Thanksgiving

I know that to our family and others you sometimes don't meet our friends and get to know who they are or what they are like. Likewise, many of our friends have not really met our family - partly because our family is large and partly because we do live a fair distance away from each other at the moment. We are grateful for you all, and I thought I may share some photos and memories for Thanksgiving.

There is a family we really miss right now in our lives - the Puddicombes. They've been so much a part of our lives while we were together at Caronport, and now they've moved to Whitecourt. They are pastoring there and miss having their friends around. We will be seeing them in less than a month when we head up to Mark's parents' place for Christmas, but we still miss them a lot.

I didn't really want to help them move away, and in fact, last year they had other job opportunities and we prayed for them to stay (thank you, Lord, for answering even those very selfish and not-so-spiritual prayers). They did stay for another year after that. Come to think of it, maybe someone has been praying the same thing about us, because we just can't seem to get out of here. I mentioned to Clayton that I was sitting in class with a bunch of our friends the other day while I was in my LAST CLASS. He told me that he was jealous that they had classes for seminary superstars and that he wasn't invited. Oh well. It's just as well. I don't think he would have gotten any more out of the class than I did. It was supposed to be about Pastoral Theology and Practice, but it seemed to be very general and a little lacking on the practice end of things (like weddings, funerals, services, and other things that aren't talked about in any other classes here). It seemed more like it was just a lesser repeated generalization of some of the leadership materials and another theology class I had taken with greater depth and gusto. Apparently when I spoke, people listened. The prof was having difficulty believing that all of the negative experiences and abuses I shared could come from one person in the brief amount of time I've been in ministry. I got thanked by some of the other people in class later for sharing, and they also mentioned how grateful they are for the more positive experiences they've had. My negative experiences are not just a matter of perspective - I'm more naturally inclined to be a happy-go-lucky fellow! Anyway - at least someone was thankful for my troubles. I pray that one day I will feel the same way.

Getting back to Clay and Tam, I'm praying that their experience goes well and that things continue to improve as the years go by in their ministry. People don't need negative experiences to make them thankful for the positive ones, or for something to learn from. For instance, the day we moved them, I was in charge of packing the truck because of my sensory perception and shape recognition skills. We packed their house into the truck with great ease and left them enough room to load another garage full of stuff into the truck with ease! Unfortunately, I broke the dresser pictured on the left (brown) because I stood on it once we had covered it with a blanket. Oh well. It was repaired on the other end, and I don't feel like I owe them money anymore. We get to see them soon on our way home for Christmas, and we are totally looking forward to that. And seeing all of the rest of you as well (you know who you are, so there's no point in mentioning such a plethora of names).

Happy American Thanksgiving.

- Mark


See post 2x below!