I realize we haven't posted anything for the last few days. My parents were out here and we were hanging out with them and going to Missionfest out here and stuff like that instead of writing, but we still often check it. Caring people are always encouraging. I was looking for recent pictures of us and this is what I found on our computer. This is Ramona and I having twin day. We figured this is the most we would ever look alike with our identical haircuts and everything so we were fooling around with our new web cam for a while trying to capture the moment. We were both wearing black pants to match our old BCBC shirts but unfortunately we didn't think to back away from the camera. Oh and as I'm seeing this we were trying to get a picture of how our tongues are different. Mony's is pointy, mine is fat...I kept paging through the pictures and I was taken back to different times in the last year...the range of emotions is huge...I saw pictures from the first few weeks after diagnosis...those were incredibly scary times and yet filled with all sorts of prayer times and talk of purpose and healing and how God would be doing all sorts of amazing things...the picture of the hockey tournament is an incredible show of support...and I also realize how easy it is to forget some of the good things and horrible ones (like chemo)...as I went further into the archives I found the last picture. That is a picture of us on our honeymoon. That feels like a lifetime ago. We spent so much time walking around the slums of Hait, visiting the orphanage Mony had previously
volunteered at, playing soccer with kids. And we were dreaming...alot, talking about where we would go and what we would do. I'm not gonna lie to you, we never mentioned Toronto other than maybe it would be a layover to somewhere else.....................I'm sitting here not sure where to go with this thought and I'm tempted to erase this whole thing...but I've been challenged by Mony in the last little while. There are many times in the last many months where things have frustrated us incredibly, and things have been especially tough on Mony for varieties of obvious reasons and she'll be at the point of tears, and it's at that point where I decide that we should pray together to make everything better...it doesn't work that way...i have treated prayer as a band-aid...I'm not going to preach a sermon...only, I've been confronted on the fact that I often pray out of tradition or feeling that if we pray then Mony will be happy or pretend she's happy and then we can forget.......as I'm thinking about this you can't see all the minutes between each sentence...I'm only beginning to understand those verses in the book of James about trials perfecting our faith...in enduring trials anything that isn't....real....is useless and becomes much more harmful to relationships.


p.s. one little story I forgot about. How God Provides. Many of the attenders of the Morweena EMC church will remember a little story from my second year of university. While I was brushing my teeth one morning my tooth brush fell into the toilet...not a big deal...it happens to every one I'm sure...but...I still needed a new toothbrush...sure enough the next day I got a care package from the Friendship Circle group in our church...and wouldn't you know...and new toothbrush...I was happy....the significance of this story had been lost until today...yesterday...while putting on my deodorant it must have caught on my bushy armpit hair and the whole big inside white part of my deodorant fell into the toilet...not a big deal, I'm sure that happens to everyone....but when I got home from breakfast with my dad there was a care package on the table with a new can of Axe...thanks Lyn and Vi...bet you didn't know just how timely of a provision that would be.




-Earl