Oh Canada

Edmonton. I'm facing the patio doors in James and Cynthia's house in Edmonton where mounds of snow verify that it's been a cold and snowy winter. After 3 months in the US, it was a relief to cross the border despite the cool air and the leftover snow. We were prepared for interrogation at Coutts, but "came home" with very little hassle from Customs. Our car, however, was apparently still too accustomed to 75 MPH and the RCMP officer who pulled us over between Fort McLeod and Edmonton was friendly, but asked us please not to "pull away from the pack" like we were apparently doing. No ticket. What can I say? I guess to this young woman, we just looked too much like her parents . . . or grandparents. Our last day of driving - from Helena, Montana to Edmonton - started out on a scary note; we hit a near blizzard as we crossed the high passes in the Rockies and thought we were looking at a day of nail-biting driving. We took our time, though, and by the time we got to Great Falls, the weather had cleared and we were looking for our sun glasses. Watching only US news on TV for the past months, we hadn't heard about the Quebec election nor of any of the antics in Ottawa. We've got some catching up to do. American media apparently have no interest in what's happening in Canada, and very little in Mexico. In a way, it's not surprising; some of the states are more populous than Canada, for one, and there's plenty going on in that complex country to fill any news hour. Right now, also, it's a very divided country ideologically, and it seems it's on the verge of something catastrophic most of the time. It's a nervous environment, and the recent bill passed by the congress putting a time limit on concluding the presence of troops in Iraq and Bush's determination to veto the bill is the knife edge of the struggle in the country right now. The White House is under siege, and citizens really don't have much time in their days to cultivate any interest in matters beyond their borders. Tomorrow, our circle will be complete when we get back to Rosthern and pick up there where we left off. It's been an educational experience to say the least, and we wouldn't give it up, even if that were possible. I've written an article for the Canadian Mennonite on the experience and I'm putting together a slide show. I also managed to complete 15 short essays for another project I'm working on, and being in another part of the world for a time has been inspirational in that regard. We'll see. My trip jounal runs to 50 pages or more and I don't know what I'll do with that yet. All of you who read this blog, thank you. We looked forward to your emails whenever we got to the library and were disappointed when there weren't any, which wasn't often. Thanks. It's good to be home.

On our way

I've got only a few minutes on this computer, so here goes:
We left Carlsbad on Friday, spent yesterday in Sedona, AZ and are now in Grand Canyon, AZ wondering in part why we've booked a nite here. All I got from the canyon was the worst case of vertigo since my brothers and I climbed to the peak of our barn. Agnes enjoyed it a lot; took about 50 pictures and walked the rim until she could walk no more. Tomorrow we'll head for Salt Lake City, thence through Idaho and Montana and into Alberta. We hope to arrive in Edmonton on Thursday or Friday. Not sure if we'll want to spend time in Utah.

Down to 4 minutes. Got to go.

Don't pay to get old

Here's a life situation. You're middle class, 55 and your husband has just passed away. Your children need your help raising your grandchildren. Your parents are 93 and 94 respectively and your mother is in the middle stage of dementia. You feel you have to do everything for them because if you didn't, who would? The hospice pastor who helped you through your recent bereavement talks to her husband, who talks to the SOOPers, and a gang of us head off early in the morning to clean up the elderly parents' yard and pick up the pecans that should have been harvested in November.

The old lady doesn't want us messin' in her flowerbeds, but the old man and his daughter placate her when she tells one of us to "stay outta my flower beds!" We rake and dig and carry detritus to the dumpster for a few hours. At coffee time, I mistake three circling turkey vultures for bald eagles (where's Wally when you need him?).

The old man hobbles out with his walker to show us where the lawn mower is kept. "Don't pay to get old," he tells me. "I'm 94." I remember a friend back home who died about a year ago saying as he dealt with continuous pain and the inconveniences surrounding kidney failure, "If I'd know old age was so much trouble, I wouldn't have bothered!" In the case of the latter, it was a continuation of this friend's love of the ironic jest, but both of them, I think, were telling me that it might be better to die "in the saddle," as it were, than to linger on until you're barely a shell of what you used to be. Maybe we're so focused on living as long as possible that we don't consider a life left before the proverbial "three score and ten" to be a tragedy.

Amzie has told us a lot about Guatemala and Honduras, places where he and Elena have lived and worked. When he talked about the injustice practiced against the people in these places, I asked him if he was ever tempted to give up his pacifist moral stand. "Never," he said, and he told us about a couple of instances where people had defied the military, unarmed and enmass, and had persuaded the government to curtail the military encroachment on their villages. "Sometimes some people have to die when they defy authority and stand up for what's right," he said, "but the numbers of dead would be far greater if they were to take up arms." He's right, of course, and I wonder if leaving life early in such a cause is not a nobler thing than being careful to stay well as long as possible and to live through a century. We need to teach our children to be courageous in support of the right, and not so much to develop those skills and find those places where they personally remain safe.

On Wednesday, a friend of the SOOPers and a former Lutheran pastor invited us all over to see a video he had recorded of an episode in the Glenn Beck show. Glenn Beck is a right wing media guru who believes that the rise of Muslim extremism is comparable to the rise of Naziism in Germany in Hitler's time. His view is that unless we crush that movement, we are doomed. He was interviewing a Muslim of the reformist stripe and questioning her about the whole business of extremisim, women in Isalm, etc.

It was a revealing interview. Islamic reformists take responsibility for the extremism and believe that Islam is overdue for some fundamental work on interpreting the Koran, which, she says, has ten times as many verses advocating independent, rational thought than it has verses regarding the defense of Islam against the infidel. How like the Bible this is. We too can find the few verses that seem to support suppression of gays, military intervention, hoarding of wealth while overlooking the core of our gospel: Love the Lord your God with all your heart, and your neighbour as yourself.

A week today we leave Carlsbad and arrive home around April 1 via Alamogordo, Sedona, Grand Canyon, Salt Lake City, Great Falls, Calgary, Edmonton and Waldheim. I hope there'll be some snow to greet us when we arrive (not!); it was +88F in Carlsbad yesterday and they're telling us it will be like that most of next week.

Meanwhile, take care, friends, and age gracefully, if you can.

Slop Pails

Three of us SOOPers along with our fearless leader form Carlsbad Mennonite worked on our remodelling job this morning. A. told us about a farmer in Indiana whose friend visited him while he was carrying two huge slop pails across the yard to the pigs. The farmer stood listening for a long time, not knowing that his visitor was talking on and on in order to see how long it would take before the man set the slop pails down. Eventually, the visitor took pity on the farmer and ended the story. E. and I were holding a half-sheet of gyproc over our heads while A. went ot get a screw-drill and the fact that he took a long time to get it from the truck outside prompted the above story. Now, the phrase for indicating that one of us should relax while waiting for something to happen is, ". . . put down your slop pails."

