Category Archives: church

October 7, 2011 · 12:54 pm

Hopes and Dreams

This weekend is full of the meaning of hopes and dreams.  Judy and Kendell will be married at about this time tomorrow.  Love will find its home in their hopes and dreams for a life together.

And my dreams? And hopes? Well I will be trying out the pastor role in new ways as I lead them in the service of marriage.  I think all is ready.  But who really knows?  I want it all to go perfectly – for their sake and mine to I guess.  

But the real test of what we accomplish tomorrow will be how they approach life together from here on.  Praying that God will bless his work tomorrow.

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Filed under church, Reflections

September 24, 2011 · 9:30 pm

And the Band Plays On

It has been a day. 

The Veritas Seminar has been well worth our precious Saturday morning time.  Gerald Froese led us through the process of assessing where we are as a church – Healthy Missional, Stable, Critical Moment, or At Risk.  That was very interesting.  Seems the general feeling is that we are somewhere between a Critical state and Stable with a strong desire to move towards healthy and missional. 

Now may God give us strength to follow his lead.  There seem to be some things we are working at that definitely are getting us out into the community around us. 

I, personally have been fighting off some sort of illness.  I thought that I had simply picked up a cold and that yesterday it was pretty much over.  Then last night and today the aching started.  So after getting home from the seminar, I headed straight to bed.  Only got up to go for a practice drive with Nan, who drives his driver’s test on Monday. Parallel parked at least six times.  If he keeps his wits about him I think he will pass. 

Then home, grilled a few smokies for supper and went to bed again.

And then the band showed up.  Makeshift Innocence.  Playing at one of the local pubs tonight and then at On The Rocks in Edmonton  on Sunday night.  They will all find some corner to sleep tonight.  And the rest of the smokies are history.

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Filed under church, Day to Day, Family, Music

September 10, 2011 · 7:43 pm

Finally

I have not dropped off the planet.

It just feels as if the planet has dropped on me some days.  This house of mine has been so busy over the summer that I have scarcely had time to keep track of everyone and who would be here to eat the next meal.  so blogging has been on hold. 

We had great visitors though.  And it was a good summer.  Just busy.

There were Rachelle, Asen and Ronin for a few weeks, Father Marcel who as I write is on a plane back to Belgium after almost 3 months(where did that time go so fast?), Nan who has come to live with us, Christian in and out, soon to be back, Grace and Zaka as their house is renovated.  And then short visits from Faith and Hugh and their daughter Amie, Steve and baby Aya.  Other family members showed up to see them too.

Many, many barbeques have been held in our back yard.  Plus an ice cream social for the whole church.

Yep its been busy.

Now the busyness of class starts again.  Two weeks in already and as essay due next weekend.  Preaching tomorrow.  Internship part time, dentistry part time, full time mom and grandma.  That’s my life.

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Filed under church, Day to Day, Dental, Family, grandchildren

May 18, 2011 · 8:04 pm

Tiny cracks in the wall

Another Kids Klub,another 25 or so kids played with, fed and watered.  Another exhausting evening.  Good, you know, but entirely exhausting.  I think my age is showing maybe. 

Two moms showed up tonight to come and get their  kids.  We don’t have a lot of contact with the parents so it is special when a mom shows up, comes in and joins us for enough time to get a bit acquainted.  Names were exchanged.  They commented how much their kids like to come. 

One tiny crack in the wall between the church and the community around us.

When these little cracks show up the exhaustion becomes worth it.  The act of storytelling takes on a new value – even if the telling is done at the top of my lungs while another couple of adults assist me in managing the herd. 

The story tonight was the transformation that took place in Peter – from a betrayer to a man Jesus left in charge. I wonder – is transformation underway in these kids?  I may never see it – but then again, there are occasionally tiny glimpses of God at work that even I can see.  For one, I’m starting to love these kids!

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April 10, 2011 · 9:16 pm

Jet Lag

This afternoon I returned from our church AGM in Sarnia, ON.  It was a great conference but way too far to go for two days.  I thought my nap this afternoon would let me catch up on sleep but it seems as if my body is telling me that it is late at night and I should be in bed. 

So, since I just sent off my Old Testament paper for the week, that is exactly where I am heading.  Jet lag – in Canada.

Good night. all.

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Filed under church, Studying, Travels

January 23, 2011 · 7:59 am

I am still here, I think

I have just sent off the first essay to my instructor in Old Testament II.  It seems as if this will have to be a weekly occurrence and since this comes on top of responding to some on-line questions and several lectures plus readings in our assigned texts, this is going to be a fairly heavy class.

Such is the student’s life I guess.  Self inflicted punishment in my case.

Besides this class, I am also taking a class in Ethics and finishing up my research project for my January Covenant History intensive class.

