Just enjoying a wonderful summer.

Sorry that I let so much time go by before updating my blog. Time just zips by, and our lives don’t seem all that filled with excitement and interesting happenings that others would find appealing! But just the same, here are some of the high lights of the last two months. We travelled to Edmonton for the annual Sam Ministries banquet and met with so many of our faithful supporters and friends while there. Pat actually drove us there in her brand new copper coloured Honda Fit. It was a tight ‘Fit’, but the good gas mileage made up for any discomfort we endured. We got in a good last visit with Lynn & Dwight before they left for Africa on July 1st. They were only home for a short three months, so our time with them was quite limited. They spent most of their time in Edmonton doing mission business and seeing as much of their children as they could.

SAM Ministries Banquet

Pat's little Honda Fit

We undertook the task of painting the interior of our house this summer, and it looks really great. Luke and his friend Devin came over and gave us a hand. Luke has had some painting experience and works fast, so that really helped. We are trying to do an upgrade on our house every year. We don’t want to end up years from now with a big renovating job on our hands and not enough strength and energy to do it! Pat has moved into our basement suite and is nicely settled in. It’s so nice to have family living there for a change. It’s good to know things will be looked after when we go on our annual trip to Brazil every year, or on a church visiting trip etc. How does the feature wall in our living room look? :) I love to putz in the garden! We are having a Schalm family reunion in July and are really looking forward to that this weekend. To date, we expect at least 110 people to come and help us celebrate. As we get older, we wonder how many more reunions we will live to enjoy! We have one every five years, and so far only one sibling has passed on to eternity besides mother and father. The sunny Shuswap is a perfect spot for a summer vacation, so that’s a drawing card. We finally have some warmer weather too, but I’m afraid my feeble tomato plants will hardly bear any fruit this year, though the weeds are doing wonderfully well as usual. Schalm Family at our parent's 50th wedding anniversary. We do have some wonderful blessing to share with you though. Enough money came into the mission’s coffers recently to begin work on installing our own fire prevention system at Mount Horeb. The city of Itaperucu has 25,000 inhabitants and there is no fire brigade, fire fighting equipment, or fire hydrants, so it is no easy task to install system at our own expense, which is what the State government requires us to do if we intend to continue to operate a school etc. But fires do happen, strangely enough, even though most of our buildings are cement and brick. In fact, we had a fire at the old Mount Horeb, fortunately all the neighbours came to our rescue and we managed to put it out. Someone called the fire department in the capital city and a truck finally pulled up 3 hours later. Another blessing we received recently is that the Jireh Foundation once again came to the rescue and six members of our staff can continue their university education, in spite of the recession. God truly has answered our prayers and they are grateful and happy.