After graduating from The University of Texas and working at the career for which I’d prepared for more than 16 years, I felt like I’d climbed a ladder that was leaning against the wrong wall. So, packing my giant, pink graduation-present suitcase with what I thought were necessities for life, which exploded with makeup,curlers, pantyhose and pink polyester pantsuits (did I mention this was l973) in the concourse of Luxembourg Airport upon arrival, I discovered my first problem was not knowing whether I was a Herren or a Damen…which restroom do I use? Forty-five countries and 10 months later, I’d learned a lifetime of lessons and was only shouldering a small backpack with a passport, a sleeping bag, two pair of jeans and 3 shirts…and was happy as a lark and free as a bird…of all the trappings of “normal” life…and transformed forever!
Return to the main Finalists page
TAGS: Community Outreach Contests Travel
Real life entertainment. Enjoyed the story.
have fun on your trip u will win
Great story! Sounds like it was a fruitful journey!
Keep Trekking……….
Set your sites high and go for it!
Awesome job, Melody! That sounds like it was a great adventure!
Good luck! Better than that,God bless you!
I totally relate to your feelings Melody! I don’t think there is anyhting more special than realizing the significance of God’s creation and the insignificance of worldly things. I wish you the best and pray that all of your travels are as special as this life- changing one you shared!
The Lord bless your efforts, Melody
Melody, I hope you win, you deserve it. God bless you and keep you in His care.
Good luck with the contest, Ms Miller.
Good Luck, Melody.
SHE HAD A TREMENDOUS STORY 1
Thank you everybody for your persistence with these difficulties. I SOOOOOOOOOOOOO appreciate it.
Excellent! I praise God for you, Ms. Miller!
Lucky girl
That’s quite a story
Good luck
I hope you win!
We’ve traveled many a road together and wish we could join you on this trip. Praying for you and hope you win.
You go, GIRL!
Bless you!
Great story! Many blessings!
Good Job Melody. Now your a dancer and a writer too. Good luck!
GREAT JOB ….MY FRIEND
Good Job Melody!!!
Great story! Melody I pray you win so that you are able to help with the mission you want to go on!
Blessings,
Michelle W
Good Luck and do great things.
I HOPE U HAV A GREAT CONTEST> N GOOD LUCK!!!!!!!!!!
Hope you win!
We have experienced the therapeutic effect that travel can have on a person. We feel Melody did a great job of explaining it and hope she wins the trip. Venita Rosenow
Loved hearing how you got started. Hope you win!!
It’s an honor to vote for you and Richard as my fellow neighbors Melody. It would be such a blessing to have respresentatives of our wonderful LTHA family taking love and blessings aboard the Mercy Medical Ship to give unto others. You will be a tremendous gift to those lives you touch. You so deserve to win this contest. In my eyes you are winners either way because your hearts are always in the right place. Thank you for being who you are and making our community a home. Belief always ~ angie
Mary Lane and Jimmy Stiglets told me about your medical volunteer plans if you win. I truly wish you every success!
Melody’s story reflects what should be the life-blood of, and the driving force behind, all world travel: a true spirit of adventure! You go, Girl! I hope you win!
Wish you all the best in this wonderful adventure!
Good luck & God bless!
Good Luck, Mrs. Miller!! Life certainly brings about a change and wakes us up to what the true meaning of life really is!!
We certainly identify with the therapeutic effects that traveling provides a person. We hope that Melody wins the contest. Don and Venita Rosenow
Great article…good insight!
This sounds like a great adventure that I would like to embark on!
Hope you win!
Good Luck Melody
Sharing the talents and wealth God has blessed us with is a really great thing, Melody is doing both these. I am happy to support her in this endeavor!
Melody very nice. I enjoyed reading the article.
Beautiful and moving
I hope you win!
Good Luck Melody. I hope you win!
Wow! That sounds like so much fun!
Melody should win this contest!
Many Blessings your way! Love your post on Jan. 27th.
Good luck! Miss talking to you.
Melody has put into words that express how well we see determination to enjoy life in her .She deserves this and hope she gets it.
