News From Canada Part 1

I am sitting here in the Loon's Nest watching the sunset. It has been a gorgeous day here...70 degrees, beautiful blue skies. The lake is smooth as glass tonight, and all the reflections are perfect. I can hear a loon calling. Bats have nested in the front wall of the cabin, and I can hear them squeaking. In a few minutes, when it gets a little darker they will start pouring out of the hole, to gobble up the mosquitoes buzzing around. As long as the bats don't make their way inside, I've determined to not freak out about them.

Yesterday we had a crew from the churches in town come in to spring clean the kitchen and lodge. When they clean, they clean. They start with the ceilings and work their way down until every shelf, every pot, every pan, every window has been done. It was a big job, but lots of help made it go faster.

A lady named Angela came to help. She has cerebral palsy. She can't do a lot, but she worked all day ironing the curtains for all the cabins. It has not always been easy for me to talk to people like her; I am out of my comfort zone. But today at church, she latched on to me. I was so thankful that she wanted to. I guess I'm making progress.

She was so funny. She brought her own record player and a collection of vinyl. We listened to everything from Merle Haggard to Ronnie Millsaps to Buffy St. Marie Vol. You can check out one of her songs on my FB page. It was quite interesting. : )

At the Border

We arrived in International Falls this evening. It is a nice little town at the Canadian border. We will cross in the morning. Tonight we are staying in a cute little cabin that Pete found for us.



Here we are at dinner tonight. We look a little done in...it's been a long drive.



We had chocolate mousse...



...at the Chocolate Moose.



This is one happy man. I can see the change in him already. It is so good to be here.



I'll keep you posted on how it's going as I have internet access. I think it will be somewhat limited.

Water for Elephants

We went to see Water for Elephants this weekend. We don't go out to see a lot of movies, but I had bought movie tickets from Fandango via Living Social. It was the first deal I made on Living Social, and I got two tickets for $9. At the regular price they would have been $23, so Phil was impressed with the deal. I had never used Fandango before, but I printed the tickets and was able to forgo the long line at the ticket booth and walk right in. Technology once again amazed me.

As for the movie, I thought it was pretty good, but Phil gave it "thumbs down." I enjoyed the trip back in time to 1931, and the look behind the scenes at the traveling circus business. It was an amazingly brutal world to live in. Robert Pattinson and Reese Witherspoon were both beautiful. Rosie the elephant was quite amusing too. The scenes of the family home that were shot in the Chattanooga area couldn't have lasted more than a total of 2 minutes. It is very small amount of time for all the hoopla that went on surrounding the filming.

The book was probably better than the movie. Most books are.

I think this will be a good movie to rent when it comes out on DVD. Catch it then.

Burdens

photo © 2008 Lisa H | more info (via: Wylio)


Last week I wrote about conversations I was having with several different friends. Most of those conversations were positive and cheerful. This week has been different, and I feel burdened for several of my friends.

This week I sat with a friend who has Alzheimer's disease, and she is only in her 50's. Her husband is looking for someone to sit with her during the day. He is her caregiver and the job is getting increasingly difficult.

I have a couple of friends that are dealing with the devastating effects of cancer. This disease is wreaking havoc in their lives because they have loved ones who are seriously ill. Their emotions are up and down, as you might expect.

Divorce continues to rear its ugly head in the lives of those I care about. Today another friend told me about getting a divorce.

I prayed with a teenager who was in tears because her family is under an unbearable amount of stress.

I prayed with a young boy who was trying to choose holiness over worldliness. (What a blessing it was!)

The world is broken. Sin is rampant. It's effects are everywhere. So we are urged to "carry each other's burdens, and in this way you fulfill the law of Christ."

"Live creatively, friends. If someone falls into sin, forgivingly restore him, saving your critical comments for yourself. You might be needing forgiveness before the day's out. Stoop down and reach out to those who are oppressed. Share their burdens, and so complete Christ's law. If you think you are too good for that, you are badly deceived."

I've been trying to live these verses this week. But bearing burdens is messy and heartbreaking...

Yet I serve a God who is in control and promises to use all these trials for our good. So thankful for that hope.

Conversation Part 2

There are a few more conversations that I continue to have on my mind.

As soon as we returned from Illinois we connected with Daniel and Victoria Meade, whom I met at camp last summer. Daniel and Victoria are roaming around the country to raise support for going to the mission field. They intend to be on staff in the fall at the Black Forest Academy in Germany. It is a boarding school for missionary kids. They are an exceptional couple who will be an asset to the ministry there. I am so glad that Phil and Will got to meet them and know the high caliber of people they are, and why I hold them in such high regard.





Phil and I have gotten to have a couple of good conversations this week with another one of our favorite people, John Cofield. We get to talk about school, family, and Camp of the Woods, all of these topics near and dear to our hearts. Our time with John is always so encouraging, and I think it works both ways. We missed Fawnda because she has already left for Canada.



