Wednesday, March 11, 2009

Three connections that make me smile

Story 1

My uncle and aunt, who are Saskatchewan farmers, stopped in Monday night for the night and we had a great visit with them. It was good to remember and to talk late into the night about things that mattered to us. Tuesday we went out together for breakfast and we talked some more. I was able to show off some of my newly found farmer language and knowledge, which pretty much impressed them I'm guessing.

It's cool to have family that you can quite instantly connect with again after a while apart. And it's good too to hear of life in the rectangle province again.

It was good of them to make an effort to stop by.

Story 2

So, last night Lauralea and I went with Micah to an orientation meeting at the high school he will be in next year. After the meeting I was approached by a lady who asked if I was John D. Friesen's grandson. To which I replied yes I was. She got a big smile on her face and told me that it was at one of his evangelistic meetings in LaCrete Alberta that she first met God in a real way.

That started a long conversation about her years growing up in LaCrete, and I asked her if she know of my uncle and aunt on my moms side who had been up there for years teaching in the school. Of course she knew them and their work, and how they had helped change that whole area of the north.

Lauralea and I while we were attending college up north at PRBI, and had at least once a year gone up to LaCrete to visit the relatives and have some fun with them, which reminds me, it was in LaCrete on April 18th that Lauralea and I started "going together." But that's a freebee to the story...

Anyway she replied with another thing in common when she said she went to PRBI for a year too, a couple of years after we had been there.

The final coolness factor was when it came out that she has a kid in Micah's class and that's how she started asking Micah and thinking this out. From Grandpa ministering in Northern Alberta, to relatives teaching up there, 27 years ago, to a small rural school in Alberta with two families who had moved around a bunch in life.

It was such an overwhelming confluence of events that really made me smile. Even out here in the field, we are connected in a small world.

Story 3

Our Insurance man stopped in today to get some stuff done on our house insurance and auto insurance, and we began to talk at the table over tea and brownies. Turns out he used to farm just north of Saskatoon in the area where my dad's family had their farm.

He knew my family, my grandparents, my uncle and aunt who had been here the day previous, and on and on it went, like some reunion tour.

Wow.

It's just cool to be known and remembered when you live in a strange land with new people and new cultures to learn and new ways to walk. Feels like God hasn't forgotten that we have a history too and that he's watching out for us, giving us what we need on any given day.

Yeah, a cool week to be me.

5 comments:

  1. Don't you just love it when God makes himself so vividly present in our days? Makes being in the field all the more worth it doesn't it?

    Jeremy

    ReplyDelete
  2. I can see how those connections would make you smile.

    Here's my connection story ... Awhile back I posted about a blog called Haskap Wine. I had found it through Google. Turns out it's the creation of a former Covenant pastor who is now into growing organic fruit in the Swan River valley of Manitoba. He knows my cousin Elaine and her husband Dave very well. We've communicated a bit about winemaking. That was a connection that made me smile.

    ReplyDelete
  3. so basically, you just played the mennonite game.

    I actually pulled out the John D Friesen name to get into a small rural church last week.....worked like a charm!

    ReplyDelete
  4. You can't get away from Saskatchewan folk.
    I was at a WCB conference this week and a comment was made about 75% of Albertans coming from here!

    ReplyDelete



Play nice - I will delete anything I don't want associated with this blog and I will delete anonymous comments.