Melody gives me inspiration to see more of the world!
interesting read, sounds like a good experience
Good Luck and God Bless
Many Blessings!
My vote is for Melody Miller! Melody, you are awsome! You deserve to win. What a great story. You go girl! God bless your efforts.
Vicky Lynn
Many Blessings to you Melody!
Melody has the experience to help people in many ways including the most important nutritional breakthrough in history saving lives and restoring health with glyconutrients.
Good luck!
Melody’s passage is so descriptive and it makes me want to just live life to the fullest with no cares or worries at all. Stress free and happy is how life should be and this passage shows this in my opinion and that’s why I love it!
Melody’s goal is to minister to a little-served area of the world with the Mercy Ship.
I wish her the best, and hope she wins this trip.
Melody is so deserving of this trip. So much of her life involves giving to others. This would be a wonder gift to her.
good luck
Most definitely you deserve this opportunity, Melody. You have had a heart to serve others the entire 30 yrs I have known you
my vote is for Melody!
Good luck on a great adventure.
Such a great story, Mrs. Miller!
What an amazing story from an amazing lady. I always want to hear more
of Melody”s life. She is one of the most cariing people I know. Hope she wins.
Congratulations on making the finals and best of luck to you.
This is an awesome opportunity for you!
Best wishes from a fellow SWC!
Good job….way to go baby doll
Wow, 45 countries! Never knew you had traveled that much. Melody, we all need to learn a lesson from your experience by letting go of the “things” that weigh us down. May the Lord help us see that only He is essential, and to put Him first, followed by our families and other people. God will take care of the rest!
Melody Miller has my vote…!
My vote is for Melody Miller who has a heart for missions. I have known her many, many years and she is a woman after God’s heart in serving others as she lives out the Gospel of Jesus Christ. It is my honor to vote for Melody.
Melody presence would be a great asset for this trip. She is kind, smart and vivacious. I recommend her highly for this trip.
Go girl, keep on with the Work!!
Good Luck!
Your goal is blessed.
Good writing. Best of luck, Melody!
My vote is for Melody Miller. I have enjoyed reading all the submissions. I hope she wins.
my vote to Melody. Wonderful story and thanks for sharing this.
It is all about the journey!!
That’s quite a story.
Wonderful story. This lady deserves to to on the trip. In fact it’s imperative that she go so lets make it happen. Thanks
Steve
Great story. Very evocative. Happy trails to you!
Good luck!
inspiring!
Way to go Melody Miller, you have my vote .
I could relate to this. Most people have way too much baggage!
I like the journey you take us as readers on for this peak into your life- nice capture!..and thank you for sharing you with us.
Great sharing and inspiring too. Thanks Melody, all the best
Melody Miller is the greatest ! Melody is nothing short of a Princess Melody I really enjoyed your article. God Bless You !
I believe Melody is up to the challenge and with God’s Blessings she will touch many lives in her travels…
God Bless
Chris
Melody, I enjoyed the article. We hope to see you continue the journey!
This is an amazing story and I want to hear more of the details. Melody is
a truly a great lady wth so much to share. She reaches out to people and
connects with them like few women I have ever known.
I enjoyed reading your article, Melody. I felt like I was there. Well done!
Congratulations on making the finals. Best of luck and I hope you win
Its a wonderful thing that someone wants to go help and better this beautiful world. May the blessings of God be with you Melody!!
Dwight C Kinkel
That’s awesome… made me giggle, the whole restroom thing. I was just as confused on my first business trip to Germany. Good luck!
Good Luck!!!!
Best of luck to you Melody!! Your story is most inspiring and you are well deserving of only the BEST! #ONE !! You Have my vote!
You have my vote, Melody.
Best of luck, Melody!
Ah the transforming power of traveling the world, . . .you made us feel it. Thanks.
Great story – and congrats on making the Finals! Good luck, you have MY Vote!
Best of luck Melody! How we all can relate to your story. While we are young, we normally fail to see the beauty of the journeys the Lord lays before us.
Good luck.
