HELLO!

What a blessing to have the Women’s Retreat choir share their Ministry of Music with us this morning. Today we focused on “the call”, why we are called, what it means to be called, what we are called to do and be, and the difference we make when we act on our call, and how we grow from what we learn from those we are called to serve. Here is the link to that service: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l77ltEFaPVE I thank our Audio-Visual team, the long-time volunteers and the new ones who have recently joined the “balcony crew”, for making our voices heard, the services accessible to those who watch from their homes. I thank Peter, whose wife Maureen is finding her recovery from recent surgery very challenging. And to make the expression “it’s never all about us” come to life, as Peter juggles many balls at once, he made time to ask me/us to pray for Dennis Hudson, who along with Lori Errington, were the AV team that supported our dinner theatre. Dennis’ father Henry is recovering from a heart attack, in hospital. Please keep them in your prayers.

Funny story, I apparently know nothing about babies. I saw Bethe carrying a baby around the church before the service began. Later, five people told me Nancy and Jim Allen are once again proud grandparents, an eighth child born this week, Winnie. I assumed the baby Bethe was carrying was Winnie. Nope, that was Gus and Lisa’s baby Carlyle. The size of Carlyle would indicate he would not be a newborn child. Everyone in the world, except me, would know this. I like being the butt of jokes, except when it is about not remembering a detail that offers nothing substantial to the story, event, experience. If I give out a time for an event and get the time or location wrong, that is an important detail. If I am sharing a story, and there were 16 people there, but in fact someone only saw 15, I roll my eyes. But 99% of the time, I like to be teased.

On Monday, June 15^th Kim and I celebrate our 35^th wedding anniversary. Some of you wonder, like those who watched the TV series Columbo, if the “wife” I speak of is a real person, or if I just make her name up. Kim is an introvert, on any scale, all of us are a mixture of introvert and extrovert, she is about as far into the hermit category as they come. She used to joke she was the only person in Canada not to notice any appreciable difference in her life caused by the COVID lockdowns. We have difference personalities, but we share a common sense of humour, we are in lock step on how we manage money, and our parenting philosophy is identical. We have only ever had one argument, and it has been going on since we met, I want to do things immediately and Kim assumes there is always tomorrow. We have never yelled at each other. Lucian has never heard either of us lose our tempers. But…neither are we demonstrative or emotional or sentimental people. We both have our soft spots, for Kim it’s children with glasses, and for me, it’s dogs. Kim loves language and she reads constantly (all fiction, her favorite authors: Louise Penny and Alexander McCall Smith). I love stories, particularly stories I hear from complete strangers on the bus or the street, and I read non-fiction, biographies, theology, and political analysis. Kim would love it if I stopped finishing her sentences, and I wish she would slow down when she is looking for a parking space. Otherwise, we get along.

Peace, Kevin