A new addition to our Clan!

Welcome

Marike Grace B!

Born November 30, 2010

Two weeks ago, our youngest, Maurice, and his wife Rachel, received a precious covenant child on loan from the Lord to raise for His glory!

Though the photos are lacking, we're "proud" to show you here God's blessing to our family.

We are humbly thankful for each one and for the Lord's goodness in keeping mother & baby safe and healthy.

Pleased Mommy, 2 days after the birth looks great! What a thrill to have another daughter!

and a sister for Anneke - her great hope fulfilled! This is their first meeting and Anneke was a little reluctant to go back with us once she got baby in her arms.

We had the privilege of taking care of these 2, the oldest of 5 (now) and we really enjoyed having them. (Thanks M&R - their good training made it all that much more possible & pleasant for us to have them during that week). They seemed to enjoy themselves as well and Jo, who is still quite affectionate, announced "Its so much fun here, I don't want to go home. I want to stay."- yeah, 3 adults doting on him! To which Anneke replied, "I want to be with Daddy, Mommy & Marike" to which Jo replied after a moment's thought, "Well they can come live here too!" LOL! Not to worry, this is the same boy who, when kissing mommy "goodbye" at the end of their brief visit, decided he was going to stay home with mommy! Fickle kids,eh? ;) The younger 2 boys stayed with Chris & Maurice- and from all reports (except maybe Kenny's) that went quite well also - despite the warnings re "Willy the terror" - he quite enjoyed rough-housing with his big cousins - especially Mark.

This past Sunday (Dec.12) baby Marike was baptized and the following photos were taken by Dad & Josh after that special occassion.

Grandchild Number #21! Niece #10!

Marike, like Anneke, is a good Dutch name (actually pronounced Marijke) - and we have 2 relatives in Holland by that name: Dad's sister-in-law, and Mom's sweet cousin (who lived close by for a time and left a lasting impression on us by her life devoted to relieving the suffering & rescuing the lost).

Bright-eyed little dolly already communicating

Living Publicly | CCEF

Living Publicly | CCEF

45 Years as Husband & Wife!

45 years of love

Our dear parents

We praise God for His faithfulness to Dad & Mom through all these years!

We are so grateful for their love for the Lord, and their love for eachother and for us, their children & grandchildren. I can't thank them enough for all their love and care for me - especially during this very difficult year! May the Lord reward & bless them richly!

We celebrated with the family 2 weeks ahead since the actual date was already taken by our church's Kingdom Seekers banquet - which turned out to be quite a celebration too!

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Our little family celebration started with Dad & Mom's grand entrance with "Here comes the Bride" being belted out by Dad while the grandkids watched open-mouthed. LOL.

After a scrumptious meal, a Trivia Game about Dad & Mom/Opa & Oma teased our brains with questions about their wedding, their various dwelling places, and different things about their lives, and of course: "What is something that Opa says a lot?" to which the grandkids immediately & gleefully said: "Now Moo!" Yeah, Dad, you've asked for it. :) The bonus question re a character trait/gift of each that we're thankful for gave us opportunity to honour and build-up these 2 special people. And, of course, special music was performed by many of the grandkids and, surprise, Christine playing a piece on her recently acquired harp!

We've been so spoiled (& tend to take it for granted) having godly parents and siblings and being close enough to be able to get together fairly easily (compared to our parents who left their families far, far away and were lucky to have even 1 family member come to their wedding! - and the S's who just had 2 more of their kids move far away!). We did miss Heidi tho who is in the US studying hard, and Daniel (who was pretending to be a YP at RLL and doing everything but school!).

Beautiful centerpiece from Sharon.

And I must mention the cross-stitched masterpiece that Betty worked on for the past 8 years! and finished just in time to present it to Dad & Mom that day! (Its been professionally framed since and is now hanging above the fireplace!)

"Great is Thy Faithfulness, O God my Father!"

Thanksgiving Hike

Local Sight-seeing with Arie & Mieke

Awesome Blossom always has such "prachtige bloemen!"

beautiful flowers and good produce

The Mill in Alton

Arie liked the interesting architecture & mill workings.

Mieke & Mom most enjoyed the art exhibits and talking with the artist

Dad's highlight was, you guessed it, the cafe!

Indian Art - if you look long/carefully at the right painting, you can see a bear's head and eagles head immerging in the sky/landscape

Round the Bend Farm

Ook heel mooi en interestant!

What happened to Dad??

lunch break

and of course the drives, seeing all the different landscaping and 2 story houses and the brilliant fall colours - which they don't have in Holland.

Note: The first photo on the first post is from the trail just before town and was taken by Arie - as all of these were (Thanks Oom Arie, and it was good to have you both - come again!)

Arie & Mieke's visit at Thanksgiving time

"Oh, Give Thanks to the LORD, for He is good!

For His mercy endures forever!"

