“What’s New?” is a question we often ask our family members or friends when we are checking up on them and their activities whether they be encouraging, funny or even disheartening.  It shows that we care and are concerned about what has happened with them over the course of the past few days, months or even throughout the year of 2023 as it closes its final...

One morning Gary called me to quickly come out on our back porch to see something.  Upon looking up in the sky I saw a drone with flashing lights hovering over our village of Churchville.  It remained for about a minute and then scampered off to the north.  What was that all about?  Was it gathering some kind of data?  Was it taking photos of our village?  If we...

I finally got my wish.  For several years now I have been wanting to see salmon swimming upstream in our nearby Credit River.  Early this month my visiting granddaughter, Bella, and I walked to the bridge and lo and behold, we spied over a dozen, two-to-three-foot long, grey fish parading up the river below the surface of the water.  Do you know much about the life...

What an encouragement!  One Sunday earlier this month when on vacation in Collingwood we decided to visit Hepworth Baptist Church located west of Owen Sound at the base of the Bruce Peninsula.  This was Gary’s first full-time pastorate in the early 70s and where our two eldest children were born.  We didn’t know what to expect as we had not dropped by...

“O.K. let’s cut it down!”  After too many years I finally agreed with Gary to dispose of a spindly evergreen that I had purchased about 16 years go for $5. I had planted it too close to the side of our house porch which was a bad decision.  Now it was reaching to the sky above our roofline and tangling itself in our house wires.  Every time I accidentally touched...

One Sunday morning I viewed our backyard through our kitchen window. Something wasn’t right.  It looked like a gigantic bush had grown overnight towards the back.  Actually, a huge twenty-foot branch had snapped off the towering Manitoba Maple – a very old, weathered tree. It is strange as there was no storm or wind that night.  Maybe it had received...

“How would you like to learn a song?”  I asked one Sunday morning at our Hillside church.  Rachel quickly nodded her head “yes” and Robyn responded with a “no.”  I began singing the old Sunday School chorus “This Little Light of Mine, I’m gonna let it shine,” three times, followed by “Let it shine.” three times as well.  Do you remember singing this song as a...