She’s known as “Mom” by Mary and Evans Jones; as “Ninny” by Brett, Karena, McKenna, Jacob, Samuel and Oliver; and to the rest of us she’s known as Louise, the 95 year old who gives us a picture of Titus 2:3-5 - “Teach the older women to be reverent in the way they live, not to be slanderers or addicted to much wine, but to teach what is good. Then they can train the younger women to love their husbands and children, to be self-controlled and pure, to be busy at home, to be kind, and to be subject to their husbands, so that no one will malign the word of God.”
 

Louise was born in 1911 in Shamrock, Texas. Her father deserted his wife and six children when she was young and her mother brought the children home to raise them at her parents’ cattle ranch in Dalhart, Texas. The children, along with two maiden aunts and a few unmarried uncles, helped with the outside chores on the farm; the canning, making sausage, making soap, the butchering, and the chore that was Louise’s least favorite, the milking, the separating, and all the clean-up afterward.
 

The first of her siblings to marry, at age 19 Louise was wed to Ora Taylor, a twin like she was, in New Mexico after finishing high school. Ora and Louise attended a tent revival within the first year of their marriage and Louise responded to an “altar call”, an invitation by a minister to step forward publicly, with a heart of faith and repentance, to receive the gift of salvation from God. She grew in godly character and thrived spiritually over the years, despite her husband's resistance to the gospel. The couple had two

children, Mary and Jim, who they brought from Oklahoma to California in 1937 in a Model A Coupe. Louise told Mary that the family was quite a sight, real life Okies! They crammed the young couple with two babies and an aunt into one seat car with a rumble seat. 

The Dust Bowl didn’t affect life in California so Ora went to work as a finish carpenter and cabinet maker, while Louise raised the children and worked for a time packing oranges in a packing house, as a seamstress in a coat factory where she was paid by the bound button hole, and performing alterations on bridal gowns at Buffum’s, a department store. When Ora became disabled thirty years into their marriage, Louise faithfully took care of him for the next thirty five years until he passed away, shortly after their move to Evans’ and Mary's home in Santa Ynez. Louise began attending Community Church of the Santa Ynez Valley with Brett, one of her four grandchildren, and together they interceded in prayer for the salvation of our dear Evans and Mary. The entire family has been an integral and beloved part of our church body for many years now.
 

These days, Louise tries to stay home due to severe dizziness, but she says that she would rather be outside gardening or with her church family. “Tell them all I’m feeling good and staying on my feet,” she

says and then laughingly adds “Just tell them I’m sick in the head!” Her characteristically cheerful and gentle spirit has deeply impacted her family for Christ and she enjoys every moment she has with them.

She loves to hear the grandkids playing handball in her front yard. When Brett asks her if the children bother her, she responds “They’d bother me if they didn’t come over!”
 

Mary calls her precious mother a true Proverbs 31 woman, faithful, hardworking, not given to gossip or slander. “I remember standing near my mom and doing dishes while I was a teenager and when I’d

complain about someone, she would always say ‘If you can’t say something good about someone, don’t say anything at all!’”, says Mary. Louise’s favorite hymns are “The Old Rugged Cross” and

“Amazing Grace”, choices which speak volumes of the beauty, faith, and witness of a woman blessed to walk closely with the Lord for seventy five years, thus far.

 *Interview by Anjie Park