Pastor Robert Morgan: "This was our last project together."

I've got you to ask a question.

Our t vetoed and our m Friends. This is going to be quite one week in the trusting you are with people we that we never looked into the future and ask where is this disease going? We just took things one day at a time and on the day or two before she bed and she was sort of confused and more or less out of it but she suddenly started quoting that great hymn by Charles Wesley, O for a Thousand Tongues. She quoted the verse that says, my gracious master and my God, assist me to proclaim to tell to all the world abroad the honors of thy name and she quoted that twice and she just loved the Lord and had a smile on her face until the very end and I have been trying to figure out what grief really feels like. It's such a mixture of emotions but it may be because there was so much anticipatory grief involved in her extended illness but I haven't felt overwhelming sadness as much as I just feel thankfulness. I put her picture, every wall or table in our house right now has a picture of her. You would think that it's a shrine but those pictures aren't making me sad.

They're making me feel grateful, just grateful. So you know she made it to heaven before I did Peter but all of us who have come through the blood of Christ are on that same journey and I'm grateful she made it safely home. We are too and I love that hymn and I love that was the last hymn that she left this world with. The last line of that hymn is one that means a lot to Gracie and me and Gracie sings it with such passion, and leap ye lame for joy.

Oh yes. That she has two prosthetic legs, that means a lot to her when she says, leap ye lame and leap ye lame for joy. And I thought you know that is a very meaningful thing for her to leave this world with that in mind and in her heart and we rejoice that she is free from all of this stuff with MS. We grieve with you and your family and we celebrate her life with you today and I know that as a caregiver through all these journeys you stayed on message for also for the calling you have on your life as a writer as a pastor and I mean your books have touched so many people. Your books about history now the history of our hymns and now you've delved in this thing with the history of our country and you were doing this as your wife was passing away and yet you were able to do this and this is always this is one of the things I really encourage my fellow caregivers to do is to don't stop being who you are in the midst of this.

You may have to limit it you may have to be creative but this is who God made you to be while you care give. You don't have to put your entire life on hold you can write and you have. Tell us about this book that you've written and why it was important for you to delve into this. Well one of the choice of writing is that it was one thing that Katrina could help me with.

Right up until near the end the last few months she had trouble with it but I would write a chapter or an article or something print it off and she would read it and look for errors and it gave her a you know she'd sit in her wheelchair and she couldn't mark too well but she could make a big circle around you know a mistake with a pen that she found and this was the last book that she helped me with it was in production when she passed away. But this is a book Peter about American history and the role of the bible in it. It is a series of 100 stories each story is three pages long it's very something that that caregivers and and their care receivers could could read to one another and and it's like a look of daily devotions every story has a bible verse and then there is the story of how that bible verse impacted some significant moment in American history and you know the secularist right now I can tell you this you know it are trying to push everything that is biblical or Christian everything about actual day of Christian heritage out of our textbooks out of our schools and out of our media in every way and I just want to push it right back in there because trying to take the bible out of American history and the significance of the impact of the bible out of the lives of those who have founded and guided this nation is an impossible task there is not an eraser big enough to erase the influence of the bible in American history and so this is just a very readable uh set of stories giving specific occasions when that happened.

Well tell me what is what are some things that you learned as you dug into this that surprised you? I learned that America is much more infiltrated with scripture than we realized for example at the battle of Lexington and Concord when the British came towards those towns it was a pastor named Jonas Clark who rang the church bell gathered his members and villagers that he had been preaching liberty to every Sunday from his pulpit and they were standing there in the church yard when the British emerged and the first shots of the American revolution we call it the shot fired around the world was fired at a pastor and at his congregation. I learned that Andrew Jackson it was a wild scandalous sort of fellow and hard to manage and had a real temper and got into duels and you know sent the Cherokees to Oklahoma and did things that were both good and bad but we look at him and think what a character he was but after he retired when he was an old and tired man to his home in the hermitage he attended a revival meeting and gave his wife to Jesus Christ and studied his bible and gave the message to everyone who had come to see him and he loved the hymn how firm a foundation and he sang it on his deathbed and I learned that Ronald Reagan wrote a letter on white house stationery in his own unique scrawl to his father-in-law beseeching him to receive Jesus Christ as his lord and savior and quoting to him John 3 16 it was as an evangelistic letter as you'll ever see so all the way through from the pilgrims all the way up to the presidential prayer breakfast the role of the bible is so entrenched in American history it is like the pedestal for the Statue of Liberty.

