A Walk Down Memory Lane - Toccoa Falls College

This is a "Steiner News Alert":  An update on Nanny Steiner (my MIL): I guess her mansion in heaven isn't quite ready yet...She's decided to get out of that bed and rejoin the living...been eating at the dining room table (at The Lodge) for the past couple of days, after NOT eating OR drinking for well over a week. She is a bit confused about where she is, what's going on, etc., but she's definitely not ready to leave this old earth just yet! Amazing woman! 95 and counting!!! Praise God! Thank you for praying! Miracles do still happen!!!

Now, back to our regularly scheduled programming:  

As a part of our whirlwind journey last weekend we made a special trip to visit the campus of Toccoa Falls College, in Toccoa Falls, Georgia.  Why? Well, for several reasons:

1. Our son graduated from college there and wanted to show his beloved bride a place that is very special to him.
2. It is also the place where my hubby and I moved to, in our first year of marriage, right after he graduated college in Florida. (June, 1970)
3. My hubby's first teaching job was at this very same place, in the Toccoa Falls Academy, a Christian boarding high school, which is no longer in existence, but was for many years a part of this college campus.
4. I also worked here on this campus, in the business office as the receptionist.
5. We have many very happy memories at this beautiful place, so please come along on the tour with us.

The tour begins at the entrance to Toccoa Falls College: "Where Character Is Developed With Excellence"

As we drove onto the campus, one of the first buildings we noted was "Fant Hall", one of the girls' dormitories.  The summer we moved to Toccoa Falls my husband actually helped build this building. He has "fond" memories of putting in insulation in 95 degree summer temperatures, and coming home covered with prickly insulation fibers all over his body. He also cut and sanded several hundred cabinet doors, and came home covered in sawdust from head to foot.  If you've ever worked in the humid, extremely hot temperatures of northeast Georgia in the summer, you can imagine how miserable he was...but we were young and in love and happy to be in such a picturesque place, and thankful for how God had provided for us...  This building is now being renovated...after 48 years!

Standing on the steps of the "new" dining hall and "Eagles' Nest" snack bar, (new to us, but it was built in the early 90's, so our son actually worked in this building in the kitchen while attending college...and ate many a meal there), my hubby is telling the "kids" that when we lived there this building was where the gymnasium was.  They now have a beautiful new gymnasium, and this dining hall is an extremely nice building compared to the basement dining hall they had in the bottom of the old girls' dorm, LeTourneau Hall, when we were there.

The view from the steps of the dining hall across the campus:

And more view from the steps of the dining hall, across the lower valley of the campus...(and there is quite a story about this "lower valley", which I will get to later)

This tour does not include pictures of ALL the buildings on campus, just a few random as we walked...if you want more info you can go to the website for Toccoa Falls College HERE.

This picture below is of lovely butterflies on lantana, outside the business office building where I worked (48 years ago!!!!)

 This plaque tells the history of the "G.I. Hill and Steel buildings" that came from a nearby Army base after World War II.  The steel buildings were used for classrooms, and my hubby's biology class was in one of those buildings.  G.I. Hill was comprised of many G.I. cottages, set on "terraces" up the side of a steep hill, and these were used to house staff members. Hubby and I lived in one of those cottages on the very tip top terrace. It was a very steep drive up and down for us Florida flatlanders, and especially for me to drive our stick shift dodge dart...could not do it very well...plus, I was in the early stages of pregnancy with our first born...yes, the same one who came to college here 18 years later, and the same one who came to visit the campus with his beloved some 24 years after his graduation...

The G.I. Hill houses have all been removed now, and have been replaced with these modern dorm buildings. This one would be very close to where our house used to sit.

And this was the view looking out over the rooftops of the terrace below...

Back down on the main campus we are walking to what is known as "Earl Hall", and back in the day it was the "Eagles' Nest Canteen" and some classrooms, etc.  I believe it houses the Admissions offices today.

This is "LeTourneau Hall", the oldest girls' dorm.  As I said before, when we lived there, the dining hall was in the basement of this building.  Now those rooms house more students...

