A Bright Sunny Morning!

Good morning everyone!!!! My name is Mary and I am from the United Mennonite Church in Black Creek :) It has taken me a bit to get on here but I've gotten my act together, well, a little bit, hee hee, and signed on up. My husband and I (and my mom) are on our way to Church for our Annual General Meeting today that will be full of information and of course elections...now that will be interesting! lol Cal, my husband, and I have been married for almost 14 years (I'm 37 yrs). I just wanted to take this opportunity to introduce myself, and also ask for prayer for our Church as we go into our AGM :) I will be doing some more blogs with poems, thoughts, prayers, and such as time goes on! Thank you and God bless!!!!!

Giving Up or Adding On?

I was chatting over lunch the other day with a young woman I know. She and her husband have been married a few years and have faithfully given up something during the Lenten season. Chocolate, coffee, going out for restaurant meals and movies, that sort of thing. She said that this year they had been kicking around ideas. TV maybe? They didn't watch it much anyways. Restaurants? Done that already. Ditto chocolate and coffee. What to give up that would be significant and a sacrifice?

Then inspiration hit. What if, instead of giving something up, they added something on? 40 days of something extra? She's going to run outside daily. He is going to walk the 1.5 km to and from work. Normally going to work means using the ATV or car but for Lent, he will walk both ways. February and March in southern Ontario are still firmly in winters grip. It’s below zero with snow and ice covering the ground. Green grass and flowers won’t be seen until April normally. Committing to run or walk daily is not for the faint of heart.

I'm impressed by their determination and creativity to honour Lent and the idea of sacrifice. As for me, I haven't firmly decided yet. What about you?

Another perspective on Giving Thanks

I went out for coffee with my friend Willard yesterday afternoon. Because Willard lives in Ontario, we don’t see each other often and this was the first time we meet in person after he experienced the earthquake in Port-Au-Prince, Haiti last month. Willard works for World Vision Canada and was on a partnership tour with church leaders from Atlantic Canada in Haiti. The hotel in which they were staying was damaged but they were not injured. Because someone at the hotel had some emergency medical training in their background, word went out that there was a doctor at the hotel and Willard and his colleagues were faced with streams of injured people coming to them for help. They tore lots of bedsheets to make bandages but Willard said in email that it was such a helpless feeling to face such an overwhelming need to which he could not fully respond.

I’ve known for a long time that Willard is a person of generous heart and spirit. He feels experiences deeply and reaches out in whatever ways he can to help. Over the years as a pastor, and now working for World Vision, he has done mission trips to many places of incredible need. The impact of these trips led him to produce a small volume of table graces for World Vision called “Thanking God with Integrity: Table Grace in a world of hunger.” He writes in the introduction, “when sensitized to the global inequity concerning access to food, simply thanking God for ‘our’ food feels terribly inadequate.” Acknowledging this, Willard has written these prayers to express thankfulness in light of a celebration of response and purpose.
Here is one of the prayers from his book:

Lord grant that we may eat this food in peace;
guarded from guilt and protected from shame.
Cause this food to become nutrients that
feed the spirit of generosity and sustains a life of service.
Then, Oh Lord, we receive this food not only in peace
but in true worship.
Amen.

What do you think about giving thanks?

Welcome new MFC staff in Abbotsford!

For those of you who live in or around Abbotsford, I just want you to know that Mennonite Foundation of Canada has new staff in the Abbotsford office. Arnie Friesen is the new Stewardship Consultant and Irm Nickel is the new Admin Assistant. MFC is all about helping congregations and individuals connect faith and finances and offers good resources for will and estate planning, charitable gift planning and financial literacy from a Christian perspective. Unfortunately, Arnie & Irm are working in the midst of drywall dust as the MFC office in the Golden Age Society building is renovated but I'm sure they would be happy to meet any of you who drop by!