1. With respect to April A Abell’s resurrection celebration on 5 June 2021, instead of flowers, pick one of the following causes to donate to:
1. https://ctxfoundation.bswhealth.com/ways-to-give/donate?f=TEMP
Notes:
• Update “Designation” field to "Hospice Care
• This the entity that helped us take such good care of April until she passed after her medical condition prevented treatment with chemo.
2. https://gtaustin.churchcenter.com/giving
Note:
• Use the drop-down menu arrow opposite the donation $ amount under “Giving” to select "Liberty Hill/Grace Alive Tithes/Offerings"
• Grace Alive church was our home church for 5 years and was a church plant from GT Austin we helped Pastor Dawn Slack to establish
• Pastor Dawn will handle the resurrection celebration service and is the pastor of Grace Alive.
Notes:
• Update “Designation” field to "Hospice Care
• This the entity that helped us take such good care of April until she passed after her medical condition prevented treatment with chemo.
2. https://gtaustin.churchcenter.com/giving
Note:
• Use the drop-down menu arrow opposite the donation $ amount under “Giving” to select "Liberty Hill/Grace Alive Tithes/Offerings"
• Grace Alive church was our home church for 5 years and was a church plant from GT Austin we helped Pastor Dawn Slack to establish
• Pastor Dawn will handle the resurrection celebration service and is the pastor of Grace Alive.
April Ann Abell (née Buehler), deeply respected and well-loved wife, mother, grandmother, leader, educator, seamstress, and artist, left this earthly life and received her complete healing in God’s heavenly presence on March 26, 2021. She was 68.
While still high school sweethearts in Chittenango, New York, April married her husband Keith on August 20, 1970. She was his best friend, lover, caretaker, and soulmate. She enjoyed riding motorcycles with him, camping in the Adirondacks, boating on lakes, playing practical jokes on him, going on long road trips, taking cruises together, and trying new restaurants, as well as unabashedly engaging in certain marital “activities” that are unsuitable to mention here.
April will forever be admired for putting up with Keith on their 50-year great marriage. That wild trip took them from upstate New York in 1978 down to Texas for 37 years, before briefly moving to Missouri, out to California for a 5-year stint, and finally back to her beloved Texas this past October.
In fact, her entire family, Keith included, agrees that she deserves sainthood for that since he tested her patience and faith with his multiple near-death experiences and job layoffs. No mountain was too tall to climb, no desert too barren to cross, and no problem was too challenging to overcome for her. God was simply teaching both of them lessons in faith. Thus, April stuck by him through thick and thin, for better or worse, for richer for poorer, ‘till “death do us part.” Keith was one heck of a lucky guy!
April’s five children—Erica, Lacy, Ben, Tressa, and Ruth—will forever cherish their mom’s creativity, passion, care, and ability to speak boldly. They love how she read stories such as Hansel and Gretel or Hank the Cowdog with all the character voices and drama she could infuse. They also chuckle thinking about Mom’s playful antics with her alter ego puppet Annie, who was mischievous, sassy, and highly inappropriate at times. Through Annie, April taught her children that grace and love always abound, despite what we may say or do.
In addition, she taught her children clear spiritual and moral leadership. She prayed relentlessly for her family and took strong moral stands on important issues, such as voting “yes” to collective bargaining rights at the bowling alley where she worked her way through college. Her examples taught her children how to be morally courageous, think independently, have strong values, and, most importantly, how to love well and care for others.
As a grandma to her twelve grandchildren, April was anything but fragile, old, or tired. With them she went zip lining, rode thrill rides at Disney and Universal, went whale and dolphin watching, swam in the frigid Southern California ocean, toured the Blue Bell ice cream factory, played games ranging from Pinochle to Candyland to the Wii, watched the latest kids’ movies at the theater, did tons of really messy art projects with them, made her famous penuche fudge, and sewed countless items for them, among many other activities.
For her grandchildren, she was even willing to go into the mother of all scary thrillers, the Walking Dead Attraction at Universal Studios Hollywood, a live action zombie haunted wasteland—she screamed her way through the entire thing, much to the delight of her teen grandsons who with her. Her grandchildren will always remember her fun-loving, silly, and vivacious love for them.
