religion didn’t work for them. Papa wasn’t sure what to do. He started seeking God. After some time and a calling, the family ended up in Rocky Mountains of New Mexico at 9,000 ft., where they were to live for 23 years. Papa said those early days were filled with studying the Bible for 14 hours a day. They dug a well, built a cabin, and lived a subsistence lifestyle. They worked for themselves raising vegetables, spinning wool from their sheep, making lye soap, sewing clothes, harvesting wheat, making cheeses. They were the hillbilly shepherds, the big Jesus family up on the mountain.

One can’t have an interview with the Pilgrims without the music. So after a couple of hours of heavy conversation, the instruments came out and those sweet bluegrass tunes came rolling off their tongues, but it wasn’t always this way as Papa began to explain.

“I couldn’t carry a tune back in my college days when I was in one of those fraternities. You know the frat boys would get together and sing and I was told to just mouth the words cause my voice was so bad.” Papa in a fraternity? Now that’s something I never imagined.

The only musical instrument for years was a guitar he found somewhere. He took it into “town” once a year or so and had it tuned at a music shop and then would take it home and play it until it went out of tune. It was a long, difficult, infrequent trip to town, so the guitar was out of tune much of the time. So how did they come to play that bluegrass so well? Inspired by a bluegrass festival around 1997, Papa put the names of various instruments in a hat. They gathered and prayed before each choosing a piece of paper from the hat. That piece of paper determined what instrument they would learn. So without any formal training, they set out to praise the Lord with their music. Soon they received a calling for another Pilgrimage. They packed up the ‘41 Chevy, the same one they honeymooned in, and the same truck Joseph was born in, and headed for Alaska.

The Pilgrims were searching for a home. They felt they had outgrown their mountain home in N. Mexico of 23 years. They needed to spread out, they needed “bigger country.” The family had been so remote and secluded for many years. The children had little experience with the “outside world” and this journey would prove to teach many lessons and eventually find them a new home. Along the way Country Rose gave birth to Lamb (in the Yukon), so they stopped the bandwagon and set up camp for three weeks while the baby came and Rose regained her strength. The Pilgrims have a knack for making an impression on folks and they did so to the road crew that was working on that section of roadway near where they were camped. In their joy and celebration of another child, they pulled out their instruments and raised their voices to praise Jesus. Pretty soon they were chummy