Home Thoughts From Abroad

   I would start this post with “Rogers Cable, we hate you,” but then I would sound like my son, and we would both hate that even more. So when we got the message that the Banmans were no longer supporting our Rogers email, I just sighed and said “Figures,” and knew immediately where the problem lay. 

Kim and Larry, who if you haven’t met are just wonderful people, did their level best to ensure that our email service would not be disrupted by their move to Delaware. They maintain our email address under their service while we are out of the country. They had every assurance from Rogers that what has just happened would not happen. But neither of us believe anything that Rogers says, and our cynicism, it seems, was well founded.

So until Larry can get this sorted out, please reroute your emails to us through steve@spwise.com or pam@spwise.com both of which are currently active. Those links and our weblog are both maintained by Jon, our son. We are just hoping that he is not planning on moving his wee family in the immediate future or we will be really up the creek.

Love to all. Keep us in your prayers.

We have always been advocates of keeping the sex of a baby as a surprise for birth, but I have to say that it is pretty exciting to now know that we are looking forward to meeting “Abigail Joan”.  But now that we know that, March seems like a long way off and it will be even longer than that before we get to hold her in our arms.

Twenty-four years ago Pam went into labour with our third child. We had two wonderful sons at home, and as befits a woman of faith, Pam wasn’t asking for a daughter, just a well-born child that she could raise for God. We had Elizabeth (dedicated to God) picked out as a girl’s name for months, but really had not been able to decide on a boy’s name. Perhaps that alone was telling.

I however was praying earnestly for a girl. Not for myself, but for the joy I knew that it would bring Pam. She didn’t know it, but I had already developed a special bond with the boys, a bond that only another Dad will understand. I wanted her to have that special bond with a daughter, and I was just delighted when they announced Liz’s birth.

Through the years I have always tried to let Pam have a little more room with Liz to develop that bond. When discipline was needed I always tried to be the one to step it in so as to preserve their friendship on an even keel. It has meant a rocky road for my relationship with our daughter, but nothing worth giving ever comes without a price.

So on her twenty-fourth birthday I am going to take the opportunity to say just how privileged I have been to be the father of a wonderfully spirited and delightful girl who has put her poor father through the wringer on more than one occassion. I love you dearly Liz, more than I will ever be able to express or even show this side of heaven.

My wish for you this coming year is that you will begin to realize the incredible ability and personality strengths you possess, and start to experience the joy that the full exercise of that ability and those strengths will give you. Happy Birthday, sweetie.

What a great idea!  The Grandmas will love it.

Happy Birthday Nicole and Jonathan! 

Throughout our children’s lives we have prayed that God would bless each of them with a godly life partner who would love and support them and challenge them to be the best that they can.   Having you, Nicole as a daughter in law. is certainly all we could ask for Jon. 

We are so proud of you both.  We stand at times in awe of the maturity and carefulness that you display in the life decisions that you make and in the loving and joyful manner in which you parent Benjamin.

Twenty one years ago this month we arrived in Bangladesh when Liz was two and the boys were four and five. Steve started teaching right away in the MK school, set up an ESL class for hospital staff and led a mid week Bible study. It was a wonderful year for us as a family.  The work was rewarding and important, but by October  we were feeling burnt out and homesick.

In our stress and loneliness we were encouraged and ministered to by Carol Stagg, Aunt Carol to our kids. Dick was the medical director of the hospital, demonstrating the love of Christ with his care, courtesy and kindness in a needy land. Carol had, and still has, the gift of hospitality, encouraging and blessing all who ever had the privilege of entering her home. We will never forget how she miraculously produced a ham for us at Canadian Thanksgiving, and a 17-layer torte, washed down with A&W root beer. Or her house magically decorated at Christmas, with her tree bejeweled with light and a special gift for each of our children nestled beneath its branches.

Her ministry was made all the more remarkable by her indomitable courage. You see, Carol suffers from lupus, a cruel disease which was made worse by exposure to sunlight. Yet in obedience to God, here she was in Bangladesh, where the temperature at midday would rise to 40 degrees Celsius, ministering for Christ in love to all who came her way. We were humbled and strengthened not only by what she did for us, but for her remarkable example of Christlikeness.

Now this dear saint and friend has been diagnosed with lung cancer. We know that she will face this new trial to her health with the same determined spirit, and will continue to witness of God’s sustaining presence in the midst of suffering. We would ask for your prayers for this faithful servant of Christ. May He be merciful to one who has borne so much for Him.

Ben is growing up so quickly and we are sure longing to hold him.  We are so grateful for the technology that allows us to see and hear him and to watch him on video.  We are also so proud of his mom and dad and the decisions they have made in parenting him. 

I blame my parents. They dragged me off to Canada when I was five, then shipped me home to visit with my grandmother when I was eleven. Three glorious weeks catching double decker buses in London, going to the Tower, Hyde Park, the Planetarium and eating bread-n- drippin’ for breakfast and I was hooked. A few more family trips to England and Mexico City solidified my conviction – I was born to travel.

I spent four years between high school and university just bumming around North America and Europe. In those glory days all you needed was a backpack and your thumb. A month sweeping streets or eight weeks priming tobacco and you were good to go again. I think I saw every art gallery and gothic cathedral between Oslo and the Pyrennes that I could pack in.

Marriage and kids didn’t settle me down much either. We spent a year in Bangladesh and another in Germany with three kids in tow, and toured as much of the surrounding countries and sights that we could, including the Alps (skiing St. Moritz) and the Himalayas (staying in Kathmandu). We swam in the Bay of Bengal (nearly losing our borrowed Jeep to the tide!) and the Adriatic. We climbed the Eiffel Tower and the cliffs of Dover and had a wonderful time doing all of it.

Fortunately God was good enough to give me a wife who not only understands my love of travel, but shares it. An old adage runs “If love is the food of life, then travel is the dessert.” To which I can only respond “Can I have another helping?”