Morning Star Fellowship - part 1

This week I'm starting a new series on Kye Valley background history.  Morning Star Fellowship is the church that figures prominently in the "Dawn Comes Softly" stories.  By the way, these stories mainly center around the third generation of the Hart and Kealy families - the grandchildren of Ed Hart and Jack Kealy Sr.  Although Ed's son Shawn is also a very important character in these stories.

The 1960s
The community Bible study that had been started by Ed Hart, Jack Kealy Sr., and Marty Stephens came to an end in the early 1960s.  In the Bible study's place Morning Star Fellowship held its first services on Easter Sunday.  The new church started meeting on the second floor of one of the downtown buildings.  Marty was the senior pastor, Ed was the children's pastor, and Jack Sr. was the music pastor.  Morning Star Fellowship started with about 200 people and grew from there during the 1960s.

Then came the spring that Shawn turned 15-years-old - during the mid 1960s.  One Sunday night he went to the altar and recommitted his life to the Lord.

Shawn told God, "Lord, I want to shine Your light in the darkness.  I want people to know that there is still hope in You.  I want them to know that no matter what they've done or where they've been You still love them.  You still forgive them, and You still want them."

That night Shawn had his first spiritual dream.  He dreamed that he was standing on a cliff that overlooked a waterfall and a river.  He spotted some deer drinking from the river.  He felt misty sprays from the waterfall falling over him. Deep-colored wildflowers bloomed everywhere in the bright-green grass.  Shawn sensed God's presence and peace so strongly.  Then he heard soft footsteps behind him.  When he started to turn to look behind him he woke up from his dream.  Shawn shared his dream with his father.

Ed told him, "Sounds like God is trying to show you something.  He's trying to tell you something.  I think you may have seen a glimpse of Heaven.  I also think that some day you will have that dream again, and you will see who was behind you."

Writing Update 6-2-12

Last Tuesday night I finally finished "Sweet Nathaniel's Eyes"!  The official title of the story is "Witness".  It has 5,738 words.  That's the first draft.  Sometime I'll come back to it and do some editing/revising.  When this story is ready to be read, I hope the ending will be a comfort and an encouragement to readers.

The next story I'm working on is "The Whole Truth".  I basically have re-started this story.  I deleted what I had already written, and then I dropped in four or five scenes that I wrote several years ago.  Those old scenes were written back when I was trying to write a novel.  "The Whole Truth" is now approximately 1/3rd written.  I would like to finish this story by the end of June.

Me write novels?  Uh, no thank you.  I'll stick with short/long stories, thank you.  Seriously, I've noticed that my stories tend to be around 3,000 - 4,000 words.  Sometimes they're longer and sometimes they're shorter.

Previously I have mentioned my story collections "Dawn Comes Softly" and "A Light Shines In The Darkness".  I've decided to combine them into the same book.  The book will be called "A Light Shines In the Darkness".  It will have four sections of stories in it.  "Dawn Comes Softly" will be one of the sections.  "Witness" and "The Whole Truth" are two of the stories that will be in this book.