Thanks 58 - Continuing the Parker Legacy

The following is an article written for a celebration of John and Virginia Parker's 58 years of ministry a few years ago, hosted by Yorba Linda Friends Church. The article was titled "Thanks 58 - Continuing the Parker Legacy" and distributed at that event.

John Parker’s Quaker family history dates bask to 1779 when the family moved to Jack Swamp and Piney Woods, North Carolina to help establish Friends churches in that area, serving as lay pastors.

In 1825 the family moved to Richmond, Indiana and finally settled near Carthage. John’s grandfather was an active Sunday School teacher and lay pastor, an Elder and Chairman of the Walnut Ridge Friends Quarterly Meeting.

Later the family moved on, helping establish Friends Churches in Iowa and Nebraska.
In 1906 the family moved to Murdo, South Dakota where John’s grandparents ran a hardware store until 1916. They then moved to Long Beach, California leaving John’s college age father, Howard Clarkson Parker, in Murdo to run the store. That same year Howard married Mary England.

In Long Beach John’s grandparents helped establish and grow two Friends Churches before moving to Whittier in 1918. In Whittier they became actively involved in the Whittier First Friends Church and East Whittier Friends Church.

In 1919 John Parker was born in Murdo, South Dakota. There was no Friends Church in Murdo so they attended the Methodist Church, hearing lessons about Johnny Apple Seed and the importance of doing good, basically being taught a socially acceptable Gospel.

For 11 months in 1931 John’s family moved from Murdo to Whittier to help care for his ailing grandfather, where he played with a young boy named Robert Seeley in the alley behind their homes on Pickering, about whom we will talk about later. Then back to Murdo they went.

John attended Whittier College from 1937 to 1942, where he met his future wife, Virginia Whitson. They started seeing lots of each other. As John recalls, “She would take me out for archery, but really she was playing Cupid.” They also loved skiing and ballroom dancing at the Coconut Grove in Hollywood and the Avalon Casino on Avalon Island.

John and Virginia were married on June 20, 1943 in the Montebello Friends Church and lived in Whittier for the next three years.

In 1946 John and Virginia bought a grocery store on Main Street in Yorba Linda. Their plan was to visit the Friends Church on Main Street first, needing social contacts to help make their grocery business grow, and then attend the Methodist Church around the corner on Lemon. By alternating between the two they would make friends and establish a good customer base.

During the first service at Yorba Linda Friends they were fascinated by men who would stand up with Bibles in hand and cry while testifying of what the Lord meant to them and how precious was the Word of God. These were not wimpy men. They were real men who had something John and Virginia had never seen before. They were humble, honest and weeping about a “relationship with God.” As John says it, “They were drinking from deeper wells than we knew existed.”

Sunday night they went back for more, and the next Sunday, and the next and the next. Their lives were being touched and needs met through this small group of people who were experiencing a living relationship with Jesus Christ.

They were influenced deeply by such people as Frank and Louise Marshburn, Clinton and Katherine Marshburn, Allen and Esther Dyer, LaVern and Mary Page, Tyler Cobern, Donald Spitler, Gunner and Helen Payne and Talmage Kennon.

When John finally went forward to the alter to accept Jesus Christ as his personal Savior he recalls eight men who came around him in a circle. Each man gave him an admonition of what will be expected of him as a Christian. John believed and accepted each admonition and continues to follow their advice today.

With their newfound faith in Christ and their believe in those admonitions, John and Virginia determined to be a witness and testimony in Yorba Linda. They became involved in the church. He started singing in the choir and offered to teach Sunday School. His first Sunday School class was a group of 4th grade boys.

During this time the grocery store was struggling at the cash register while in the back room each morning they had Bible Study and prayer. Eight to ten of the town leaders would be there, faithfully bringing their requests and praise before God and studying His Word.

After five years the store was broke, however during that time men and women were accepting Christ as their personal Savior and others’ spiritual lives were being strengthened in the back room.

After closing the store and with no money to pay creditors, Virginia took a job teaching and John began working two jobs. It was a hard time, but they knew it was something they must do as Christians. Eventually all the creditors were paid off.

For a while John worked at the Yorba Linda and Whittier Post Offices. One day, while working a substitute route in Whittier he noticed the name for the next home was Robert Seeley. He rang the doorbell and asked if this was the same obnoxious kid he played with in the alley off of Pickering in 1931. Sure enough it was.

John invited Robert and his wife, Barbara, to Quaker Meadow for Labor Day Family Camp and they came. On the way home after camp Robert told Barbara that he had made a decision for Christ while at Camp and she admitted to having done the same thing.

That was the start of Robert Seeley’s lifetime ministry as a soul winner, and as was the case with so many that John and Virginia have encountered.

Just after John and Virginia closed the grocery store in 1951 a friend from Murdo, South Dakota called asking if they could come for two weeks and run his grocery store, while he and his wife went on vacation. With no store to run in Yorba Linda, but experience in how to (or maybe how not to) run a grocery store, John, Virginia, and family agreed to head to Murdo for two weeks. John had been praying for his school friends in Murdo for several years, that God would provide an opportunity to witness to them. Could this be the time?

