Free The Blue Door by Christa J. Kinde Page B

Prissie asked in amazement.
    “Not very well,” he admitted.
    “Oh, I dunno,” Grandma remarked as she placed the vase of flowers on the counter. “You and Pete had some good visits while you were learning to cast stitches.”
    “No argument there,” Milo replied. “Though Harken wasn’t terribly impressed with that lumpy scarf I produced. He thought it looked more like a fishing net!”
    Prissie giggled and reached for a handful of beans. “That wasn’t very nice!”
    “Maybe not, but sadly, he was right.”
    Grandma Nell brought a pair of scissors with her to the table and carefully sliced through the packing tape. She peeled back the heavy brown paper, taking care to save the postmark, then opened the box. Setting aside the letter that had been placed on top of the other items, she murmured, “What have you been up to, my girl?”
    Ida’s boxes arrived at regular intervals from cities all over the world, depending on where she and her husband might be visiting. Uncle Loren worked for a missions organization and traveled from church to church, offering encouragementto the many men and women who served the Lord in faraway places. “Did she send the usual?” Prissie asked.
    “Of course,” chuckled Grandma Nell, fishing out a small sheaf of papers and a clear plastic freezer bag from under something folded into tissue paper.
    While Pete and Nell Pomeroy loved hearing from their daughter, they didn’t like for her to fritter her money on useless things. Early on, Grandpa had jokingly announced that as a farmer, he was mostly interested in dirt. The first time Ida sent him a small bottle of sand from the shore of Honduras, a tradition was begun. Now Ida always included a soil sample for her father, one for every place she visited.
    Grandma’s standing request was for church bulletins. Not all churches used printed announcements, but Ida always found something — a missionary’s photo postcard, conference fliers, or cuttings from local papers. Over the years, Grandma Nell’s collection had grown to include news from many foreign lands in many foreign languages.
    Of course, there were always other things as well — small gifts that reminded Prissie of her aunt Ida’s enthusiasm for life, no matter where it took her.
    “Oh, look at
this
!” Grandma exclaimed, shaking out a black shawl with a deep fringe. “Spanish lace! Gracious! Ida knows better than to send something this fancy to me!”
    In spite of her grumbling, her grandmother looked pleased over the present and swung it around her shoulders with a swirl of the silky tassels.
    “It’s pretty, Grandma! You should wear it to church!”
    Milo was spared from making any fashion comments by taking a large bite of lemon bar and chasing it down with aswallow of his tea. However, he reached over and tapped the corner of the bulletin. “May I see?”
    “Help yourself,” Grandma Nell replied as she opened her daughter’s letter and unfolded a sheet covered in Ida’s distinctively loopy penmanship. Some smaller cards fell out, and she looked even more excited than she had been about the shawl. “There are recipes this time! Now where are my glasses?”
    As her grandmother bustled into the bedroom for her reading glasses, Prissie stole a look at Milo. The mailman had gone back to snapping beans, but his eyes followed the text of the announcements in the church bulletin Ida had sent. “Can you read Spanish?” she asked in surprise.
    “Yep,” he replied calmly, then cautiously added, “Language is no barrier for someone like me.”
    Prissie knotted her fingers together. The lull was getting awkward again, and she didn’t like it. Taking a deep breath, she asked, “Does it say anything interesting?”
    Milo brightened somewhat and pulled the folded paper closer. “This is talking about some services they’ve been having, and how they’ve pulled in some new attendees — folks who’ve never been to church before.”
    “That’s good,” Prissie