Early this morning Shari’s grandmother, Ethel Melissa Winger went to be with her Lord. Grandma celebrated her 91st birthday this past December, and we enjoyed some good visits with her while we were in Ontario. This picture of her and Nathanael was taken in October (click the picture to see the full-sized version in our photo album). Ethel is reunited with her husband Arthur who passed away almost 40 years ago.
We are going to be going to the funeral, which is on Monday March 7th in Southern Ontario. Shari’s brother and his family will be going also, and we’ll be flying back with them on Thursday. Shari’s parents are in the process of driving to Ontario from Saskatchewan. Grandma had another son whose family is in Ontario.
We would appreciate your prayers for the family at this time. Please pray for the Lord’s comfort, for wisdom in the practical details, and for a time for everyone that is glorifying to God and a witness to His love and power.
Last month I was remembering out loud my visit with a jaguar in Belize. Actually, I remember waiting up one night trying to catch one in the wild (on film, actually), but he must have caught our scent (and decided we weren’t good to eat) because he never showed up.
Anyway, last weekend we went to the zoo and were able to see a couple of jaguars. They are beautiful creatures! The jaguar is the largest native cat in North America, but it’s becoming extinct. Most of the remaining North American jaguars are in Sonora, Mexico. Naturalia, a non-profit company in Mexico City, purchased a ten thousand acre ranch to be used as a reserve for the jaguars. The hope is that some of them can be reintroduced into the southern USA as well.
As you can see, my pictures didn’t turn out that great. The second picture here shows both jaguars, with the black one in the back.
I’m not sure why, but several times I’ve been asked for advice on how to cut a pineapple. Sometimes by total strangers. I don’t know if I just look like someone who should know, or what.
Well, I may not be an expert pineapple-slicer. But strangely enough, I used to work at a golf and country club, and the chef there did indeed teach me how to do it right. So the last time I had the opportunity, I took these pictures so that you too can learn to cut pineapples the way the elite do it. 🙂 Please remember that this is really only one way to slice it. It’s good any way you slice it, especially if you buy it fresh from a market in Mexico… The pineapple originated in South America. It eventually became popular in the Caribbean and there became known to the Europeans when Christopher Columbus and his crew visited.
Pineapples are difficult to ripen at home (I’ve heard it said that you should turn them upside down to ripen them), so it’s best to find them fairly ripe at the market. A good pineapple will have deep green leaves, and will smell sweet. It should be free of bruises and very soft spots. First, slice off the top and bottom of the pineapple, as shown. Now you’re going to slice off the skin, using a knife, from top to bottom. You can see that I’ve already done one slice here. Now I’m going to look on the side and use that as a guide for my next slice. At this point, I just want to cut off the skin, but I’m not worried about all the eyes. After a few slices I’ll be all the away around the pineapple. You’ll see that I happened to peel this pineapple in seven slices, so it is now septagon. This will give the slices a nice look when we’re done. At least, in theory.
Now we’re going to remove the eyes – here’s how we do it. We’re going to take the knife and put it at an angle to the pineapple. We’ll make two slices at an angle to take out each eye. You’ll see what I mean in the next picture (I hope) – this is the hard part to describe. You may have been tempted to stick the point of your knife into the pineapple and twist out the eyes. You might save a bit more of the pineapple, but you might also mangle it, and you won’t have the cool look that I almost succeeded in getting at they end (hey, nobody said I was actually good at this!).
Now you can see what I meant by cutting at angles – there are cuts all around the pineapple, all at the same angle. It looks almost like a screw, except of course the grooves are short and don’t go all the way around. It’s time to actually slice the pineapple. Try to slice it nice and evenly. If you cut out the eyes properly, you might get a nice pinwheel effect in the final slices. It worked for me a couple times, but of course I didn’t take a picture of those slices, so too bad for me.
