Do You Really Know What You Are Saying?

Happy Canada Weekend Everyone!

“He stayed around until the last dog was hung!” I commented to our daughter Sara about a recent newcomer to our Milton church. Sara, laughingly exclaimed, “What are you saying?” She had never heard about dogs being hung. I will let you “Google” that idiom since I am writing this blog in our car. I’ve found the older we get the more explaining we need to do for younger folk who have never heard these ancient sayings before.

Gary and I are driving home from a visit to Timmins to round up some volunteer help for our upcoming door to door Hillside church outreach campaign. We also journeyed via train from Cochrane to see our son Rob and his family in Moosonee. Yes, he did return home from his missions trip to Germany which went very well. In Timmins there is lots of French speaking people; in Moosonee there’s lots of Cree speaking natives. With all the various English idioms we use daily it’s no wonder that these Canadian citizens along with new immigrants to Canada have a difficult time understanding what we are really trying to say to them.

One day Gary, who is forever filled with lots of questions, stopped himself when he was talking about a person who had to really “bone up” on a particular subject. He muttered, “Now where on earth does that phrase come from?” You can Google that one also to answer his query. Our two granddaughters, Sydney and Faith graduated this week from grade school and high school respectively. They must have “boned” up on all their school subjects for their excellent marks.

We have been excited over the past month at our Hillside church because seven newcomers have visited. Every week our two pastors, Aaron and Scott have to make sure what they say each week in their messages gets across to these dear folk who have hardly ever been in our kind of church before. They don’t know much about Jesus Christ who can affect their lives greatly if they will only let Him. Our prayers are being answered through our current incidental outreach efforts plus Aaron and Scott have found a couple of dependable painters for their business. What a relief! Could you please pray for Scott who has been having some health issues over the past few weeks? All medical tests up until now have come up negative concerning his extreme fatigue.

Well, that’s it for this month. I hope you are enjoying this extremely hot Canada weekend. Aren’t you glad you live in such a wonderful country where we have freedom to say and believe what God wants us to say and believe? (And no, we haven’t sold our house yet.)

Blessings,

Wendy

wendy.carter@kainos.org