friendship

Friendship

Friendship is an important concept in the Bible. We don’t often think about it as we rush through the Scriptures, but it is one of the bedrocks of God’s will for His people.

“A man of many companions may come to ruin, but there is a friend who sticks closer than a brother.” Proverbs 18:24

Abraham is referred to as a “friend of God” in Scripture (Isaiah 41:8, James 2:23). Jesus told His followers that they were no longer slaves, but His friends if they do what He asked of them. Even George Washington admonished people not to attempt to have many friends – just a few handpicked ones that were “well-tried.”

“No longer do I call you servants, for the servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you.” James 15:14-15

For 48 years, A Company of Women CEO Rosalie Storment was my friend. She introduced me to Jesus in 1976. We spent virtually every moment of free time together- at her bookstore in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, on the phone in long distance conversations when she moved to Hawaii, and times of heartache for us both when she moved back to North Idaho in 1992. Rosalie, me, and her other special heart friend Robin Jeanne Parks knew well the statement of friendship in the Bible – we lived it with her. We cried together, laughed together, and began the ministry of A Company of Women International together.

Rosalie never wavered in her love of God. Through tears of heartbreak, or the hope of a husband that lived in her spirit, she loved Him with her whole being. She married Robert Storment in 2005, the epitome of prophetic fulfillment.

“Around the corner hid from view, a new companion sparkling new…” Stormy literally lived around the corner from Rosalie.

When the dreaded disease of Alzheimer’s began to take her from us, she maintained the underlying faith that she was ready to go to Him whenever He chose. In early January 2024, she passed into His loving arms … as His friend.

We are all called to be friends of God. We can only do that by loving Him and doing what He asks. His requests aren’t terrible, after all, He promised that His “yoke is light.” We all go through tough times, from sickness to finances to relationships. But remembering to talk to Him, to listen for His directions is the key to staying His friends.

I will miss my friend Rosalie, but as her friends, we all have the precious knowledge that she is with our Savior. She was the living, breathing picture of friendship.

WHEN GOD SPEAKS TO MY HEART

WHEN GOD SPEAKS TO MY HEART

by Rosalie Willis Storment

 

     My sheep that are My own hear and are listening to My voice; And I know them, and they follow me.

                                                                                                     JOHN 10:27 AMP

 

     After receiving the baptism of the Holy Spirit in Newbury Park, California, it seemed that every time I turned around God would say, “Ask what you will, and you’ll receive it.”   One day God spoke through a book I was reading: “Ask what you will, and  you’ll receive it.”  I didn’t know it was possible to hear God’s voice and didn’t realize I was hearing His voice, yet I listened and responded.

     In 1972 my husband, Dale, an FBI agent, had been transferred to Los Angeles, California, from Roswell, New Mexico.  He disliked the smog and congestion in L.A. and was more accustomed to the mountains of Idaho where he and I were raised.  Responding to the Lord’s prompting to ask and receive, I prayed, “I ask You to transfer us from Los Angeles to the state of Your choice, to the town of Your choice, to the house of Your choice, and sell our home.”

     Shortly after I prayed the FBI approached Dale, who had been with the agency for two years, and said, “Where do you want to go?” Normally agents must have ten years of service to receive that kind of favor or to be asked where they want to go. 

     Dale requested Idaho, but learned that the way to Idaho was through Butte, Montana.  Suddenly we were being transferred to Butte and had one month to sell our home. I told my friends, “God said He’ll sell my house.”

     One neighbor came to my door and said, “Get a grip, it doesn’t work this way!”

     “No!” I said. “God said!” Nobody looked at our house except for a few couples with huge families, which wouldn’t work in our three-bedroom home.  The day the movers arrived, nobody had even considered buying our home.  After the movers packed up and left, a car pulled in our driveway.  “There’s my buyers!” I said.

     Although the real estate agent normally wanted me to disappear so she could show my home to potential buyers, this time she asked me to show my home.  This was a gift, as I loved my home!  When I finished the tour, the agent pulled me aside.  “They really seem interested,” she said.  “Where will you be?”