Now, this is a new building to all of us.  My son is explaining the history of it to us...When he was a student there he was a part of the founding group who formed the "Outdoor Club", which planned hikes and other "outdoor" activities for students.  They never had their own meeting area, and weren't even chartered to receive special funding or privileges as a club until later, but eventually they were recognized...and at some point in the recent past this lovely wilderness looking building was built to house a natural history museum from the region as well as provide meeting space for the "Outdoor Club".  Our son was really excited to see this, even though the building was closed while we were there since it is summer vacation time.

Back when our son was a student they used to take a lot of hikes, and one of the trails began here in these woods below, which is just behind that nice building:

I loved these Adirondack Chairs, embossed with the Toccoa Falls College emblem

They were situated around the wonderful wrap-around porch of this rustic building....

If you would like to know what my "dream house" would look like, this would be a great example:

Yep, I'd love to have one of those maple trees too!  Just sayin'....

Okay, back to the tour...  The "kids" are standing in front of a smaller waterfall on the campus, which is adjacent to the old original "power plant" that used to provide electricity for the campus many years ago...

You can see the pipeline where the water was channeled from the top of the mountain lake to the old turbine generators in the power house.  I forgot to take a picture of the old building...but it was very interesting...

Now we are on the trail to the waterfalls that made Toccoa Falls famous.
Our son is telling the story here about the terrible flood that took place on November 6, 1977.  For more information click HERE.   For an excellent book that tells the whole story, you can check out THIS BOOK, "Dam Break in Georgia". 

Here our son is explaining that this riverbed became a raging torrent and wall of water some 30 feet deep as it roared through the campus on that fateful night, killing some 39 people...

Thankfully, the dam that burst that night and the lake that was atop the mountain no longer exist, so that can never happen again...

Just a beautiful, peaceful, bubbling creek now...

As we rounded the bend in the trail, here is the breathtaking view of the falls as they plunge 186 feet to the rocks below....

Would you believe that hubby and I and also our son have all been to the top of these falls? There is a road up on the top that leads to it, but it is not easily accessible and definitely not recommended for the faint of heart.  I was much younger then...

Son and his beloved bride at the base of the falls...

Hubby and his beloved bride also at the base of the falls... (I never dreamed 48 years ago that one day we would be back here...but most especially that our son, whose very existence began on this "holy ground" would also not only come back here to graduate from college, and then come back so many years later to bring his own beloved bride!!!)

What a happy day this was for all of us.  Well worth the trip...just wish we had had more time to explore a little more...

This is a monument telling the story of the flood...

And this stone stands in "loving remembrance of those who lost their lives in the flood, November 6, 1977"... Heartbreakingly, because we had lived on this campus in the years 1970-71, many of these who perished in the flood were people that we had known and worked with.  It was only by the grace of God that we had moved away from there when we did, because we actually did not want to leave and had wanted to stay on and serve there...but God had other plans for us.  If we had continued on in the direction we were hoping, we could have been actually living in one of the dorms for the academy students, which stood down on the "lower valley of the creek", and it was totally washed away in the flood, killing those who lived there.  We don't always understand when God says "no" to us in our prayers...but I have learned to trust Him and try not to force something that apparently is not God's will...

It is not always easy to pray,  "not my will, but Thy will be done"....but we need to learn to be obedient to the whispers of God when He tells us :

"For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, 

says the Lord,

Thoughts of peace and not of evil, 

to give you a future and a hope."

Jeremiah 29:11

Had we not listened and obeyed, these two might not have ever come together!

Thank you for taking this tour with me today. If you ever have the opportunity to visit Toccoa Falls College and the waterfalls that are on the college campus, you will be amply rewarded by its serenity and beauty.  There is so much history here that will inspire you as well.  This school is known for so much more than what I've shared here. Many, many pastors, missionaries, teachers, and godly Christian young people have gone out into the world, sharing the Gospel of Jesus Christ wherever they go, as a result of the wonderful training and education they received here. If you know someone searching for a good education from a Christian perspective, please check out this college!!

Okay, that's all for tonight.

More tomorrow about our trip for Friday Foto Friends.

See you then!

