Why Do Christians "Go to Church” on Sunday?

Because Jesus rose from the dead. This initial answer to that question might sound blunt and certainly as if it needs some more explanation, which I will be happy to oblige the reader with.

The world is full of religions. They probably all have places that are sacred to them, some of which could be identified as places of worship to whatever deity or deities the religion or faith subscribes to.

However, if it were not for the content of the initial statement, we Christians would not have churches. Christianity, as the religion or faith many of us know, grew out of Judaism. Judaism, since the time of Moses, had one central place of worship for the whole group of people that came to be known as the children of Israel. The 400 year period after the return to Israel of the exiles after a 70 year absence, mainly from Babylon, and Persia, saw secondary local places of learning and worship known as synagogues also develop. These could be formed where there was a group of 10 male Jews who wanted to unite in this way.

Now, if Christ had not risen, there would be no Christianity. The closest there would be to the Christian Faith would still be Judaism, and we would still all be meeting in synagogue only at this time of history, as there has been no temple since the Romans destroyed it when they sacked Jerusalem in 70 CE.

No, if you know your history, you know that Jesus' teachings aroused such animosity among the Jewish leaders and those whom they could enlist to support them, that they persuaded the Roman authorities that Jesus deserved death by crucifixion. That would have been the end of the group that was following Jesus as a rabbi or teacher, as they called him,. These disciples and followers would no doubt have disappeared into the general body of Judaism. Hopefully, the teachings they had absorbed from Jesus would have helped make them better Jews, and perhaps there were some of whom that could be said.

However, to the shock of everyone, including Jesus' closest followers, the 12 disciples and others who had walked the streets and roads of Palestine with him, on the third day after the crucifixion, the tomb into which Jesus had been placed was empty. Some who visited the tomb claimed that they saw angels who told him that Jesus had risen, as he had predicted. Indeed, Jesus had been telling his disciples this would happen but resurrection in this life was not in the Jews’ scope of understanding at the time. There was a belief in resurrection after death, to a new life in what we generally speak of as ‘heaven.’ However, apart from a few miracles documented in their history where a prophet raised someone back to life, there had never been a resurrection of an individual of the individual’s own accord, if we can say that of Jesus' resurrection.

Many, from day one, never believed that Jesus rose from the dead. However, after 2000 years of ‘Christian’ life and stories or testimonies that sometimes led to martyrdom, I believe those who cling to this disbelief simply do not want to believe. The call on their lives if they did believe is not something they wish to consider. However, many more intelligent minds than mine, legal minds, have looked at the evidence and determined it is irrefutable by all legal standards. There might have been over a hundred in Jerusalem who saw Jesus in the first days.  He evidently made a special appearance to his brother James, who seemed to turn from a skeptic to the leader of the church in Jerusalem. How’s that for impact of an appearance? The Apostle Paul, who documents some of these appearances outside of what we see in the Gospels and Acts of the Apostles, lists these appearances and says at one time Jesus even appeared to a crowd of 500. That sounds like in pre-resurrection days, when he seemed to draw crowds of thousands to his teachings and miracle working.

According to the Gospels, Jesus rose on the first day of the week, our Sunday. That was when he first appeared to his closest followers, then again a week later. That seems to have led to a continued pattern of those who had followed Jesus, as well as the many new converts that were quickly made after Pentecost, fifty days later, to meet on Sundays. That pattern has never been broken.

Unfortunately, as with many things, Sunday meeting has become for too many a tradition, a ritual. It lacks vitality. For others in our time, the focus has become the style of worship, the music. Some focus on the pastor’s message. Others go to meet friends. We try all kinds of strategies to use Sunday mornings to draw more people into our faith communities. Maybe all of this is missing the key point.

Meeting on Sundays is a testimony, a witness, to a risen Jesus. It confirmed him as the promised Messiah, or Christ, the Son of God. Moreover, it is also a witness to the power of God the Father, who brought Jesus back to life. It is also a witness to the third person of the Trinity, which Christians believe is the nature of God, the Spirit. This would be because there was a special infilling of the disciples of Jesus, including his mother, by the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, a Jewish feast fifty days after Passover. That first Pentecost after Jesus’ resurrection is also believed to be on a Sunday. 

