Jarom's Story

Okay I said I'd tell you Jarom's story, so here it is.  To preface this blog a little bit I want to tell you about Jarom.  Jarom is a phenomenal boy that anyone would be proud to call their son.  He works hard and lives on a ranch up here on our mountain but on the other side of the draw.  He is the oldest of 7 children in a family of 6 boys and only 1 girl.  He was born with some special problems that ended up involving him having to have a shunt in his head to drain fluids.  This hasn't given him any problems now but obviously has to be checked yearly.  He is very intelligent but struggles a little bit in school work so he's in some resource room classes.  He loves to hunt and play music.
Shortly after we retired and moved to this area in Idaho, one of my best friends and neighbor Gail invited me to ride with them into town to watch their grand kids at their school choir concert.  I had just barely begun to teach their grand kids to play bluegrass guitar and sing.  I'm always one to support the arts and "my" kids that I teach so it was wonderful getting the offer to come hear their concert and I was excited to go.  I knew Jarom from church and from living out here, and of course he was in the school concert too.
While I was watching the kids sing I saw Jarom up there with his class and he was really feeling the music and singing his heart out. I love it when I see kids who actually love to sing and I got to see this through his body language.  It's just so fun to see kids like that....Immediately I felt the Spirit telling me that Jarom was a boy who would love to learn to play the guitar and would benefit from this music.  The prompting was so strong that on the way home I told Gail of my prompting and feelings. I knew that his parents were in no position to be able to buy him a guitar, and so I pondered how I could get a guitar into his hands.  An entire month went by and the Spiritual promptings wouldn't let me stop thinking about and pondering how I could get a guitar for this boy.  I never said a word to him or his parents of my promptings but I just kept pondering my dilemma, meanwhile nothing was getting done to help this boy. 
Suddenly about a month later Jarom comes running up to me at church and blurts out, "Sister Redman I really want to learn to play the guitar, and my dad has a friend at work who is going to give him a guitar for me to use".  I was shocked, as I hadn't mentioned my promptings to him or his parents, but Heavenly Father knew my dilemma and stepped in to help.  So the following Sunday Jarom runs up to me again all excited and his eyes just dancing as he told me, "I got the guitar, I got the guitar."  "It's got a couple of strings missing but my mom told me not to worry that you'd be able to fix it."  "Can you come over today?"   So after talking to his parents it was agreed upon that I'd begin lessons with him the next day, Monday. 
Now he was 11 years old at this time and he's just slowly gotten better and better, but always has kept his same enthusiasm and joy in being able to play and sing.  When I come for his lessons he's so excited and he hurries to get his guitar.  I now also teach his next younger brother and his sister and sometimes when I'm working with them he'll grab his guitar and suddenly he's right there playing along with them.  Never tiring of his lesson time, never saying to me, "how much longer before I'm through," and such things like some others can say.  He loves to play and this music has changed his life and given him something that he can do that's special and that he loves so much.
Every year he begs me to get to play for his class, or to talk to the school to see if we can do an assembly as we've done in the past too.  This year was no exception so I finally went in to talk to his school and they've asked us to put on a full school assembly.  He's so excited to get to do this that he's helping me plan it and giving me "ideas" as to what songs he thinks would be good to play, and which song we should end with, etc.  Every single time his eyes dance with excitement as we talk about and plan it. 
So this is Jarom's story and as I previously posted you can read about our weekend and his first jam.  Now he's really bitten with the bluegrass bug, and the two of us are working on how he can get to stay and play longer at the Kamiah Super Jam, a fun bluegrass festival coming up in a few weeks.  Late last night as we were finishing up our jamming time he looked at me and said, "I've got it, I can stay with my grandma (who lives near the festival site) and she can let me stay and help me out". 
So as the Spirit has guided us through this whole thing once again we were provided a way.  His grandma suddenly showed up at our church today and I was able to visit with her about this past weekend and Jarom's new plight to get to stay longer at the Kamiah Festival.  She is so excited for him and wants to help in any way so it was no problem convincing her to help him out.  She said that she'll let him spend the whole weekend at her house so that he can participate and jam as much as he wants to.

I spend a lot of time teaching and moments like these make it the most rewarding thing I've ever done in my life.  I have several other kids that are suddenly coming alive in the music too, and there's nothing better for me in the whole wide world.  Heavenly Father has blessed me through this music with very nice instruments that there is no way I should have afforded to own.  I know with our income that I shouldn't have been able to buy these instruments but somehow I've been blessed to have them.  I love my instruments and have been blessed to somehow have gotten them.   I've had so much happiness and pure joy of life each and every day since I began playing 25 years ago.  I can show gratitude by giving back to these kids and people that I teach.  When I see the light, then it's me who receives and learns the most, and this is Jarom's story.