Thursday, January 29, 2009

Caleb's story

Editors note: These are my presumed thoughts of Caleb but I think they are pretty accurate


I've enjoyed living in Sherbrooke but since I am the youngest and the whole world really belongs to me it has not been that hard. The hard part is taking care of my parents.
My day usually begins with me waking up dad so he can fix people breakfast. Once I make sure he is on the job I relax a little and watch TV like I am doing here. The other kids and mom go to school then i have a very hard job of keeping dad on task all day. We practice french words for animals a lot and i help him study, but he and I have a lot of stuff to get done
He and I do the shopping while mom is in class.


First I have to make sure the car is cleaned off for him which gives me an excuse to play in the snow. Then we go shopping.




I like it when dad lets me clean off the snow



It is great when there is a car buggy in the store



This day those things to most of the morning. But my day is not over yet. I eat a "big snack" at lunch time because I don't like to eat lunches. Mom usually comes home then and I have more work to do. Sometimes I have to "help" her a lot with her french computer program, but mostly I just work on my own computer games. I also help her with some housework as well.

Here I am sweeping the floor for her









As you can imagine I sometimes get tired.



I really like it when my brother and sister come home from school and I make sure they get all the attention they need and that they give me all the attention that I need.

At night we do devotions and my favorite song is "blessed be the name of the lord" and my favorite things to pray about are "being crazy" and "using the potty"

Editors note again:
Ian really does have a lot of fun throughout the day and is a delight to have around.
We would ask you to pray for him specifically for physical health, for better comprehension of God's love for him, for Anna and I to have wisdom in balancing study and care of him and that he would continue to love to learn French and other new words.

ps-I know this post is about Caleb but i wanted to let you know as well that Ian had a much better week at school this week and his attitude towards french is a little better

Sunday, January 25, 2009

"La vie is belle"

There is a french phrase we hear a lot "La vie est belle" and I am pretty sure you do not have to be a french linguist to catch the drift, and I am happy to say we are reminded a lot that life is beautiful. We see a lot of pretty snow. We are encouraged by other missionaries here struggling through the issues we are. We are proud of our children and watch them progress as well. But the biggest of all is we are happy that God is not a man that He should lie or the son of a man that He should repent. Has he said and will not do, or as he spoke and will H e not make it good? We are happy to put our trust in Him

In that though we do have doubts and fears. We are not sure we are going to learn the language well enough in the time we have, we fear that our kids will have trouble with our adjustments and our uncertainties, we fear that we will let "people down", we fear that we are not really good enough to do this, we fear we will not have the financial support we need and we constantly are asking God for more faith.

As we are doing this there was a confluence of Bible passages that came to my mind. One was Luke 17:25 where Jesus responds to the disciples request for more faith by describing a good servant, another was a friend who shared about Jesus' first miracle with wine and the servant's role in that, and finally today there was a sermon on Jesus' healing the centurion' servant (that last one was in french and my comprehension was spotty at best but I still made some apps when I read it in English today). All of these passages involve or speak on faith and it all ties in to the servants role. In the Luke passage I think Jesus is trying to get the disciples to understand that faith is not having a magic lamp, but doing what you know to do by having a clear vision of your responsibility, in the John passage I see the servants through obedience getting to be right there on the spot with the miracle, and in the centurions servant we again see where an understanding of authority and servant hood increases the level of faith.

I guess I am trying to get my mind around how keeping a willing servants heart and doing what God has set us to do will increase our faith. Though, at the end of most days Anna and I can truly say "la vie est belle".

IN the next couple of weeks I will be posting some picts and posts on the theme "a day in the life of......" on each of our children so you can see our daily routine etc.

Some more matters of prayer
Pray for Ian in particular he continues to strggle more than our others with French.
Pray for Anna and I this week. It would be an encourgement to both of us to see a breakthrough in french
We do thank God that He has called us and wants to use us.
We also are thankful that we've stayed safe and warm so far this winter.

Stephen

Sunday, January 4, 2009

We're Baaaccckkkk

The Wegner Clan (well the montana-to-ROC portion....there really are a lot of us) is back in Quebec now. Her (Quebec's) brief respite is over.
We drove about 2500 miles in all and stayed at 4 different places, 4 nights in hotels and the kids got some loot for presents. We enjoyed seeing a lot of family and reconnecting there. We also enjoyed some warmer weather and ordering food in English

Anna and I were encouraged both coming and going by a couple of packages from Cut Bank MT.
That was really awesome and some thank you's are coming your way.

Now it is back to classes for the kids and us this week and hopefully leaps and bounds in language acquisition. We are still waiting to here what our class structure will be like and so we are still up in the air about what to do with Caleb if Anna and i are in class together. All four of us will actually start school on Tuesday as tomorrow is orientation for the new students here and a "planning day" for the teachers at our two oldest schools.

Ian turned 9 today and I am truly amazed at how time flies with him. He and I recently had another conversation that ultimately God used for me...."encore" the french say. He was wanting to get some more toys and books that tie into a video game he enjoys playing. I was not to keen on that and so I told him that if he does something with one aspect of his life (computer time) it is probably just a fun hobby, but if he starts doing it with 2 and 3 aspects (toys, playing with friends, reading books) then it becomes more than a hobby and he should be on the watch that the video game (and by extension its authors philosophy ) doesn't control his life. Believe it or not he got it or at least realized he was not going to prevail. Later I was taking stock of what I spent my time doing and realized anew it was very reflective of what was controlling me. It needs to be God...not God's work, not learning French, not being good, not being a dad, not being a husband, not making money, not being a doctor. This was not news to me nor is it to you I wager, but was good to reorient myself to that.

thanks again for praying, and following with us.

Happy New Year.

Stephen