April’s leadership and zest for life was not only on display in her family but also in many other places. While earning her bachelor’s degree in art and literature from the State University of New York at Potsdam, she became president of the Scabbard and Blade Honor Society while cross-enrolled in Clarkson University’s Army ROTC program.
After graduating, she was commissioned as a second lieutenant and assigned as platoon leader in the 3rd Signal Brigade at Fort Hood, Texas, where she oversaw the photography unit, command and control, field telephone, and switchboard operations, in addition to helicopter assets. As a result of her service, the Army awarded her a commendation medal and the tempting offer of any position in her commanding officer’s brigade. Not surprisingly, she chose family over career.
After finishing her service, April experimented with a few different jobs until she realized she would rather be her own boss and do what came naturally to her—teach. She transitioned into education and became a small business owner. She earned Texas certification to teach pre-K through 8th grade and ran a highly successful private home preschool for nearly twenty years, which always had an extensive waiting list of families wanting to place their children.
In the early 2000s, April retired from running her preschool and began spending far more time engaging in her favorite creative outlets. April’s art projects ranged from painting and photography to sewing and quilting. Her painting projects turned dresser knobs into “eyeballs” when she was a teenager (much to the chagrin of her older sister who shared a room with her) to creating colorful murals on nursery walls when a grandmother.
Her creativity shined in her photography projects as well. With her darkroom in her college apartment, she was photoshopping decades before Photoshop became a thing, turning her young daughter into a Playskool Little People family member living in a Lincoln Log cabin.
Her favorite outlet, however, was sewing. Her sewing projects ranged from the practical—baby bibs and blankets, curtains, dinner napkins, Covid masks, and dresses for her granddaughters—to the artistic, such as her stunning leaf quilt that hangs in the hallway of her house. Not surprisingly, she was sewing right up until her body would no longer cooperate with her; an unfinished sewing project for her niece’s baby shower still sits by her sewing machine in her study.
Retirement also gave her more time and opportunities to minister to others and serve in leadership roles in church, where she served as a Sunday school teacher, women’s ministries leader, prayer team leader, home group leader, and church plant leader. During the early days of the Covid shutdown, when masks were nowhere to be found, April spent weeks sewing hundreds of masks for her family, friends, and nursing staff at a local hospital, giving nearly all of them away, free of charge.
April’s ministry also included the gift of prophecy. She frequently spoke startling truth into others’ lives and turned their attention to God. In accordance to Acts 2:17, these messages sometimes came in the form of highly specific dreams that God would give her, which she would then share with certain individuals.
Though April never had advance knowledge about these individuals’ situations—indeed, she barely even knew some of the recipients—her God-given visions always proved accurate and exactly what others needed to hear. This gift reflected her close relationship to God, which she continually cultivated through prayer and study of the Word.
In countless ways, April leaves behind an extraordinary legacy that will live on in the lives of her family and friends. She will be sorely missed!
April, who was born on January 21, 1953, in Utica, New York, is survived by her husband Keith Robert Abell, daughter Erica (Jeff) Huinda and grandsons Benjamin, Mark, and Daniel; daughter Lacy Abell (Jon Lee) and grandchildren Lola, Wyatt, and Bodie; son Benjamin Abell and grandchildren Noah, Macyn, and Emersyn; daughter Tressa and grandchildren Zach, Jeremias, and Anna; and daughter Ruth.
She is preceded in death by her parents, Victor Bernard Buehler and Elizabeth Ann Buehler (née Bateman) and April’s niece Sarah Huang but is survived by all of her siblings: Janet Buehler (Robert Huang) and nephew Matthew (Jessica); Victor (Carol) Buehler; Frank (Kristiane) Buehler; Jane Buehler (Mike McIndoe) and nephews Christopher and Nicholas; Gretchen (Victor) Hines and nephews Karl and Court; and Beth Buehler (Chris Ricker) and nephew Adam and niece Megan.
She is also survived by her aunts Helen Rice and Margaret Cook; her uncle, Chuck Bateman; and numerous cousins and brothers- and sisters-in-law; as well as innumerable dear friends in New York, Texas, Missouri, California, and multiple states in between.
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