Three good reasons to celebrate and worship on Sunday. These should be the real  reasons we ‘go to church’. We go to thank God for all of this. We go to share stories of how the Risen Christ, through the Spirit given us who believe in him, has changed our lives, sometimes in drastic ways. Thus, we go to meet with fellow believers to have our own faith encouraged and strengthened by what we do together on Sunday mornings. Perhaps if we do all of this with the enthusiasm of the Spirit in us as it was in our sister and brothers 2000 yer ago, people would be draw in by the question, ‘What is happening there?’

Love Actually, in the Apostle Paul

Introduction - Paul, lacking love?

A good number of Bible scholars, particularly perhaps if they are of a feminist bent, have been  - in my opinion - and I, as a white male of European descent have to careful here - too hard on the Apostle Paul. Yes, he said a couple of things about the place of women in the church that some find unacceptable today, for example, I Corinthians (Cor.). 14:33-35 being the passage most often referred to, 11:2-16 being another) - and ‘today’ is the point. 

These things were written to new communities of believers in a world hostile to Christianity nearly 2,000 years ago. Paul was human, and he did not want the gospel and its adherents to m make a bad impression in the society of the day. And yes, he did seem to favour singleness in another place (I Cor. 7:1-17). But that was only in terms of his thoughts of all believers being single so they could be as single-mindedly zealous for his accepted task of spreading the gospel for his Lord as he was. And when you realize how many thousands of kilometres he traveled - much on foot - many miles by ship - you have to have some respect for his remarkable commitment to his calling. We know too it was from from easy. Just read the litanies of troubles he encountered in passages like II Cor. 11:21-12:10.

Paul, the writer

In spite of, and in large part because of, these travels and the new communities of Jesus followers established, Paul found time to write a number of letters. This must show some bond between Paul and the people he writes to. Traditionally, Paul has been credited with thirteen letters, which we often refer to as books, as in ‘the books of the Bible’. In some cases, he wrote to communities in which he had spent time - I & II Corinthians, Galatians, Ephesians, I & II Thessalonians, with one example of a place to which he wished to go - Romans, and in one case to a place for which we have no record of him having visited - Colossians. In addition, he wrote 4 personal letters - two to his beloved ‘spiritual’ son and co-worker, Timothy, one to his co-worker, Titus, and one to Philemon, a man he seems to have met or at least fellowshipped with. Finally, we have note of one letter for which we have no record - a letter to the Laodiceans Paul asks the Colossians to read in exchange for the one they have (Col. 4:16). Colossae, where it is assumed Philemon lived, as Archippus, addressed in Philemon v. 2 seemingly a a member of Philemon’s household, is viewed as the same Archippus mentioned in Col. 4:17 with an admonishment to complete some task he had been given. 

 The World of Paul

This year, my wife and I and some 20 others had the privilege of being able to follow in Paul’s footsteps from Asia Minor (now Türkiye) through Macedonia, Achaia (those are both part of Greece) and on to land in Italy where he did and then on to Rome, where it is believed he met his death. We noted how different our travel was though - air conditioned buses and seagoing vessels that were not as much at the mercy of the wind as those in which Paul traveled. Our sightseeing tour was much enhanced by the input of New Testament scholar/teacher/writer Tom Yoder Neufeld, a Manitoban, most recently from Conrad Grebel College.  Indeed, such seeing coupled with learning was the whole point of the trip. 

As described, this tour, of course, only covered the regions Paul visited in his so-called 2^nd and 3^rd Missionary Journeys. The 1^st was to the region west and next to Syria, from where Paul came. As well, we know we first meet Paul in Jerusalem, already a Pharisee of some authority and scholarly background. Then he went to Damascus, after which he apparently spent quite some time in ‘Arabia’, which some believe to be what is sometimes known as Nabatea in southern contemporary Jordan. Before starting on the major expeditions referred to, Paul did visit Jerusalem to meet the other leaders in the new Jesus movement, but spent the most of the next 14 years or so in Syria, working out of his hometown, Tarsus, but mainly Antioch, which became the centre of the Eastern Church after the fall of Jerusalem to the Romans in AD 70. Paul summarizes much of this in his letter to the Galatians 1:11-2:14.

After seeing the places Paul visited, being on the ground there and listening to Tom explain Paul’s letters as they pertained to these cities (Ephesus - now a wondrous and much-visited collection of ruins, Laodicea, Hierapolis, Colossae - although we did not go to this last, as there is really nothing to see there now, Neapolis, now Kavala, Philippi - now basically ruins only, Beroea, Thessalonica, Athens, Corinth, Puteoli, now Pozzuoli, a suburb of Naples, and finally Rome, one gains a new appreciation and understanding of these epistles.  The whole experience stimulated revisiting Paul’s letters with renewed study, especially with the background this trip provided.

