The Birth of the Adult

Someone has said that the Mother goes through labour to give birth to the infant child and the Father goes through labour to give birth to the adult child. I believe that it is us as fathers that call our children into adulthood and give them the primary affirmation and confidence that will be helpful to them as adults. One model can be when God the Father spoke at Jesus baptism and said, "this is my beloved son, in whom I am well pleased". As a father I want to give my children the blessing and affirmation that will help them as they move from childhood to becoming adults.

One of the ways I have tried to do this is to spend seven days with them when they are about 13 years old. I want to spend this time with them doing something that they want to do and I want to enjoy being with them.

Hans and I did a bike trip from Dryden to Winnipeg and back. It was about 500 miles round trip. I thought I was going to die. It is probably the most physically challenging thing I have ever done. We made a lot of good memories during that week.

Bethanie and Jennifer each went with me to Haiti for a week. We spent time with our friends there and enjoyed each other on the trip.

When Elaine's turn came we went as a family to Winnipeg and camped at Bird's Hill Park. During the day she attended a horse camp. We did things together in the evening.

Now I am ready to do the last one. Dallas and I are leaving tomorrow morning. We are going to North Dakota for the weekend and then to Minneapolis for the rest of our week. I am looking forward to spending the week with him. I am also quite satisfied that he did not pick something as physically challenging as a bike trip to Winnipeg.

Hopefully, the next seven days can be part of his journey from boyhood to manhood.

Ojibway Park Church Picnic

Today we had our annual outdoor church service and picnic at Ojibway Provincial Park. Last year it started raining just as we began the service and got worse as the day went on. Today we had a beautiful day. The sky was clear, and it was warm.

After the morning service we had a picnic together. There was a lot of good food and we had a wonderful time of fellowship together. I think if we could have designed a day for an outdoor church service and picnic, this would have been exactly how we would have designed it.

After lunch I got Joe Ice out on the dock in his wheelchair, and helped him fish for a little bit. He didn't catch anything, but had fun trying. We left the park about 3:00 PM.

We really enjoy our church family here at Sioux Lookout. We are blessed to be part of a group like this one.

This is the beginning of the outdoor service. We did sit in the sun, because it wasn't all that warm first thing in the morning.

This is Nate grilling the meat for lunch. Some of the rest of us men kind of stood around and at least acted like we were part of the action. We did do a little bit occasionally. The principle here is "Where there is smoke there is lunch".

This is the ladies putting the finishing touches on the food table. We had a lot of great salads and deserts. The fellowship was the best part of the day though.

Micro-Finance Project

We have been home now for a little over a week. I am getting caught up on the things that needed to be done. I conquered all the grass cutting, and most of the office work that was awaiting my return.

One of the things that is moving forward is the Anabaptist Foundation micro-finance project in Haiti. We have received board approval to move ahead with the next stage of the project in the Miragoane area of Haiti.

We are planning a savings-led micro-finance project there. We will be hiring a few Haitian Mennonite men to be trained as facilitators for the formation of savings groups. These groups will be given training in biblical financial principles, and ways of developing trust and accountability within a group.

Each group will decide what they are saving for and determine how much they need to save. There could be a group of parents who decide in to start saving in September for the tuition, books, and uniforms for their children's schooling the following year. They might meet twice a month and make a small deposit into their group savings. In August of the following year they could withdraw their savings to pay for the school expenses. Or there could be a group of farmers who would save money from their corn crop and millet crops to pay for planting the next year's crop.

One of the exciting things about savings-led micro-finance is that it really changes the mindset that we are helpless and need someone from outside the community to come and give us the resources to change things. The amounts people might be able to save are small, but it does make a difference, and they did it with their own resources.

We are working with HOPE International as a partner organization. They have savings groups in Rwanda. In Rwanda they have 31,000 people participating in savings groups. Their participants there have deposited funds with a value of over $500,000 U. S. dollars. Obviously, we are starting out much smaller than that in Haiti, but the potential is huge.

We are in the fund raising stage right now. We have a staff person that is planning to move to Haiti in October to begin working on the project there.

Michael Jackson

We have to admit that Michael Jackson was an intriguing person. No matter what you thought of him, you probably had more questions than answers about him. This week there was a grand memorial service for the man who became known as the "King of Pop" in the music world.

I once heard that the lady who operates the Galilean Home was invited by President George H. W. Bush to a white house dinner to honour volunteers. She sat across from President Bush and next to Michael Jackson. In the story I heard, she said that Michael Jackson came in late and sat through the dinner without speaking and mostly keeping his head down. She said he seemed like a poor lost boy and she wanted to just take him home and love him. I don't know how true that story is, but that is how I heard it.

In March 2001, Michael Jackson gave a speech at Oxford University in England. In that speech he gave some insights about himself. Here are a few quotes from the speech:

"All of us are products of our childhood. But I am the product of a lack of a childhood, an absence of that precious and wondrous age when we frolic playfully without a care in the world, basking in the adoration of parents and relatives, where our biggest concern is studying for that big spelling test come Monday morning.

Those of you who are familiar with the Jackson Five know that I began performing at the tender age of five and that ever since then, I haven't stopped dancing or singing.

