I landed in Portland, near the Pacific Coast and traveled through the mountains up to the high desert area of Bend. At 4500 feet, the air is a little thinner and the terrain a lot dryer. They say it never rains there, and the evidence is that every single square foot of ground is being watered day and night by irrigation. The week prior to our visit the weather was a beautiful 80 degrees. However, our arrival seemed have brought all manner of crazy weather and we were in for 40 degrees and 2 1/2 days of rain! But we could've seen hail the size of cantaloupes and it wouldn't have held us back! God had chosen to move 130 of us crazy horse people up to the 'high desert' and a team of wild ones couldn't move us out of there!
The directions on our information email asked that we not show up at the ranch on Wednesday before 1:00pm so that they would be ready to give us a proper greeting. I was up at the crack of dawn so I wanted to make sure I could find my way... yes, I cheated just a little bit! I didn't go all the way in, though, I just stopped to make sure I had found the right place.
I'd like to share with you some pictures I took while I was there and I'll try to explain them as we go. (I hope the pics don't bore you to death... I think they speak way more clearly than I!)
This is the "barn" we were in for all of our classes for the week. You'll notice a stovepipe coming up out of the roof of the building! We had a wood burning stove inside and that's the only way those of us "thicker" girls could stay warm during those cold days! This was our first day, though, and it was absolutely beautiful. You'll notice, too, that the entire place is covered in wood chips! It makes for a fabulous terrain.
While we were in this barn we began each of our sessions with a worship time, and Troy Meeder and his right hand man, Marshall helped lead us all in a time of praise and worship songs. It was great! We kept saying that it was like adult church camp!!
If you turned directly around from where I took the picture of the barn and headed back right, up the hill, you'd see just this. The building to the far left in this pic is of a new structure that will soon be Troy's new office. Just up the hill to the right is the 'round pen', and then at the top of that hill is "Independence Arena". The arena was built by Kim and friends over a 4th of July weekend especially for Troy while he was away doing a horse clinic. It's an amazing arena and inside that space is where the relationships between the leaders and the horses at Crystal Peaks Youth Ranch are born!
This is the tack room! Within the walls of this structure lie the most incredibly organized tools you have likely ever seen. Each horse has his/her own bridle, labeled with a small wooden "plaque" that has been colored by the hand of one of the kids who visit the ranch. The saddles and pads are also labeled, not by horse, but by size. Depending on the size of your "seat" (to put it nicely), its always best you have a "seat holder" that fits the job at hand! At Crystal Peaks they use synthetic saddles because they are very light and easier for the smaller children to handle, especially as they are learning how to properly dress their horses for riding.
Here's another pic from inside the front gate of Independence Arena. You will notice the fencing that's used at Crystal Peaks. They made the fencing out of posts and they are bolted together and sit atop the ground. Because the ranch is situated on what was once an old cinder pit, the ground is almost pure rock and digging postholes is extremely difficult. This fencing is not only incredibly attractive to look at, but is very safe for the horses.
Independence Arena from the top side, looking back toward the front of the ranch and to the Cascade Mountains in the background! Can you imagine waking up in the morning and seeing snowcapped mountains out your window... IN MAY?????
If you are interested in reading more about Troy and Kim Meeder and learning about their incredible story, and the stories of these horses, I would encourage you to read Kim's books. You can find them online at Amazon.com. That afternoon when I first opened the link my friend Marguerite sent to me, I ordered all three of Kim's books on my Kindle! After reading the stories of the horses and knowing what had happened to them, and then seeing them as Kim and her staff led them into this smaller arena, tears ran down my face again. I was meeting the "stars" of her life! Out of their tragic lives and horrific stories were born the redemptive, hopeful new stories they were creating in the lives of the children that come to Crystal Peaks.
