesus Christ. The devil is Diabolos with all his demons, and they all had different names. The fight, oh the battles were so intense. It was a very, very exciting book, but the message you begin to see is how we are not fighting against flesh and blood, but we are fighting principalities and powers, and the enemy is always trying to get and take the soul of man. He wants man. He wants to overcome us, and it's a very powerful book. I would recommend it to you if you haven't read it. I really think it's a book that everyone should read.
Cherish: I want to get it.
Nancy: You need to read it. Chally needs to read it because she loves allegories, doesn't she?
Cherish: Yeah.
Nancy: She just loves allegories, and you would love it because you wouldn't be bored.
Cherish: Oh, it sounds like my book completely.
Nancy: Absolutely, and it's life-changing. I was so blessed as I read it, so I decided I was going to buy one for the book party.
Cherish: How did you learn about it?
Nancy: I found it lying around in our house. I don't know where it came from. I picked it up and I said, “Oh, I'll check this out.” I was amazed. I was reading a little about John Bunyan today because he lived back in the 17th century, between 1628 - 1688. I think those were his years. He only lived for sixty years, but he accomplished so much, and most of his books were written in prison. He was put in prison because he was a separatist. He did not conform to the Church of England with all their things that they tried to put on the pastors. He wanted to be free to just preach the Good News.
His hardest thing in prison was having to leave his wife. It was his second wife. His first wife had died, leaving him with four children. Now, he had a second wife and had to try and somehow provide for them in prison. He was a tinker, and he used to try and make shoelaces in prison to get some little bit of money for them.
He could have been freed if he said he would refuse to preach the gospel out in the open, but he said No, he would not stop preaching, and he would remain in prison “until the moss grew on his eyelids,” rather than fail to do what God wanted him to do. That was the kind of man he was. In prison, he wrote many of these amazing books.
While we are talking about books, I must mention a few more books. In fact, if you missed podcast seven, go back and you can listen again, or you can even read the transcript because we now do transcripts for our podcast. We talked about many books that day, and there are loads of wonderful books that are listed there.
Another great book that I never had time to tell you about and won’t have time today to tell you about all the books I want to talk about. One book that we read when we first came to the States, we came to America in 1991. At that time, Serene and Pearl came with us, and we were traveling and ministering.
Our first Christmas here on the continent was way up in the Caribou of Canada. My sister was living there on a ranch in a huge log house. They weren't like a normal log house, they were massive logs. This house was in the Caribou, looking out on the Fraser river. We arrived, and it was in a snow storm. They lived way up on this hill. There was no way we could drive up. Her husband had to come down in the tractor and tow our car up behind the tractor, and then we were iced in and snowed in for the whole time we were there. We didn't even want to go out because we were so scared to go down that hill. You have to use chains to go down and chains to go up on the couple of occasions that we did. I stayed home, and I made homemade soup and homemade bread every day. Christmas day came. At that time, we had no money to buy presents. We didn't even want to go out to buy them.
Cherish: You were still snowed in?
Nancy: We were snowed in. What we did was we wrote poems for one another. I still have those poems. It's amazing; things like that are really far more meaningful than even gifts that we get that we lose. They kind of get lost, or they wear out or whatever. You don't even remember them, but I still remember those poems. While we were there, we got hold of a book called, Nothing too Good for a Cowboy. Have you ever read it?
Cherish: No, but I've heard about it.
Nancy: Yes, because you've heard your Mom talk about Mulligan soup.
Cherish: Yes.
Nancy: Yes, Mulligan soup.
Cherish: Is that where it came from?
Nancy: That's where it came from.
Cherish: Oh, my goodness.
Nancy: Yes, from Nothing too Good for a Cowboy. I must tell you about Mulligan's soup. I read through this book while we were traveling. We were traveling through Canada and ministering, and Colin and I would speak, and the girls, Serene and Pearl, would sing. As we were traveling, I'd read this book and other books we got to, but this was about a cowboy up in the Caribou. True story.
Anyway, it got to this chapter about how every few weeks he would make Mulligan soup because his name was Mulligan. He didn't use a pot. Oh no. He used a great, big boiler tub. Maybe some of you wouldn't even know what a boiler tub was like. Well, I knew because when I was a little girl, every Monday, my Mom did the washing. We didn't have a washing machine. Oh no. You put all this water in this great big boiler tub, and you boiled up the water, and you threw all the clothes in the boiler and stirred them round. Then, the really dirty ones, you'd have a rub-a-dub-dub, one of those things, and you'd rub them against that. This is how we did the washing.
Well, this was how Mulligan made his soup. He'd fill the boiler, and then he would throw in the food. Out to the garden he'd go. There was no time to wash vegetables. You didn't wash vegetables. He'd pull the big carrots out of the garden, and he would throw them in, throw in the carrots. And he'd get a couple of cabbages, about 8 pounds in weight and he’d throw in the cabbages. And then he'd throw in beets and spinach and heads of lettuce and parsnips and horse radishes and handfuls of garlic. Not little cloves, of course, the bulbs, just throw them all in.