Melody and I met on a incentive trip to Mexico with a nutrition company we both believe in called Mannatech. I found her to be a wonderful fun-loving gal with potential to do whatever God calls her to do. She is active in many worthwhile activities and all the while seems to find time for her family. Her work with the pro-life movement has so inspired me. She is ever giving and continues to be supportive in endeavors of the business we share. Ambition is one of her characteristics and persistance is a an added virtue. Good luck Melody
Melody,
Here’s wishing you luck. You deserve this honor.
Great story Melody…Wish I had been with you. You write well and I really enjoyed it*!*
Wow how awesome a life you have lived!! Love the Israel story, too. Do tell us more. Keep on sharing these inspiring stories for all to read.
Congratulations, Melody on being a finalist in the Amble travel writing contest. Kudos to you for having the courage to let go and find your way. You are among the very few who will get past the fear and allow a better path to unfold. Infinite blessings, Jamelle Rackley
Melody, It sounds like you travel with a lighter suitcase but a fuller heart! Congratulations and keep up the good work!
way to go Melody….forty five countries in 10 months has my vote
Congratulations Melody!!
Outstanding!! You have my vote!!
Thank you so much, friends and family! Your comments are SO kind and encouraging. I had said I left another story on #8, but it looks like the numbers change as more comments come in. So back there somewhere is chapter number one of a book I started last year, Just a reminder that when you leave your comment, you MUST go to your email in box to respond that you sent that comment and that is your email Just the way they have to keep the contest honest. Again…thank you Soooo much!
I have traveled the same way and can relate perfectly with your experience!!
Way to go Melody! I remember my wake-up call when I found out I didn’t really need anything except the clothes on my back. Yep, true freedom!
great Article.Good Luck.
David & Martha Webb
Hey Melody,
Hope you can take your act on the road to the Ivory Coast.
Miller Rhodes
Great Article. Good Luck.
Good Luck Melody. Make our future Brighter!!
Melody
Best wishes for a life of travel and service to others!
Melody, Congratulations on being a finalist in this very worthwhile endeavour.
Docfran Clark
Good Luck!
Jennifer & I think Melody would be great to go on this trip–she has a heart of gold to serve her Lord & Savior Jesus Christ & loves ministering esp to them who are downtrodden. We’ve known her since 1990. Some of her jargon brings back memories–happy as a lark! She was born on Thurs June 8. Jesus shines thru her & she is loves people dearly from her heart. We are proud to know her. Bless you dear sister Melody. 16:08 CST Jan 29, 2012.
Good luck on the Mercy!
We read the little story told by Melody and there was a sentence in her story that has stuck with me . I think, in everyone’s life there is a “wakeup” moment when we realized we weren’t going the direction God had for us but never thought about it in the way Melody put it. I loved the expression of “having our ladder placed on the wrong wall”. This was beaufifully written to give us an excuse to change our direction. Very thoughtful Melody. Thanks for the thoughts. Sue DeCamp
Sounds great Melody! Keep enjoying your travels.
Great job!!
Great job, Melody! Good luck!
Good luck, Mrs. Melody!
God luck on your quest.
This is great life experience. Wishing everyone would do the same. Probably the world would different. Love it.
Once you have experienced other parts of the world, you live life differently! Great story!
Loved it!!
You all SO kind to take time to encourage me. Thank you SSSSOOOO much. I left another anecdote of my travels on comment #8 and welcome you to take a look. The Lord has been leaning on me to pull out my old journals and memories and share MY STORY FOR HIS GLORY. My brain says…there is already too much to read…too many books…magazines…emails……websites…why more? But my heart says “Yes, Lord, You are Lord and I am not”. So comment #8 is the first chapter of a book I started last year to make sure the lessons the Lord has taught me don’t go to my grave, but are passed on to my three precious daughters, if no one else ever reads them. This contest and winning one of the top 10, is such confirmation that He wants me to keep on keeping on…writing. So thank you…ssssssoooooooo much.
Great article Melody! Enjoyed it.
Too funny and well written. So many lessons in life!