Meet Little Bear. Little Bear is a draft horse cross. He is the product of a well known Canadian industry called the PMU program. PMU stands for pregnant mare urine. These very large, extremely docile horses are used, mainly in Canada, for the prime purpose of collecting the valuable urine used to make the drug you may know as Premarin... a hormone replacement used by women during menopause. They use these large draft mares for the sheer volume of urine they are able to produce. Once a mare is pregnant, they confine her to a stall that's only a couple of feet larger than the mare herself. She's fed and water and then the urine is collected by either an internal or external catheter-like contraption. They have a gestation period of about 11 months, their foal is born and they are immediately re-bred so that the cycle of urine collection can continue on. The foals are simply by-products of the entire system.
When a little filly (female) is born, she can be turned back in and used in the program when she's old enough to breed. The colts (males), however, are of no use and are turned out as quickly as possible. They will turn the weanlings (at about 3 months old) out into a lot so that they can be sold. Those who are not able to be sold, are most usually destroyed.
Kim has a friend that lives nearby and she travels every year with a huge trailer in an effort to get her hands on these young colts. The nearly 1000 mile trek to Canada has all sorts of hazards that go along with such a trip, but on one particular trip she found herself in the midst of a miracle.
Kim's friend went to the sale, planning to carry about 100 of the young colts on her trailer back to her farm in Oregon. She looked through the lot and found, crushed in the middle of the herd, a very small buckskin colt. He was absolutely filthy and looked to be injured, but because of the dirt that was caked all over him there was no way to really know for sure. As a part of the selection and approval process for the colts, they were required to pass a couple of vet inspections before they could leave the lot. The little buckskin was in the center of the herd and Kim's friend knew she had to try to help him. As they were making their selections, she pointed out the young buckskin and he was passed on through the first inspection. Two more to go!
The next vet check was going to be on the way in the trailer. Because there were so many horses to sort through and so little time to do it, I suppose the vet at this checkpoint was just "eyeballing" them and letting them on through, too. So, up on the trailer he went, crushed in the middle of the rest of his herd. If he was injured, Kim's friend only prayed that he could survive the ride home. She knew exactly who could help this frail little thing if anyone could... Troy and Kim!
The checkpoint next was customs. Would you believe that the injured little man passed through there, too? And although it went against every "rule" it was almost as if those charged with keeping the sick, lame and injured horses from passing out of Canada and into the United States had been blinded, somehow, to the little buckskin colt that could.
I'm sure you are wondering about the injury that he had sustained and what made this draft horse remain so much smaller than the rest of the weanlings his own age....
Soon after the colts were turned into the lot at the back of the PMU farm, guarded only by a thin fence that held them in, there was a bear attack. The bear came over the fence and landed with both paws tearing at the hindquarters of the little buckskin colt. The tears were to both "hips" and went down toward his hocks. For reasons unknown, the little colt lived and the bear left the lot. His wounds were deep and his pain must have been excruciating, but the little colt survived. As he lay in the lot his wounds were covered in mud, perhaps saving his life. Although that would probably not be the first choice for dressing a wound by a veterinarian, it worked long enough to stop the bleeding and allow the mud to dry into a sort of pack that held his torn flesh in place.
When the little colt arrived safely in the US he was taken directly to Kim's vet. They looked him over and couldn't imagine how he had survived that attack, much less the 1000 mile haul to Oregon. But he did. And to this day, Little Bear's story of remarkable persistence and unbelievable odds has inspired hundreds of children to push through their circumstances and to hold on and wait on God!
If you look closely you can see that the scares from his attacker are still very evident. He is not lame, but he carries with him the scars that could've killed him. Thankfully they are behind him and all he sees today are the loving hands of little kids who can't imagine that this gentle giant would want to be their friend. Little Bear truly is an inspiration and his story will live on forever because of Crystal Peaks.
Troy and Kim bought the piece of land that no one else wanted. This old cinder pit was covered in the small red lava rock that you see in this photo. The entire 8.9 acre lot looked exactly like this! When they took the land that no one else wanted, they spent their entire savings on water. The well they had to dig was over 800 feet below the surface of this desolate piece of land and it took everything they had to find it. So because of the cost of the well, Troy and Kim had to buy a mobile home instead of building their dream home on the land. But God had given Kim a vision for this place and nothing was going to stop her. Her love for horses... and Troy's love for her... were forces that, when combined with the power of God and prayer, have proven unstoppable!