I simply sliced out the core at an angle on each half slice, but another nice way to do it is with a round metal cookie-cutter, if you have one the right size. Eating the core won’t kill you, but it’s a little hard. There they are, in all their glory! Serve them however you want, don’t let me intrude upon your creativity. They’ll even keep in the fridge for a couple of days – but who wants to wait that long? Now your family and friends can sit down and enjoy the fruit of your labours. There’s nothing like fresh pineapple!
I was just visiting the website of FAM International, a Latin American mission agency related to CAM International. It’s so exciting to see Latin Americans rising up with a vision for missions, reaching out around the world.
You may be interested in hearing what some of their priorities are as they look around the world to see where the needs are. Two of the countries are very familiar to us – Mexico, and Canada.
Of course we’ve written before about the need in Mexico. FAM wants to reach out to the Hispanic population in Canada (perhaps 200,000 and more) and the USA. They also have a vision for Spain, and the Muslim world, particularly Africa and Turkey.
FAM missionaries join with missionaries from other parts of the world, such as the USA and Europe to form multinational teams reaching out to many parts of the world. We look forward to hearing more about what God is doing with FAM! You can visit their website by clicking on the graphic (but be warned, it’s in Spanish).
In our most recent newsletter we included 7 ways that you can always pray for our ministry. We also have generic prayer request in the Ministry Vision brochure that everyone that gets our newsletter has. One of those requests is for health.
Now I’ve often wondered if we simply place too much emphasis on health in general. Our health is certainly far better than many people I know. Things could easily be far more serious. But it can be frustrating when you can’t do much in any given day, when there’s so much you would like to do.
I guess there are really a couple of sides to the issue. First of all, it’s obvious to me that Jesus cared deeply about people that suffered. He spent a lot of His time and energy healing, and the Bible tells us about His compassion (ie Matt 14:14). So does Jesus care when we’re sick? Absolutely. Is it valid to pray to Him for healing? Of course. In fact, prayer for the sick is commanded (Jam 5:14). So a prayer request for our health is certainly appropriate.
Then again, how high a priority is it? From the standpoint of the world, it’s very important. If you don’t have your health, you don’t have anything. And if you don’t have your health, your productivity goes down. Well, the Christian has a lot in spite of poor health, and often gains a lot as he or she sees God work through pain. It can be a powerful witness to others. The more weak we are, the more people can see God’s power (2Co 12:9). So health is certainly not the most important thing to the Christian. We have the hope of healing; even if it’s not healing at this moment, we know healing will come.
I guess the thing to do is… 1. Focus on God – don’t let sickness become a reason to become inward focused 2. Realize that God can use us no matter what our physical condition 3. Realize that God has the power to heal, and to do even greater things – beyond the physical
So if you’re praying, go ahead and pray for our health. But pray also that God would keep us focused on Him, and glorify Himself through us – in sickness or in health, may He be glorified.
Those of you who have been a part of our 2000 years of Missions seminar, part 2, have heard me talk about Dr. Donald McGavran. His 1955 book,”The Bridges of God” started many hot debates about the way we “do” missions and church. One of the issues that McGavran brought to the table was how to deal with different cultures, or people groups. (Visit this page for seminar resources)
The challenge came home to me walking down a road in Belize. First I passed a church. It was an English speaking congregation (English is the official language in Belize). Then I came to a little village. My team and I went door to door, meeting the friendly people of this village. The amazing thing was, not only did most of these people not speak English, we found that from house to house the languages were different. Here were many languages and cultures side by side, but if the only church was a one-culture English speaking church, how were these people being reached? The challenge is the same in Mexico, and perhaps in every country in the world.
If you want a great, real-world example of this tension, I recommend three posts by Keith Smith, the first one here, then the next one, and this most recent installment. You’ll realize that this is a challenge even here in Canada. The danger may be that people leave church because it’s not “relevant”, or they isolate themselves into little church groups and no longer interact or support the larger church. What’s the best way to really show love to our brothers and sisters in Christ? What do you think?