Well and I want to I want to mind that a little bit more but one of the things I want to also interject here to to the listeners is who you are as far as the church hymns because you've written these tremendous books then sings my souls a whole series of them and you tell the story behind the hymns and these things have sold you know many you know millions of copies I have I think two of them two copies of each one so these are things that I just cherish and love and you probably know the story when you were thinking about the Revolutionary War because Isaac Watts wrote so much of our early hymnal in this country that we used Isaac Watts is also the one who wrote the Joy to the World with the text with that I believe but his hymnal was was used prolifically and there was a pastor another pastor in Rhode Island named Campbell I can't remember his first name but he was his wife was shot through the the window of their home and and she was killed his house was burned down and he became a chaplain for the American troops in the Revolutionary War and at one point they ran out of they ran out of they ran out of packing paper wadding paper for their muskets that he ran into the church building and brought out a hymnal and held it up real loud he's going to use the paper from the hymnal says give them Watts boys and he's going to use Watts's hymnal to help pack the muskets and they were literally firing at the enemy with with the hymns of the church and I thought surely you've heard that story before I have heard this story before you're gracious don't let me tell it oh no I didn't include it in this book you know Peter I could have this could have been a thousand bible verses that made America I mean the biggest challenge I had was what to leave out because there are so many stories like that that you can trace back to scripture and back to the great hymns and they have influenced American history and I think each one of them gives us hope you know I have another book that caregivers have used very widely called the Red Sea Rules and it too is written in little short increments but as caregivers we don't always have time to sit down and read for half an hour but when you have something brief that can give you encouragement for 100 days in a row and that you can share with others then you know there's something about the power of those verses and the stories behind them that encourages us and that's what I hope for this book that that I really did write while caregiving and my wife we say that we were both caregivers one to the other but this was our last project together 100 bible verses that made America. Well Pastor Robert Morgan one of my absolute favorite people in the whole world you sir have been an inspiration to me for many years our paths have intersected on a lot of different levels I'm so grateful that you called into the show today and took the time I'm going to put this out on the podcast this interview with him and I want you to be able to download it share it with people you know get this book he is a wonderful writer you're going to love it it's available wherever books are sold and please take advantage of this 100 bible verses that made America. Pastor thank you very much for the time today okay.

You're welcome Peter God bless you. All right you too this is Hope for the Caregiver this is Peter Rosenberger 877-655-65 6755. Have you ever struggled to trust God when lousy things happen to you? I'm Gracie Rosenberger and in 1983 I experienced a horrific car accident leading to 80 surgeries and both legs amputated. I questioned why God allowed something so brutal to happen to me but over time my questions changed and I discovered courage to trust God that understanding along with an appreciation for quality prosthetic limbs led me to establish standing with hope for more than a dozen years we've been working with the government of Ghana and West Africa equipping and training local workers to build and maintain quality prosthetic limbs for their own people.