Working at SOOP is not like working for MDS or MCC in every way, but I hope the birthing and nurturance of friendships is similar. "On the job", you get to know people really quickly, and because we're all Mennonites, are all seniors and have all applied to SOOP, we already have a start on knowing what values we probably share. This makes it easier, and, I think, makes participation in the program here in Carlsbad - at least - more than worthwhile.

For most of the SOOPers here who work at the thrift store, the biggest temptation is keeping their hands off the merchandise. Last Friday, I came across a pair of jeans that actually had the size-tag still attached. The waist and leg length matched mine exactly and I needed some jeans because the ones I brought have almost all been put through the construction-worker mill. So there I was with a pair of jeans I wanted in one hand and the pricing pen in the other. Talk about your conflict of interest. I marked them at $2.00 - the going rate - and took them to the till where another SOOPer said, "you should get these for half price!" I have also purchased two or three shirts, another pair of pants, a pedometer, and a TV that I had to return because it would only work for 15 minutes at a time.

We're exploring the Grand Canyon via library materials since we plan to go there on the way home. They've just constructed a viewing platform that looks like a huge horseshoe with the round part extending over the canyon's rim. The floor of this "horseshoe", however, is made of glass and when you walk on it, you apparently get the sensation of flying, or, in my case, of vomiting. It's just opened and we're already talking about which of us will be too chicken to go on it. I suspect it will be both.

I'm writing as much as time and energy will allow. Right now, I'm beginning work on an article for the Mennonite papers (on spec - no reqest) that will be called "Carlsbad Soop." I've also picked up work on short essays I'm writing for a meditation-style book with a difference. We have taken to reading the standard Mennonite booklet every morning (Rejoice) but find that it seems to be great for new Christians, but doesn't give one much to chew on. I hope to appeal to a different audience.

Agnes is done her emails and is reading in the car, so I guess it's time for me to wrap up here.

Flowers

Yesterday, I titled my post "Flowers and Sweat," but never mentioned flowers.

Spring has hit New Mexico. Just outside the door of the RV stands a 5-foot tree covered in white and pink blossoms, and vibrating with bee-song. It's obviously a grafted specimen with several fruits possible at the same time. I'm told it's quite a few years old and would grow much faster if watered, but that that's a bad idea since the bigger it is, the more water it would need and it would literally grow itself to death. Things are different here in the desert.

Around town, the mock crabapples are in full bloom. Sparse grass is sprouting in shady areas, under our RV, for instance. I told my adult Sunday School class this morning that I've noticed a few differences between NM and Saskatchewan. One is that the coming of spring is not nearly as dramatic here since the only differences observable are that temperatures are about 10-15 degrees warmer than they were in January and February, and trees are slowly greening and a few are blooming.

Another difference between the two places has to do with dusk and dawn. The sun goes down at 6:05 (sorry, 7:05; we changed to daylight saving time last night) and by 6:30 (7:30), it's dark! The lighting of the day also happens much more quickly here than in SK. Nights are very dark in Carlsbad and the stars and moon are clearer and brighter than I remember them back home. A part of this may have to do with the fact that Carlsbad - at 3,400 ft. elevation - is over half a mile higher than Rosthern and therefore has a thinner atmosphere.

The Sunday School lesson this morning was based on 1 John 3: 11-24. Every Christian should read this regularly. John emphasizes here that Christians' test of authenticity is in the love they share for each other, and that love is not communicated through talk, but through action. Starting a discussion here in Carlsbad Mennonite is not hard. All you have to do as discussion leader is to hesitate; someone is bound to leap into the silence. It's great.

Tomorrow, a few of us SOOPers are driving the 40 minutes north to Artesia to clean up a backyard for an old man who can't do it for himself. Apparently we'll be picking up pecans at the same time; they'll have been lying there since late last fall, I imagine. On Tuesday and Thursday, we'll be doing some more renovation work and Friday, I'm working at the Bargain Store. Agnes will spend her time at the Bargain Store, the library and the hospice, I expect.

Next week, we'll have to start getting ready to head home. The owner of the RV we borrowed died just a few days after he and I brought it over here and his widow would like it brought back to her place for cleaning; she doesn't know yet what she wants to do with it. Our car was packed on the way down and we've gradually been picking up other "stuff," so I'm curious to see what our back seat will look like on the way home. We may have to donate most of our clothes to the thrift store!

We hear from Rosthern and Edmonton that temperatures are warmer and that it's beginning to feel like spring. Agnes said to the Sunday School group that we were going to enjoy a bonus this year, namely two springs. I imagine that we could live with an absence of snow when we get back h0me, but I very much doubt that that's going to happen.

Flowers and Sweat

This will be short. I'm scheduled to get a haircut in 20 minutes. Ernie at Ernie's Barber Shop and Self-storage place has become a good friend and he does it for half price for SOOPers. I said to Agnes that I'm missing the most homey of things, for instance, getting a haircut in Sharryl's kitchen on a Saturday morning. I also miss morning coffee at the Hotel. Well, in two weeks we should be in Northern Arizona on our way home, scheduled to arrive on or about April 1.

I did 18 holes with D. and E. yesterday and given the hilly nature of the course, the temperature (+25C) and the extremely dry air, I was exhausted after we were done. E. and I are both 65 and he and his wife have bicycled across the USA and are preparing to bicycle the entire freedom trail from Mobile, Alabama to Owen Sound, Ontario in a few months. D. is ten years older than I and he carries his clubs! All of this to tell myself and others that although I thought I was in pretty good shape, it all depends on whom you compare yourself to. (Pardon the sentence-ending preposition.) At any rate, we have plenty of incentive to walk here in the desert, and we've been doing as much of it as we can.

In the NM news, an 11 year-old boy appeared in an Albuquerque school a few days ago with a motorcycle gang symbol cut into his hair at the back. Big news. The principal said he would have to study in a room by himself - until he had removed the offending symbol- for his own safety. The principal thought someone less tolerant than he might take exception and do the boy some harm. The boy's mother was not impressed with the principal and said her son would probably remove the symbol, but she had no idea what he would substitute for it. Can child rearing and educating get any wimpier than that? I thought. It was, however, a break from the usual news here in the deep south. Murders, kidnappings and abuse seem to be regular lead items, and one gets tired of that.

An update on something I wrote about earlier: The legislature in NM has approved the bill to ban cock fighting and it only remains for Governor Bill Richardson to sign it. All indications are that he will do this. That leaves only Mississippi as a state that seems happily to remain esconced in the dark ages as regards this despicable "sport."

We're well and enjoying a weekend off. Hope you're all doing likewise, and God bless you all.