Yesterday I got to talk to Becky Bates at Camp of the Woods. She was sharing with me the theme for camp (Mystery) and the ideas that they have already been rolling around. I will start working on things I might be able pitch in from my experiences and resources. It's always fun for me to be thinking about this sort of stuff. I've been talking to Johnny too via email.



And last, but certainly not least, there's my mom and dad. I try to go up every evening and watch "Wheel of Fortune" and "Jeopardy" with them. We talk over our day during the commercials. We have conversations quite frequently, so many of them are pretty inconsequential. But I'm treasuring each one of these conversations more and more. Mom and Dad are such an important part of my life, and I appreciate the encouragement they are to me on a daily basis.

Conversation

Proverbs 18:20(The Message) says, "Words satisfy the mind as much as fruit does the stomach, good talk is as gratifying as a good harvest."

I feel this way about great conversation. Over the past couple of weeks I have had the pleasure of being able to engage in a lot of it. Let me recap it here.



I went hiking on the Cumberland Trail with Ashley and Kathryn. We had all been to church that day and the sermon had given us lots to talk about. It is so important for me to keep these girls engaged in discussions of faith. Too many people their age have completely lost any desire to think about their faith.

Even though the funeral for Phil's mom was a sad occasion, getting together with the extended family was a rare treat. We got to visit with all our nieces and nephews, along with the youngest members of our family.



Phil's cousin, Kevin, and his wife, Shelia, flew in from California. They are funny and intelligent and have a "California" perspective on lots of things that you don't always find in our neck of the woods. For instance, Shelia has an app on her phone that helps you select the best seafood to eat based on environmental factors (fishing practices, population of the species, etc.) She works for the Monterrey Bay Aquarium, and had some interesting things to share about her job.



It was fun talking to one of our favorite people in the world, Aunt Kay, and her daughters, who we don't get to visit with enough. We are going to have to do better about that.



We always try to visit with Phil's friend, Cathy and her husband, John, when we're in Illinois. This is the first time both Kathryn and Will had been able to be with us. Cathy is such a great hostess, and I am always envious of her beautiful home and her little tea pot. Our favorite quote from the evening... John says to Cathy: "You'll be bunking with her."
Sorry, you had to be there.



More later.

What I'm Reading 2

The other book I just finished reading is The Challenge of Jesus by N.T. Wright. I had been working on this book off and on for 6 months. Most of the book had been very scholarly, much more than it was applicable and usable to me. Even though it was laborious to read, I had finished the first six chapters and laid it aside. This past week I picked it up, determined to finish it (because I would not start a new book that I had ordered until it was finished).

What a pleasure it was to find such good stuff in the last two chapters! Let me share a couple of things that I liked.

The first thing I liked was a brief but clear explanation of post-modernism and what changes have occurred in our thinking in the transition from modernism. If you would like a better understanding of this, I would highly recommend chapter seven.

Chapter 8 calls us to be "the light of the (post-modern) world."

"Part of the point of postmodernity under the strange providence of God is to preach the Fall to arrogant modernity."

"And our task, as image-bearing, God-loving, Christ-shaped, Spirit-filled Christians, following Christ and shaping our world, is to announce redemption to the world that has discovered its fallenness, to announce healing to a world that has discovered its brokenness, to proclaim love and trust to the world that knows only exploitation, fear and suspicion."

"What should we be doing in God's world that would call forth the puzzled or even angry questions to which [the Scriptures] would be the right answers?"

"Your task is to find the symbolic ways of doing things differently, planting flags in hostile soil, setting up signposts that say there is a different way to be human. And when people are puzzled at what you are doing, find ways--fresh ways-- of telling the story of the return of the human race from its exile, and use those stories as your explanation."

"Do not despise the small but significant symbolic act."

"[The way of the Christian witness] is the way of being in Christ, in the Spirit, at the place where the world is in pain, so that the healing love of God may be brought to bear at that point."

"Learn new ways of praying with and from the pain, the brokenness, of that crucial part of the world where God has placed you. And out of the prayer discover the ways of being peacemakers, of taking risk of hearing both sides, of running the risk of being shot at from both sides."

"As C.S. Lewis said in a famous lecture, next to the sacrament itself your Christian neighbor is the holiest object ever presented to your sight, because in him or her the living Christ is truly present."

"God forgive us that we have imagined true humanness, after the Enlightenment model, to mean being successful, having it all together, knowing all the answers, never making mistakes, striding through the world as if we owned it. The living God revealed in his glory in Jesus and never more clearly than when he died on the cross, crying out that he had been forsaken. When we stand in pain and prayer, following Christ and reshaping our world, we are not only discovering what it means to be truly human, we are discovering the true meaning of what the Eastern Orthodox Church refers to, yes, as 'divination.' Ultimately, if you don't believe that, you don't believe in the Holy Spirit. And if you think that sounds arrogant, imagine how arrogant it would be even to think of trying to reshape our world without being indwelt, energized, guided and directed by our God's own Spirit."

