Benjamin Bushong: Chief engineer of the seagoing cowboy program

Benjamin G. Bushong’s deep friendship with Dan West would have unforeseen consequences for this Pennsylvania dairy farmer and Guernsey breeder. When West came home in 1938 from relief work in Spain during the Spanish Civil War with the idea of sending cows to Spain to help provide starving children with the milk they needed, he shared his idea with Bushong around the Bushong’s kitchen table. From that point on, Bushong became a confidante and advisor for West on getting the program adopted and started.

Benjamin G. Bushong. Photo courtesy of Mark Bushong.

The Heifer Project, started in northern Indiana in 1942, came into being as a program of the Brethren Service Committee of the Church of the Brethren in January 1943. That same year, the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration [UNRRA] was formed by 44 of the allied nations to be ready to assist devastated countries at war’s end.

Soon after VE-Day in Europe in May 1945, UNRRA made its first test-run in shipping live cargo – six purebred bulls to Greece, supplied by the Heifer Project. Bushong proved his organizational and red-tape cutting abilities engineering this shipment.

Of this experience, Bushong’s granddaughter Rebecca Bushong notes, “The work was tiring and frustrating, but in these early dealings with UNRRA and world governments, Ben Bushong was learning valuable lessons in diplomacy that would serve him and his denomination well in the coming years.”*

With this successful shipment, UNRRA decided to include live animals in their shipments to Europe. But they had a problem: where would they find the handlers for their livestock? Heifer Project also had a problem: where would they find ships for theirs? An agreement was made: UNRRA would ship Heifer Project animals free of charge, and the Brethren Service Committee [BSC] would recruit all the cattle tenders UNRRA needed.

Having proved his value to both organizations with the bull shipment, the Brethren Service Committee drafted Bushong to be their “man on the spot” on the east coast for working with UNRRA. Bushong’s and his family’s life would never be the same. Starting on a volunteer basis from home, he served double duty as recruiting agent for UNRRA’s livestock handlers and coordinator of Heifer Project shipments for BSC – and on top of that, also managing his farm in Pennsylvania. The first shipments of UNRRA cattle and BSC “seagoing cowboys” departed from US shores the end of June 1945.

News clipping from Lancaster, PA, newspaper, 1945.

UNRRA’s program soon mushroomed, with an estimated need of 8,000 cattle tenders to see the program through. The heavy responsibilities pulled Bushong off the farm, which his son Mark ran by then. Headquarters for the seagoing cowboy office were established at the Brethren Service Center in New Windsor, Maryland. By March 1946, BSC put Bushong on salary as the executive director of the Heifer Project and head of the seagoing cowboy program, a position he held until 1951. Throughout UNRRA’s two years of shipping livestock, they employed nearly 7,000 seagoing cowboys.

The busy seagoing cowboy office at the Brethren Service Center, New Windsor, MD, 1946. Photo courtesy of Brethren Historical Library and Archives.

Bushong’s office recruited and handled payroll for them all. It boggles the mind to think of all the juggling acts this one man and his small staff had to perform to see that the right number of cattle tenders, with proper papers in hand, were in place at the right time for the right ship – and in the case of UNRRA shipments which included Heifer Project cattle, the right number of animals with the proper papers. Not to mention Bushong’s numerous committee meetings, negotiations with US and foreign government officials, dealing with longshoremen strikes, and handling problem cases or injuries of seagoing cowboys.

The Heifer Project Committee meeting at Quaker Hill in Richmond, Indiana, July 20, 1949. Benjamin Bushong is seated at the table next to Dan West on the right. Photo credit: Palladium-Item.

Bushong was definitely a man on the go!

* Bushong, Rebecca, “Ben Bushong – Apostle of Mercy,” Brethren Life and Thought, Spring 1979, p. 73

Clarksville Victory program coming up!

I’m looking forward to telling the story of the Clarksville Victory seagoing cowboys at the Customs House Museum & Cultural Center in Clarksville, TN, Thursday night!

The SS Clarksville Victory and Her Seagoing Cowboys: Healing the Wounds of War

March 16 @ 6:00 pm – 7:00 pm

Free to the public; does not include Museum admission | Turner Auditorium 

The SS Clarksville Victory, named after the city of Clarksville, Tennessee, made seven trips to Europe after World War II delivering livestock to Poland and Greece for the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA). In an illustrated talk, Peggy Reiff Miller will bring to life the story of the men, dubbed “seagoing cowboys,” who tended the animals on these voyages. Some of the first civilians to enter Europe after the war, their service helped to rebuild a broken world. 

