Home Thoughts From Abroad

While our family and friends in Canada celebrate the last long weekend of the summer, we also had a three day weekend to mark the 57th anniversary of our adopted country. We opted to use the time to revive our very old scanner which is capable of scanning our family’s slides. It stretched the limits of our technical knowledge to convert thirty year old slides to digital format using a ten year old scanner and new computer platforms. But with the help of Steve’s now out of date Windows XP on his work computer we were able to upload the necessary software and the CanoScan 4200F was soon up and running again.

With the technical details behind us, we were soon absorbed in the wonder of seeing long forgotten images. Once we got over the shock of how much we had aged and shrunk, we were caught up in the wonder of the memories that cascaded over us. The sheer volume of those collected experiences began to sink in, and we were overwhelmed by the depth of God’s blessings on our family in our adventures with these three wonderful children through their growing up years.

With our water babies – all of them – we spent many happy hours on the beach in Port Stanley or at the cottage in Barrow Bay on the Bruce Peninsula. They loved their routines and yet were all very flexible, adventurous and could roll with the punches effortlessly. You could pretty much toss them their blanket and they would curl up and sleep wherever they happened to be. Throw in some sand on a sunny beach and they would entertain themselves for the entire day.

Their fearless and accepting attitude to whatever came their way gave us the courage to pack them up for an amazing adventure that found us living for a year in a quite remote hospital station in the southern panhandle of Bangladesh. There we served alongside some faithful servants of God and made life long friends while our kids learned much about independence as they explored the compound with their buddies. As we made our way home, we had the joy of visiting Kathmandu and driving out into the Himalayas to watch the sun rise over Mt Everest. From there we flew to Amsterdam where we picked up a camper van and had an amazing three weeks exploring some of Holland, Belgium, Germany, and Switzerland enroute to visit with our TWR missionary friends Steve and Barb in Monte Carlo.

Seven years on, we again packed up and headed off for a year at Black Forest Academy in southern Germany and were again touring the countryside in a camper van. It wasn’t a very fancy set of wheels but it took us on several trips to England, enabling us to spend time with Steve’s Dad just a week before he passed away. We made many trips that year through France, Germany, Switzerland and Italy. There were great experiences skiing in the Alps, swimming in the beautiful lakes of Italy and the beaches of the Adriatic, amazing European campgrounds, and city tours of Rome, Venice, Florence, Zurich, Bern, Paris and Frankfurt. We grew to love the beauty of Interlaken, Alsace Lorraine and the Black Forest.

But babies grow up, teenagers move out and young adults establish their own lives. Grandchildren are born and their own parents take photos of their little ones. Before you know it babies are taking “selfies” on their tablet and grandkids are making their own videos. We don’t know what technology will be available when our own children look back on their family experiences, but we pray that they will have made the type of wonderful memories we were delighted to revisit.