Love in Paul’s Writing in I Thessalonians 

Many believe the first letter to the new Thessalonian believers is the oldest writing of Paul’s that we have. It is generally held that he wrote it after continuing south from Thessalonica and arriving, eventually, for an extended stay as it turned out, in Corinth.

Perhaps because the letters to the Thessalonians somehow seem to be those I have least studied, I was keen to look at hem anew and in more depth. When I turned to these letters, realizing the first letter at least is the oldest New Testament writing, save possibly for the Gospel According to Mark, I was all the more interested to see what we could learn from ‘early Paul.’ However, even this is probably twenty years after his unique ‘Damascus Road’  conversion. 

Some students of these letters also find them interesting because the teaching on Christ’s return is still fresher in Paul’s mind here than later writing, so it is interesting to see what that entails. What really struck me as I re-read the first letter though, was the evident love contained in it. This is what led to this essay.

The New International Version English translation of the Bible has 588 uses of the word ‘love’, with 204 of these being in the New Testament. Almost half, 100, are in Paul’s writings. This from an apostle whom some want to see as a stern champion of serious patriarchy? Seven of these references are in I Thessalonians and 3 in II Thessalonians.

I would venture today that all believers soon encounter in their Christian life Paul’s most famous writing on love, chapter 13 of I Corinthians, devoted entirely to what Paul describes, when he leads into the section of the letter, as the “more excellent way” (I Cor. 12:31).

Jesus himself taught that love was what was needed to be able to keep all the laws the Jews adhered to. Indeed, his teaching, recorded in Matthew 22:34-40, is linked to the Old Testament law in Deuteronomy 6:5. When asked what the greatest law was, Jesus replied, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul and with all your might. This is the greatest and first commandment.” Then he added, referencing Lev. 19:18: “And a second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbour as yourself.’ On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.” This teaching has come to be known as The Royal Law, based on Jesus’ brother James reference to it as such in 2:8 of his short ‘book’: “You do well if you really follow the royal law according to the scripture, ‘You shall love your neighbour as yourself.’

Paul does not ignore this emphasis on the need for love. In Rom. 13:8-10, this devout student of and formerly legalistic adherent to the Mosaic Law writes: “Owe no one anything except to love one another; for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law. The commandments… are summed up in this word, ‘Love your neighbour as yourself.’ Love does no wrong to a neighbour; therefore, love is the fulfilling of the law.” This same teaching is included more briefly in Gal. 5:13-15. 

Let us turn to I Thessalonians now to see what it shows as evidence that Paul was a  man with love. Acts 16:11-18:21 give us the narrative third-party story of Paul in Thessalonica and the context around that. But what is Paul himself saying beyond what Luke, the author acts, wrote?

Paul more often addresses the new converts as brothers (e.g. 1:4, 2:1,9, 17, 4:1, 13, 5:1, 12) than he has a habit of doing in his other letters. Look though at 2:7-8: “…we were gentle along you, like a nurse tenderly caring for her own children. So deeply did we care for you that we were determined to share with you not only the gospel of God but our own selve, because you have become very dear to us.” Then, there is 2:11-12: “…we dealt with each one of you like a father with his children, urging and encouraging you and pleading that you lead a life worthy of God…”  

Do these expressions sound like a harsh, legalistic patriarch? If you read them in context you can hardly not acknowledge the deep feelings Paul has for these people. Would you not agree there is love in there somewhere?

Paul then writes about how he misses them. He had left suddenly, at the encouragement of some his companions it seems, because of the opposition they were experiencing, with its focus, naturally, on Paul as their leader. Perhaps the Jewish people who were persecuting them regarded Paul, as a Pharisee, as a traitor for believing in Jesus as the Messiah, whom their compatriots in Jerusalem had killed. We know from their responses to the Apostles in Jerusalem earlier that they also felt the Apostles were trying to make them feel guilty (Acts 5:17-42). No  one likes to be reminded of their bad deeds.

Now there is the situation of what happened in Philippi and where that left Paul and his companions when they arrived in Thessalonica. In 2:1 he writes “our coming to you was not in vain, but though we had already suffered and been shamefully mistreated at Philippi, as you know, we had courage in our God to declare to you the gospel of God in spite of great opposition.” In Philippi, Paul and Silas had their clothes stripped and been beaten with rods publicly and thrown in the stocks in jail without a charge, let alone a trial, all of which was entirely against Roman law. Paul had protested this greatly when the jailer had simply received word to let the men out to go in peace. Indeed, when the authorities had found out, they had almost come on their knees, begging Paul and Silas to simply go away quietly, as it were (Acts 16:16-39).