Customs House Museum & Cultural Center
200 S 2nd St
Clarksville, TN 37040-3400

Stories from the S.S. Mount Whitney – Dangers at sea

Seagoing cowboys often faced dangers at sea, and this was true for those on the S.S. Mount Whitney, as well. Mines like this one found by divers off the eastern coast of Greece in 2016 still lurked in European waterways.

World War II mine found off the coast of Skopelos, Greece, 2016. Source: Reporter.com

The ship’s crew had to be on constant lookout for mines bobbing in the water. Seagoing cowboys were often asked to take their turn standing watch.

Luke Bomberger recalled an incident on Mount Whitney‘s second trip, on the way home after unloading the Icelandic ponies in Poland. “My dad was up in the mess hall in the afternoon playing chess with another guy,” he said, “and I was out on the deck. There was a first, second, and third mate, and they had different watches. Those guys never run, they walk. They’re officers. I saw the second mate RUN into the wheelhouse, and I thought ‘there’s somethin’ up.’ And I looked over the side, and just like that, about the time he got in the wheelhouse, I could feel the ship turn, and he spun that wheel real fast and turned the rudder, and I looked down and there was a mine, and it was that close I could have spit on it.”

That was October 3, 1946. Bomberger’s shipmate Harold Jennings recorded in his diary that day, “They had to swerve the boat out of the path of a mine – Really shook everyone up.”

Owen Schlabach reports another mine incident in December, 1946, on the way home from the Mount Whitney‘s third trip to Poland.* “After we left the Baltic Sea it was really smooth, with nice sailing, until 4:00 in the morning when we heard a loud noise; they had dropped the anchor. Our ship was equipped with a mine detector, and when the lights started to blink they would drop the anchor, because they didn’t know where the mine was. About two hours later we were off a distance when we saw a ship come the other way and hit the mine. We saw it slowly turn on its side. It took about three hours to sink, but they managed to get all the people off.”

Rough Atlantic seas on Mount Whitney‘s second return trip to US.  Her next return trip was rougher yet.  Still shot, Luke Bomberger movie footage.

Atlantic storms posed another danger for the cowboys. Owen Schlabach reports running into a storm on their way home that lasted five days and nights. “The night before Christmas,” he said, “the waves were 60 feet high and the captain sent us word to be prepared, because he didn’t know if we would still be sailing by morning. This was a real concern for everyone, as a lifeboat was of no use in such a storm as this. The ship would creak and groan as if a giant hand was twisting it. That evening we had a prayer meeting till midnight.”

The cowboys anchored themselves into their beds by putting their arms and legs out through the railings to keep from falling as the ship rocked back and forth. “At 4:00,” Schlabach said, “we heard an awful noise. There was no place to run, so we just stayed where we were. Later we found out our metal lunch trays had gone sliding over onto the floor when the ship swayed so far to the side. Our shoes and clothes were all mixed together on the floor from sliding back and forth, making a real mess. But we were really thankful still to be sailing. We couldn’t sit down to eat for all five days, but we would just stand and try to balance our trays. Sometimes the ship leaned so far that water spilled out of the commodes.”

After arriving back in Newport News, Virginia, on New Year’s Day 1947, the Mount Whitney went into dry dock for repairs from the thrashing it took. According to Schlabach, the newspapers called it the worst storm in history, with five ships sunk during the storm. “Thank God we were spared,” he said.

*Owen Schlabach’s story is recorded in Elmer K. Hertzler’s book Cowboy on the High Seas and Other Stories as told to Marie E. Cutman.

How a novel turned into a blog

This will be a more personal post. At my presentations, I am often asked how I got into this seagoing cowboy history. So today, I’ll share that story with you.

It all started with an envelope of my Grandpa Abe’s photos my father gave me some years after grandpa died.
Turns out, Grandpa Abe had been a seagoing cowboy, accompanying a load of horses to Poland the end of September 1946.

I grew up in the Church of the Brethren, the denomination responsible for recruiting all of the livestock tenders for UNRRA’s shipments of farm animals to Europe after World War II. From my youth magazines, I knew about these “seagoing cowboys.” But I DIDN’T know that my grandpa had been one of them. He never talked about it with us grandkids, and we never knew to ask. I knew there were a couple of Polish dolls in grandpa’s attic where we grandkids often played, but I didn’t make the connection until seeing his photos.