RJD: Discerning God's Will

I was about to give up on writing anything for this month's Random Journal Day...I really don't have a large number of old journals like most of my writing friends.  My journal writing has been pretty much hit and miss for the past few years...and so much of what I wrote in the earlier years seems dated...or has too much personal information to share. So to share something at random is a bit risky for me.  Therefore, I must confess, I do read over the posts carefully before sharing.  But I think I finally found something. So here I sit at my computer desk, with a blank screen before me, and my journal open and ready for perusal.

This particular entry was written on Friday, May 3, 1985.  I was full of stuff to say on this particular day, as this journal entry was eight pages long! Don't worry, I'm not going to share all of it...just the parts that are "shareable".

To give you a little history...we were in a place of ministry, but my husband was searching for a different place to minister where he would feel more fulfilled. We had been looking for a while, and things just weren't developing as we had hoped they would.  Here is what I wrote in my prayer conversation (monologue?) with God:

"No, not a perfect church--there is no such place on earth.  But I do believe there can be a perfect situation for us..a place where we can be fulfilled in our life's calling to the ministry.  Lord, You know where that place is.  Please, Lord, unlock the door.  Open the gates of Your love and mercy shown to us in the past.  Perhaps we are not yet worthy of the place we'd like to be...Yes, I'm sure we aren't...but Lord, if You waited on Your servants to be worthy of their calling, would anything ever be done?

Lord, we know we're not worthy to be called Your children even, let alone your chosen servants, but Lord, with You helping us and strengthening us--we can do all things through Christ Who strengthens us.  Lord God, it is Christ Who makes us worthy of our calling...it is His blood that makes us worthy to be called a child of the King.  Lord, I can't sit here and fool You...You know my thoughts and my desires.  I pray You do not judge me too harshly.  Lord, I am willing to go where You want me to go...just give me wisdom to discern what is Your will, and not my own will.  But Lord, Your Word teaches us that if we have the faith the size of a mustard seed...and say to that mountain, "be ye removed,"  it shall be done of my heavenly Father.

Lord, I'm asking You to remove the barriers that stand between us and joyful service in Your kingdom.  I'm not even sure what they are, but You know.  Help us Lord, to be all that You want us to be...and to do what You want us to do.  I don't want to be selfish and demand like a spoiled child that You give me my desires...but I do believe that if "we delight ourselves in the Lord, You will give us the desires of our hearts."
Maybe that's the key...maybe we're not delighting in You enough.  Forgive me, Lord, and help me to delight in You.  I want to be joyful in Thee.  It's not You, Lord, that I'm disappointed in, or maybe I'm fooling myself...if I'm not contented with what You've done for me, then maybe I'm not contented with You.  Forgive me, Lord, I didn't mean to be discontented.  I know You've provided abundantly, and with much love You have always showered Your blessings on us.  I'm sorry, Lord.  I've not been very grateful lately.  But Lord, something is missing in my soul.  I can't quite put my finger on it.  Perhaps I've neglected too much in communication with You.  I know that's true.  Help me, Lord to correct that.  I'm not fit to be in this position, and here I'm desiring a better one.  Forgive me, Lord.

But Lord, I need some positive reinforcement...no, maybe not...maybe I need chastening.  I guess I'm just confused.  Jesus, I need Your help and guidance...not MY will, but Thine be done, on earth as it is in heaven.  Lord, I have confidence that You WILL see us through...You WILL have YOUR way in our lives...You won't cast us away.  You've bought us with a price, and we are valuable in Your sight.  Use us today, Lord.  Keep us on the right track. "Guide me, oh, Thou Great Jehovah."

Thank you, Lord, for your healing balm...that soothes my soul and makes me whole.  Oh God, in THEE Do We Trust!  Amen!"


Postscript:  Within about three months from this writing we were called to a better situation.  God did hear our prayers and answered abundantly.  I still had a lot to learn about faith and God's will, but He chose to continue the lessons with love and mercy. He's still teaching me...and "strengthening" me in the process...my One Word for 2014...funny how it keeps popping up....part of God's design? Yep. 


Now go visit with my other journaling friends and see what they've been up to.  http://beneaththesurface-dawn.blogspot.com/2014/01/happy-new-year-and-1st-random-journal.html