The description in Luke's writing in Acts, coupled with how Paul himself described their treatment in Philippi, suggest that what had happened had really had a strongly negative impact on them. If we did not know Paul better, we might have thought Paul suffered a real blow to his ego, and perhaps there was some of that in what he wrote. That may be what prompted him to quickly add that they still had the courage to preach the gospel to the Thessalonians when they arrived; they were still able to ‘do their job’ (2:2).

At the same time, it seems that Paul goes out of his way to make certain that the Thessalonians did not see them as coming for any personal gain. If one reads all of Paul’s protestations in this regard in I Thessalonians 2:3–6 and 9–10, one might also be wondering whether Paul felt their hosts, who appear to have been very good to them it seems, had also responded so positively to Paul's message that Paul may have had a concern that they did so out of pity, and not genuine repentance. This may also be why he strongly points out to the Thessalonians that their faith, the changes in their lives, and their treatment of Paul in his companions, is all evidence of the powerful work of the Holy Spirit in their lives. We see this in 1:5, where Paul says, “…our message of the gospel came to you not in word only, but also in power and in the Holy Spirit and with full conviction". It seems Paul is making sure that the Thessalonians know that their response to the gospel as it has subsequently been borne out in the changes in their lives can only be the working of the power of the Holy Spirit, not any feelings of being sorry for Paul and Silas and the condition in which they arrived in Thessalonica.

At the same time, the persecution that surfaced in Philippi and had followed the Apostles Thessalonica, was already affecting the new believers (1:6, 2:14-16, 3:1-3). Therefore, Paul wants to reassure them as well and expresses his concern that the persecution may have weaken their commitment to follow Jesus was one of the main reasons why he wanted so badly to go back and visit them (2:18, 3:5). At the same time, he has heard such positive reports of their being example to all the believers in Macedonia and in Achaia because of their imitation of the witness and behaviour of the apostles and of the Lord (1:6-7), that he spends much more time giving thanks and praising them for all of this in the first two chapters than he generally does in his other letters.

Going back to Paul's deep appreciation for the Thessalonians’ response in spite of the circumstances, we read in 2:8: "so deeply do we care for you that we are determined to share with you not only the gospel of God but also our own selves, because you have become very dear to us.” In 2:17, Paul writes, “…we were made orphans by being separated from you – in person, not in heart" which made him long "with great eagerness to see you face-to-face” again. Paul writes in vs. 18 about how he wanted to go to them, again and again but believed that Satan was blocking the way.

As Paul then states in 3: 1-3, “Therefore, when we could bear it no longer, we decided to be left alone in Athens; and we sent Timothy, our brother and coworker… to strengthen encourage you for the sake of your faith, so that no one would be shaken by these persecutions,” ending that section with the remarks (3:5) "I was afraid that somehow the tempter had tempted you and that our labour had been in vain." However, then he speaks of Timothy's return, bringing the good news of their faith and love and that they remember Paul and Silas “…kindly and long to see us - just as we long to see you “(3:6). 

Finally, Paul closes this section with a prayer (3:11-12): “Now may our God father himself and our Lord Jesus direct our way to you. And may the Lord make you increase and abound in love for one another and for all, just as we abound in love for you." Again, building on what he has heard and already written positively about to the Thessalonians, he adds in 4:9 "Now concerning love of the brothers and sisters, you do not need to have anyone write to you, for you yourself have been taught by God to love one another, and indeed you do love all the brothers and sisters throughout Macedonia."

There is more love language in the final section of the letter. In 5:12-13 Paul admonishes the Thessalonians to "esteem very highly in love [those who labour among you] because of their work.” Then he urged them, as “beloved" (5:14) in various ways of exhibiting the Christian ethic in their lives with one another. Just before his final greeting, Paul also addresses them with a request, "Beloved, pray for us" (5: 25).

Conclusion

I believe that when we read and examine this letter, we see how it is permeated with a strong bond of love between these apostles and the new believer. These are newly met individuals who have received the message he was mandated to give, and with whom Paul is trying to maintain and strengthen ties with, in language that is steeped in caring love. 

Would that we see such love between our shepherds and their flocks and that we also do our part to exhibit such love in our lives that we could also be worthy of the type of praise Paul pours out on the Thessalonian Christians.