After receiving that envelope of photos, I got curious about what grandpa’s trip may have been like. So in January 2002, I interviewed a man from our church, Al Guyer, who I knew had been a seagoing cowboy to Poland. The end of that year, I signed up for a book writing course through the Institute of Children’s Literature to write a young adult novel. Grandpa’s photos and stories of Al Guyer’s eventful trip kept beckoning to me, and I thought, what a great topic! The trip of a 16-year-old seagoing cowboy to Poland! My instructor agreed. The topic was “something new and different under the sun,” she said. Being historical fiction, it would require a great deal of research, so I sought out more seagoing cowboys to interview.

Interviewing J. O. Yoder about his trip to Poland on the S. S. Clarksville Victory in December 1945.

One cowboy led to another, and another, and another. And their stories were so fascinating and compelling that I was hooked! It didn’t take long to realize that this was a rich history, just hiding away in people’s minds, and drawers, and attics, and my mission changed to that of documenting this little-known, not-to-be-forgotten history of how men of all stripes delivered hope to a war-torn world. I’ve been at it for twenty years now, accumulating a sizable archive of cowboy photos and stories too significant to just sit on my shelves.

In 2007, I created a DVD documentary photostory, A Tribute to the Seagoing Cowboys, which I took on a Tribute Tour around the country meeting more cowboys and gathering their stories.

Meeting and hearing from seagoing cowboys at Brethren Village retirement community in Lititz, PA, April 14, 2009.

I started my seagoing cowboys website in 2008, and what a game changer that was! I began to get requests for information of all types related to this history from as far away as Poland, Germany, Finland, and Japan. Inadvertently, I had become the recognized “expert” on the seagoing cowboys and the related history of the Heifer Project.

My novel did get drafted and revised, and revised, and revised, but never published. Instead, it sort of morphed into my children’s picture book The Seagoing Cowboy. In the summer of 2014, while that book was in the works, I decided the best way to get more of this history out into the world was to start a blog. And I’ve been at it ever since.

 

Oceans of Possibilities: Turning Swords into Plowshares

If you missed my program for the Indian Valley Public Library last week and would like to see it, you can tune in to the 56-minute recording here. I talk about the ways in which the seagoing cowboys and the Heifer Project contributed to building peace after World War II. Enjoy!

~Peggy

The Longest Ride – Part II: Life on board from the US to Greece

Today’s post picks up the story of the November 5, 1946, trip of the S. S. Carroll Victory to Greece and South Africa. I’m exceedingly grateful to Charlie Lord for sharing with me and granting me permission to use the letters he wrote to his wife while on this trip as well as his marvelous photo collection documenting this voyage. The following vignettes show in part what life on board was like for these seagoing cowboys apart from caring for their 785 horses.

Nov. 5 – “It has been unusually rough for the first day out they say. The ship is rolling sidewise a lot and rocking endwise, each end goes up and down 8 or 10 feet with each rock. . . . It’s very unhandy to be trying to re-arrange things in a locker, and find yourself sliding back and forth on the floor and the locker door banging back and forth against your leg with every roll. Dishes banged in the pantry and kitchen with that one.”

In the stormy Atlantic Ocean, November 1946. © Charles Lord

Nov. 6 – “The sea continues quite rough. The crew battened every thing down today after a flying box slid off into a passageway and almost hit a cattleman. . . . Down in lower two [hold where Lord worked], it sounds like thunder as hundreds of hooves go one or two steps forward then back on each roll. . . . Several cattlemen are feeling under the weather. I hope to get a picture of a man at the rail tomorrow.”

Nov. 7 – “Del just told about his getting caught in the cable, swinging on the end of the cable clear out over the stalls and the ocean and coming back to crash his shoulder into a bale of hay.”

Pulling up hay from the lower hold on a rocking ship was dangerous work. © Charles Lord

Nov. 11 – near the Azores. “A strong wind is blowing and the ship is pitching from end to end, lengthwise. It feels queer to be climbing a ladder and have to use most of your strength to get two or three rungs then float up the next two. Walking you climb a hill then are practically thrown through space. A few men are getting seasick again. . . . Tonight I saw sparks in the water behind the ship. It is a phosphorescent result of the propeller or something. It looks like diamonds in the sea.”