America, America

I just started a new project today. It's going to be called "America's Good Side, America's Bad Side." I want to summarize my impressions in ten points on each side. On the good side, America (USA) has a constitution that protects freedom of religion, conscience, association, etc. On the bad side, America pays so little attention to the rest of the world that there's a vast ignorance here about the rest of the world and its people. The only bit of information I've heard about Canada since we've been here is that an American company was bought out by a company from Canada. And one day as we were going home from church, public radio was playing Gordon Lightfoot.

If you have anything to contribute to my project, I'd be glad to hear from you.

Yesterday, a bunch of us worked on that old house I've mentioned a few times. The owner fancies himself a bit of a writer and intellect, and as we shared the lunch his wife had made, he began to educate us on the ways of the world. Within a few minutes, we learned that a program called HAARP run by the USA is altering weather world-wide and using a new technology in the upper atmosphere in a sinister design to control the world. We also learned that Queen Elizabeth, Prince Charles, the last three US presidents and the president of France have met and divided the world up for future domination. And now I know that Great Britain is sinking at a rate of at least 1 foot per year, and some years as many as 20 feet. He said that the huge concrete barriers surrounding Great Britain had been abandoned because it has become impossible to control the sea's encroachment. I said I'd been to GB numerous times and had never noticed that. He asked me if I'd seen the barriers and I said that there was nothing like that on the coastlines I had seen. Then he asked me if I believed that mankind was contributing to global warming and I said, "Yes, I do," and at his request, explained why I believed this to be the case. He said that there were natural factors and I agreed and said that things don't always result from one cause alone, but that I believed that human activity was joining with other factors to cause the greenhouse effect. "Are you a scientist?" he asked. "No," I said, "but I have taught high school Science and I know a few basics.

That ended our discussion. I think another negative thing about America is that the lack of discusion about all but American affairs has made masses of its people extremely vulnerable to hoax, conspiracy theories and general gullibility. The same could be said of Canada to a lesser degree, but since we are a small fish in the big pond, we are not nearly as inward looking as I find many people here to be. To me, it's still amazing that the US got itself embroiled in a war in Iraq on the basis of such deplorable ignorance in the White House that the current debacle was not even considered a possiblity. I wrote at the beginning of this war that the aftermath of Saddam's overthrow would precipitate a civil war among the Sunnis, the Shia and possibly the Kurds, depending on the course of the war itself. If I could have sensed it at the time, how is it that this came as a surprise to the US president? I think it's all a package; if you are deprived of news from abroad and your education system virtually ignores world history, the nuances of life in other countries is bound to escape you.

And yet - on America's good side - there is a growing awareness of this weakness , and a resolve on the part of many to steer America back onto a right course. This can happen in a democracy like the US or Canada; if one regime does badly, the people can throw it out. And the development of the American system was won through great hardship and stress, in wars with England and Spain (even Canada) and civil conflict. Maybe with the history of this place, the nature of its democratic system was predetermined to be the only one that the diversity of its people could accept. In any case, Americans now know that Iraq was a colossal mistake, and they are saying so openly. An interviewer on TV the other day referred to the "Iraq fiasco," and the interviewee didn't challenge him.

It's a construction week for me. For the last two days, I've been working with others on the repair of old houses and tomorrow will be Habitat for Humanity day again. Patching gyproc into an old house is quite a challenge, especially when studs and ceiling joists are uneven and the corners far from square. But we soldier on. The pleasure we see in the eyes of the people who benefit from our volunteer work speaks volumes; the owning of a safe, comfortable house can only be taken for granted by the middle and upper classes. Most of the world, seems to me, subscribes to Better Shacks and Hovels. Fact is, the amount of one's possessions doesn't determine one's outlook on life. We all know this, but this experience is making it more clear to me how that works.

It's time for a constitutional walk along the river.

On Cacti

As we drove across NM and AZ, we tried to school ourselves on - and solidify what we already knew about - cacti. (Cactuses is also an accepted pluralization.) They are amazing plants. The prickly pear group has many varieties but I see the flat, oval, or cows' tongue shaped "leaves" for sale in the produce section of the supermarket. A Mexican Mennonite family in Manitoba Colony uses the juice of this cactus - along with cabbage juice and garlic - to make the tonic they call Jugo Mennonita. Cactus jelly made from the prickly pear is for sale in stores.

There are others, and I would send photos if it wasn't so much trouble. You can google the following names if you, like me, have to know what thing it is that I'm looking at or that's being talked about: Ocotillo, Saguaro, Cholla. Two things desert plants have in common: an amazing ability to extract and conserve water from their environment and an armour of sharp barbs to discourages assault. Looking for lost golf balls on a desert course is not that inviting an endeavour.

I think people - like plants - reflect the environment to which they've had to adapt. The poverty we saw in the hills above Nogales, Mexico has forced people to improvise, and the home-made-of-found-material "residences" are tributes to people's ability to adapt against all odds, like the lowly prickly pear. In many parts of the world, agriculture is under siege, and people who have always made their way by growing crops and raising animals are faced with the necessity of adaptation. What will food production look like in Canada in 50 years? In Guatemala? In Europe? Will it take a generation or two to adapt to the consequences of globalization and corporate agriculture - or more?

Humans can't survive without water either. The cacti's method includes ingenious collection methods and conservative use of this precious resource. The world has plenty of fresh water for every plant, animal and human that will ever inhabit it; somehow we will need to reeducate ourselves to a far more conservational use of water in the future if we're to survive. This is an adaptation our future will require of us.

Here are a few good questions: How much water does a person need in order to have an effective wash? Well, if you have a jacuzzi and you need to soak (for your mental well-being), the answer might be 150 litres. If you shower like I have to because I live in an RV, the answer is 15 litres. Truth is that you can wet yourself, soap up and rinse with a few litres. Baths and showers will look different in the future. How much water does it take to grow a lawn? It's pretty easy to sprinkle on 5000 litres in a few hours. But if you creatively cover your front yard with gravel, cacti and other succulent plants, zero water is plenty.

Cacti also carry armour. Their conservational way of living requires it. Like them, we need to be as prickly as necessary to prevent the consumerism of our time from doing what's environmentally right. In Carlsbad last week, a public meeting was held to hear the citizens' views on the establishment of a factory in the area to produce triggers for nuclear weapons. Only one person spoke up against the plan. The rest were enthusiastic about the economic spinoffs. Those of us who have been given the ability by our Christ to sense the evil inherent in commercialism and consumerism need to develop and project spines that defend the creation from the destroyers.

Well, I've worked the cactus metaphor to death, and my time's up. Have a nice day.