Before leaving John asked Paul Miller, the pastor of Yorba Linda Friends, to be praying for him on this trip. He felt that he would be asked to preach while in Murdo. After Paul stopped laughing he said, “John, you have never preached in your life. What are you going to preach on?” Without hesitation he replied Romans 12:1-2.

The Parker family arrived in Murdo on a Saturday afternoon. John was shown around the grocery store, handed the keys and the owners headed out of town. For the next six weeks (not just two) John and Virginia never heard from them, except for one postcard. But God was working from a different calendar, having planned more than anyone could ever imagine.

Later that very first day a lady came into the store. With hesitation and a stammering voice she said that she heard he was in town and “had gotten religion in California.” She explained that the Methodist pastor was unexpectedly delayed out of town and could not return to preach tomorrow. “Would you be willing to preach for us tomorrow?”, she asked. John’s immediate reply was, “Yes, I have been expecting to.”

One of those first days in Murdo John’s childhood best friend and wife, Harold and Pat Thune, dropped in. They were in the local drinking, partying crowd and on the verge of divorce. The plan was to stop in for a few minutes, do the socially acceptable thing of renewing acquaintances, and then head off to the party-of-the-night.

Triggered by an expression Harold used, “…slower than the return of Christ…”, John and Virginia started sharing with them about what God had done in their lives. They started looking at the Bible and talking about how God had a plan from the beginning of time for all mankind. At 1:00 AM Harold and Pat headed back home, never having gone to the party.

When John and Virginia climbed into bed, he heard her crying. He asked what was wrong and she said that they had just gotten into town, did not have many friends there and now he had driven these two away with his talking. All he could answer was, “Mommy, I just told them about Jesus.”

The next morning Pat called the store and asked if they could get together again tonight and talk more about the Bible. Then she asked if she could invite a few friends.

For six weeks they met, five nights per week, 2-3 hours per night, reading, studying and talking about God’s Plan of the Ages.

Toward the end of the second week Pat called the store saying that they were not going to have Bible Study tonight, and John answered with some relief that it was okay with him. Then she announced that she was coming over that night “to get saved.”

They talked, read scriptures and she prayed asking Christ to come into her heart. When she opened her eyes she stared at John and announced, “It did not take.” John still does not know where he got the words, but he responded with, “Congratulations. You are the first one in 2000 years that did not take.” Then he suggested she go home and they talk tomorrow.

Very early the next morning they were awakened by a phone call from Pat. All she said was, “It took!” Pat says that the stars had never shown so brightly as they did from that time on.

From this small and exciting beginning, God started a process that today is still bringing people to Jesus Christ through the lives of those first few school classmates, their children and their children’s children. Four generations have now been impacted by those six weeks of working all day and studying the Bible each night. That faithfulness and dedication continues to pay heavenly dividends around the world.

In the years following that 1951 visit a small church was formed. It later moved to a vacant store building. In 1959 our family along with others from Yorba Linda Friends Church, Art and Woody Dietrich, Les Blair, Marvin Rich, went to Murdo to help build their new church building.

From this small witness and Bible Study in Murdo we have:
• The Murdo Community Bible Church
• Missionaries sent out around the world, such as Karl and Karen Hoekman
• Pastors actively preaching the Word, such as Robert Thune, Pastor of the 2nd largest Christian Missionary Alliance Church, and Dave Beckwith, Pastor of Yorba Linda Friends Church in the 1970’s and current pastor of Woodbridge Community Church in Irvine, CA
• Christian teachers in the public school system
• Housewives who have helped establish churches in other communities and hold Bible Studies in their homes
• Workers with Christian ministries, such as Back to the Bible
• John Thune, a Christian Statesman, having served 6 years in the House of Representatives in Washington DC representing South Dakota, and in 2004 running for the Senate seat currently held by Tom Daschle
• Christian businessmen and women, sharing their faith with friends and coworkers worldwide

From 1948 to 1953 John Parker served on the Quaker Meadow Board as President and for two years traveled from Capay Rancho in Northern California to San Diego with his pet squirrel, Bushy Tail. His mission was to re-establish Quaker Meadow in the minds and hearts of Friends churches throughout California. The camp attendance had declined during the war as a result of gas shortages, but his travels re-ignited the fire of Quaker Meadow experience up and down the coast.

During the 1960’s John served on various Friends Church Yearly Meeting committees such as the Evangelism and Church Extension Board, Yearly Meeting Elder Board, Quaker Meadow Board, and Yearly Meeting Promotion Committee.

At that same time both John and Virginia were leading five Home Bible Studies and teaching Sunday School. Each week John would prepare for and teach one Bible Study in Azusa, another in Brea and three in Yorba Linda while Virginia taught women’s Bible Studies on “How to be the wife of a happy husband.”

“Our main emphasis over the years has been working with people one-on-one, teaching Sunday School and Home Bible Studies. This is where God has placed us and made us most effective for His Kingdom.”

Needing to expand, in 1968 Yorba Linda Friends Church started planning for a new church building to be located on Lakeview Ave “On The Hill.”