Cowboy supervisor Jesse Roth at the top of the hold 2 ladder. © Charles Lord

Nov. 12 – “There is a notice up about a Mail Buoy at the Rock of Gibraltar, but I hear it is a hoax. If it isn’t I hope to send this letter there.”

Charlie Lord at the Rock of Gibraltar. Looking for the mail buoy? November 1946. © Charles Lord

Nov. 13 – “The Mail Buoy is an old marine joke. I’ll send this in Greece. . . . I did my washing today. Main trouble is that soot from the smokestack leaves soot on them while drying. . . . I showed my pictures to the Chief Steward of the ship, a Negro, and asked him if I could take pictures of his department sometime. He has 14 men under him, about half colored & half white. I’ll bet Ebony would like pictures of an interracial crew at sea, without any mention of cattle-boating. I’ve never seen any article on the subject. He was enthusiastic, promised 100% cooperation. He said if I could get the story where all the people would see it, realize mixed races can get along when living close together in cramped quarters for weeks or months, it would help him & the whole Negro race.”

Nov. 15 – “We are supposed to go to Kavalla. But about a thousand guerrillas are loose with arms in that territory so we may not go there. . . . We got clean linen [today]. We get it once a week. 2 bath towels, 2 hand towels, 2 sheets, 1 pillow case, and clean bed spread every two weeks.”

Nov. 16 – “One of the things I dislike about this is the way most of the horses have colds or something, and have snotty noses. They often snort and cough & blow the mucous on a fellow when he is watering or feeding them. All in all, it’s a pretty easy job, though. The manure is beginning to smell now. It is getting warmer.”

Nov. 17 – nearing Kavalla. “We passed through a mine field and they sent all men up from the holds from 3:30 to 5:30 PM. We will pass through another in the morning and no one is to be in the holds below from 4 – 6 AM. We are due to reach Kavalla at about daybreak.”

Nov. 18 – “We arrived!”

Arriving in Kavalla, Greece, safe and sound November 18, 1946. © Charles Lord

Next post: Greek odyssey #1

In Memoriam

Another fifth Friday has rolled around, and with it a post remembering seagoing cowboys no longer with us.

Good, Ellis, January 10, 2022, Bourbonnais, Illinois. S. S. F. J. Luckenbach to Poland, January 15, 1946.

Guyer, C. Albert, February 28, 2022, Martinsburg, Pennsylvania. S. S. Mexican to Poland, November 8, 1945.

Kaufman, Lester, February 14, 2022, Millersburg, Ohio. S. S. Joshua Hendy to Poland, December 8, 1945.

Lammers, Richard Lewis, February 2, 2016, Pleasant Hill, Tennessee. S. S. Spartanburg Victory to Italy, March 17, 1947.

Layman, Wilbur Clement, January 24, 2022, Harrisonburg, Virginia. S. S. Charles W. Wooster to Greece, August 15, 1945; S. S. Bucknell Victory to Poland, February 16, 1946.

Morehouse, John, Jr., February 22, 2022, Goshen, Indiana. S. S. Lindenwood Victory to China, December 19, 1946.

Neuhauser, James Groff, January 8, 2022, San Juan, Puerto Rico. S. S. Pierre Victory to Poland, March 29, 1946; S. S. Plymouth Victory to Poland, May 11, 1946.

Schwartz, Arthur Edward, January 10, 2022, Henderson, North Carolina. S. S. Zona Gale to Yugoslavia (docking in Trieste, Italy), June 28, 1945; S. S. Frontenac Victory to Poland, June 6, 1946.

Shenk, Ellis, December 28, 2021, Bel Air, Maryland. S. S. American Importer to West Germany with the Heifer Project, November 7, 1953.

Stuntz, Hayward W., February 17, 2022, Plymouth, Indiana. S. S. Joshua Hendy to Poland, December 8, 1945.

Swords, Gene G., March 13, 2022, Lititz, Pennsylvania. S. S. Rockland Victory to Czechoslovakia (docking in Bremen, Germany), June 14, 1946.

Rest in peace, dear seagoing friends.

Ten young seagoing cowboys from Okanogan County, Washington, on an errand of mercy: Part III

The story of the Okanogan County, Washington, seagoing cowboys continues with their sobering arrival in Danzig, Poland, on December 27, 1945*:

The Clarksville Victory approaches the pier in Nowy Port, Poland, December 27, 1945. Photo by J. O. Yoder.

