Volume 26, Issue 5
WisconsinChristianNews.com
Page 27
Letters to the Editor
Stones Or Bread?
Editor, Wisconsin Christian News: September 2025
a job as a road construction flag- ger. Hours soon dwindled and she was not making enough to survive on. During a weekend outing with friends to Bear Lake, her 1988 Ford truck was towed away and she was left with no means of transportation.
selves? Why can’t we put away the Book of Excuses and stop the habits that are ME-cen- tered? Why the vacations and trips to the casi- nos, endless shopping, smok- ing, drinking? What if we gifted that money and helped others
after filling out forms! When has Jesus not helped us and asked us to complete forms? Let’s give more bread, not stones. *NOTE: If you would like to make any donations to Caitlin or her family, let me know by e-mail I will put you in contact with them, with their permission. Of further note and answer to prayer: Pastor Dan at a church in Idaho has agreed to pay the towing fees to get Caitlin’s truck back for her this after- noon. Why was I left wondering why this pastor could somehow help? I guess he didn’t have to spend $2,000.00 on a new aluminum bridge. I am doing church at home now with Caitlin’s family and others from Lamont.
I will probably get sued for writing this...accused of telling lies about our church and the people running it in 2025. This article will be based solely upon my opinion and observations of the situation at hand and our duties as Christians and Christ-centered believ- ers who example the walk, not just the talk. This is a true and ongoing story. I moved to the small town of Lamont, Washington in the wheat fields of East- ern Washington in August of 2022. Dur- ing that time, I attended our local church...about fifty feet from my front door. Having been a transplant from Western Washington, a liberal strong- hold, it took the attendees time to get used to me and get over their fears that I was there to spy on them. Though a former Catholic (strike one) and former alcoholic (strike two) I was not afraid to voice my opinion regarding the neighbors and their lifestyles. This included freeloading (mooching) behav- iors and noticed that our town did not offer any social services. We did not even have a bank, gas station, or cops cruising town. People left their doors un- locked and trusted neighbors. If you were new, though, chances were very strong that you would be taken advan- tage of. It was not a matter of if, but when. Fast forward to August of 2024. A nice young couple in their twenties, Caitlin and Cody, joined our little church. They became baptized Christians and soon were married. We were thrilled. Finally, our little church had a hopeful future. The youth would someday takeover and Christendom would be saved. Christmas night, Cody died unexpect- edly in his sleep. He was only 33 and his wife 27. They had been married for two months and life for her would rap- idly change. Her stepdad, Chris, and her mother, Christian, soon joined Caitlin at the mar- ital home which stood a few doors down from the church. Their goal was to live together and be there for her as she mourned. They, too, mourned deeply. Meanwhile, leaking plumbing was dis- covered in the basement and Chris, a former home builder, discovered black mold growing in the walls of the base- ment and the rugs and furniture. It was later discovered in autopsy that Cody had died from a weakened immune sys- tem and pneumonia. Mold may have been the culprit. Soon, Christian, Caitlin’s mother, came down with a sim- ilar illness and was airlifted to a Spokane hospital. She barely survived. To further complicate matters, any monies collected at the memorial serv- ice for Cody were soon spent to bury him and try to make house payments. There was no insurance on the home and no possibility of collecting Social Security. That would have required at least ten years being married to qualify for pressing a claim. Again, they were only married for two months. Since Cody had been a U.S. Air Force veteran and honorably discharged on a medical, the government paid for his headstone and cremation. There had been no life insurance pur- chased by Cody and the family was un- able to make the large mortgage payments to the bank. It soon went into foreclosure. Adding to Caitlin’s misery, there was no work in Lamont, some sixty miles southeast of Spokane. She had to relocate to Idaho, where she was invited to stay with her sister, Bridgette, and a best friend and her baby. Rent was high and Caitlin found