Nothing was washed, right out of the garden, clean dirt. He would throw it all in. Of course, they had the rivers, and they would get the trout, and they would throw in the trout. They would throw it in, heads and all and boil it all up. Wow, Mulligan soup. When it was all boiled up, they would sit there, and they'd eat it. Mulligan, especially him, would be bloated. Then, that soup would last them for six days. Then, when it was over, they would start again.
Anyway, I know your Mom, when you want to make a big soup and use all of the stuff in the refrigerator and whatever you've got there, she calls it Mulligan's soup.
Cherish: Makes a lot more sense now. I was wondering where we got the name from.
Nancy: Yes, it's from the book, Nothing too Good for a Cowboy. It's a great book.
I wanted to mention some children's books that I loved when I was a child. They are still available today by Patricia St. John. Now, Treasures of the Snow is one. Another is called The Star of Light and another is The Tanglewood's Secret. Wonderful books and you may love to get them for your children. They are not for little children, but for middling children, they would enjoy reading them.
There was another book at our book party, my sister, Kate brought it because Kate now lives here in this Nashville area, no longer up in the Caribou. She brought The Exodus by Leon Uris. Now, I had read that book years and years and years ago. Kate had too, but she had recently read it again, and she said, “Nancy, you've got to read it again.” This book is about the establishing of Israel. Israel became a nation in 1948, and it’s the amazing story of the establishing of that nation. It's a novel, but it has so much historical facts too. It's a wonderful story.
Anyway, we better not keep taking about books because we would go on forever. The best book of all is the Word. As I love to tell my little grandchildren, singing . . .
The best book to read is the Bible,
The best book to read is the Bible,
If you read it every day,
It will help you on your way.
Oh, the best book to read is the Bible.
What do you reckon? Do you love to read the Bible?
Cherish: Oh yes, I love to read the Bible. You can make it exciting, or you can make it feel like a chore. When I read it, I'll pray first, and then, when I read the Bible, I'll put myself in it like I'm going through that journey. That's me doing this, and it's a lot more exciting and fun, but there a lot of cool, amazing fun ways that you can do it.
Nancy: Yes, now, do you like to try and read a chapter a day or how do you go about it?
Cherish: Sometimes, when I read the Bible, sorry, I'm thinking . . .
Nancy: You were telling me earlier today that you like to do what Auntie Vange does. What does she do?
Cherish: When she reads a Scripture, she'll read it, and then, she can't go on because it's so deep, and you have to ponder it. You keep getting new things and new ideas, and it's like you're stuck on that one page. Every time I reread it and reread it, that just, yeah.
Nancy: So rather than trying to make sure you read a chapter every day, you read until you read something that really grabs you. Then, you'll stop and pray about it and think about it. Do you ever write down things about it?
Cherish: I used to. I need to start doing it again, but yes, I used to. God would give me loads and loads of revelation, and it's crazy.
Nancy: A good thing to do is to keep writing because I was exactly your age (I was eighteen years of age) when I began to write what God showed me in His Word, and that has been the most, greatest blessing of my whole entire life. I have books down there on my shelf that started when I was eighteen years of age, and I have continued every year.
This is how I read the Word too. When I open the Word, I'm not just saying, “Oh, well, I've got to read the Bible.” I open the Word, and I am excited. I am looking for God to speak to me. I am believing that God is going to speak to me. I'm looking at every word I read, and when I come to something that arrests me, I don't just keep reading. I stop, and I think about it, and I meditate about it.
Then, I have my book. I always have my book there ready to write, write what God is saying to me about it, what I feel the revelation of the Scripture is, and I just write. I find, as I write, more and more, understanding comes.
There's a little saying that says:
“Thoughts tend to disentangle themselves when they pass through lips or cross pencil tips.”
Although, now we use pens of course. But I have found that so true. You talk about that Scripture to someone else, it becomes clearer as you talk about it. That's why it’s so good to fellowship over the Scriptures but also to write. Keep writing, get your journal. I like to get a journal with one page for every day of the year. I'm looking out for everyday to fill my page. Sometimes, I need more, so I'll have an extra book to write more that I want to write too. That's a great blessing. That's something that can bless you, precious ladies, too. Well, you've got to stay on for the next session. We've got to do another poddy while you're here because I've got to ask you more things. Let's just pray.
“Father, we thank You for your blessings, for the joy of family life. I pray that You'll bless every dear mother and wife listening today. Fill them with Your joy, fill them with Your peace, and Father, I pray that You will bless them as they open Your precious Word, which is the best book. Lord, we can read all these other books, and they are so great, and we enjoy them, but Your Word is life. It is life. The words that You speak unto us are life. They fill us with life; they change our lives. I pray that Your Word will become precious to each one in the name of Jesus, Amen.
Books Mentioned:
The Eliot Family Trilogy by Elizabeth Goudge
The Blades of Acktar series (Dare, Deny, Defy, Deliver, Destroy) by Tricia Mingerink
The Holy War by John Bunyan
The above book, THE HOLY WAR is available from Above Rubies.
Go to this link to order:
http://aboverubiesbookstore.mybigcommerce.com/the-holy-war-john-bunyan/
Pilgrim's Progress by John Bunyan
Nothing too Good for a Cowboy by Richmond Hobson
Treasures of the Snow by Patricia St. John
Star of Light by Patricia St. John
The Tanglewood's Secret by Patricia St. John
The Exodus by Leon Uri