Our Life Together Vol 3 Nr 11 March 18, 1975

The thing that caught my eye on this issue was the birth of Joshua Mower. This opened a strange and wonderful chapter in the life of our community. Cathy, Joshua's mother was a young lady with many problems. She was under Psychiatric Care and spend some time institutionalized. For a while she was in community. We did the best we could through prayer and other ministry to bring healing to her. In fact, one of the first things that I did after coming back from the Navy was to participate in the "24 hour" ministry with her. One night I was assigned to the Mid Watch (Midnight until 4 in the morning). Our job was to pray over her and, if she became restless, to read scriptures to her. The we is another chapter in my life, another new person to community, Penni Neely (then Wilson) was placed with me. We have now been friends for about 35 years. Anyway, back to the story of Joshua.

Since Cathy was unable to care for him, he was assigned to a young, unmarried woman, Jacque Johns (now Mays) to care for him. Of course, Jacque quickly became his mother. As a side note, Jacque went on a trip to England later in the year and my wife Linda took care of him in Jacque's absence. Josh was a cute little thing and Linda had a hard time giving him back to Jacque. As time went on and it became certain that Cathy would never be able to really care for him, something needed to be done to satisfy legal, guardianship issues. We didn't want him to end up in the foster care system -- he was too much a part of us. Jacque applied to become his foster parent.

Becoming a foster parent as a single person was quite unusual at the time. Then there was the issue of Josh's biological dad, not to mention that Jacque was living in a commune. No one knew where the bio-dad was. We had to advertise throughout the areas where we felt he might be. No answer came. Then, not only did Jacque need to be investigated to be certified as a foster parent, the entire household had to be certified -- all 20+ of us had to be checked out. It worked. Josh became Jacque's real foster child. We were all part of the foster family. Joshua really became a part of us. Since then, Jacque was married and Josh was adopted into the family. He is now a grown parent himself.

I think that this was one of those chapters that demonstrated some of the best aspects of community life. Josh would probably have become a part of the child care system if the household had not been there. We were committed to Jacque. We were committed to Joshua. I haven't seen him for years, but I really love him and certainly remember him well. A neat time.