But while performing and making music undoubtedly remain as some of my greatest joys, when I was young I wanted more than anything else to be a typical little boy.

I wanted to build tree houses, have water balloon fights, and play hide and seek with my friends.

But fate had it otherwise and all I could ever do was envy the laughter and playtime that seemed to be going on all around me.

There was no respite from my professional life.

But on Sundays I would go Pioneering, the term used for the missionary work that Jehovah's Witnesses do.

And it was then that I was able to see the magic of other people's childhood."

Later in the speech he said:

"Ours is a generation that has witnessed the abrogation of the parent-child covenant.
Psychologists are publishing libraries of books dealing with the destructive effects of denying one's children the unconditional love that is so necessary to the healthy development of their minds and character.

And because of all the neglect, too many of our kids have, essentially, to raise themselves.

They are growing more distant from their parents, grandparents and other family members, as all around us the indestructible bond that once glued together the generations unravels.

This violation has bred a new generation, Generation O let us call it, that has now picked up the torch from Generation X.

The O stands for a generation that has everything on the outside - wealth, success, fancy clothing and fancy cars, but an aching emptiness on the inside.

That cavity in our chests, that barrenness at our core, that void in our centre is the place where the heart once beat and shich love once occupied."

He went on to say:

"Love, ladies and gentlemen, is the human family's most precious legacy, it richest bequest, its golden inheritance.

And it is a treasure that is handed down from one generation to another.

Previous ages may not have had the wealth we enjoy. Their houses may have lacked electricity, and they squeezed their many kids into small houses without central heating.

But those homes had no darkness, nor were they cold. They were lit bright with the glow of love and they were warmed snugly by the very heat of the human heart.

Parents, undistracted by the lust for luxury and status, accorded their children primacy in their lives."

Later in the speech he spoke of his relationship with his father:

" My father is a tough man and he pushed my brothers and me hard, from the earliest age, to be the best performers we could be.

He had great difficulty showing me affection. He never really told me he loved me.

And he never really complimented me either. If I did a great show, he would tell me it was a good show. And if I did an OK show, he would say nothing.

He seemed intent, above all else, on making us a commercial success. And at that he was more than adept.

My father was a managerial genius and my brothers and I owe our professional success, in no smlall measure, to the forceful way that he pushed us.

He trained me as a showman and under his guidance I couldn't miss a step.

But what I really wanted was a Dad. I wanted a father who showed me love. And my father never did that.

He never said I love you while looking me straight in the eye, he never played a game with me. He never gave me a piggyback ride, he never threw a pillow at me, or a water balloon."

I think that speech tells us a lot about Michael Jackson as a man. Men like Michael Jackson may puzzle us. But we can learn from their experiences in life. We can observe the effects on a man who had no childhood. We can mourn what could have been. For even though he was extremely famous and popular in our generation, he was a man. He was created in the image of God.

When he died he passed from this life into the next and he met his creator, the one who longed to be a Father to him. At the memorial service, the pastor who prayed the benediction said it well when he said, "and now the King of Pop bends the knee before the King of Kings".

Slate Run

We had a great weekend at Slate Run, Pennsylvania. Edith's family gathered there for the weekend. She and most of her eighteen siblings were there, along with many of their children and grandchildren. I'm not sure how many people were there, but I'm sure it was well over 100.

We arrived there Thursday evening. We set up our tent even though there had just been a rain shower. It rained some during the night and on Friday. Then by Friday afternoon it cleared off and there wasn't any more rain for the rest of the weekend.

It was great to visit with family again there. I told some of the brothers-in-law that it is a very short time from when I was the new boyfriend being introduced to the family until I am one of the old men sitting on the porch.

This morning we had a worship service and sharing time. We packed up after lunch and headed for Sioux Lookout. We drove as far as Central Ohio. We hope to be home by Tuesday afternoon.

This is a view of the cabin site. Most of the family brings campers or tents for the weekend.

The cabin is along the Little Pine Creek. The children love the water. Dallas and a few friends went up stream and floated down to the cabin on tubes.

There is an old railroad bed that has been converted to a bike trail. I took a bike ride several miles up the trail on Saturday.

At one spot along the bike trail there were some butterflies on the weeds by the trail.



This ravine looked interesting. When I stepped into it I saw a deer with two spotted fawns in the ravine. I didn't get a very good picture of the deer.

Travels

We are getting ready to go to Slate Run, Pennsylvania for Edith's family's get together. It is a major family event at the hunting camp her father was a part of. Most of the family camps outside the cabin on the lawn. It is a beautiful setting in Northern Pennsylvania. There are mountains on both sides and a creek right by the cabin.

We are planning to arrive there this afternoon and stay until Sunday afternoon. Then we will head back to Sioux Lookout and hope to arrive home by Tuesday evening.

Yesterday we helped my brother move to Allentown, Pennsylvania. They are involved in the start-up phase of a church there in the city. It was good to see their new home and meet a few of the children who attend their Sunday School.

Last evening we attended the commissioning service for Randall and Laural Horst who will be joing the Believers Fellowship staff team in Red Lake.