Arizona and back

Green Valley, Arizona, is probably the ultimate retirement town. Great climate, a clean and impeccably managed town - to all appearances - and easy access to the history of Arizona, Tuscon and Mexico. We spent a few days there with good friends, enjoyed their hospitality and some cut-throat scrabble as well as a great deal of travelling around the area.

Most memorable for me will be the side trip into Nogales, Mexico. We drove into Nogales, AZ, where W. parked the car and we walked across the border into Nogales, Mexico. We were greeted by shops selling jewellery, money exchange kiosks and pharmacies selling prescription drugs, apparently, at cut-rate prices. One hawker at a pharmacy offered loudly, "Viagra, we got viagra. Cheap. Have really good time tonight!" R. asked at a jewellery shop where she'd done some browsing if there was any way we could see the city, and he suggested the transit bus terminal nearby. Another gentleman flagged down a bus for us and for a dollar each, we commenced a two-hour voyage through the city of Nogales. The downtown doesn't surprise with businesses like any other city. It's when you get up into the high hills around town that you see Nogales other side. Here narrow gravel trails wind in and out, up and down among shacks of concrete block and unpainted plywood. Homes are packed together and children play among wrecked cars, dust and debris. Also up in these hills are the Multinational factories that exploit cheap labour as they do in Ciudad Juarez across the border from El Paso. Master Lock, for instance, has a factory there that probably covers 5 acres. The employment opportunity doesn't seem to hold a lot of benefits for the community, however.

We also stopped in on friends from Eigenheim spending a few months in Mesa in a fifth-wheel they bring up with them from home in winter. With them, we saw a good bit of the beauty of Arizona, including the desert hills with the Siguaro cacti standing like prickly sentinels in their thousands. We played a game of "desert curling" with some friends of A. and V.; it's like ice curling except that it's played on a waxed floor with "rocks" made of wood. Both mine and Agnes's teams lost badly and I hope they're not still muttering about those inept curlers from Saskatchewan.

We got back to Carlsbad on Tuesday night. We took a cross-country route via state highways 60 and 70 to Lordsburg where we drove the I10 through El Paso and then on to Carlsbad through the Texas panhandle. We passed through the most magnificent mountain scenery so far between Phoenix and the NM border, and I'd highly recommend this route for anyone travelling in the area. Just east of the Guadalupe mountains, we spotted 5 - 6 Javelinas (Ha va LI nas), small, black, wild pigs, rooting for food in the ditch.

Back to work. We nailed siding at the Habitat for Humanity house until strong winds started blowing over our ladders and making the handling of siding boards hazardous. Our crew went over to a local house where we were nailing up gyproc and nearly finished one room. The house in question is in pretty bad shape, and when I was going to mark the stud locations for nailing the plasterboard and I asked for the level, the owner of the house laughed. There's no point in using things like levels and squares in this house, he said. He was right. I remarked to our fearless leader that when we got done nailing up the gyproc, we would need to do some very creative mudding.

Spring is windy in NM. We want to golf this afternoon, but it's almost too breezy for that, so we'll play it by ear. The temperature is around 70F.

Some photos

I'm in Room 212 at the Super 8 Motel in Alamogordo, NM. For the moment, I'm online so I'm experimenting with uploading photos. The first photo below is of the trailer in which we settled when we arrived, on January 23rd! The second shows the fifth wheel we're living in now. The third was taken near Cuauhtemoc, Mexico at a cheese plant where employees are unloading milk on the Menno Colony. We're on the way to Tucson to see friends from our Thompson days, after which we expect to drop in on Eigenheim friends in Mesa, near Phoenix. We decided to shorten the trip by doing the drive through the Sacramento Mountains today. It was a wonderfully scenic trip taking us to about 6500 feet above sea level. There are still mountains of snow up there, and the skiiers are having a great year. From the Sacramentos, we descended rapidly into the flat plain in which Alamogordo sits. In the distance the next range of mountains is beckoning to us for tomorrow. We plan to make a stop in the White Sands desert where, we're told, the sand is white as snow and is made up of granulated gypsum. It's on our way, so we should make Tucson before dark. Have a great day!

Those friends thou hast . . .

In Hamlet, Polonius gives advice to his two children, Laertes and Ophelia. One bit directed toward his son goes: Those friends thou hast, and their adoption tried, grapple them to thy soul with hoops of steel.

When we got to Carlsbad, one of the first couples we got to know were J and M. In their mid seventies, they were nevertheless young thinkers and actors and although J was having some serious problems with a chronic health condition, it was he who accompanied us as we worked on the Habitat house where we sensed some of the chagrin he was feeling as his physical condition made the work he loved difficult. We spent several evenings at their house with the other SOOPers, Agnes spent a number of Wednesdays helping M to sort and bag pecans for MCC, and this Monday, I helped J mark off the lines for nailing siding on the storage shed for the last of the Habitat houses. The same evening, J and M came to our place (which is their fifth wheel provided us after out problems with the RV we had rented) and we fed them salmon and baked potato, etc., and played Mexican Train - a dominoes game that J loved - until 10:00 p.m. Both of them have a great sense of humour and we laughed plenty. They told us about their good times when they'd travel with their RV and boat to Florida (for instance) and J would spend the mornings on Habitat construction and the afternoons on the boat. Their love for each other and for life was obvious.

On Wednesday, the two of them went for their regular swim in the recreation centre near their home and J - as usual - spent some time in the hot tub and then dived into the cool pool. When M looked around for him, he was nowhere and she was in a panic. She finally spotted him floating in the pool below the water level and yelled for help to remove him an call the ambulance.

There was no reviving him, and as I sit here, J is slipping away from all of us at the Carlsbad Medical Centre, his family around him.

J isin charge of the pecan harvest and shelling for MCC fundraising at Carlsbad Mennonite. he is a long-time, founding member of CMC and deeply loved by all who know him around town. If he should miraculously recover - please God - or if he should be taken home, he will always be associated in my mind with pecans and building houses for less fortunate folk. Of all his passions, these were the ones that it was my privilege to witness and share with him.

Is six weeks long enough for a friendship to sprout and grow? With a man like J, I think that 6 days are plenty. Some people are so gifted that way, and we are all much better for having known them.

Snow, again!

Many of you like to see pictures more than you like to read. That's me too. I had hoped to use my laptop at the library so I could upload some of our many photographs, and so I had a new wireless card installed this morning. The library wireless service is not working, wouldn't you know, but someone has suggested that if we have an adaptor to run the laptop off the cigarette lighter (which we do), I could probably access the web from the Methodist Church parking lot. It seems that's a hotspot. Maybe I'll try that. Meanwhile, just words.

