Lakes and Forests, Friends and Loved Ones

It was so wonderful being with all the Cameron cousins at the lake. So many teenagers for our boys to be with. So thoughtful and convenient of my first cousins to supply second cousins for our kids at just the right age group.

The boys zipped from tennis to football to baseball to bridge jumping to swimming to volleyball and back to tennis and occasionally to just sitting and talking. This year there was a little more mingling of the guys and girls, which was nice.

The girls mostly resembled a "bookseller's convention." They read and talked and read and talked and read some more. It was a unique and curious experience seeing maybe 15 members of the "book" family all in a big circle outside the cottage, noses in their library books!

One of the beautiful things besides talking with my dearest cousins and auntie was to be able to share the Lord Jesus with some guests on the grounds, who did not appear to know why Jesus Christ came to this earth. How God loved the world so much, despite our sinful hearts, that he send a perfect Substitute who took all the blame for every wrong doing and died upon a cross, and rose again to rescue us from ourselves and dark despair. And so we could go to heaven.

Several Russian guests I met fairly hung on every faltering word I said about Jesus. They apologetically explained that in Russia the government did not allow them to learn these things and would I please write and tell them more. I got their email addresses.

Once at a loss how to explain the concept of sin and forgiveness in Russian and sign language I grabbed a little girl I'd met, who willingly translated John 3:16 as I gave it to her to an elderly Jewish babushka. The precious woman's eyed widened with every word as if it was her last hope. It may have been.

The little girl asked if I had a picture of Jesus, so I took her to the camp lobby and showed her the wonderful painting hanging there and explained that the Son of God lived here so long ago that no one knows for sure what he looks like, but that he loved children and had kind eyes like the painting. She especially wondered if it was true, like they told her in school, that people came from animals. I was happy to tell her that that was just a fairy tale, and that God really made us just as she suspected he had.

Another couple Jacob and Rina thought it was quite all right to be Jewish and believe in the Messiah. They liked to know his name as Yeshua. Rina clasped her hands and said, "Oh I wish you didn't have to leave so you could tell us more!"

All this was a truly an amazing experience for me, especially after so recently moving north from deep in the Bible Belt where nearly everyone "knows the Lord."

After leaving Jackson's Point on Lake Simcoe, we traveled north ito the Great Canadian Shield to Dad and Magdalene's cottage on Lake Shebeshekong near Perry Sound. Oh, the peace and quiet! I cannot forget the golden sun setting over the lake, the water becoming calm as if on signal, and a restful stillness settling over the whole landscape. Once the sun had slipped between the trees and hills, the loons which owned the lake, began their evening calls back and forth, the male's long lonely call to his female on her nest with her young, and the female warbling back to him across the dark waters.

The first night the boys slept out in the camper. The next night Peter moved indoors to the couch where he could not hear the loon which he had taken to be a coyote!

In their thank you note the guys mentioned how relaxing their time with Oma and Grandpa was. It was a lovely winding down time for them after the activity at the Salvation Army Camp. Also it was a great blessing for me to hear Oma joke and laugh and tease, and for Bob to sit and chat with Dad.

Back home Bob is recovering nicely from the Crestor and finding his peace as he moves from full time at work to part time. Today he filled out forms for that and we contemplated the possibility of his being involved in plans for an upcoming medical school in our area.

Tomorrow morning we have been invited to the Messianic congregation in town by a family at the boys' school, who are on the welcoming committee at school.

God is good and he is to be praised.