In an unidentified newspaper article, 16-year-old Fancher said, “You have to see that country to believe it. Everyone is hungry . . . The children are in rags and most of them have not been to school since the war started. You walk down the streets and they run up to you, holding out their hands and begging for food.” One of the images that still remains in Fancher’s mind today is that of seeing people on the street cutting steaks off of one of the mares that died.

Children following the seagoing cowboys in Gdansk, Poland, January 1946. Photo by Nelson Schumacher.

Henneman recalls that their ship had apples from Tonasket. “The labels on the box tell you where they come from, and who packed it. Somebody we knew packed them. You knew their number.” In Poland, he carried apples off the ship under his jacket and handed them out to people. “I guess it was stealing,” he said, “but we had plenty. They didn’t have any.” He bought other items that he carried off the ship and gave to people. The guards, who would normally shake someone down they suspected of carrying things off, would let him pass because they knew he was giving everything away.

Dave Henneman shares a story from J. O. Yoder’s book about their trip with Peggy Reiff Miller in 2014 interview. Photo by Sandra Brightbill.

Cigarettes were the prime black market commodity, and other cowboys learned they could buy cigarettes cheaply in the ship’s store and trade them for souvenirs. Or they could trade their dollars for Zloties to make their purchases. Dugan was able to obtain a violin which he still has and which he played for dances after he got home. Fancher brought home a little wooden box with a hand-carved lid.

Entertainment options in Danzig were slim. Dugan remembers visiting battlefields with ammunition and the bodies of unburied German soldiers still lying around. “Danzig is like some old Wild West town,” Fancher said in his newspaper interview. “It is full of Russian, Polish and British soldiers, and all the civilians carry guns–pistols, rifles or tommy-guns. There are a lot of shooting scrapes. Two English and four Russians were killed during the 14 days we were there, and some of our boys were held up and robbed of cigarets [sic] and American money.”

Exploring a battlefield near the docks in Poland, January 1946. Photo by Nelson Schumacher.

Fancher and John Woodard told the reporter, “one sight in Danzig was three times as horrible as the worst Boris Karloff movie.” Woodard explained, “That was the [building] the Germans used for human medical experiments. They showed us thru it . . . it was terrible. There were human bones all about, human skin that had been tanned, soap made from human fat . . . the smell was sickening . . . there were two petrified bodies . . .” The experience is one the cowboys do not like to talk about today. Their crew was one of only a few that were taken through the facility before it was put off limits.

Photo by Clarksville Victory fellow cowboy Eli Beachy, January 1946.

(to be continued)

* Excerpted from my article published in the Okanogan County Heritage magazine, Winter 2014.

On being seasick

The Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines seasickness as “motion sickness experienced on the water.” Some say it’s “all in the head.” Many a seagoing cowboy would disagree. Here are two accounts:

Cowboy Merle Crouse, from our last post, painted this colorful description of what it was like to be a seagoing cowboy in his short address at Heifer International’s 70th anniversary kickoff in Little Rock, Arkansas, in March 2014. He opened with this paragraph:

If you like to feed dusty hay to confused cows who are sliding around on a layer of fresh manure that has greased a floor that is rocking 4 ways at once from 40 foot North Atlantic waves while you are so seasick that you don’t have anything left in your stomach to throw up and you almost wish you were dead and you almost wish you had stayed home on the farm instead of volunteering to be completely miserable, then, welcome to the experience of being a seagoing cowboy.

Seagoing cowboys en route to Italy in 1946 try to get their sea legs. Photo by Elmer Bowers.

John Brelsford served as a seagoing cowboy on the S. S. Rock Springs Victory delivering cattle to Ethiopia in March 1947. He says, “I can’t write about this crossing without trying to describe seasickness.” He continues:

