Ten years ago today! A group from First Evangelical Free Church in Calgary was serving with us in Ixtapaluca. Good times! And here they are at the community centre in the community of Jesús María, teaching English – head and shoulders, knees and toes, as I recall – well, here in the picture it’s eyes.
For more about what the time was doing (and a toes picture!), just go to English/Canada Class.
I’m just stopping by to share with you a sermon that I preached in Canada. Actually, this is one of the only (if not the only) sermons I specifically prepared on the topic of “missions”. I started working on it for a missions conference in Mexico, but thought it would be an appropriate topic for believers in Canada as well.
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It was great to see many of you in central/northern Alberta over the weekend! I wish we could have visited longer with everyone.
We are looking forward to being in central Alberta for the next couple of weeks, so I just thought I’d stop by again to update our schedule for you, in case you can come and see us.
18 October 2020 (10:30am): Innisfail, AB – We will be sharing at Innisfail Baptist Church. Please contact the church for more information.
25 October 2020 (10:30am): Provost, AB – We will be sharing at New Hope Gospel Church. Again, please contact the church for more information.
I hope all of you in Canada enjoyed a very thankful Thanksgiving! We were able to be with some of Shari’s family. We’re also thankful to hear that most of the crops are in here in Alberta, thanks to God sending some great weather late summer/early fall.
I hope we can see some of you soon! I’ll try to post again when I have more information.
I’m finally taking a breath and sitting down to give you a bit of an update. But it will take more than one post to get through it all! So let’s go in order. 🙂
So after we talked to you last, we spent some time in Saskatchewan, in the Lashburn/Maidstone/Lloydminster area, with my Mom and other friends there. We enjoyed some time with the folks at Grace Community Church in Maidstone, and as planned I spoke there on the 13th of September.
Also in September I spoke at our church in Mexico! By recorded video, this time. 🙂 Actually, this was much more of an “adventure” than we intended. We have had tremendous technical difficulties with one laptop, and since then we’ve gone through hours of tech support, and the problem still isn’t solved. So that has certainly thrown a wrench into the works.
However, thank the Lord, the sermon somehow got edited and uploaded, though not quite with the excellence I would have liked. 🙂
Now, big news. For quite a few months (actually, even longer), my Mom has been batting around the idea of moving to Three Hills. Why Three Hills, you ask? Well, because of the lovely view of the three imposing hills, casting their massive shadows over the landscape of the vast Canadian prairies, of course! Well, a lot of reasons.
First, she has family here now (Hannah, her granddaughter), as well as “in-law” family – Shari’s parents. Also, there’s a place for seniors here (the Golden Hills Lodge), which has the bonus of providing meals (my Mom’s a good cook, but she’s been busy with a lot of things, so this is one big time-saver).
We came to Canada knowing this was a possibility, but she didn’t finally decide until we were in SK last month. Now, how this went down was interesting. Hannah was graduating on the 26th (more on that later). I believe my Mom decided to move on the 16th. And she also decided that she would like to move before Hannah’s grad, so that she could be there for the celebration. Which, when we worked in all the logistics, meant that we basically had 7 days to move, start to finish.
I’m not sure I would have been that ambitious, but since that’s what my Mom wanted to do, we decided to give it a try (and when we had time to think, we realized that there were a number of reasons why this may be a good idea, but we won’t get into all that).
So – the short story — we did it! By God’s grace and through a lot of insanity!
So, my Mom has moved to Three Hills! Her address, phone number and email will all be changing, but there are forwarding services in place now. So get a hold of her while you can, and you can get updated on all the new info. 🙂
There’s still a lot to do while she gets settled, but we’re trying to lend a hand where we can. Otherwise, she’s doing well and enjoying catching up with friends and family, and making a lot of new friends.
So I’ll try to update you on our next speaking engagements, and also other adventures (including Hannah’s grad!) when I have the change to take another breath.
Thanks again to everyone who has been praying for us during our time in Canada! Here’s a brief update…
We’ve been able to enjoy a little time with family, so that’s cool.
On Sunday, we enjoyed the service at First Evangelical Free Church. It was great to see many of you there! We’re always thankful to get together with our brothers and sisters in the Lord.
We were also encouraged to hear that the service went well at our church in Mexico. Lord willing we’ll catch up by watching the video sometime! 🙂
Also, I know that many of you have been praying for Hannah as she’s been looking for a job and a place to live. Well, the Lord has been bringing things together in many ways! Lord willing, this week she will start work, and also move into a new basement suite which she will eventually share with a room mate. More on that later, no doubt!
And, for a further clue that we really are in Canada, here’s a picture I took today:
Every Tuesday night, for 15 weeks, they crammed into the small room that we used to meet as a church. On the 24th of August, 2010, we finally finished the Chronological Bible Study – the first time I taught it. We took this picture to celebrate – what a lot of memories in these faces!
The theme of the final study is “The Triumph of the Lamb”.