Troy was a landscaping contractor and has an amazing gift for seeing what can be out of what isn't. Their property was blessed by his vision and ability. While at a job site just after they had purchased their "farm", there was a fire that had consumed most of the trees that they were going to use on a big job they were working on. The foreman of that job told Troy to haul them off because the little pine trees were destroyed and they would have to be replaced. Troy asked the foreman if he could take them home with him instead and was told to "go for it".
When he arrived home with the crispy young trees, he noticed that deep within the charred crust of the young trees was the whitish green sign of life that he suspected might be there. He hauled in some good soil, nursed the young trees back to life and they are the pine trees that stand over Crystal Peaks to this day.
What do you have to work with? Troy and Kim had land that no one wanted. They had rocky soil that couldn't spring forth water and trees that had been thrown away as refuse. They had horses that had been left for dead, abused, shot, attacked... horses that were never loved. And they had a God that chose to use just what they had to help minister hope to kids who were hurting. Isn't that the craziest thing you've ever heard?
In the photo above you can see the back of the farm. This area is at the top of the hill that makes up Crystal Peaks. You can see the rocks are still there, just as Troy and Kim found them. There's a fence there, just to keep the horses safe, but other than that, this is the cinder pit as they found it. Troy and Kim chose to leave this area for a purpose. It's the memorial to them that "With God, nothing is impossible". Do you believe that? Just like the scars that will follow Little Bear around for the rest of his life, and just like the red lava rock hill that the Meeders call home, do you have a place you can look back to and say that you know for sure that God is there?
God told His own children, the Israelites, to built altars and memorials all the time. He knew that once He brought them through a hard time they would keep moving forward and never look back. He knew that once their trials were over they might have a tendency to forget about the miracles He'd done for them. He rescued them from an evil Pharaoh. He allowed them to escape from Egypt. He parted an entire sea and allowed them to cross on dry land. Over and over again God would rescue them and before you could bat an eye, they were right back in the middle of whining and crying over their next little boo-boo.
But before you think I'm being too hard on the poor children of Israel, please know that I've been right there with 'em! Oh, I've thanked God plenty for getting me out of a jam here and there! But I'll be John Brown if I don't take a couple of steps doing things my way and focusing my eyes back on what ole Rhonda wants and forget all about what God did for me.
Oh, that God would forgive me for forgetting His mercy and grace in my life! This "blog" is my way of building an altar. I know it's probably not exactly what God had in mind when He was instructing the Israelites to "remember"... but I can't afford a billboard right now and I want to share His mercy with as many people as a I possibly can!!!
Troy and Kim's story has resonated with me in such a way that I want to make every effort to carry out the call of God on our life, too. I know that our God is more than able to have His way and His will be done in the live of hurting people here, just like He's reaching hurting people in Oregon. If He choses to use horses or a farm or Paul and me to do it, so be it!
I am so thankful that God has opened this door up for us and I'm as eager and anxious as ever to see what tomorrow holds for Whispering Pines Ranch. Some of you are starting to see that our God is still alive and that He really does have plans! I've been asked already if we are taking donations... people are wanting to be a part of what God is doing for the kids here in Mississippi, too!
I'm going to ask for help tonight in our blog. I'm going to ask you to earnestly seek God in prayer and ask Him to make clear to Paul and me HIS plan and HIS will for Whispering Pines Ranch. He told us that "the effective, fervent prayer of a righteous man accomplishes much" and we are believing it!
Thank you for your patience and for enduring my ramblings! Perseverance is surely your spiritual gift!
It's amazing how our mighty God can use even a poor ole injured horse to show His power and love. I'm praying that God will reveal His mighty plan for you and Paul and for the farm. I'm also praying for all the people, and especially the children, that will be helped through this ministry.
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