missions. However, there was no sup- port for any local charity in Lamont. The poor were knocking on doors asking for food, to do laundry, have a place to set up a trailer to live in without fear of it being towed by police...as in Spokane. What was next? I made the awful mistake of asking what the mission of the church was. Were we to just show up, listen to a ser- mon, sleep in the pews, have a snack afterwards, then go home? Was this a feel-good-only church made of cotton candy? Where were the folks who could give from their needs instead of their wants? After the board meeting, I left the church, quite frustrated. A clear barrier to really sacrificing to help the poor had been set up or all efforts at helping the local poor were being blocked. Why? Later that night it hit me. Every person on that board had taken a vacation this past year. One had gone to Japan twice, then Texas twice; another trav- eled with another lady from church to Belgium; another couple went to Canada; another couple had gone to Oregon. Finally, another couple and the lady who had visited Belgium had gone on the same cruise (at different times) to Alaska from Seattle. I figured that each trip made cost close to $2,000. Just adding up the folks’ spending led me to conclude that if we had adopted Caitlin’s family, a lot of their suffering would have been avoided. I made the suggestion of adopting one family per year by the church. Why not? Why were we helping people in foreign lands and ignoring those at home? Something had to give. I made a few calls to members of the board. They voiced anger at my hav- ing suggested that they were not gen- erous enough and ignored the poor. How could they go on vacations? When I mentioned Christ preaching about the following...why the angry backlash? “If your brother ask for bread, do you hand him a stone?” One cannot eat stones and survive. Why the apathy? Why the cold hearts? My grandfather survived the Great Depression. He was a baker and brough people bread when he went to visit them. I asked him why he did this. He stated, “If you see that people have a need, do not wait for them to ask for help. Simply help them quietly and give to them from your needs...not your wants. After all, son, that could be you someday.” When he worked in coal mines in Black Diamond, Washington, along- side of his father, they used to do the following. They would meet grandma at the mine entrance. She held out her skirt and they would throw the money that they had made that day into it. They were a family. Nobody starved. Forty years later, they owned five houses in that town. They were all paid off. What has happened to us? Why can’t we love our neighbors like our-
The towing fees were over $600 and climbing. The truck had been a high school graduation gift to Cody and was in need of repairs. Lamont neighbors helped buy her a new starter and bat- tery and install new head gaskets. She lovingly drove it until the fateful confis- cation day. Meanwhile, her mother and stepfather were in receipt of a foreclosure notice by the bank and plans to bulldoze the house. It was a biohazard...not worth re- building. They had days to vacate and find places to move their possessions to. They ended up with Chris taking care of Christian and his not being able to find steady work. It resulted in selling items to a hock shop nearby and then having the brakes on the back of Chris’s truck explode into shrapnel. Parts to re- place them would be expensive. Luck- ily, he was also proficient at car repairs. He just lacked money. At this point, I was letting people at the church know what was going on weekly with the family. One man stepped forward with $50 cash and another lady, her husband, and her sister donated $300 in cash to help them buy the needed parts to re- pair his truck. It was their lifeline. After going with Chris to the auto parts store, he had exactly $1 left over...proof that another prayer had been answered by God. This past week, I was invited to attend the church board meeting as an ob- server. I was also allowed to speak when it was my turn. Two subjects were brought up….aiding a local food bank program called Feed Sprague and re- quest to have the church pay the hall fees for the program for the rest of 2025. That was done. The next topic was the rotting bridge out front from the road to the church en- trance. The boards of the bridge were dry-rotting and in need of replacement; the alternative was having a new bridge built to replace the rotten one. Argu- ments went back and forth. One man suggested it be taken out and burned and folks walk an extra fifteen feet through the driveway to the front door. No need to spend money! Another sug- gested rebuilding it at a cost of materials and donated labor by men in the church. A further suggestion was to place a large metal culvert pipe in its place and flatten the top down and add dirt and grass for people to cross over… .then install railings for safety. The pas- tor said he would research the idea of placing an aluminum bridge with railings he had seen sold on the internet. It was best for handicap use. A few days went by and pastor’s idea seemed to carry the most weight and satisfied the Easy Button. The cost? $2,000.00, which would be paid from church funds. I was reminded that since he did not take a salary as pastor, that the church could afford to support sev- eral overseas missions. I was basically told to sit down and shut up. After all, I was still considered an outsider. Over three years, I had observed the church’s mission in supporting foreign
without their having to ask? Or, as one board member had suggested in a meeting….help them avoid spending it on drugs and alcohol and other habits? I blurted out….like drinking, smoking, shopping, or vacationing? They had no rocks to stone me to death with. It was the pot calling the kettle black. (Kill the messenger.) Another wanted the poor to formally come to them to request help
-Sean Taeschner, Lamont, WA
SeanTaeschner@Outlook.com (509) 992-2223
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