“We’ll be at Howard Johnson’s to spend the night,” I said.  “Then we’re headed for Butte, Montana, early tomorrow morning.”  When we pulled into Howard Johnson’s, the telephone call was waiting.  We drove to the real estate office, signed papers at 10:00 P.M., and left for Butte the next morning.

     That began my adventure of hearing God’s voice.  God had said, and God had done!  When we arrived in Butte, the FBI put us in a motel for a month.  Six months later they sent us to  Glasgow, Montana.  I had told Dale that I’d go anywhere with him on the face of the earth except Alaska.  Glasgow was colder than Alaska – 49 degrees below zero the day we arrived!

     We moved onto the Glasgow Air Force base, seventeen miles from town.  Soon after I said, “God, I know You have a purpose for me here.  So let’s begin!”

     The next day when Dale walked into the bank, Marge Forum, a real estate loan officer, said, “I’d really like to meet your wife.”  Marge invited me to a lunch and told me of her desire to open a Christian bookstore.  To me, nothing could have been more exciting.

     Marge and I began working on this dream.  The vice president of a bank in town said he had seven thousand bushels of wheat.  “If you can sell it, you can have the money for the bookstore,” he said.  Wheat was then selling at $2.19 a bushel and profit meant anything over $3.00 a bushel .  From that point on the price of wheat steadily climbed and sold at a price sufficient to provide the necessary capital to open the bookstore.  Over seventy-five Christian friends came forward to help in any way they could-each one playing an important part in the formation of the store.

     One day a greeting card company representative came in as we were ordering things and asked, “What are you going to use for fixtures?”

     “God has provided everything else, He’ll provide this too.”  we said.  He drove over two thousand miles into Colorado to pick up fixtures for us and brought them back.  God provided everything! The Good News Bookstore opened November 12, 1973.

     When the vice president who had given us money to start the bookstore brought Bertha and Allen Phaup in one day, the Lord said, “This is important.  Pay attention.” Allen was the new deputy commander on the Glasgow Air Force Base.  He and Bertha had moved there from Honolulu and received the baptism of the Holy Spirit under Dennis Bennet in the Episcopal Church in Honolulu.  As we talked about different merchants in town, they would say, “Oh yes, the Lord said we’re supposed to meet them,”  The Lord said this and the Lord said that.

     I had a personal relationship with the Lord, but I didn’t know Him like that.  The next night when I invited Allan and Bertha over for dinner, they told me how they had learned to hear His voice and how they documented everything He said in journals.  For the next two weeks, whenever I wanted to know something from God, I’d call Allan and say, “Would you ask the Lord about this?”  More than delighted, Allan would call me back and tell me the Lord’s answer.

     Two weeks later God told Allan, “She’s potty trained; tell Rosalie to come to Me herself.”  That beagn my adventure of keeping journals, which I have done for thirty-two years.  After learning to hear God’s voice, the first thing I asked Him was, “When will we get transferred form Glasgow, Montana?”  His caravan would move at His time and His bidding, He said, and my mind and heart was to be on His word and His work.

     When Allan and Bertha planned a trip out of town, I asked to borrow their journals.  While they were gone I wrote down every word from their journals that spoke to my heart.  When they returned the Lord directed me to do the same with my journals.  He led me to put Allan and Bertha’s journals first, and mine second, and to title it Glory to God.

    God directed me to take the manuscript for Glory to God to a man on the Air Force Base at 10:00 A.M. on a particular day.  He said that the man who had a printing shop, would be happy to do the printing for me free of charge.  Although I thought I would print three copies, one for me, and one for a friend, and one for the Phaups, God said, “Make one hundred copies.” 

     The man said he’d be happy to do it for me and wouldn’t charge me anything, just as God said.  He even included beautiful yellow covers without my asking.  Then the Lord revealed each person who was to receive one of the copies.  I gave the copies as directed, knowing they were either burned or thrown away.  I said, “Lord, Why?”  He said He wanted them to have the opportunity whether they took it or not.

 Time passed and more journals were written by all of us.  The Lord told me to do Volume 2 of Glory to God, this time putting my journals first and Allan and Bertha’s second. 

     The time came when again I asked God, “When are You going to transfer us?”  Learning that Dale’s boss would retire on February 28, we knew our transfer would come soon as well.  The Lord said our transfer would happen within the first Fortnight of February.  God expanded my vocabulary, I didn’t know what a “fortnight” was!