On Monday, we had a short-sleeve-shirt day (+20C) and today, it's +2C and two inches of snow. I guess it's some kind of justice when it snows on the snowbirds. We plan to make a trip into Arizona in a week to visit friends the Janzens near Tucson and the Friesens near Phoenix. It'll be nice to see another place and to converse with people from "back home." Speaking of names, which nobody was, our SOOP experience has been heavy with Friesens: Two Friesen couples arrived when we did (both acquaintances from childhood days) and another Friesen couple from Kelowna just arrived. We actually knew the latter from Germany where we worked the office of MCC and they did refugee work in Munich. When we crossed the border from Mexico into the US a month ago, The lady who looked at the Friesen's passport called a colleague over and said something like, "Look, more Friesens!" Somebody in church said that all the Friesens were coming to Carlsbad because it was so cold in Canada, everybody was 'friezen.' I imagine that the "frozes" are too stiff too move. We haven't seen any here.

I cooked an authentic Mexican-American meal for supper last night. I have a cookbook on the subject from the local library and decided to try cooking something from scratch. I made a chili sauce instead of buying it prepared and made enchilda. These are sharp cheddar, boiled egg, olives and sauteed onion wrapped in a tortilla and smothered in chili sauce, then baked at 300F for 25 minutes. They were good. I also made a side dish of Mexican beans and rice starting with small red beans soaked overnight, then boiled. You add the rice after 30 minutes, along with coconut milk and a few spices and 1 habanero pepper, the hottest pepper in the entire world. (Never cut these up without rubber gloves.) It was a good supper and our guests, the Friesens, enjoyed it. I think it may have thawed them out.

We keep a close watch on the weather in Edmonton, Saskatoon and Winnipeg and realize that most of you who are reading this are experiencing a cold snap. I know, for instance, that it's -21C in Rosthern today, and that Horatio, our cat, is probably mad as a hornet. I also know that it's only -8C in Edmonton and that warmer air is on the way. What a bizarre place the earth under global warming has become. The midwest USA is practically buried under snow today. At least it has served to provide variety to our lives and to give us grist for the coffee row conversation mill.

New Mexico has a bone to pick with Saskatchewan, I found out recently. It appears that the postash industry was really strong here until the stuff was found in plentitude in Saskatchewan, after which the Carlsbad economy took a real dip. There's still a potash industry here, but it's not what it once was. Agnes met a lady at a friend's house the other day who will be moving to Saskatoon from Carlsbad. Her husband has been transferred from a potash mine here to work at one near Saskatoon. Don't know which one.

Time's up. Got to go. God bless you all and keep you warm. Especially you Friesens and Froeses.

Different, but the same . . .

I'm sitting in the Carlsbad library and aware that except for a few subtleties, this could be the library in Saskatoon or Prince Albert. That's true of life here generally; American and Canadian cultures overlap considerably. I would say that Canadians on average are more knowledgeable about world affairs than New Mexicans, but I haven't been impressed with my fellow Canadians on this subject either. We place different values on certain things; for instance, New Mexicans generally seem to put their discretionary money into their vehicles as opposed to their homes. Games of chance are attractive to New Mexicans as they are to Canadians, but I haven't seen a single casino here: I'm told that Aboriginal tribes in other NM cities have gone heavily into the gambling business, however.

Every day, we pass through the vast Carlsbad cemetery on our way downtown. Stones are large and the entire cemetery is very well kept. In some areas, the stones all seem to be decorated with bouquets of bright red, plastic flowers, and it looks kind of nice. I've a feeling the resting place of parents and grandparents is treated with more reverence and solicitation than we're used to at EMC. I think it may be a Spanish tradition. Some days, we'll see a mother and children kneeling at a stone, placing some flowers, spending some time with a loved one.

Not surprisingly, food is spicier here than it tends to be in Saskatchewan. Spanish influence, probably, although we've been told that Mexican food is generally bland. I've got to figure this out yet, but since Agnes and I both like a bit of kick to our chili, we're enjoying the food. Tonight, the church ladies are putting on a Valentine's Day banquet, and we'll no doubt be treated yet again to their amazing cuisine - TexMexMenno. Agnes is making cheesecakes for the event.

Carlsbad has a large number of churches, some pretty large. Methodist, Presbyterian and Episcopalian seem to be the largest church presences here, and on some ventures, the Baptists, Presbyterians and Mennonites have cooperated. They have, for instance, purchased and are running several transition houses where victims of abuse, abandonment, etc, can live until they get back on their feet. They also figure in the running of the Community Kitchen, Carlsbad Association for Retarded Citizens, etc. I don't expect to get to know enough about non-Mennonite denominations as represented in Carlsbad in the short time we're here. CMC stated some 40 years ago as a combination of the presence of a voluntary service unit and a few Mennonite families that had come here with their work. At present, their average age must be well over fifty although there are a few young families and probably about 10 children. Their future is uncertain.

In a recent post, I said that I could now identify numerous desert plants, including Otillo. Hold the phone. Agnes read that and informed me gently that it was "Ocotillo" about which I was purporting to be the expert. Birds here also represent a challenge and I presume my sometime birdwatching friend Wally, who's in Arizona right now, is revelling in novel bird sounds. Where we are, there appears to be an epidemic of Grackles and Mourning Doves/White-winged Doves. The Grackles group together in large trees and scold, sing, banter - whatever their peculiar conversation is called - endlessly. the Mourning Doves coo "mournfully" day in and out, and leave their deposits on your car if you happen to park under a tree. Our favourite birds so far are the Roadrunners. They're shy, but occasionally we see one - surprise, surprise - running across the road. They fly about as much as barnyard chickens, that is to say, enough to get over a fence or ditch. Their preferred locomotion is on foot. I haven't heard them go,"Meep, meep" as they did on the Roadrunner Hour, and I don't know if they're particularly threatened by coyotes.

Seventeen of the eighteen Whooping Cranes in the Eastern flock died in the tornados in Florida on February 2. I felt like taking my hat off and observing a moment of silence when I heard that this morning. There's another larger flock wintering in Southern Texas right now, but this is a real blow to this endangered species.

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Influenza, moral dilemmas, etc.

I'm recovering from a bout of what I called "Montezuma's Revenge" to a church member yesterday, and he protested that hear in NM, Montezuma is not a character demanding revenge on unwelcome visitors. In any case, it wasn't pretty, but I'm feeling better and know that there are lots of others around me who have suffered with the stomach 'flu lately.

The Habitat for Humanity house is coming along. We've just about completed the siding and soffits, at which point the outside work will be done. The floors, walls and insulation will be done by people who know what they're doing. I took the day off today, supposing that going to the Community Kitchen was not a good idea until I was fully recovered. It gave us a chance to do some necessary things like laundry, getting oil and filter change on the car, flushing out the sewage holding tank on the RV, cleaning the carpets in the car on which we spilled a bunch of borscht when we hauled it to church on Monday, etc. Fun stuff. Such are the ingredients of adventure, it appears.