What I'm Reading

I often have two or three books underway at one time, so over the last couple of weeks I have had some time off that allowed me to finish two books. The first one that I'll talk about here is Same Kind of Different as Me. My sister was going to read it so I downloaded to my ipad. It is the first book I have read on the ipad, and that in itself takes some getting used to. I like books and turning pages and marking things I find important or interesting. Although you can still do all those things, it's going to take some getting used to for me to be a fan.

This book is alternately narrated by a white man, Ron, who became involved in a homeless shelter, and a black man, Denver, who was changed by the ministry of the man and his wife. It is a powerful testimony of God's grace, and the struggle of what you do when things go wrong, and you can't understand why God lets bad things happen to good people. Tears are guaranteed when you read this book, so have a tissue ready.

Here are a couple of passages and quotes I really liked:

(Spoken by Denver, who was a tough, homeless ex-con) "Ever man should have the courage to stand up and face the enemy," I said, "cause ever person that looks like a enemy on the outside ain't necessarily one on the inside. We all has more in common than we think. You stood up with courage and faced me when I was dangerous, and it changed my life. You loved me for who I was on the inside, the person God meant for me to be, the one that had just gotten lost for a while on some ugly roads in life."

(Spoken by Ron) "I remembered what C.S. Lewis said of the clash between grief and faith: 'The tortures occur,' he wrote. 'If the are unnecessary, then there is no God, or a bad one. If there is a good God, then these tortures are necessary for no even moderately good Being could possibly inflict or permit them if they weren't.'" (C.S. Lewis lost his wife to cancer.)

(Spoken by Ron) "The pain of losing Deborah still brings tears. And I cannot mask my profound disappointment that God did not answer yes to our prayers for healing. I think He's okay with that. One of the phrases we evangelicals like to throw around is that Christianity is 'not a religion; it's a relationship.' I believe that, which is why I know that when my faith was shattered and I raged against Him, He still accepted me. And though I have penciled a black mark in His column, I can be honest about it. That's what a relationship is all about."

Here She Comes!

My brother shared the following piece when his mother-in-law died a couple of years ago. I thought it was lovely and wanted to share it in memory of my mother-in-law.


photo © 2009 Stephanie | more info (via: Wylio)




I’m standing upon the seashore; a ship at my side spreads her white sails to the morning breeze and starts for the blue ocean. She is an object of beauty and strength, and I stand and watch her until at length she hangs like a speck of white cloud just where the sea and sky come down to mingle with each other. And someone at my side says, “There. She’s gone.”

Gone where? Gone from my sight, that is all. She is just as large in mast and hull and span as she was when she left my side, and just as able to bear her load of living freight to the place of destination. Her diminished size is in me, not in her; and just at the moment when someone at my side says, “There. She’s gone,” there are other eyes watching her coming and other voices ready to take up the glad shout, “Here she comes!”

…and that is dying for those who trust in Jesus Christ’s work on the cross for their salvation.

Dorothy Kiper

My mother-in-law, Dorothy Kiper, passed away today. She had been afflicted with Alzheimer's disease since about 1999. They call Alzheimer's "the long goodbye" for good reason. Dorothy left us long ago. Today she became her true self once again.

Dorothy was a wonderful mother, mother-in-law, and grandmother. She gave good advice but did not force it upon you. She loved spending time with all her grandchildren, and although she lived very far away, she made the time we spent with her special and something to look forward to. She was witty, sarcastic at times, and very funny. Her writing reminded me of Erma Bombeck (if you're old enough to know who that is).

She worked in Sunday School and in AWANA Cubbies for many years. She loved being with little kids.

She had been married to Roger for over 60 years. They were very devoted to each other.

Will posted this sweet status on FB: "The world lost an amazing woman this morning in my grandmother, Dorothy Kiper. She has struggled with Alzheimer's disease for almost as long as I've been alive and it's a relief to know that she's not sick anymore. I'm sad that I didn't know her better but happy that I will someday."

I am thankful to be able to pay tribute to her here. She was a wonderful person, and I will miss her.


This is one of my favorite pictures of Dorothy with Kathryn. Kathryn's expression shows how much fun her grandma was.


One time when we visited she pitched a tent in the backyard.


Grandma & Grandpa on a visit to our house on Ewton St.


Many times we went with Grandma & Grandpa to visit Lincoln sites in Illinois.


Our family on a visit to Illinois for Christmas.


Grandma & Grandpa visiting the TN Aquarium with us.