Ancient Christian Symbols

In early Christianity, particularly as it entered the Gentile world and the Roman Empire, we know that there were various ways that Christians communicated and conveyed their presence. One interesting example of this that one finds is a simple drawing of a fish as a way to indicate the 

presence of something Christian. One apparently finds it particularly commonly among the catacombs, the early graveyard of Christians, below the city of Rome and its nearby environs. 

We also know that this adaptation or derivative of the word fish led to the use of the letters of the word fish to form “an acronym or acrostic for "Ἰησοῦς Χρῑστός Θεοῦ Υἱός Σωτήρ", Iēsoûs Khrīstós, Theoû Huiós, Sōtḗr.” These words in common or ‘koine’ Greek “translate into English as 'Jesus Christ, God's Son, [our] Savior’.”

One then finds carved into stone in a number of city ruins of the Roman Empire a circular combination, sometimes casually referred to as a pie chart, of these letters.

This entry in Wikipedia, quoted twice above already, describes it succinctly:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ichthys 

“Jesus - Iota (i), Iēsoûs (Ἰησοῦς), "Jesus"

Christ - Chi (ch), Khrīstós (Χρῑστός), "anointed"

God’s - Theta (th), Theoû (Θεοῦ), "of God", the genitive [possessive] singular of Θεóς, Theós, "God"

Son - Ypsilon (y or u), (h)uiós (Yἱός), "Son"

Saviour - Sigma (s), sōtḗr (Σωτήρ), “Savior""

How these letters were combined is crudely represented in this engraving below from the ruins of Ephesus according to the above Wikipedia article. To understand it better with the help of a colour line drawing, look at the accompanying ‘pie chart’ where I for Iesous/Jesus is blue, X for Xristos/Christ is green, Th for Theos/God is black, Y for Yios/Son is red and S in the sigma form for Soter/Saviour is orange.

Finally, a photo I took from the streets of the ruins of Laodicea, mentioned in

Colossians and Revelation, is pictured as well, although the circle and some elements are rather time-worn.

 

A Tribute to My Mother

 Many years ago, in a snowstorm, the dearly beloved woman holding me a year later in this photo, gave birth to me in a Manitoba snowstorm, although we were safe and warm in Winkler’s quite new Bethel Hospital.

After recently writing a tribute about my maternal grandparents, my wife encouraged me to write one about my mother. One of my initial reactions to this was, how does one write a tribute to someone that has been gone from your life for 60 years. On second thought, my grandparents have been gone for 35 years already, and I managed to write something about them. I gather I can write something about my mother. When we talk about my mother in this case, I need to be clear. My father remarried 10 months after my mother's passing, so we have a stepmother, but this is about my real, biological mother. She lives in our memories still, this woman who nursed me, mentored me and loved me till she was gone so suddenly in Dec. 1963.

I certainly have memories of my mother that could fuel such a piece of writing. There are also things I have heard about her from friends and relatives. Four years ago I came into possession of a five-year diary of hers from the ages of 14 to 19, as well as some other journals. This certainly shed a different light, or should I say additional light, on who my mother was.

And that will be my starting point. I want to say something about who my mother was before I go on to write about how she influenced my life. Again, these are my memories; my siblings are entitled to theirs.

My mother, Margaret Enns, was born in 1920 as the second child of Franz (Frank) and Maria (Marie, nee Loewen) Enns in a small farming community northeast of the town of Winkler, named Greenfarm. She came from ancestors who immigrated to Canada in 1876 from what was known as New or South Russia, referring to its having recently been taken from the Turks and Tatars by the Russians. Some 110 years earlier the same ancestor lines had move from Prussia, previously Poland, to this area of Russia. In fact, maternally, Jacob Hoeppner, who was one of two delegates who left Prussia to spy out the land of Russia as it were, is an ancestor of hers. Earlier in this century, a cousin of mine who did some travelling in these countries, and also some archival research, managed to trace her line indirectly back to the 16th century in the Netherlands. In fact, the information we have pinpoints what is now the province of Zeeland and quite likely the town of Veer. The family name at the time was DeVeere. From here, family members had moved to Schiedam, which is a suburb of present-day Rotterdam. They had also moved on to Amsterdam, and from there, still in the 16th century, to Poland.

More importantly than simply tracing genealogies, when it comes to the influences that shaped her life, the geological line consisted of individuals who had left the Roman Catholic Church in the so-called Protestant Reformation, to become Anabaptist, later known as Mennonites.

