On December 13, 2024, I lost my dearest treasure. So this blog is very personal. Here is the eulogy I wrote for the memorial service on December 28.

Each life is sacred to God. Thus, it is fitting that we meet today to celebrate the life and faith of Barbara Ann Hurd (Breneman). She was born during the Great Depression to a strong Mennonite family living on a dairy farm near Lancaster, Pennsylvania. Farming life taught her the virtue of hard work, a virtue she demonstrated throughout her life and inflicted on her husband and children.

In 1967 Barbara began her work with Latin America Mission when she taught school in Costa Rica. We met each other there and, after a few months, became engaged on a remote airstrip in Venezuela where I was flying for Mission Aviation Fellowship. Later, we adopted our three children from Costa Rica and Colombia.

Barbara never complained about where we lived. In Venezuela she would stare up at the cockroach-eating geckos on our ceiling who would lose occasionally lose their grip and land on our supper table. As I was flying over the Venezuelan jungle, she stayed home alone with Princessa, our German Shepherd, checking my progress with our short-wave radio. When our water supply failed, she took our laundry down to the Orinoco River to wash it and beat it out on the rocks.

When we moved to Colombia she comforted me after an airplane crash, nursed me through a bout of Typhoid fever and, when we were evicted, found us a new home.

During my years at Penn State, Barbara never complained about the poverty of grad school. She worked as an overnight nurse’s aide. She planted a productive garden in rocky soil. She sewed and patched clothes. Our 100-year-old house had no furnace so we bought a free-standing woodstove and Barbara helped me build a 30-foot-high cement-block chimney for it.  On trash days, Barbara would lead the whole family out to scavenge the garbage cans and dumpsters. She made her own tortillas, except once, when she brought some hard taco shells home from a local garage sale. She linked us up with the local Christian and Missionary Alliance Church and directed their program for seniors. She took the lead in forming some of our life-long friendships.

We moved to Minnesota in 1982 where I taught at Bethel University. She painted and wallpapered our two-story colonial house and turned it into a home. We would drive at night up University Ave. to Main St. to gather what she called “used carrots,” discarded in a field by the green grocer. I would shine the headlights out over the field and she would dash out to fill a large bag with carrots while our kids would all bend down so their friends would not see them. She made ice cream with cream from a nearby Amish farm, churning it with ice that we harvested from our yard and crushed in a burlap bag. She frequently hosted students and faculty and linked us into a strong, loving network of friends. Barbara entered into the life of each church we attended and served them well—Sunday School superintendent at Good Shepherd Church and 28 years as a volunteer counselor in the North Heights counseling clinic.

In 1988 we uprooted our whole family to live for a year in Costa Rica where I taught in a missiological school. When I was caught in the eye of hurricane Joana in Bluefields, Nicaragua, she volunteered at a local shelter and awaited word from me. Several years later, she joined me for five months in northern England when I was a visiting fellow at Durham University. We explored Holy Island together, along with other wonders of the Celtic Christian world.

Barbara suffered through the many stories we told at her expense. For instance, the healing service where she said, “I wanted to go down for healing but if I got healed, I would never know what was causing it.” Like Mary Poppins, she was an Almost Perfect Person. We would joke that Lent was the hardest season of the year for her since she never could think of any sins to confess.

Barbara was the beating heart of our home. Always loyal to her husband. A sacrificial wife and mother, she fiercely fostered our social, emotional and spiritual development.

Her life motto was “To know Christ and to make him known.” She forgave people who hurt her, including her husband, and poured her life into her kids and grandkids. In the larger community, her charity was natural and unpretentious.

We lived Barbara’s last days in sacred time. In our own bed, I would hold her hand and speak my gratitude to her. Her condition waxed and waned and in the low times she would say, “I just want to go and be with Jesus.” Barbara was embarrassed at all the care we had to give her—the last words she spoke were “thank you.” She trusted in Christ and his death on her behalf and confidently looked forward to a resurrection when she would dwell in the house of her Lord forever. She died without regrets, with no unconfessed sin and with no unfinished business. It was a blessed death for her and a gift to all of us.

Barbara, I bow before your example, your faith and your service. You have distributed your rich gifts to many and now I release you to our Lord. May eternal light shine upon you.

James Hurd and family

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