This has been a pretty crazy week.  On top of all these classes, which I think I have mostly been able to keep up with, has been all the work of arranging the funeral for Auntie Florence.

Florence

And it was a glorious funeral.  Glorious in the sense that glory was given to God for her life – as her life itself had been one of following God and service to him.  I will post her eulogy under the pages section of this blog. Click here and a link should take you there.

This week will be busy with wrapping up her affairs plus the ongoing classes and preparing a sermon for Sunday.

After that I will continue on with my on-line classes on the beaches of Costa Rica.  I can hardly wait.  Maybe the time there will give me some moments to relax and finally process all that has happened over the past weeks.

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Filed under church, Family, Studying

December 20, 2010 · 3:08 pm

This waiting season

Advent is drawing to an end – to the climax of Christmas day when we celebrate the birth of Christ.   I thought I would share the final essay I submitted for my Theology class since I now have been marked on it and that bit of anxiety and waiting period is over for me.  If you want to read it all, click on  continue reading   (sorry for the American spellings – the school is USAian).

We Wait in Expectation

Almighty God, give all of us grace to cast away the works of darkness, and put on the armor of light, now in the time of this mortal life in which your Son Jesus Christ came to visit us in great humility; that in the last day, when he shall come again in his glorious majesty to judge both the living and the dead, we may rise to the life immortal; through him who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen.[1]

Recently, I was asked to reflect on the purpose and meaning of Advent with some young children from the neighborhood around our church. The children had no idea that a season of Advent existed. Their preparations for the coming season of Christmas were centered around what they wanted from Santa not on the coming celebration of the birth of Christ. Anticipation and waiting meant counting down the days till Santa came.

Continue reading →

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Filed under Christmas, church, Quotes, Reflections, Studying, Theology

December 5, 2010 · 8:13 pm

Today we celebrated

It was a great day.  We celebrated paying off the mortgage on our church building.  Thirty years or so.  It started in 1980 with only $5000 raised.  We are not a big congregation and we are not wealthy.  We did it by keeping at it and by the grace of God.

I’ve put up a set of photos from today on Flikr.  You can check them out here.

We shared in a banquet today and had a great time. 

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Filed under church, Photos, Worship events

November 30, 2010 · 4:52 am

Sorry about that

I just haven’t been around here much lately.  Who would have thought that semi-retirement from dentistry would leave me so busy!  Today will be another day jam-packed with things to do.

Yesterday I sat surrounded by old albums, newspaper clippings, photos, etc and began to put together a presentation for our upcoming celebration at our church.  We have finished paying the mortgage and that is something to celebrate.  Since I wasn’t around in the days when the building was being built, I had some research to do.  MJ has been a wonder at digging up the info I needed.

But the building was built before the days of digital photography. Now we take pictures of everything.  Not so 30 years ago.  I’ve had to dig hard for stuff to use in a powerpoint show! 

 plans

But it will be ready.

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Filed under church, Photos

November 23, 2010 · 10:18 pm

Of KFC and Sunday School Curriculum

Today has been full of busy work.  Good stuff to do but the day seems too short by the end – Bread ministry, staff meeting, School volunteering, picking up grandkids, another meeting tonight. 

The longest part of the day may have been the half hour wait to pick up some KFC.  I had the kids with me and it seemed like a good idea at the time. Till we had waited over half an hour by the time we got to the window to pay and pick up food only to be informed that if we wanted to we could wait another 15 minutes and then our order might be ready.  Seemed a bit much so I declined and headed over to another chicken joint where we got our chicken and were home within 15 minutes.  May be the last time I line up at KFC.  Meanwhile the kids were super about the long wait in the car and were happily playing with each other.  They were very hungry though when we did sit down to eat.  Cleaned up their plates in no time.

At the meeting tonight we took on cleaning out a cupboard at the church.  Sent a lot of really outdated Sunday School material to the recycle bin.  Chucked a few vinyl records of someone telling stories and singing the choruses to go with the lessons.  Really dated stuff.  But there is some good stuff there too.  We just do not have the number of kids of all ages to use the material but if anyone could use it – I would love to pack it up and ship it off to someone who would use it.  We have some stuff by Groups, Hands on Bible Curriculum. 1997 that is still very usable.  Curriculum plus learning labs full of active things to do.  From toddler to Grades 5/6.  Say the word, give me an address to ship it to and it is yours!  It is not getting any younger!

We also have a couple of sets of curriculum for use with mentally challenged adults – very good stuff.  We don’t have a need for this right now and would love to share it with anyone who needs this.

And that has been my day.  Tomorrow I will be trying to put together a power point presentation to use at our church’s mortgage burning banquet on Dec. 5.  Why didn’t people take more pictures back then?   I may have to get creative and take random pictures of construction sites!

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