One of my goals here was to gain some understanding into the situation Mennonites face in Bush's USA in 2007. I learned in conversation yesterday that 2/3 of American Mennonites vote Republican. Take that to mean whatever you like, but it helps me to understand the schizophrenia that MC USA is suffering under. What I fail to understand is how Mennonites can see Christ in the politics of force and war, in the policies of domination to which the current regime seems to have married itself.

Here in Carlsbad, liberal theology seems to be right at home, at least among the members we've gotten to know. The other day we had a discussion around the table at A. + E.'s about a lot of things, including D's recent participation in the mass demonstration in Washington against the "surge" in troops to Iraq. One subject of our conversation was the lobby Carlsbad area politicians are putting on the federal government to locate a plant in the area for the manufacture of the detonating devices for nuclear weapons. The area needs jobs and economic development, and this is seen as a great economic opportunity. Church members here, of course, are dead against it. I made the point that although Canada is a nuclear weapons-free zone, Saskatchewan produces a lot of the world's raw resource for nuclear programs. One gentleman at the dinner table works for the University of New Mexico on the project that buries military nuclear waste in a salt bed thousands of feet below the surface just east of Carlsbad.

I delivered a meditation to a men's breakfast last Saturday. My topics was "witnessing," and my central theme was the need to identify the issues on which we need to witness for Christ in our age, and the finding of the effective means to do this. That's nothing radical, but in the light of the moral dilemmas faced by Christians and their temptations to support the status quo - either actively or passively - we face a real test, as Mennonites in the USA as well as in Canada.

Sunday School

Dick Rhodes led us in an interesting discussion regarding Gospel of John's version of the "I am the Good Shepherd" passage. (I don't have the reference with me here in the library.) Not only did we have considerable discussion about the character - or lack of it - of sheep, but we spent quite a bit of time working at the teaching inherent in the following points:
1) What does it mean to be "sheep" to Christ's "shepherd," and at what point does the analogy break down?
2) to whom was Christ referring when he talked about the hired shepherd who runs when he sees a wolf because he has no real love for the sheep? and
3) to whom was Jesus referring when he said, "I have other sheep that are not of this pen."

I know the simple answers to these questions (except for 2, possibly) but the concept of Jesus being God while still calling him "the Father" I find to be theologically difficult in this chapter of John. "I know my sheep and my sheep know me" is vital to the Christian's concept of the relationship between God and his followers, seems to me.

Dick asked if I would be willing to teach the class on February 18th, and I consented.

Tomorrow, Amzie and Jason from the church and SOOPers LaVerne and Maurice and I will work again on siding the Habitat house . Building is somewhat different here from what I'm used to. For one, there are no basements; the city sits on a shale bed and digging basements simply doesn't work. Laundry facilities and water heater are in a small room on the main floor and, generally, a heat pump on the roof provides both heat and air conditioning. Construction consists of 2X6 walls with blown insulation, no vapour barrier and gyproc (they call it "sheet rock" here). Siding is 12 inch composition board with artificial grain running either horizontally or vertically. The house rests on a concrete slab.

Just outside Carlsbad is the Living Desert State Park. Agnes and I spent yesterday afternoon there walking around in a combination zoo and botanical garden learning as much as we could about native plants and animals. We now know the difference between Yucca, Prickly Pear and Otillo, as well as the fact that tarantulas are harmless while scorpions bites are similar to a wasp bite, at least the scorpions found here in the Chihuahuan desert. You don't want to stick your hand in among branches if you can't see for fear of the adult female black widow who could be hiding under the leaves. A bite from her could ruin your whole day. I also know the difference between a Western Rattlesnake and a harmless King Snake, but I'm assuming that that knowledge won't benefit me much since I will probably take off at the sight of ANY snake. The chances, by the way, of us coming across a Rattler are miniscule. Our landlord has lived here most of his life and he has yet to see a Rattlesnake in the wild. Our chances of coming across a two-legged snake are much greater.

I can't get over my revulsion for the caging of wild animals. To me, all their body language speaks rage. The eagles in a 20' by 20' by 20' cage for instance. They screech as if they were being tortured. And the turkey vulture eying us as if we were carrion (which to him, we might well be) should be soaring over the desert and mountains, and here he sits - grounded and miserable. Zoos should be abolished.

Golf

After working at the Community Kitchen yesterday morning, I accepted an invitation to go golfing on the Carlsbad Lake Course in the afternoon. It's a desert course, and although the temperature was close to 50 F., we'd been promised a brisk wind. At about the second hole, the wind indeed went from about 5 MPH to 50 MPH and the flags pointed northeasterly as if they were boards. Curiously, several fairways - including the first - have new homes alongside, located in such a way that anything off to the right can easily end up in a living room. Friend LaVerne hit his first one that way. "That sounded like breaking glass," I said as we'd watched it arc and slice to the right, coming down among the houses. "Do you think it was glass?" he asked and I admitted that it could have been metal. Later, I landed one between two houses on the fourth hole. Houses and hazards suck. No. I mean literally. If there is a lake off to the side, I'll hit the ball into it no matter how much room there is beside it.

One green was humpbacked with the cup placed right on the hump. LaVerne was on the fringe upwind from the cup. He missed by inches, but the wind caught his ball and carried it right across the green to the opposite fringe. He hit it back upwind, but missed the cup again and it had enough momentum and, with gravity helping it along, it ended up about where he'd started. He tried it again, missed the cup by just a bit and again, the wind carried it right across the green. Ernie and I sensed a pattern developing, and it was about then we decided not to play the back nine.

I'm reading an "Interpretive History of New Mexico" right now, and finding it fascinating. So far, I've learned that the Pueblo (village) Indians of the Santa Fe and Taos areas had a well developed culture in the 1500s. They lived in adobe apartment buildings piled one on top of the other, with as many as 50 apartments. They irrigated and grew corn and beans in the desert and dried and stored it on the roofs of their dwellings. Their religion was similar to that of other Indian tribes with which we're more familiar in Canada, i.e., their focus was on gaining harmony with the environment around them. They did masked dances in order to induce rainfall, a practice the Spanish colonizers found so reprehensible and "pagan" that they raided the sanctuaries where they were kept and burned all their paraphernalia of worship. I've also learned that the Spanish king effected laws that were designed to prevent the slaughter, enslavement and general mistreatment of natives by colonizers, but that the individual viceroys assigned to New Mexico found ways to bypass these laws and as a result, Pueblo Indians were subjected to horrifying abuse, not the least of these being forced labour without reimbursement by the Spanish conquerors, who by and large were part of a class that simply did not do menial work and found it quite appropriate to require the people they were "evangelizing" to do the irrigation, planting and harvesting work for them as well as for themselves.