We praise God for His mercy in not giving us what we actually deserve but instead, because of Christ, giving us what we don't deserve - grace, forgiveness and eternal life. And many temporal blessings as well. We have sooo much to be thankful for!

One of these was the opportunity to have relatives from Holland over and enjoy renewing relationships and introducing them to our families...

Mom's brother, Arie, and his wife Mieke, arrived from sister Marian's on Wed evening and stayed with us till Monday afternoon. A great time to experience a Christian Canadian Thanksgiving weekend and the beautiful fall colours.

Here we are having a delicious turkey dinner with all the fixings.

Dad & Mom took them sightseeing locally and to each of their kid's homes: Thursday for roast beef dinner to Maurice & Rachel, Friday to meet Lizzi & Mark.

Saturday we all got together at Christine & Maurice's (except M&R, our YPs, Sharon, & David who was sick). What perfect weather and great hosts - thank you!

After a yummy BBQ and pumpkin/apple pie & icecream, Maurice read from Psalm 19 and John gave thanks. We then enjoyed some singing before heading off for a hike.

Sunday it was off to church and then to Ralph & Sharon's for soup and homemade bread

then a quiet afternoon of napping, walking, reading, talking....

Monday Betty & John came and helped us give the travellers a hearty send-off with lots of hugs & kisses (Joanna trying to find a spot on Arie's face on which to place her kiss was hilarious - you had to be there)

Can you see any resemblance?

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"Oh, that men would give thanks to the LORD for His goodness, And for His wonderful works to the children of men!

For He satisfies the longing soul, And fills the hungry soul with goodness."

Psalm 107:1, 8,9

...and He is glorified.

I guess there is something good about having absolutely no social life -it forces you to spend more time thinking. And drinking tea. And eating fudge. :-)
Believe me there is lots to think about. Everywhere I turn I am bombarded with information about theology, about anthropology, sociology, psychology, Christology... pretty much any "ology" you can think of. More than that, it's a lot of information about self. About service. Understanding. What it means to love your brother. My classmate put it well when he said "Professor, everything you say is great, but there is so much sometimes it's hard to know what we are supposed to do with it all!" Not only how to organize it into our worldview, but how to live it without hypocrisy. I feel like I need 10 years of counseling before I could even begin with anyone else! And yet the more I hear, the more I am overwhelmed, and the more need I see for the body of Christ to be just that -a body! And the more I wonder, just what is wisdom? Where does knowledge flow into understanding, understanding into action? How can sinners minister to sinners? And I see more and more the beauty of the cross. The ugliness of torture, pain and death -and yet the most beautiful thing that could touch our lives. Not only touch our life, but consume it, control it, motivate it, energize it and even use it! It's as if the water of life is inside us and it's bubbling and filling and swelling until whether we like it or not it comes spilling over all our edges, bathing everyone we meet and giving them the consciousness that here is a person who knows about love. Who knows about sin. This is an image-bearer, a grace-child.
How I wish that I could only point to Christ! Every road sign I put up says "look at me" Every beginning of inspiration and understanding is so quickly overtaken by pride, gutted of sincerity and sent forward as another tribute to the work of Heidi Luimes!
And yet somehow, miraculously, God looks at all those smelly, selfish attempts and is glorified. Not in me, but in His Son. Not in my work, but in the finished work! In the work of the cross that somehow enables us to take another feeble step forward, rejoicing in the knowledge that "He who started the work will be faithful to complete it in you."

Good-bye dear Pastor & Cher

Our church was sailing merrily along
With never a thought of losing our helm
-Why, our pastor and his sweet wife
Would probably be staying with us for life!

Then out of the blue, without any warning
Another church from far-out "Winter-peg"
Rocked the boat and disturbed our calm
And suddenly everything was up in the air!

A whirlwind ensued – especially for you
‘Til now, only a couple months later,
You’re actually bidding us adieu! – boo-hoo!

As sad as we feel now
Some day we’ll be glad
As humbly we bow
To God’s sovereign will
Knowing everything He does
Is for His glory and our good.
....

It is a sad and weird feeling to know they aren't coming back
and that we are without an undershepherd and less another family now.
Its tempting to get discouraged but we need to instead:

Pray that this tiny little flock
Which is founded on the Rock
Will continue to "walk the talk"
And not cause others to mock
That we’ll once again grow
As love to one-another we show
And God’s Word we faithfully sow
Filling seats - row upon row!

We trust that as they've been such a blessing to us
They will be a blessing to their new church
As the Lord blesses and uses them there

Italized stanzas are part of a poem I wrote for the book our church gave to our Pastor & family as a rememberance of the Hope family. Pictures below of our last little visit after church service. I wasn't able to attend the church's farewell social but you can see pictures on Sharon's blog.

Yvetta and her friend Bethany - so cute!

Cher's sister from the States was there too - a long time friend of mine

How I miss these dear friends
So glad to know that we will see each other again!