Marsha's Blog

Thank you all for your kind comments on last week’s blog.  I promised you this week a “non-maudlin” post. My sister looked up the word, “maudlin”, and took great delight in reminding me that it describes a kind of “drunken self-pity”. That’s not exactly what MY dictionary said, but I’ll do my best to cheer up anyway.  Somewhere in one of our “memory boxes” in the garage, I believe we still have a cassette tape (remember those?) labelled “Angles”. We laughed about the person who couldn’t spell “Angels”, but the laughing always turned to awe when we listened to it. And we listened to it often. Apparently, it was taped when 4 or 5 missionary men got together to pray.  This particular time, they were especially low, as missionaries sometimes get when there’s no visible harvest. Finally they decided, after much prayer, that perhaps singing would lift their spirits.  Someone pushed ‘record’ on the player, and they began to sing. Later, they discovered that what was recorde...

 It’s been one of those weeks, busy and happy, but yet another funeral.  That makes two in the last week.  Godly men, age appropriate but still leaving you thinking, “Hey! What’s going on??”   While these things were going on, another dear friend miscarried, and a school acquaintance of my teenaged grandchild was killed on his e-bike. All this just reminds me again of the hope of Heaven, and wondering how anyone could bear them without that assurance.  I wanted to share a memory of Tony’s dad’s home going.  It was many years ago now, 2012.  A lot of you remember him.  He loved the Lord, he loved his wife, Jody,  and every day he made an effort to love living, and keep serving. We were in Europe when the call came that he was having bypass surgery.  We were due to be home in a couple of weeks anyway, but we changed plans and flew home to be by his side as he ‘recovered’. The operation seemed to go well, although we were not aware tha...

It’s been an interesting week.  I had cataract #1 removed last Monday and I confess: all of you who told me it would be a “walk in the park” were right. It was just that!  So I’m really thankful for your prayers. I go in tomorrow for the other eye, so you can keep praying, please!   In other news, our kids have been remodelling their house.  Since we live nearby, we suggested that they move into our place. We were planning to do some traveling anyway, so they could have full run of the place.  I think they enjoyed themselves.  When we got home, work was still going on, so we got an Airbnb nearby.  Easier to shift two people than a family of five. After ten days of that, however, we all agreed that it was time to come home. This made for four adults, three kids, a dog and a bird, but we all squeezed up a bit and survived nicely.  By yesterday, work on their house was still not finished, and while we protested meekly, they decided to go back ho...

 Good Morning,   Last week I wrote about my Daddy’s favourite song, “Jesus loves me” and I want to thank all of you who responded.  One of my readers even researched and found out that Karl Bart (famous theologian) also responded to the question, “What is the greatest theological tenet?” by responding like Daddy, “Jesus loves me, this I know”. It’s been a hard week emotionally.  We’ve had to say goodbye to three friends, all our age or older, so we shouldn’t be overly shocked. But still …… I can’t help but feel like the teenager who thinks he’s invincible, then coming back to the grateful heart that reminds me that “invincibility” for a child of God calls for a change of venue one of these days.  So today I’m just enjoying the life I have here and resting in the assurance that it’s just going to get better. Gratefully, all three of these friends were faithful giants, so there’s no need to be sad. But it’s still, well, just sad.  But my punk has been li...

 Good Morning, This morning in church we sang an old song.  In fact, without doing a lot of research, I’m going to say it’s VERY old…….. and every one of you could sing along. A vivid memory I have is seeing Daddy standing in the middle of the living room. At that point he was getting old and a little bit ‘off’ from time to time.  But he had always been rather quiet, and so when he spoke, people listened. Today was no exception. He got our attention, and with some pause he announced. “I’ve been thinking………. and I’ve decided that all I know about God is summed up in this one verse, “Jesus Loves Me This I Know’”.  And with that, just a little while later, he passed away peacefully, with that assurance on his lips and in his heart. Let me tell you another story related to that simple but powerful song.  Tony and I were short term missionaries in Zambia, as I mentioned last week.  Our ‘main’ job was to establish a student ministry there in our town of Luanshya....

 Good Morning All, I promised you something less 'compelling' from the last couple of weeks, so here you are.  Maybe it will elicit a (holy, of course) smile. When we lived in Africa about a hundred years ago, we were in our 20’s, and so were classified by the Mission board as “youth workers”, sent off we went into the wild unknown. Being young ourselves, we had the energy to be full on with all the kids.   There was one particularly happy group we love to visit at the school where we were also teachers.  If you’ve ever been to Africa, you'll know these people can SING, most often without the benefit of instruments! We always looked forward to sitting in on many rehearsals for the “Mufilira Gentlemen’s Most Excellent Choir”.  Fancy names, but believe me, it fit these young men. They were excellent, no contest there. We used to giggle to ourselves over their minor mistakes in English, until we realized that they were speaking in their third or fourth languag...