The missionary arm of Spanish colonization of New Mexico was very strong, so much so that it competed for power with the political administration. Early in the 1600s, the friars and the governor's militia actually carried on a bloody war; none of this benefited the aboriginal population, of course, many of whom were victims of these antics.

I'm looking forward to this well-written account of the history of the area in which we are now beginning to feel quite at home. English predominates here, but it's obvious that a large proportion of the population has Spanish and/or aboriginal genes. Commerce in Carlsbad is effectively bilingual, even though the concept of multilingualism is not recognized in this country.

Several conversations I've had with Americans have been enlightening on the health care front. There's a tremendous lobby against universal health care here, despite the fact that many want some sort of plan to be implemented. According to the critics of the Canadian system, in Canada:
1) People are not allowed to choose their doctor; the state determines this,
2) Doctors are salaried,
3) You can't get even emergency health service because the system is so backed up by flagrant overuse,
4) The Canadian health care system is on the road to collapse because it simply doesn't work.

I do what I can to correct these misconceptions, but I feel I need to warn readers back home that we ought not be blase about the drive to allow for corporate health care. It's a real and present danger in Canada and it's high time Canadians assessed what values are driving the pressure to compromise the Canada Health Act.

New wine, old wineskins

On Monday, I and three other SOOPers nailed siding on one of the Habitat for Humanity houses going up here in Carlsbad. On Tuesday, three of us (men) went with Amzie Yoder into the country near Loving and tore up an old wheelchair ramp and replaced it with something sturdier. The man in the wheelchair is dying and is a client of Vista-Care, a hospice organization. (Hospices provide services to the terminally ill and their families; SOOPers work for them quite a bit.) Today, we worked on the home of a couple, one of whom has MS and the other some condition that doesn't allow him to work. Both of the latter two homes were extremely derelict and we found ourselves nailing new lumber onto old. At yesterday's home, the floor of the veranda was so rotten the occupants were in danger of falling through. Amzie is very good at visualizing what repairs volunteers can do given the material available and the condition of the premises. I call it "meatball carpentry," a takeoff on Hawkeye's "meatball surgery" on M*A*S*H. I find it hard to resist tearing away whole portions of these homes and starting over. I don't like putting new wood over old. New wine in old wineskins?

Carlsbad people tend to tell us that this is not an attractive city, and they're right. Generally, the roadsides are depositories for beer bottles and cans, and the fences and mesquite bushes along the roads are replete with rags and papers waving in the breeze. Where we live, outside the city, you'll find a lot of abandoned RVs and vehicles littering the countryside, and the brittle brown undergrowth of the desert is not cut, probably because to do so would expose the area to the wind and increase the blowing dust, already a problem on dry, windy days.

But all around us there are great wonders to visit. Last Sunday after church and potluck, Rudy and Ruth Friesen and Agnes and I drove out to Sitting Bull Falls, where a spring feeds a curtain of water that glistens in the sun as it plunges a few hundred feet into the canyon below. The trip was wonderful, especially when we approached the rugged foothills and wound through the canyons until we reached the falls. I've already talked about visiting the Carlsbad Caverns, and nearby, we spent some time at Rattlesnake Springs and the Washington Ranch. A legend here has it that the original owner of Washington Ranch would hire Mexican workers, would pay them on payday but have other hands follow them as they left, kill them and retrieve their pay. The legend says that the numerous caves in the area served as the final resting places for these unfortunate people. This ranch is now owned by CARC (Carlsbad Association for Retarded Citizens) and Agnes suggested that we come back next year and volunteer exclusively at the ranch. It's a magnificent place.

So much to do, so little time. Truth is, there's never enough time to do what needs doing. Another truth is that people get hungry, need clothing and shelter, need love and communion every day, so providing some assistance in bringing these things to them is part of an ongoing challenge for Christians. This fact reminds us that it is probably more useful to help a person augment his/her income in order to escape poverty than it is to bring the same person a charity meal day after day. We need to witness more to governments, not only in chastisement for their neglect, but also in the form of ideas for improving the INCOME of those who are now dependent on charity. Meanwhile, Randy and Donna's house is a mess, a mass of renovations started and never finished, and no amount of lobbying government will finish that job. And so we reach for our hammers at the same time as we dream up alternatives. At least, that's what it looks like through my window today.

To Cuauhtemoc and back

Thursday: Thirteen of us in a fifteen-passenger rental van left for the Menno colonies at Cuauhtemoc. Three hours later we were through El Paso, through Ciudad Juarez and were getting our permission slips to pass beyond the 30 km. zone in which you are allowed to visit without any more than a cursory border check. We all got our personal slips, but when it came to the van, a woman who obviously had a bone to pick with either Mennonites, Americans, Canadians or all three decided to get picky. Rudy, aka Rudolph, Friesen, had rented the van using his shortened name; his passport showed the latter name, and there was nothing we could do to convince her that Rudy and Rudolph were the same person. She turned us back and, to shorten a long story, we arrived back in Carlsbad late at night and not-a-little frustrated and tired.

Next morning, we decided that true character wouldn't allow us to be beaten by a bureaucrat; we re-rented the van (this time I did it; "George Epp" has few obvious variations) and we headed out again. This time, we hit snow and slush in the Guadalupe Mountains and I drove nervously through that stretch. Then we were slowed by fog between Juarez and Chihuahua, but we arrived at Colony Manitoba and the Mennonite "La Heurta Inn" at 11:15 p.m. The same woman at the border had to approve our passage and this time she came up with a cock and bull story about our van being too heavy, but finally she said that since she hadn't seen the registration the other day, she would let us through, but that we were never to try to cross into Mexico with a vehicle over 7,000 lbs. again.

Cuauhtemoc was an eye-opener for me. North of the city of 125,000 runs a four lane highway called "suicide way", i.e. the most dangerous bit of road in Mexico. This takes you into Mennonite territory. The highway is lined with businesses, factories and large, expensive houses, some of which are purported to be the fruits of a drug trade which is still active in the colonies. Off to either side, roads lead to villages off the beaten track; they bear official numbers like "Campo 36" and have German names, like "Blumenau." Blumenau has about 20 homes and is the site of the only "General Conference" church in the colonies. Its members are mostly people who have left the Old Colony, Swift Current (Kleingemneinde) or the Rhinelander groups.