Even though many Mennonites, even then, were quite well off and found in a variety of businesses and professions, such as lace and braid making an, brandy distilling, or grain traders as in the case of the DeVeeres, they tended to live frugal and humble lives. This revived faith of theirs also caused them to do more to look after one another in many areas than others in the society around them might have done. Taking care of the poor and orphans was a duty. Helping out when there were fires and floods led early in the 17th century already to mutual aid organizations under such circumstances.

Although, as mentioned, they had conducted business in a variety of trades in the 16th and 17th centuries, the constant pressures of the king, the local councils and even trade guilds in Poland, led some of them to abandon these things and turn to farming in the Vistula Delta. To be sure, there were skills that the Dutch already held, such as knowing how to drain farmland and unproductive swampy land into productive agricultural areas. This led them to be quite prosperous in these ways to the point that some local councils and even local nobles and church officials who owned land were quite happy to have them as owners or leaseholders on their estates. For well over 100 years, they developed these skills further during their sojourn in Poland. However, when it became Prussia and ever more militaristic, this clashed with one of the tenets of their faith, which was not to take up arms. This was what led them to leave Prussia for Russia where they were given freedom not to have to do so, at least initially.

This last was one of the same factors that led my mother's grandparents and great grandparents generation to leave Russia for Canada when the state there began encroaching on the originally granted freedoms. Again, they arranged these same terms with respect to religious freedom with the Canadian authorities.

My maternal grandparents with their two youngest children and one on the way moved in 1923 from Greenfarm to an area somewhat more distant from Winkler to the northwest, known as Burwalde. Grandfather did well with farming here. By and large then, mother grew up in a home where they were never really in need of anything.

Mother went to the local country school until about Grade 9. By that time she had done things like join 4-H and Sewing Clubs and around that time she also went with some friends to Canadian Sunday School Mission Camp on lake Winnipeg at Gimli. Thus, she was not entirely shielded from the world as some more conservative Mennonites were. Indeed, it was around the time of her birth that many Mennonites left Canada for Mexico because, again, the government, of Canada this time, was beginning to require them to attend public schools, learn English, and be exposed to some nationalistic and patriotic learning, versus the simpler Bible – oriented education they had been allowed to do when the had the privilege of running their own schools according to the agreements negotiated when they immigrated to Canada. 

However, my mother's family was obviously not that conservative. Some of that conservatism did show up though when mother really wanted to go on to complete her high school. It took her some time to convince her father of this and she actually missed a year of school in the process. However, she had her eyes on teaching as a profession and so she actually completed high school in the private residential Mennonite Collegiate Institute in Gretna, nearly forty miles from home. She then went on to enrol in the provincial teacher training program in Winnipeg at what was called the Normal School on William Avenue. 

Again, mother had some friends that we're doing the same thing. They stayed in rooming houses in the vicinity of their school and sometimes spent time studying together as one can see from one of her pictures. From mother’s letters and diaries one also learns how adventurous she was. She attended concerts, went to see special displays, such s one of tropical butterflies in the T. Eaton Department Store, attended some public speaking events by prominent personalities, such as the gentleman who had founded the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. Nor did she limit her attendance to church to those of Mennonite persuasion. She visited several different kinds of churches. She tried singing in some choirs too.

She was also though still very family oriented and, I would say, emotionally tied to the land where she grew up. She often writes of missing her family and not exactly looking forward to returning to the city after a weekend or holiday at home. She got to do her teaching practicum in Burwalde and really did not want to return to Winnipeg after that. She shared a number for experiences and opinions with her older brother Frank, including when he had to spend some months in a building camp in what became riding mountain national Park, which was his alternative service in World War II, instead of having to go into the military.

At the same time, mother seems to have been troubled by some lack of motivation and, should I say, self-discipline. She often seemed to leave her preparation and homework till rather close to deadlines. Then she would castigate herself for not starting things earlier and getting done more promptly. This often led her to question her decision to go into teaching and she often wondered whether she was moving in the right direction. These sentiments come out in her diaries and include failure to make entries on a number of dates.

However, now that this was the path she had chosen, her father, who had experience as a school trustee, used his ability and connections in this regard to make sure she got a teaching job upon graduation from Teachers College. Her first job was in fact in the area that had been the village where her ancestors had settled just southwest of Winkler, Hoffnungsfeld. However, she then moved on from there to another rural area which was still Mennonite, Clear Springs, near Steinbach.