     One day Dale said, “You know, the first fortnight ends on Friday the 13th.  He did’t want the transfer to come on Friday the 13th.

     While I was in the shower on the morning of Thursday, February 12, 1976, the Lord kept saying, “Rejoice, rejoice, it’s a wonderful day!”

  I thought, Can it be?

     That night Dale came home and didn’t say a word until after dinner. 
“Did I tell you we got transferred to Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, today?”  The government hadn’t formulated the new budget, so nobody in the FBI was getting transferred, yet Dale was being transferred.

     God led me to do a third volume of journals of Allan and Bertha’s journals interspersed with mine, print one hundred copies of all three volumes, and take them to my new home in Coeur d’Alene.  There He would show me where all one hundred sets were to go.

     The Lord said, “Have you not been in the battlefield of the wilderness for forty months, and have I not led you every step of the way?”  I counted the months we had lived in Glasgow; exactly forty months.  From the Wilderness of Glasgow, God sent us to the land of milk and  honey; Coeur d’Alene, Idaho.  Before we moved, I asked Him if I could own my own Christian bookstore, and He said I would.

     After moving to Coeur d’Alene, I started job hunting because our daughter, Shanette, was about to start college and I needed to work to help pay for her education.  My first job interview was with a real estate office.  Because my family had been in real estate and I had been their secretary part of the time, the man said, “you’re the perfect one for the job.  I’ll call you tomorrow.”

     When he called the next day, However, he said, ” You were the perfect one.  I don’t know why I hired this other person!”

     After my next interview at a bank, the banker said, “The job is yours.”

     “I need this job,” I said.  “But I can’t take it, and I don’t know why!”  I went to my prayer group and asked them to pray.

     When I returned home, I received a phone call from one in my prayer group. “I want you to call the manager at Beneficial Finance, ” she said.  I called, interviewed, and landed the job.

     The Lord had told me that when I opened the Christian bookstore, it must be on Sherman Avenue, with all windows to the street.  Beneficial finance was on Sherman with all windows to the street, but I didn’t make the connection.

     On January 28, 1980, God said, “Look forward to March 15, it’s an important day.”  On March 15 a neighbor I didn’t know well called.  “I heard you’re thinking about opening a Christian bookstore,” she said.  “Would you come over and talk to me about it?”

     When I met with her and shared my testimony for over two hours, she said she wanted to give me $10,000, with no interest for ten years, so I could open the Christian bookstore.  I now had about half of the money needed for the store.  The Lord directed me to go on a 140 day bread and sugar fast.  I was a sugarholic!  He said the ship of His provision had set sail, and it would find safe harbor by September 1. On September 1, 1980, the last day of the sugar and bread fast, gifts of $10,000 and $5,000 arrived.  Now I had $25,000.

     One year earlier, on February 12, 1979, God had awakened me and said, “your only have two years left until the ministry I have for you begins.”  Right then I started ordering and collection the things I would need for the bookstore and stored them in my basement.

     One day my boss from Beneficial Finance told me his rent was being doubled.  Suddenly it clicked!  I had looked on Sherman Avenue for a bookstore location but had found nothing available.  Now I realized why the other jobs didn’t work out and why I had to work at a job I wouldn’t normally enjoy.  Calling People about getting their money in, working on a huge computer I had to figure out every day, and being unable to talk to people like I love to do was like death – body, soul and spirit.

     Dale would say, “You could quit.”

     “No!” I’d say.  “God placed me here!  I don’t know why, but I have to stay until He releases me.”   When I realized this was the site for the bookstore,  I asked my boss if he would help me get the lease on the building.  He agreed.

     The following February 12, 1981, exactly two years from the day the Lord said my ministry would begin in two years and exactly five years from the day we had been transferred to Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, I flew to Boise and negotiated the building lease with the bank manager in a top floor conference room of a high rise building.  Instead of doubling the rent, it increased only $25 a month.  I flew back to Coeur d’Alene and gave my two-week notice to Beneficial Finance.