The story brings back memories from the 70s. Great beginning. You ought to add some more and write a novel about your memories about that special time in our culture.
Souns like a great adventure. Good luck.
Great story!!! Love you!!!!
Great article – best of luck on winning
Great story… you got my vote!
Great story…ah, to be young again!
Great article Melody.
Great story from Melody Miller
This is another experience I had about 10 months after the one I wrote for the entry to this contest:
It was my last day in Israel, a beautiful sunny day in March of l974. One thing I had yet to experience was the camel auctions in Beersheba. So I’d taken the 3 hour bus ride south, asked the bus driver to let me know when we were close to there, and kept my nose glued to the window, taking in the monochrome but memorable desert vistas along the way. After all, I was in Israel…traveling from near the Sea of Galilee to south of Jerusalem.
“Boee, po.” “Girl, come here” I heard the bus driver holler. I gathered my purse, my awkward and heavy backpack, and army jacket and squeezed up the center aisle and out the door. These were not big city buses, but more like school buses and always crowded.
“Toda raba, thankyou,” I uttered climbing down the steps. As the bus went rumbling on down the road, I looked up to see an open dirt field, buzzing with activity and animals. Goats, sheep, a few camels, chickens, roosters, all being bartered and traded. To the side were tables laden with fruits and vegetables, not clean, shiny and freshly misted like in the grocery stores back stateside, but dusty and dirt-crusted.
I was mesmerized by the step back in time, feeling like Moses would walk up any minute, 10 Commandment tablets in tow. The musty smells, the sounds of a busy market, or shuk as they call it, mostly drab colors from the veil of grey-brown dust in the bright sun sparsely punctuated by hues of bright red, pink, and orange from the Bedouin garb, blankets and saddle blankets for sale. All of it was just out in the open, no walls or ropes separating the sellers.
I wandered around for about an hour, trying to record the experience in my memory, knowing that very soon I would be transported to another side of the world and leaving all this far behind. Buying nothing except some dates to munch on, I shouldered my backpack, carried my purse by hand, and made my way back to the main highway that would take me toward Lod Airport. In typical Israeli hitchhiking mode, I pointed my right index finger down to the road and looked toward the oncoming traffic. Only a couple of trucks passed by when a small light colored coup pulled up and offered me a ride. I jumped in.
The driver was a 30 or 40ish man, dark skinned and of Arab descent. We said a few words, though he didn’t speak English and I knew no Arabic and very little Hebrew. We had only driven a couple of miles when he made it clear that he would take me to the airport if I would sleep with him, but otherwise he would only take me to the edge of town. I told him the edge of town would do fine, thank you. A bit irritated, he pulled over, gave me very few seconds to grab my stuff, then spun his wheels screeching off down the road. Not far though, because he had pulled up to a major intersection to let me out, but did not pay attention to the oncoming traffic from the right and pulled directly into the oncoming path of another car. The passenger door I had just slammed shut was totally smashed about half way into the other side. I saw him climb out of his side, blood streaming from a gash on his head, and fall on the ground. A few people came running up to assist. I stood there stunned. I might have been in that car. I might be dead right now. This was not my first brush with death. In fact, it was happening on such a regular basis, I was beginning to ask… “What was after me? Or perhaps…what was protecting me?”
How did a 23 year old Army brat from San Antonio end up on the outskirts of a camel auction in the Israeli desert…asking herself such probing, unanswered questions?
Great story!!! Great details. Hope you win!!
how exciting to explore the world on your own. I would love the hear the things this experience taught you about facing your fears and dealing with challenges!
I hope you get to go & do great things
Awesome! You got my vote!
Sounds like a lot fun! Good luck!!!!!!
cool adventure
Loved your story melanie. Quite an adventure. Good luck.
Awesome story. I’d love to hear more. Very well written.
Great article… I want to hear the rest of the story!
Love your story! Good luck!
Great story! Good luck. Hope you win!
Casting my vote for Melody Miller!
Thanks for sharing Melody! You sound pretty in pink! How brave you were…makes me want to be more adventurous!
