Dear Reader:

Now that I have allowed myself to go back down memory lane … eleven years in the making… my head is exploding with recollections I have not entertained in so long… I am having to shake the dust off them.

In the title photo… you see Beverly Barutio, the creator of St. Jude’s Chapel of Hope… the picture taken soon after the chapel was complete.

Beverly’s miracle save from God and St Jude came in the mid-eighties when she informed her oncologist she was stopping chemo treatments and going to live the rest of her life out the best she could( doctors told her less than a year-the cancer had spread to her liver and bone marrow.)

Beverly began praying for time to make changes in her life and be with family… besides God… she prayed to St Jude, the patron of improbable but not impossible causes.

When she received this fifteen plus year miracle she resolved to give back to the little town of Trust, NC and build a chapel where all who sought refuge could come. The home she and her husband Bill lived in ( Civil War home) she named ” Plum Nilly” -as in located ” Plum out of Asheville and Nilly to Tennessee. “

She and Bill built a little cafe for the locals to come dine and soon word spread that Beverly was the best pie baker around. She always wore an apron that read ” Kiss the Cook.”

When Bob Hurley… a newspaper columnist called me and asked if he could meet me…Honey and I met him in late October of 2011.

A few weeks later the article showed up in the Greenville Sun. When Bob Hurley went to introduce himself and his wife on that chilly mountain day earlier… he whispered ” Beverly and I have been waiting on you for a long time.”

Apparently Bob had suggested, on several occasions, that Beverly collect stories from the visitors around the world who now came to the compelling little chapel in the woods. But Beverly shook her head and informed Bob that her mission was to build it-another else would come along to tell its stories.

Isn’t it a nice feeling to know someone is waiting on you… that a little chapel in a little mountain town has been bidding it’s time… waiting on you to reveal its secrets… one story at a time.

Since Bob Hurley, the columnist knew Beverly before me… he lamented the fact that we weren’t destined to meet on this side of life ( he thought our personalities and outlooks on life were eerily similar) but one day what a great reunion we had in store on the other side!

Bob’s article titled ” Stories from Tiny Mountain Chapel Now Being Shared with the World” started out in the first paragraph with this observation…

” Somewhere in the back of my mind, I always knew that Becky Dingle would come along and share the story of St Jude’s Chapel of Hope with the whole world.”

So until tomorrow… isn’t it nice to know that someone is waiting on you to come along and share their story when they no longer can? In life… it is always about the story!

” Today is my favorite day” Winnie the Pooh

Greenville Sun -Bob Hurley-columnist-Nov. 19, 2011