      When the lease for this location on Sherman Avenue was firm, I was anxious to tell Jean Rainbolt, a dear friend I had known since 1976.  After I shared the news Jean said, “Rosalie, I’ve had two special desires in life.  One is to be a church secretary, which I am, and the other is to work in a Christian Bookstore.  I’d like to work with you, and I want no pay.” 

     We gained access to the building on April 1.  After our husbands built the bookshelves, painted, and put the whole store together, The Sonshine Bookstore opened on May 1, 1981.  Jean and I worked side by side and showed up even if we were sick because we didn’t want to let each other down and wanted to play store together.  Jean and I prayed together in the office every day.  God’s people visited our haven of peace, coming back into the office to be refreshed before returning to work.

     After The Sonshine Bookstore had been open about two years, God said, “It’s coming! It’s coming! I’m going to open doors, and you’re going to love it.”

     I said, “What’s coming?”

     One day while Shanette was home from college, Jean and I attended a Women’s Aglow meeting while Shanette looked after the store.  At the end of the meeting the pastor told us to break into twos to pray for one another, “It’s coming! It’s coming!” and you want to know what’s coming.”

     “Yes!” I said. So Jean prayed.

     The next day Dale said, “Where would you like to go?”  As an FBI agent he knew it was time for us to move on.

     “There’s no place better than Coeur d’Alene, Idaho,” I said.

     “How about Honolulu, Hawaii?” he suggested.

     Shanette and I said, “Count us in!”  Although his boss didn’t like the idea, God said the transfer would come on the 28th of August and gave me the selling price for the bookstore.  The next day I told Jean the news.  Jean and her husband, Dick, had been planning to buy a motor home, but the night before the Lord told her, “No.”

She thought,  How am I going to tell Dick?

     The next morning Dick said to Jean, “I don’t think we’re supposed to buy this motor home.”

     When Jean came to work the next day I said, “We’re moving to Honolulu.  Would you like to buy the bookstore?”  The Lord told me the price the store would sell for, the day it was to sell, and the day our transfer would come, and it all happened exactly as He said, to the last detail.  Dick and Jean Rainbolt owned the store from September 1, 1983, until May 1 1992. 

     We moved to Honolulu in December of 1983.  The Great Commission, an organization in Hawaii much like the Full Gospel Businessmen, met down the road from where I lived.  I attended a Sunday meeting where a chaplain from the Waikiki Beach Chaplaincy was speaking.

     After the meeting I told the chaplain that I had just sold a Christian bookstore in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho.  He said, “The Chaplaincy was just given money to open a Christian bookstore in Waikiki.  Would you open it and manage it?”

     Because God had told me I had come to Hawaii to sing, I said, “I’m going to have to pray about that.  I thought I came here to sing.”

     After praying, the Lord directed me to manage the bookstore but to keep a loose hold on it and to let go when He told me to let go.  I handled the ordering and setting up for The Good News Bookstore.  Working six days a week, then five, then four, then two, then one day a week.

     I said, “Lord, how can I manage a store when I’m only here one day a week?”

     “It’s time to let go.” the Lord said. “They don’t need you anymore.”  It was a wonderful year.

     The Waikiki Chaplaincy, who acted as an agent for musicians, scheduled me to sing throughout the island, just like God said I would, during the two years we lived in Hawaii.  From Honolulu we were transferred to Missoula, Montana, for seven years and then relocated to Post Falls, Idaho, near Coeur d’Alene.

     Back in Coeur d’Alene, when Dick and Jean Rainbolt retired they closed the Sonshine bookstore, and the building owners rented it as a used bookstore.  Twelve years later the used bookstore closed, and I heard that a new business had opened.

     In July 2005 I had lunch with my friends, Tex Gaynos and Faye Higbee, at a new restaurant next door to the Sonshine Bookstore’s original location.  I bubbled with excitement during lunch.  “This is where the Sonshine Bookstore used to be!” I said.  I could hardly wait to finish eating so we could visit the new shop.

     Walking over the threshold, I was delighted to find a beautiful gift store called Possibilities, taken from Matthew 19:26, “All things are possible with God,” I made a beeline for the office, anxious to discover the wonderful things awaiting me.  I found a wine tasting room, and Lee Kausen sitting with his wife Jill, joint owners, at a high table working on their laptop computer.

