A preview from the documentary Jesus Camp.

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If you ignored my repeated warning, clicked the links, and they got your -

Now you feel like complaining!!!

Well... You can kiss my hairy -

We had a tragedy in our family while I was away from Grab. It has been a couple months now. I really have not completely excepted it yet and have not really talked about it much to anyone. Gotta put something in this blog area, so I will just tell the whole story here.

We had a tragic violent death in our family back in September. If you live in the U.S., then you probably heard something about it. It was reported on CNN and all the networks covered it. It was the story about the little girl in Ohio who found out that a man who was living next door had molested her friend. She confronted him about it. He snuck into her house that night and killed her. He then came to my home state (Indiana) and killed two women that were working at a gas station/convenience store. One of the women shot was a family member, Kendora R. (Lucas) Furr.

I would like to tell you a little about her and why we thought of her as family. I met her my sophomore year in high school. Kendora had been a friend of my girl friend at the time. One day she drove up to my girlfriends house while I was there and we were introduced. Most of my girlfriend's friends were loud and obnoxious so I did not pay much attention to Kendora. I did not see her again until our junior year in high school. She had moved into town and started to go to our school. Now I saw her everyday and got to know her a little. She met my friends, we had a class or two together, and we even skipped class a time or two together. She and my best friend at the time hit it off and seemed joined at the hip for awhile. I met her family around this time. I met her mom, dad, (abusive) step mom, and her brothers. She moved away again half way through our senior year. I did not see her again, for awhile. My best friend found a new girl and started planning their life together. lol kids!!! His new girlfriend eventually introduced me to my future wife. We graduated, my best friend and I lived in a apartment together for a few months, and I met my wife during this time. The next year we were planning our wedding. At this time my best friend and his girlfriend were fighting a lot, so he decided that he wanted to find Kendora again. I had seen a couple of people that I knew she had worked with at a party and they told me where to start to find her. It took a little longer, my wife and I were married, but we found Kendora. My wife and I had an apartment by now. My best friend and his girlfriend were still together and he was trying to keep his relationship with Kendora. His girlfriend was very jealous, violent and my wife's friend. Not good for him!!! A lot of people came to our place to party in those days. There were always people around. Kendora came over a few times My friend always tried to be there if she was. One night when Kendora was there his girlfriend showed up. She made my friend look like a idiot (wasn't hard). She was sitting on his lap and kissing him all night and talking about their wedding plans, in front of Kendora. Kendora was not happy about it and left early. She came back a couple nights later. My friend was going to be there. My wife’s older (ten years older than us) brother was there that night too. He came over to be around some people. He lived in a very small town quit a ways from our house. His first marriage had fallen apart the year before. She left him with nothing except his empty house. He ate with us a lot. My friend came over. I went out and picked up Kendora, she was living with one of her friends. I warned her about my brother in-law (he was a little strange) and brought her back to our place. We all ate and had a little to drink and Kendora and my brother in-law started openly flirting with each other. My wife and I thought it was very funny, my friend did not. The flirting went on for a couple hours and my brother in-law suddenly announced that he was going home and asked Kendora if she was coming with him. Now it did not seem too funny to my wife and I anymore when Kendora said yes, she would go with him. They had only known each other for a couple of hours. I tried to explain that my brother in-law lived a long way from our town and told her she would not have any way back except my brother in-law. She did not care. My best friend was very upset about this turn of events and tried to talk her out of going. This seemed to convince her to go. She went. We could not believe it had happened and did not hear from them for a couple weeks. They came over and announced that they were getting married. I was shocked, but happy for them. They were married soon after. We did not make it to their wedding because we could not find the church and got lost. We spent the afternoon driving around the Indiana-Illinois state line. We made it by the end of the reception. My friend and his girlfriend were also eventually married then divorced a couple years later.

My brother in-law’s big house became a home. They had their first kid (girl) less than one year after we had our first daughter. They had a girl shortly after my wife and I did two more times. Needles to say, their kids and our kids were very close to each other. They always had someone to play with at family get-togethers and we visited them a lot (I enjoyed the long drive). We adults would play cards and talk while the kids stayed up late and played. We all had lots of great times there then. We would stay until early morning. After about ten years Kendora began to get restless. She did not want to live in the small town anymore but my brother in-law did. I think he may have told her that they could move if they had more money. She got a job and worked as much as she could. Her mom watched the kids. They both worked long hours. My brother in-law really had no intensions of moving. He was using the extra money to fix his house up. Kendora realized it and started to think about moving on. She had came over to our house trying to find my old best friend. We were rally not that close anymore but I did know where he lived and I took her to him. He was not interested in her anymore. As a last ditch effort to save their marriage they had one more child, a son. Kendora's dad died around this time and she decided to name their son after him but he was a chip off my brother in-law's block. There family was now three girls, one boy, and a dog. There happiness did not last long. Kendora wanted more. Kendora started chatting with people on-line. She chatted with a man and decided to go meet him. Her husband knew it was happening but did nothing to stop it. I could not understand, he wanted her to feel free. She brings her new boyfriend back to meet her family. I decided that I did not want our kids to be around this situation and my wife agreed. The last time we all visited was on a Independence Day. Her family was all there, my wife's family, and so was her new boyfriend and his friends and family. There marriage did not last much longer. They divorced and Kendora got the kids and the big house that we all had so many great times in and we had offered to buy ourselves a couple of times. She sold it to someone else. My brother in-law was living in a small apartment in another small town. Kendora and the kids moved to a house in a slightly larger town. Their kids came to visit us still. They would spend occasional weekends at our house. Kendora had a couple of other boyfriends during this time. My brother in-law had been bemoaning the fact that his life was over, because he would be paying child support for the rest of his life while stuck in a small apartment because their son was so young (about four) and he was feeling so old. Their oldest daughter moved in with him to get away from her mom's boyfriends. We received a call from my wife's mom. She told us that the son that Kendora had, near the end of her marriage was hit by a car and died. He and his dad had visited us the week before. They went for a walk with us and planted some peach pits that they had along the trail. They planted a bunch of them, I hope at least one grows. When it was time to go home he cried and wanted to stay with us. We had to promise him that he would come to visit us again. That was the last time I saw him, he was crying begging to stay. If only he could have. One of Kendora's friends had backed their car over him. He was gone. The weekend of the funeral their youngest daughter spent with us. A few months later their middle daughter moved to her fathers apartment.There was a lawsuit because the insurance refused to pay and Kendora's friend said the accident was not her fault. Kendora started to be depressed. My brother in-law said that he felt that she might commit suicide. She only had her youngest daughter, her dog, and a boyfriend.

It was only about one year and four months after the death of her son that Kendora had her encounter with the pedophile murderer on the run Melvin Keeling. He robbed the store for only a little money, shot both clerks in the head, and went on his way. He went to another town in Indiana and killed himself. We are left with no answers. We only wish he could have carried out his last action first. Kendora's youngest daughter spent the weekend of her mother's funeral (in September) with us. We took in Kendora's dog and she lives with us now. A couple weeks after the funeral there was a large fundraiser concert near the spot of her death for both victims families. I think Kendora would have loved it. We had grown apart over time for some of the reasons mentioned above and a few others that I have not mentioned. I do not remember what the last thing I said to her was. We were there in the hospital when Kendora had her kids, now all our kids are getting older and we do not see each other as much. Their kids are doing well and getting along with their lives. My brother in-law has a girlfriend now and she is about twenty years younger than him. Same age didn't work, ten years younger didn't work, so I guess he'll try twenty years younger. LOL! It just feels like a chapter of my life is closed for good.

WEEEEEE will just keep on keeping on, I guess.