On a regular basis we purchase and ship equipment and supplies and with the help of inmates in a Tennessee prison we also recycle parts from donated limbs. All of this is to point others to Christ the source of my hope and strength. Please visit standingwithhope.com to learn more and participate in lifting others up. That's standingwithhope.com. I'm Gracie and I am standing with hope. Welcome back to Hope for the Caregiver this is Peter Rosenberger this is the nation's number one show for you as a family caregiver we are so glad that you are with us. 877-655-6755 that is Gracie and Russ Taft singing off of her new record resilient and congrats by the way to Russ Taft he was at Carnegie Hall I think last night and that's quite a bit you know how to get to Carnegie Hall John? Practice, practice. Okay I mean honestly I had to do it. If you want to get a copy of that record this is the last month we're doing this and then we're going to do something a little different with it but this is the last month for any amount that you want to give to standing with hope which is the presenting sponsor of this show and you've heard Gracie's story you've heard her share her vision for this many years ago when she gave up her legs she envisioned a way of reaching her fellow amputees with a powerful way of lifting them up literally and pointing them to Christ and we do that we've been doing that for 15 years in the West African country of Ghana and we ship prosthetic supplies over there along with used prosthetic supplies recycled prosthetic parts of things like the pylons the feet the knees and the screws and adapters and connectors and sleeves and all those kinds of things that can be recycled and they go to a prison in Tennessee run by CoreCivic CoreCivic has many faith-based programs and one of them is our program where inmates volunteer to disassemble limbs for us it's kind of cool you know and and it's I mean if think about what you just said okay it's very cool it's very cool the the amount of like things that had to come together for this to be pulled off is rather unexpected so well and I will tell you that at the front desk there at this prison they're used to getting I mean you'll you'll often see stacks of legs that have come in but it's a little bit weird and but they're kind of used to it by now aren't wind arms too and we just had one I think that was from a World War II veteran or something it was very old like the old style of leg and and the the manager there at CoreCivic wrote me he said I don't know how to describe this that's okay I do and I said just tell me was it above knee or below knee I'll go from there right right but but those those old legs and you know there's still parts on there that we may be able to to to use let us make the determination don't throw it away we'll take it and if we can't use it I'm gonna turn it into a lamp you know I mean we we've actually had people do that and yeah we you know we were actually contacted by American Horror Story I don't know if I ever told you that no you never told me that really weird show the American Horror Story and they contacted us and wanted to talk about getting some of our prosthetic legs to use in an episode and I said no we're using them for amputees over in West Africa we're not gonna give them to you get them back maybe they'll be coming I didn't I didn't have that confidence and so all right I figured you know I'm not you know that's a little side note piece of trivia I think I just surprised you with that didn't I John yeah you did absolutely but no they they we we we go through we disassemble them the inmates there at this this facility they they help us organize them and then we ship them over we got a shipment going this month and and then Gracie and I and the team we're going to go over this summer and we're going to do this and continue and if you want to be a part of that if you want to support that there's several ways you can do one of them is you know what pray for us it's it's an amazing work that we do Gracie could be nursing her own wounds and retreating into you know isolation but she's not she's going out there and she's she's putting herself in a position to I mean she it it cost her something physically to do this uh to get on a plane and go to Africa and she does this with her broken body and she works with these broken lives in a prison and we take parts from other broken people and we go over there to Africa we provide limbs to other broken people it's an extraordinary work and we do all this to point to the one who is broken for us you know how about being a part of that and you can do it today you can go out to standingwithhope.com and you can just whatever's on your heart to give we'll send you a copy of Gracie's CD it is a very good CD she is a no kidding singer and that voice of hers I've listened to it for a lifetime and I would oh I had to laugh John when he was talking about that Rob was talking about his wife Katrina was editing his stuff we've tried that in our house it gets loud it gets real loud I've heard about that voice of hers goes up several octaves I mean but you know and she does it right with big circles she right it comes back and it's all in the margin I mean it's mind-numbing and I'm like you can't edit my stuff anymore I'm not gonna let this happen this is killing us and it's but I had to laugh because obviously they worked out an agreement right well they and they they had this yeah that's a beautiful thing that you could find it's rare but Rob is a very even-keeled guy and his wife Katrina very even-keeled lady even-keeled that is those are not words that are normally associated the same sentence with Gracie and me I was gonna say this is the these are not adjectives that I would pick out of the hat no no it's I would pick out very positive adjectives we we have we have our positive traits yeah even-keeled is not is not among them and we're you know it's so but she has helped me with that over the years and still does sometimes and I go in there with great trepidation and I just hand it to her because you know some of the stuff she says is right yes there is but she tells you see I told you this is really good I said yes but but look at us we're we're in the ICU following this event we don't need to go to this level so I highly creative people fun I mean poke a little fun I don't mean to poke fun yes you do yes you do this is entertaining to you and so but we are highly creative people and that's what we do but well if you want to be a part of that it's a delight to see the result it really is Gracie just texted she's following along she said careful in all caps so if you want to be a part of this we would welcome that you can you can do whatever you want to do towards the show towards the the prosthetic limb outreach you could pray share it with friends tell somebody you know about this recycling program it is an extraordinary thing that that is going on be a part of it today standingwithhope.com hey listen we're out of time the podcast is free it's out there it's all out on our website just go take a look don't try to do this alone friends don't let friends care give alone okay this is why we do the show you're why we do the show okay healthy caregivers make better caregivers our goal is every show that we leave you better than we found you did we do that today let us know about it helpforthecaregiver.com this is Peter Rosenberg we'll see you next week