     After introducing myself, I asked, “Did you know there used to be a Christian bookstore here?” 

     “No!” they said.

     “Yes!” I said.  We both laughed for joy.  Lee shared the miracle of God moving his family to Coeur d’Alene to open Possibilities, and I shared the miracle story of the Sonshine Bookstore.  “I’m going home with Tex and Faye,” I told them.  “I’ll come back with pictures of what it used to look like here as Beneficial Finance and as the Sonshine Bookstore.

     When I returned, Lee and I perused the pictures and talked animatedly until about 6:00 that night.  I headed home full  of excitement, knowing God had “re-dug the well” that He had dug twenty-five years before.

 

     I gave Lee a copy of my book  A Walk With Jesus, written from the first seven years of my journals, which documented how God taught me to trust Him and His love.  I also gave him When God Speaks to My Heart, published by White Stone Books and distributed through Harrison House Publishers.  Lee loved them so much that they now sit on the wine tasting room table where customers can taste wine and read both books.  Also tucked on shelves and in gift baskets throughout the store.  They remind us of God’s divinely orchestrated plans for the Sonshine Bookstore and the Possibilities that followed.

 

Featured photo – the Sonshine Bookstore was in this block in downtown Coeur d’Alene

prayer

THE POWER OF PRAYER by Rosalie Storment

 Mary Fox Murphy, President, Christian Women’s Outreach and International Prayer Network, and my friend writes, “Prayer changes things! Every praying Christian knows this is an absolute fact.  However, with the help of technology, prayer itself is changing.  With the advent of rapid communication delivery systems, prayer has entered a unified, worldwide dimension.  E-mail and fax capabilities make it possible to send prayer requests around the world instantly.  Thousands of intercessors can be praying for a critical situation within thirty minutes.  When thousands or perhaps millions , networked in worldwide prayer, begin to beseech God for a critical, personal difficulty, a no-hope condition , or an international crisis, miracles begin to happen.  Such was the case for Rosalie Willis from Post Falls, Idaho.”  

I’m alive today because of global prayer.   Treasured friends and strangers around the world took time out of their busy schedules to fervently pray for me as the Lord healed me of multiple strokes, three code blues, multiple seizures, paralysis, blindness, deafness, 10 hours of surgery, a month in the hospital, and as I learned to breathe, talk, and walk again.

 

    A year and a half after my brush with death, I visited Israel for the Feast of Tabernacles, I met many from different parts of the world who, when they heard that I was Rosalie Willis, exclaimed, “I was praying for last year”.  Then we’d hug, laugh, and praise God that we got to meet, that He answered their prayers, and that He’s totally healed me!  

    On January 15, 1998, while packing for a conference in Yakima, Washington, a paisley pattern blocked the vision in my left eye as I was overcome by a sickening feeling of weakness.  After resting for an hour, I seemed to be fine. Five days later, however, I returned from Yakima feeling extremely weak.

    A speaking invitation on my answering machine requested that I come to Cove, Oregon.  Because this trip was important to me, I make the five-hour trip alone by car.

    Disturbing symptoms continued to plague me.  As I lay in bed at night, I heard a gurgling sound in my neck.  The weakness in my body increased, so I drove home a day early.  Once home, weakness again consumed me.  This time I had to grab hold of a chair to keep from falling.  I promised myself I would see my doctor the next day.

The doctor wasn’t available so a nurse practitioner examined me.  She cleaned out my ears and told me that I had water on my eardrums.  An antibiotic and antihistamine was prescribed, and I left.  Later that day I saw more jagged, brilliantly colored lights even when my eyes were closed.  But by the time I got home that day, the lights disappeared and I seemed normal.  

    That night two seizures flailed me about like a rag doll, flinging me to the floor.  When I called the hospital, the doctor said, “Come in immediately.”  It was in the middle of the night and I was home alone.   I knew it wasn’t safe to drive myself to the hospital, so I agreed to call my doctor first thing in the morning.  I also called friends from A Company of Women to pray.

    On Wednesday, January 28, I went to the emergency room of the local hospital, knowing that something was drastically wrong with me.  After describing my symptoms to the ER doctor, and MRI and a barrage of other tests were ordered.