Ten minutes after we left the pier, I began to be sick. I didn’t know what was the matter then, but by the middle of the next day I knew well enough. I get a headache that seems to settle in the back of my neck, have a very upset stomach, and feel cold all over. The night we sailed, I went to bed right away to try and get warm and get over my headache. The next morning I didn’t feel like eating and my headache was worse. I ate an orange to see how food would stay down. It stayed pretty well, so I went to breakfast. After I had been there a little while, the whole place seemed to make me sick, so I grabbed a half grapefruit and beat it. I don’t suppose that it was five minutes later that I decided to see if the orange and grapefruit tasted as good as I thought they did, so I brought them back up. . . . Well, I tried to go about my business of feeding and watering a third of the 84 head of heifers that we had on our end of the top deck, but every once in awhile I’d give up and stick my head over the side of the ship or over a bucket. . . . It was surprising what it would take to set you going. Sometimes, it was looking up and seeing somebody else going through the motions. Sometimes, it was the look on the face of a cow. Sometimes it was listening to someone tell how just as they got through eating they leaned over and deposited their dinner in some lucky fellows lap and then settled back down and ate another plateful. Sometimes it was just looking at the paleness or yellowness and the pained expression on the faces of the fellows around most anywhere. To say the least, I was worn out by night just from bending over the ship and working my diaphragm muscles so much. I had decided never to eat again when Carl Geisler talked me into testing a pork chop that he was eating out in the fresh air. He strongly suggested that I do the same thing, so I finally consented and went into the galley and ordered a plate to go out. I went back out and stuck my head in every few minutes until my plate was ready. It had a couple of pork chops and three slices of bread. I very carefully discarded all the fat and bones and wrapped up the small pieces of meat in the bread and rather slowly ate them. After the first bite hit my stomach, I felt better. I have been eating ever since. . . .

There were all sorts of different ideas as to the causes and remedies. . . . I’m sure that if doctors and sailors haven’t been able to figure out either the cause or the cure in all the years that men have been sailing the seven seas, there isn’t much use of first time sailors trying to figure it out. But figure we would. For three or so days that was all anybody talked about. All I’m sure of is that we all got sick and that we all got over it in spite of the cause or treatment.

Two of John Brelsford’s shipmates hanging over the rail. Photo by Howard Lord.

Read more about cowboys and seasickness here.

The Seagoing Cowboys and the Bruderhof

For some reason, the photos intended for this post were omitted this morning, so I am resending it with the images included.

At this time of Thanksgiving, I give thanks for the wonderful people my husband and I met or reconnected with this month on my 12-day speaking tour out east. I also give thanks for the work of sharing the seagoing cowboy stories that has, by providence, been placed in my hands. My tour took us to the Hagerstown, MD, and Elizabethtown, PA, Churches of the Brethren; the Living Branches Mennonite retirement community in Souderton, PA; and four Bruderhof communities in New York and Pennsylvania. I was able to tell specific stories of their own related cowboys at each place – always a joy. And particularly this time at the Bruderhofs.

The Bruderhof is a 100-year-old intentional Christian community with over 25 settlements on five continents. The members practice radical discipleship in the spirit of the first church in Jerusalem. After they came to the United States in the 1950s, a number of young Church of the Brethren families joined the movement, and today there are more than 600 descendants of the Church of the Brethren throughout the Bruderhof. Having grown up and been active in the Church of the Brethren, it was great fun for me when I first visited the Maple Ridge community in New York in 2016 to discover the many connections I had with Bruderhof members.

Heifer Project started in the Church of the Brethren in 1942; and when World War II ended in Europe in May of 1945, the Brethren Service Committee became the recruiting agency for the livestock tenders, dubbed “seagoing cowboys,” which the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration would need for their shipments of animals to Europe. I learned in 2016 that some of the Brethren families who joined the Bruderhof had been active in raising animals for the Heifer Project in those early years, that some of their relatives had served as seagoing cowboys, and that some of their young adults had recently spent a year volunteering at the Heifer Ranch in Perryville, Arkansas.

Bruderhof member Kathy Fike Mow & her sister Elsie in the right of this photo join other children in presenting money they had raised for a heifer to farmer Paul Rhodes in Astoria, IL, in 1944. Photo courtesy of Kathy Fike Mow.

So on this year’s trip, I went with stories in hand of Bruderhof relatives’ involvements in the Heifer Project and as seagoing cowboys to share with the four communities we visited. Being able to share a piece of their ancestral history at their high school and three of their elementary schools was the highlight of my trip.

Presenting the Heifer Project and seagoing cowboy story to 9th graders at Bruderhof’s The Mount Academy. The high school is located in an amazing former monastery. Photo credit: Rex Miller.

After basking for six days in the love and hospitality offered to us in the Bruderhof settlements we visited, and being inspired by their model of radical discipleship, my husband and I came away with hearts full of gratitude and refreshed for our journey home and the responsibilities that awaited us there.

With my husband Rex on the Hudson River at The Mount Academy, November 10, 2021.

May the Spirit of Thanksgiving embrace you as well.