When the church was ready to start building they were still shore $25,000 in the bond program. Nothing could proceed until that money was raised. John and Wayne Fredenburg went to the bank and personally borrowed $25,000 in order to get the project going.

For the next 2-1/2 years as a layperson-volunteer John was daily on the construction site, helping oversee the construction project and handling payroll for the crew.

In 1969 John and Virginia went on their first Holy Land Tour, with Biola College. Having personally experienced the impact of “walking where Jesus walked” they decided to put together a group themselves. Their first tour was in 1970 and since then they have lead 22 groups to the Holy Land.

Just a few of those who have traveled with them to the Lands of the Bible these past 30+ years include Chuck and Nancy Mylander, John and Kay Werhas, John and Carol Wimber, Matthew and Maude Cork, Glen and Doris Shaffer, CW and Mary Perry, Frank and Louise Marshburn, Mickie and Cherie McDermott, Dick and Lavonia Tuttle and Walt and Pat Hoffman.

On every tour at least one person has received Christ along the way and people’s lives have been enriched as a result of “walking where Jesus walked.”

In the late 1970’s John was asked to become an Elder of Yorba Linda Friends Church. He continued in that capacity until 2002.

Starting in the early 1980’s John and Virginia began teaching specialized seminars, focusing in depth on how God’s Word relates to our everyday lives, needs and problems. Some of these seminars are:
• Finances God’s Way
• The Life of Joshua
• The Home God’s Showcase
• Husband and Wife Relationships
• Parent and Child Relationships
• God’s Plan of the Ages
• Letting God Rule
• Road to Freedom
• Breakfast with John
• Evangelism Training
• The Life of Paul
• Wanting God’s Best For Your Family

John says, “There has never been a seminar Virginia and I have taught where souls did not come to Christ. This is our ministry and our life”.

Looking back on 58 years of their Christian walk, John and Virginia recall that God seems to have used them more working with people outside of the church than with those inside the church. “No matter where we go God provides opportunities for ministry and to bring folks to Christ. This is not the Pastor’s job, it is our job as lay persons, to share our faith with those around us, those we work with and those God brings into our lives.”

John and Virginia recall hundreds of individuals with whom they have personally counseled, prayed and met with over and over again, having a personal influence in their walk and spiritual growth. Today they point to these outstanding Christian men and women, husbands and wives, fathers and mothers who are involved in ministry and serving Christ wherever God has placed them.

“Everything we have and are we owe to our God, to Yorba Linda Friends Church and to the Friends Church Yearly Meeting. Our children know Jesus Christ and are serving Him. Our grandchildren know and are serving Jesus. God has truly blessed our family and us.

Our heart’s desire is still to pray and counsel with men and women concerning their marriages and bring them to a saving knowledge of Jesus Christ.”

Some interesting calculations:
• 3,250 Sunday School classes taught, starting in Murdo, South Dakota and then at Yorba Linda Friends Church. His first Sunday School class of 4th grade boys in Yorba Linda is one of the photos. At least one of those 4th grade boys still attends Yorba Linda Friends Church
• 6,525 Bible Studies taught in homes throughout Yorba Linda and surrounding cities
• 10,4000 hours spent counseling individuals and couples on their salvation, marital relationships, finances and parent/child relationships. Waitresses at Poly’s, Mimi’s and Lakeview Café always knew where John wanted to sit to counsel people.
• 46,500 hours spent in preparation for teaching.
• 8,970 hours in the Holy Land leading tours and teaching while actually at Biblical sites.

Ps 145:4 “One generation shall praise Your works to another, and shall declare Your mighty acts.”

Written by Lauralyn Underwood (daughter): My children have always been affected or impacted by the measure of commitment the folks have had. Stories of making promises to God and never wavering from them – have spoken volumes to my kids. They also are living those things out in front of their own kids.

Now that John and Virginia are older they cannot physically do as much, but one thing the can do is pray. Believing that we all live in an atmosphere of prayers spoken, I believe John and Virginia still are having an affect on many of our lives when we don’t even know.

The legacy of prayer is very important to our family and something that everyone counts on. Many times we all go to John and Virginia and ask for prayer, knowing their level of communication with God. That is special.

Even their great grandchildren are prayed for all the time and I am sure their lives will be blessed in certain ways even long after John and Virginia are gone.
What an example they are for all of us, to “lay up treasures in Heaven” for our future generations.

Prayer reaches into the future. It is an example for us of how to put spiritual riches in deposit for future generations.

Proverbs 14:26 “He who fears the Lord has a secure fortress, and for his children it will be a refuge.”

Regarding Evangelism: John always talks about Jesus no matter where. Even recently in the ER (hospital) he asked one of the gentlemen (PA) where he went to church. They visited a little while and then prayed together.

He would talk to people about Jesus when renting his condos. Often not rent condo so some, but would pray with them to accept Jesus. He’s already talked to his new neighbors about church and Jesus in Canyon Lake.

John and Virginia are examples of Finishing Strong. They are not giving up. If only the rest of us would be as effective in our remaining years.