 The next day my daughter, Shanette, flew in from Seattle to stay with me in the hospital.  Test indicated a problem in my carotid artery.  Assuming that the artery was clogged, the doctor scheduled me for surgery the following day.

I suffered a stroke at 5:00 in the morning.  The hospital staff called a code blue.  At the same time, the Lord woke women from A Company of Women and instructed them to pray for me.  Three hours later I regained consciousness but was paralyzed, blind, deaf, and unable to speak or breathe on my own.  Most of the alarming symptoms disappeared within hours.  When the surgeon began to operate later that morning, he discovered that the artery wasn’t clogged but was torn.  I was bleeding internally.

    While on the operation table, my heart stopped and a 2nd code blue was called. They again brought me back. After five hours of reconstructive surgery, the surgeon broke the news to my family, “I’ve done all I can ,” he said. “There’s not much hope.”

    Two hours later, I awoke in the ICU Recovery Unit only to hear my surgeon say, “we’re taking her back in.”

    The monitors indicated that I wasn’t responding properly.  Another arduous five-hour surgery transpired.  The surgeon approached my family a second time, giving some hope if only I could survive the night.

    I woke up at 11 P.M. in ICU.  I was on oxygen and had tubes extending from me in all directions.  My face was so swollen that I was unrecognizable.  The pain was unbearable.

    Trying to bring the swelling down, they put a block of ice wrapped in a towel on my neck but the weight of the  ice increased the pain.  My dear Shanette brought packages of frozen peas in small plastic bags and rotated them throughout the night.  It worked.

    The Lord had also alerted precious intercessors around the world to pray for me.

    After the initial crisis, my daughter, family, and friends had contacted intercessors across the U.S. and in international prayer networks around the world to pray.  They were told that the next few days were critical to my survival.  Shanette’s loving 24-hour presence in my hospital room during my hospital stay was also critical to my survival.  God gave her the wisdom to know what to do at the right time.  I was stabilizing although I was still in critical condition.

   Four days later I suffered a third stroke and a third code blue.  Once again, they brought me back.  God’s people were praying, and His intercessors continued to carry me.     

For almost a month, I wasn’t allowed to sit up, get out of bed, shower, or wash my hair.  Everything had to be done for me.  I had to learn to breathe, talk, and walk again.  The muscles and nerves in my left arm shut down for three months because of the swelling in my neck.  The Lord miraculously brought completer restoration and use to that arm.  When I was released a month later, my recovery amazed the doctors.

    During the second month of my recovery, Shanette commuted back and forth from Seattle.  She worked three days a week and then spent the next four days caring for me.  She scheduled around-the-clock care for me.  Friends from A company of Women came to my home for their appointed time of care but often stayed over to enjoy the love and fellowship of other dear friends.  The house was always filled with loving, laughing, worshiping, and praying women.  What a wonderful way to heal!

    On Easter Sunday, April 12, 1998, the celebration of Jesus’ resurrection became my day of resurrection as well.  I attended church and rejoiced over my miraculous healing and restoration.  The nurse who had cared for me in the hospital was also in the service that morning. At first she didn’t recognize me because she had only seen me at death’s door.  When she realized who I was, her obvious shock of seeing my full recovery spread across her face.  Others were stunned when they heard of my brushes with death, and their faith was strengthened as they witnessed my recovery.

    A year and a half later I visited Israel for the Feast of Tabernacles.  I met many people who, when they heard that I was Rosalie Willis, exclaimed, “I was praying for you last year!”   We hugged, laughed, and praised God that we got to meet and that He answered their prayers!

God is still in the miracle-working business as we pray in one accord!  Although I don’t know how many people prayed, I’m fully persuaded that became of their faithfulness to intercede, I’m alive, restored, and able to continue this wonderful adventure of loving God and loving His people.

    “Surely he took up our infirmities and carried our sorrows, yet we considered him stricken by God, smitten by him, and afflicted.

    But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was upon Him, and by his wounds we are healed.” ISAIAH 53:4,5

P.S. About a dozen years later we saw my surgeon at a dinner party.  He had been retired for a number of years. He greeted us joyously and said that I was truly one of his greatest miracles.

Featured photo- Rosalie and daughter Shanette in Israel