Category Archives: Day to Day

Yesterday we had a great Sunday School picnic. Today we had a few injured people in church due to the oldies versus the youngies softball game. If you want to see pictures, link to Randall Friesen.

Good day today. We had good fun over lunch with the pastor’s family. Then I went out for coffee with a friend from our congregation and had a good visit. I didn’t realize we have so much in common since we don’t get to visit in depth in church. So we got to share some of our difficulties with our children and also how God has worked in both our lives to just confirm how much he cares for us no matter how our children turn out. It was good. We should have gone for coffee a couple of years ago. I hate being too busy sometimes and also sometimes it’s my own fault not taking the time.

I also found out that she also likes to write and so I have encouraged her to blog as well if she has access to a computer. I find this is a place where I can meet and get inspiration from others out there. Thanks to all of you who have contacted me or mentionned my site.

This morning I was out walking. A light rain scares off the other walkers which is OK since then they don’t think I’m whacko talking out loud to God. Talking out loud helps me to concentrate my thoughts as does writing. Otherwise my thoughts get lost in the maze of a million distractions.

Anyway, I was thinking out loud about how the church organization, ie: the “modern” church doesn’t meet a lot of my deeper spiritual needs. Those have always been met more in my relationships with others. But sometimes I am so busy helping to keep the organization going that I hardly have time to develop relationships. I guess having a few less kids would also uncomplicate my life but those are some of the best relationships I have – that and the one with Leo – and all need a slice of my time. I know I am too busy. I have decided that housework is not high on my list of priorities so I am willing to give that up but the other things are harder to let go.

Today has been one of those days when I seem to spend most of my time in the car. First up to the track so Grace can run her race, then back home to pick up Sara to ref her soccer. Then back to the track. Two stops at fast food places along the way and then over to my office to photocopy some of the notes Grace has to replace. Back up to pick Sara up after reffing. A few minutes and then off to the Sunday School picnic. Leo conveniently got mistaken and thought the picnic would be on Sunday so has a golf game set up with one of his colleagues. At least he is able to go to Saskatoon to pick Patrick up from the plane. Patrick will drive home in Leo’s vehicle so that means I will have to drive down to Wakaw to pick Leo up later – unless I can talk Christian into doing it for me. I have to get Grace back up to the track again, return to the church for a meeting after the picnic and then arrange to pick her up again. It seems like this is becoming a typical Saturday. It is less work going to work!

You may understand why I post most of my blogs in the wee hours of the morning. Well it seems to be the only peaceful time around our house.

For those of you who have read some of my ealier blogs, you may remember that our friend Jacques was bit by a cat which died a few days later. Today he sent us a message that he got the rabies vaccine and immune globulin that Leo as a Medical Health Officer was able to procure for him and which American Leprosy Mission was able to courrier out to him and have flown up to the city where he lives by Missionary Aviation Fellowship. So he has taken his first injections and should be OK. He is always in our prayers, especially since we share children. He is where we cannot be and cares for his own people in a way no missionary can do, including being there through all of the civil war past and present.

Patrick, Kongawi’s son is performing tonight in Vancouver. I was hoping that it would be on TV live but sorry it will just be on Radio-Canada or on you local French FM station.

There are times when my lack of discipline in all areas stares me in the face. I don’t do what I know I should do. It is more fun to escape into the world of the internet than to do the housework. I try to get my children to be self disciplined and then I look at my own poor example. Sometimes, I must admit, they do a better job than I. So I am going to try very hard today not to forget to do some of the chores I need to remember – phone calls I have to make – and I hate phoning.

Last night Grace discovered at 10:00 that she had left her school binder somewhere at the track. She is not sure where or when she last saw it, but it is not here. Now, I told her that if she had thought of doing her homework earlier she would have noticed it’s loss a bit earlier too. So off we drove to the track and around we walked in the twilight, but no binder. In it are all of her notes, all of her completed and incomplete homework. She is not our most academically inclined child. The loss of her binder is a real blow. She will have to try all the lost and founds today and then if no binder, borrow and do some major note copying. I hope her teachers are a bit sympathetic but she doesn’t have a good record with them. This may just be one of life’s hard lessons – hope it turns out to be a lesson learned. Do you ever wish you could make life easier for your kids? Unfortunately, I think they follow our poorest examples the most easily.

Last night I went to my daughter Grace’s dance recital. Grace is very petite, very athletic(quite proud of her 6 pack) and very agile. She is a fantastic Hip Hop dancer. I wish she would put half the effort into her schoolwork as she does into her dance. I went with as much of the family as I could muster, my dad and step mom, my daughter -in-law to be and my elderly aunt. It always amazes me that their reaction is so favorable. We never would have dared dance let alone dance Hip hop when I was a kid!

My dad seems to be doing better since I last put a word in here about him. He apparently did have a little stroke and he is definately more feeble in the physical sense. His mind is still slipping away slowly. We are so fortunate to have Sharon(my step-mom) who cares for him so well. We know it cannot be easy. When I took him down to Saskatoon a week or so ago, I wrote this on returning. Maybe I am frightened a bit at my own future. This is not the way anyone would like to go.

Dad

Searching for answers in your mind
You come up blank
Or with a story
So unrelated
To the question
That we can’t even correct you.

Sitting beside me as we wait
Suddenly you expound
On the value
Of oxygen.
They must need it you say.
Short circuits happening again.

Where do you go in your mind
As we sit with you?
You try to enter
Our conversation.
In hopeless turns,
We speak, you lose your way.

At the moment, while we speak,
Do you remember,
How you taught me to walk,
To ride a bike,
To swim, to drive, to …?
Now I am driving, taking you home.