John and Ruth Janzen, MCC workers at Cuauhtemoc, took us on an educational tour of the Manitoba Colony on Saturday. We visited a cheeze factory and discovered that Mennonite cheeze is a very popular commodity in Mexico. We toured a Mennonite apple processing plant where about 30 Spanish workers sort, box, store and ship tons of Golden Delicious apples every day. We spent time in a rehabilitation centre for alcohol and drug abuse and sat in a classroom where a senior student from the Steinreich Bibelschule (Km. 36) was helping 33 men through an assignment from the book of John. We sang along with these men from Evangelische Lieder. They sang lustily, to our surprise, considering how they got there. The centre is virtually a jail. Doors are kept locked and guarded and the exercise/crafts/recreation area has a 10 foot concrete wall around it. The last man to arrive here was picked up in a bar after a father alerted the Mennonite police, was brought in in handcuffs and is now serving a mandatory three-month "sentence" in rehabilitation. The "re-evangelization" of these men appears to be the main therapy; the rate of recidivism - John said - is far higher than they had hoped at over 50%.

We had a great supper at a home for the aged/ home for the mentally challenged facility in the heart of the Manitoba colony. Here we were able to talk to residents at leisure and discovered that the facilities echoed the Mennonite Nursing Home complex in Rosthern up to the Pineview level. After the elderly reach a point where the untrained staff cannot care for them well, they are sent home or to hospital. A nursing home like those in Canada does not exist in the colonies.

On Sunday morning, we dicided to attend the earliest church service available, and ended up in an Old Colony church at Km. 11. Those of you who have been in Canadian or US Old Colony churches will already know that they are spartan, and strict rules apply: 1) The men enter one door and women another; the minister has his own entrance, 2) women sit on the left and men on the right, 3) there are no bulletins; the program consists of a 5-10 minute hymn led by 6 Vorsaenger who sit behind a low barrier at the front, the minister (Ohm) opens his notebook at a large white pulpit in the middle of the side wall and reads from it for an hour or more, in this case stopping to cry and blow his nose periodically, several times - on some cue I didn't pick up - everyone whirls around and kneels, their heads on the benches, for about 30 seconds, the minister finally sits down, a "hymn" is chanted, people walk out, go straight to their cars without speaking and leave.

Our presence was not acknowledged and no one said a word to any of us. We hear from John and Ruth that that's normal.

The gist of the message - delivered in alternate High and Low German - was apparently that members were in danger of hell fire if God was as sensitive as they were to the liberties in dress and behaviour in the congregation. I found it hard to follow him since he spoke in a low voice without amplification of any kind and I found his pronunciation somewhat strange. Not surprisingly, the concern generally is with remaining pure in a wicked world, and the constant reminder that all around us, we and others are making compromises with the world - sinning grievously, in other words - and there will be a reckoning coming. Forgiveness doesn't appear to be a theme here.

It's quite a picture to see, though. Sitting in the back of the church with about 150 men and boys (children aren't allowed in church until they finish school at age 13 or so), their off-white Sunday stetsons hanging from nails above them, the hard wooden seats and low backs of the pews biting into your thighs and back as the minister drones on and on. Across the aisle, the women all in black with their Krushelmetze look like a convention of subservient reverend mothers in full habit.

It's apparently not correct behaviour for a worshipper to speak anywhere on the church yard except in his car. I found this disconcerting, but in keeping with the fact that the entire worship appears to have been deliberately and completely depersonalized. I found myself wondering what would have happened if the minister had accidentally looked up and made eye contact with someone in the congregation. It was one of the saddest, least worshipful events I have ever attended. The leaving of the congregation (all except a few who stayed for a wedding to follow; the couple had sat through all this in chairs in front of the pulpit) was compared by someone in the group to having a giant vacuum cleaner sucking everyone out the doors. I could understand the need to escape. But, as I said to someone, these worshippers are in this church one hour a week; there may have been a great deal significant that goes on in their daily lives or even in this service that we have no hope of understanding in one short visit.

We left for Carlsbad right after the service, taking a more easterly route that took us through the area of Oasis, Mexico, where a number of new colonies are being established in what looks like a barren desert. We hadn't the time to stop there, unfortunately.

Learning patience from the caverns

Saturday is a day off for SOOPers, of course, and yesterday we took Bruno and Rha Friesen with us, determined to walk the 800 foot descent into the bowels of the earth at the Carlsbad Caverns. What an experience! Last time we were here, we took the elevator down and up. The walk takes about an hour and taxes muscles one doesn't use much, as well as being a strain on knees and hips, but we did it in fine style. Agnes and I took the King's Palace Tour thereafter, which is another 80' descent and rise, but the magnificence of this natural wonder made it worthwhile.

And heres the "learning patience" part. We went through a tunnel that was blasted about seventy years ago in order to provide person access to yet another room in this labyrinth. Water drips slowly from the roof of this man-made tunnel, and tiny stalagtites of calcium carbonate about the size of my little fingernail have formed there. Elsewhere in the cavern, these stalagtites soar to 70 to 80 feet and are massive. I thought of some of my friends who are of the conviction that the earth is 6000 + years old and wondered what they would make of this. It's obvious that dripping water would not have formed these stalagtites and stalagmites without millions of years of time to get the job done, based on the slowness at which new ones are forming. Time is of a different essence down there.

Carlsbad Mennonite - as I've mentioned before - loves potluck and games. This morning's service at 9:30 featured a men's chorus of 8 or so (SOOPers Rudy and Bruno Friesen and me included) sang 606 from the blue hymnal (Ich Weiss einen Strom) in English and German. At 11:00, adult Sunday School discussed the same lesson that Eigenheim discussed (unless they were stormed out). From John 5, it was a very difficult lesson in that it's deeply theological on the subject of Christ's sonship. Bruno said as we drove to church that he was glad not to be teaching that, a sentiment I could echo easily. Our teacher, Dick Rhodes, shared with us after his struggle to prepare for the lesson adequately. After Bible Class - as they call it here - we sat down to potluck, a tremendous variety of good foods and salads. My favourites were the stuffed mushrooms! We also got to know a new SOOP couple from Chilliwack - Henry and Evelyn Rempel whose nephew and niece are currently managing the motel in Rosthern.

A group had lunch together after church. The purpose of their gathering was to decide what actions to take regarding the "surge" of troops Bush has proposed for Iraq and the growing conviction here that it's a stepping stone into military action against Iran. People are pretty spooked at that possiblilty. Carlsbad Mennonite seems to be as much a peace church as any we've ever attended, and it was heartening to see how seriously they take their discipleship. One member asked the congregation for prayer and advice about a calling he felt to fly to Washington to attend a peace vigil there, and I think he got plenty of help and will likely go. The discussion around such topics is invigorating.

Tomorrow is Martin Luther King day and a national holiday. We hear that the thrift store will be open, however, so we'll go there and sort, tag and hang out clothes for another half day. On Wednesday, "the men" will spend the day building on a Habitat for Humanity house.

Our greetings to all our friends and family who read this, and to all our brothers and sisters at Eigenheim Mennonite especially.
George