Making a difference

Well, we made it back to Prince Albert, safe and sound, if not a little tired.

The weekend was a good one. Celebrating 100 years of the Evangelical Covenant church of Canada. It was our Annual Meeting, and it was the Annual meeting where I was "recognized" (Or whatever it's called) as a minister being formally accepted into the Evangelical Covenant church, later this June. My strengths and gifts were wonderfully affirmed, and I felt blessed.

The affirmation was needed as I tend to obsess over details in my work.

I am a detail guy, (sorry or; you're welcome.) This tendency makes me focus so closely on what I'm doing today that I can get blissfully unaware of the overarching picture of what God is doing in a place. Being able to go away for a while allows me to stop and step back from the details, and stand up and take a look at how things are going.

This weekend was particularly blessed, because the meetings were held in Winnipeg, a city we worked at planting a church in, for ten years. I kept meeting or bumping into people we had ministered to years previously. The blessing was in hearing their stories of how God had changed their homes and lives.

One family we had a hand in leading to faith, excitedly told me about their children who came to faith and their children's children who found God and married Godly people! Wow.

Another family's children are going to ministry school now. While another one works in ministry. Story after story about the effects God has had on the lives and the children of those God led us know.

Sunday morning we bumped into a couple who came to Winnipeg in the 1990's from India. Life was so hard for them at the first, but they worked hard. I became their "Pastor" and they were a blessing. Sunday in church, I saw them across the room at the same time they saw me and they came running over with arms full of a firstborn Son. Excitedly they told me of their life now and their new son. They still called me pastor, and asked me to pray over their grinning boy. We found a quiet corner and I prayed, and it was all good.

I needed to be reminded of the fruit of the years of hard work over in South Winnipeg. I needed  to remember how God worked to feed the hungry, to heal the sick, to love the broken. I needed to remember the changed lives, the babies fed, the sick made well again, the lost who found Jesus.

It was a great weekend of remembering the past and looking forward.

So, thank you to those of you who care for us, enough to pray, and love us. We are making a difference in this world.