Then suddenly as the red sun sets
There spring into your mind
Words
An old song
And you sing
My mind floods with memories.

And I wonder if this is a shadow
Of how I will become.
No quick or glorious
Ending.
Surrounded by my children
My mind escapes, my body lingers on.

The Gigantic Garage Sale is now past history except for the junk that didn’t get sold. People sure do buy some odd stuff. The useful stuff is the last to go. Old jewelry, even old Sunday School attendance pins were hot stuff. We even had a purple Kool Aid stand that one of the men was threatening to buy and take home. His wife was praying that anyone else would buy it. Not sure what was the end result.
Tonight we are up late doing what a well organized mother would have made sure was done earlier, except that I was already doing too many other things. “We” are doing laundry. You see we have in our house an unwritten rule that everybody has to make sure that their own clothes are clean. We also have some procrastinators living in this house that just didn’t get it done. I think my procrastinator of the moment is not admitting to being a bit stressed and excited. Patrick leaves tomorrow for Vancouver and although he was home most of the day, he is doing his laundry as he packs. Patrick won the Saskatchewan French music competition for performance of three of his compositions. He will now go on to the western Canada competition in Vancouver so he is justifiably pretty excited in a “cool” sort of way without admitting it. I guess this is a chance every budding guitarist would love because he has a chance of going on to Quebec to compete there, he’ll meet lots of well connected people in the recording industry as well. So if anyone is in Vancouver take it in at the Waterfront Theatre on Friday at 7:00 or watch CBC – the French channel and you will see Patrick Kongawi perform. And yes I am a bit proud of him! Patrick

Leo had to move out of his office today. He is not doing enough clinical medicine to justify using up space in the clinic so he has to pack up all his books and bring them home. We are wondering where we are going to put them here. I guess we’ll fit as many as we can into the office space at home and then who knows. We seem to have lots of bookcases but not as much floor space as they require. I suggested he take as many as he can to his MHO (Medical Health Officer) office but he doesn’t think he has room for them there either. When it comes to books, he’s not a good thrower outer. Me neither. Good news – He got his American Society of Addiction medicine certification and should get the Canadian one soon. Between the books and the diplomas and certificates we don’t need to worry about needing more artwork to cover our walls. Leo’s quite proud of his new certificate and I guess he earned it by his hard work so should be.
Christain, Grace and I went over to the church to help set up for the Giagantic Garage Sale. It is a fund raiser for CHIC so lots of the kids were there. We are hoping Christian can go but we don’t have his US visa yet. He is a landed immigrant but still a Congolese so has all the hassles of being labeled as a potential assylum seeker by the US. Can you imagine! Anyway this garage sale sure has a lot of junk! It always seems to me that we take some junk there and bring some different junk home but we never really get rid of any appreciable amount of junk.
So tomorrow my day is already mapped out for me – help at the sale and then get some groceries before I get fired as a mother for having no Pizza Pops in the freezer.

It’s a beautiful evening. I sat outside in our new porch swing but then the mosquitos began to come out in full force. Now, under the remote threat of West Nile Virus we are exhorted by our good sense to think about applying some of that vile smelling stuff to ward off the little beasts. Sometimes it’s just easier to go inside.

Greg is over tonight. Lingala lesson number three or four. Patrick has taken it upon himself to teach him since Greg is going to be spending several months in the Congo for his field experience towards his degree in Intercultural Studies from Providence. Greg will be working with Patrick’s dad – a doctor(Congolese) with American Leprosy Mission.
Lingala is my third language and a pretty simple one as languages go. If you can’t find the right word or if no word exists in Lingala(this happens quite often actually) you steal a French word and lingalacise it. Works great! I guess we are not above doing that in English or French for that matter. It still strikes me ear as strange when my kids who speak French Canadian French use the word “fun” as in C’est du fun. Just sounds weird to me. But then we commit faux pas and write resumes so I guess with time my ear will get used to it and I won’t cringe when I am in a situation where I actually use it myself.

I can see where I may need to add a page explaining a bit about my family if I keep mentioning them in my blogs. Can’t be a mom without mentioning the kids and the man in our lives. Our family is a bit unconventional – large and multiethnic, multicultural, and even ecumenical in a sense. However I think I will use this site a bit and get used to the changes I’ve made before I do another big change.

This internet stuff is a challenge for me. I think I am catching on a bit. Thanks Randall.

When I was the age of my kids there were a few huge computers somewhere but I had no illusions I could ever use one. We started using a PC in the Congo. Both Leo and I had to develope a lot of our own teaching materials and found the computer to be very appropriate technology. Now it is the way we communicate with friends around the globe. Wow! If we had had the internet while we were back in the Congo I would have done a prayer letter on a blog site. I guess we had no phones either but now with SAT phones its a possibility. Actually that is how we communicate with our Congolese boys father and mother via e-mail and occaisional voice communications. I might just have to take a laptop with me when I go out there next summer. The possibilities just seem incredible. Bear with me – I’m a dreamer!

Reading Jordon Cooper on the Congo really shook me up tonight. Why are we so helpless to do something. Sorry, I guess I am too close, too entangled in the web that is the Congo. The hurt is too much for me and my tendancy is to put it on the back burner somewhere in the recesses on my mind so I can go on functionning. We Canadians agonize over one lost child. What would we do if all the children in our city were slaughtered over the short span of a few weeks. There are no flowers on sidewalks in front of Congolese children’s homes and no mothers left to weep. Sorry I am having a very hard time dealing with this slaughter.

 
I still seem to be having trouble changing my template. Sometimes machines are frustrating.