Melody, you are quite an adventurer! Enjoyed your story!
Total transformation
Certainly sounds like a search for one’s self.
Melody sounds ready to go again and her experience really speaks to me about the unexpected joys of traveling abroad. Good luck Melody!
Melody’s experience sounds like it was life changing for her! I wish her the opportunity to do and go even more places that she make an impact.
Melody, it sounds like you have had a great adventure in life. Continue to explore and enjoy life.
I have climbed the same wrong ladder several times and I understand fully as to what you are saying.
I really liked Melody’s travel adventure cause I feel she captured for me what it is like to be young and free and traveling on your own .
Congratulations, Melody! Great article! Well written, Melody!
Interesting story, for the early seventies you were dressed accordingly for the times. Go polyester. You have my vote.
Rachel, YOU have THE QUOTE! Stuff happens! My husband and I have discussed going to volunteer on the Mercy Ship that is stationed off the Ivory Coast of Africa, and this plane ticket would surely help on our expenses to get there… but I look around my home here…and stuff has happened big time. Not that I’m not grateful for all the Lord has blessed me with, but it’s been a while since I was pared down to just a backpack. This contest has revived the memories of the freedom of being streamlined and free again.
Yay!! Mom, I’m so proud of you! Hope you win!!
Very inspiring! Definitely book-worthy, makes me want to know about all those life-changing experiences
Love the ending…the simpler life and transformation. Maybe what’s “normal” really shouldn’t be normal?
Ah Grasshopper – Melody Rumpf Hylander Miller (MRHM)
The lessons of life.
The STUFF of life.
I enjoy your writing and your evolution. I see the DNA sequence in the explosion of pink … and the live simply but completely from a backpack. Live simply that others may simply live.
Love n Light – Marty Chamberlain / MD • LMT • COWHN
What a life changing experience. We learn that it’s not all about how much we have in our bag, it is about having what we need and knowing how and when to use it. Traveling increases our knowledge and expands our territory.
Great story,that’s life.
Emerald – The Vernon Howard quote was really appropriate for Melody’s story. (I have a tendency to speak in quotes as well when I’m amazed, moved, or inspired. My own words falter.)
At some point, I will reclaim that feeling that I had when I packed two suitcases and spent 2 days crossing the country in an Amtrak to start a new life on the West Coast. It was a feeling of freedom, clarity, almost lunar weightlessness.
Still, my packing wasn’t quite as pared-down as Melody’s, but I still felt incredibly unburdened. I’ve moved a couple of times since I left Oregon… and somehow now it requires a car trip (or two). Stuff happens.
WOW! Amazing quotes! Thanks so much. Don’t forget to respond to the Email sent you to validate your comment.
Your description of climbing a ladder which was leaning against the wrong wall is a great metaphor for the programming we grow up with in life. This is what we all unknowingly struggle with and thankfully many of us learn life’s lessons eventually! Thanks for the journey.
I loved your pithy yet visual and funny description of your arrival at the airport. Ahhh-hhh, the lessons you learned…Next time take me with you!
I want to go to Europe!!
Wow! So many cultures and countries! Truly inspiring for someone to follow their heart!
Traveling to other countries really expands your horizons!
I’m starting late having just found out today (the 24th) that I was a finalist. But your comments are kind and encouraging. Thank you for stopping by!
What a wonderful life education – more mind expanding in many ways than a college degree. Learning what is really necessary in our baggage in life is priceless. Thanks for your story.
You have succeeded in life when all you really want is only what you really need. ~
Vernon Howard
Hi Melody, love your story, you have my vote I hope you win you deserve it.
All the entries are so good and so moving! I thought the rules said 3 sentences or less, so I radically condensed the overflow of memories. There is so much more to share! Thank you for your comment!
I love your story! I can totally relate. A few years ago I moved to Asia with 2 suitcases… after living and traveling there for over a year – I came home with one small backpack (intentionally leaving things in different places along the way)… As Hans Hofmann put it, “The ability to simplify means to eliminate the unnecessary so that the necessary may speak.” Great story, Melody!