Mother was not even through teaching her first year at this school when my father entered her life. They both discovered they shared a mutual interest in Christian missions and father was at that time set on returning to Northern Manitoba to continue a work pastorally that he had begun there as a teacher fulfilling his conscientious objector alternative service status. However, his prospective employer, the United Church, really wanted married staff in those positions. Within six weeks of their meeting, they were married and less than two months later, they were on their way north.

Mother was by this time 24 years of age and I think she was relieved to be married, as many people in that period of time got married younger than that. At the same time, given what I have read in her diaries and what I know of her life with our father, I know that whirlwind romance was really built on love. This was demonstrated so well as far as I can recall, all through the 17 years of their married life of which I was privileged to be a part of. One example of this that I often cite is that only once do I recall her and father getting into an argument. It was over whether we should take a family photo when we were in our Sunday best before lunch, interfering with its being ready and warm, which I think was Dad’s inclination, or after, which I think was mother’s preference. I don’t remember though which way the decision went. 

Whatever problems plagued our mother as referred to above in terms of those years of high school and later study, did not seem to rear themselves in our years as a family as far as I can recall. She worked very hard. Within 11 years of marriage, she had five children, four sons and one daughter.

Mother had learned to cook and bake and she provided for us better than well in that regard. I would have to say we were spoiled, especially when it comes to how much dessert was part of our life. It is a wonder we aren't all diabetics. In spite of all the hard work mother had to do to satisfy the appetites of five growing children, I really don't remember her ever limiting what we ate. There always seem to be enough food.

Living up north, meant all of this baking was done in the wood stove. Father, later aided by us children, helped supply that stove with wood to keep the house warm as well as to do all the food preparation. We also had to go to the river, later the lake, to bring in water. Carrying out buckets of slop to a designated area was another task we were at times entrusted with. Mother and father also put their hand to gardening from the beginning. When we got older, mother also canned some of the fruit we picked, particularly Saskatoons. We were often given fish by our neighbours and she would can some of that. When we went south to visit our grandparents, which was more or less for the better part of a month almost every year, she, grandmother and my aunts would pick and can fruits and vegetables from the grandparent’s garden to help us through our winters up north.

We did not have electricity to begin with either, so all of this work was done by the light of gas or coal oil/kerosene lamps. Mother also was very active helping father in the mission work, teaching children, playing the organ and piano, which she had taken lessons of when she was young, which again shows that her parents were not that conservative. She and father would sometimes sing duets for the worship services. She did sometimes get local girls to help with housework.

Part of the work was having Bible studies and she and father would trek to the different homes where these were sometimes held in rotation, which meant bundling up the children in winter to be pulled along by sleds until we were old enough to walk the distance.

There is some evidence that mother had a degree of anxiety. One notable story that reflects this is that when she first was being given the opportunity to learn to drive, which again is a progressive thing for those days, she was going too fast to make a corner and either did or nearly went into the ditch. She walked away from that and never learned to drive. We didn't hear much about it where were children, but I know she was often anxious when we lived in Loon Straits and father made many boat trips back-and-forth across the 8 miles stretch of open lake to where the road ended to go to pick up supplies or take people for medical care. Sometimes those crossings meant encountering very high and dangerous waves. I am sure she was praying regularly.

Besides going to Bible studies, mother and father did a lot of home visitation. Sometimes mother did this on her own, including taking us children along. When we were older we enjoyed this because it gave us a chance to visit and play with our friends while mother or sometimes both parents would visit with their parents.

One thing about our parents, and I am not sure who would be the one to point to most here, but I know for myself, if I seemed to show an interest in something that was positive, they greatly encouraged it. When I was barely starting school, I became interested in the birds that populated our neighborhood. The next thing I knew had a set of bird books and then even a year’s subscription to the Canadian Children's Audubon magazine. When I showed a penchant for drawing, I have a notebook or two where mother has written interesting comments about my drawing, which she certainly obviously encouraged. Some of it in my preschool years looks more like what we might call abstract or modern art but mother tried to find something in that as well. I remember in Grade 6, when it became known, that in our Social Studies, we were going to do a lot of work that involved including illustrations in our homework, we got a prescription to the MacLeans magazine and were allowed to cut pictures from it to use for our homework. Given my artistic leaning, when paint-by-number sets became a fad, I was given one of those for Christmas when I was, I believe, perhaps 13.

When I was about six years old, our mission chapel or tabernacle as father had named it, was provided with a piano ,which was really given to us as a family, as we kept it even as we moved. Mother then took it upon herself to try to teach us children piano and when we moved to Winnipeg when I was already in grade 11, she and father arranged for us children to continue to take piano lessons, which I did, probably until the end of grade 12. At that point I was probably approaching a Grade 6 level in music.

Father had been interested in music as well and had wanted to play the violin, so mother's wedding gift to him was a violin. Somehow, in his busy life, he never got into it. When one of the teachers in the community when I was in Grade 6 turned out to be a fairly good violinist, I ended up taking lessons, but only for a year, as he left the community after that. Year later, when our daughter was studying violin, we bought Dad’s old violin so Anika has that memory of her grandmother.

In spite of not having grown up around water, mother went with us on picnics that involves boat trips. When we were younger, in Grand Rapids, this involved leaving the security of the river and heading out on to the lake to what we called a beach, but which was really mostly gravel. When we moved to Loon Straits, we often packed things up and went and had wiener and marshmallow roasts, accompanied by other foods and desserts, on the large granite rock points that framed our own private sandy bay. She also went with us when we would take boat rides across the 2 mile bay to what we called the river and travel up it to The Rapids, which was the end of how far a boat could go. 

We boys love to go out exploring from our home. In spring, it was always exciting, and there was some competition between us and our school mates in this regard, to see who could see which birds had returned first from their annual migrations. We always wanted our mother to come with us and on one of our Saturday morning excursions we were so glad when she actually did join us one spring morning. We tramped through the sometimes still deep melting snow to see what we could see. We boys didn't really sense it at the time, although I think I already knew that she had some back and foot troubles and problems with varicose veins, which probably did not make such hikes easier. But she was game to go with us. We were thankful.

I think we were also spoiled when it came to play. We seemed to have a lot of time to play as a child. I don’t know that we were expected to help much until we were attending school. Then we did things like wash and dry dishes, sweep the floor and sometimes help with baking or other food preparation, not to mention carrying wood and water. 

I must comment on discipline. We kids did get into arguments and fights. However, I don’t remember mother being hard on us. If we had really crossed the line, it was father she turned to for the dreaded spankings, which were not frequent in any case.

By the time mother had come to her second year of teaching, before getting married,  it seems she had begun to enjoy it. Her pupils had obviously enjoyed her, as they were really quite sad to see her go when she left six weeks before the end of the year to get married. Thus, it was not surprising that when we moved to Winnipeg and were all in school after a year there, she managed to get herself a substitute teaching job. I remember how happy and excited she was to dress up in her white blouse and grey flannel skirt and go and do this. Her first teaching job was actually at the school our second youngest brother Lloyd was attending, Princess Margaret in North Kildonan. Then she did some substituting teaching further north at McIvor School. Unfortunately, that ended prematurely, as did our having our mother, as she passed away some two weeks before school would've closed for the Christmas season, in 1963.

One’s mother might have passed away, but mother is never out of our lives. Especially when Anne and I began raising our own family, there are so many junctures in the lives of a family and those who were her grandchildren, that she would've loved attending, but she was never there. Indeed, when our daughter was born, our neighbour in the next block, a very kind and hospitable church lady who was raised in Winkler MB, came to visit us and brought a gift for us. She was so surprised, "She looks just like her grandmother!”

“How do you know?" Anne asked.

"I babysat for your grandmother." Mrs. Mary (Abe) Wiebe knew who my grandparents were since we told her of our connection to the Mennonites in southern MB when we moved to Gladstone to practice medicine in the summer of 1978. Every Sunday she told church people how much Anika looked like her grandmother. We have two pictures displayed side by side on our mantel, of both Mother and Anika at a very similar age. They indeed belong to the very same family, the Enns family of Winkler, my mother's roots. Even in later life photos, we saw when we came into possession of some of mother’s photo albums, it was uncanny how our daughter sometimes took poses just like her grandmother! 

In terms of what a mother can offer, who knows how much advice I might have gotten in terms of work, career, marriage and parenting, had she been alive when I really needed it. I know my father did his best as well. However, that all changed when he married a year later and soon began to raise our step siblings. But that is another story. Mother had done most of her upbringing for me by that time, as I was 17 when she passed away, and I know she left me a very good legacy in so many ways. There was her faith, her family devotion, her adventurousness, open-mindedness, gentleness and her creativity. All of those have been influential in my life as well. Someday I hope to be able to thank her for all of this when we meet in the promised new earth.

With help from my wife, Anne.