Since my last blog we visited more churches in the Edmonton area. Thanksgiving Sunday we drove to Camrose and had dinner with my sister Dorothy, her granddaughter Laura Joy, and great grandson Sevrin. We did our best to polish off the whole turkey, but didn’t quite make it, which was just fine with us because we got to take home enough leftovers for several meals along the way. We managed to work in a visit with the four girls (all sisters) that Bob & Sharon Guzak adopted from out orphanage in Brazil. What a treat it was to spend an evening with them.
Richard & Neide, Marize, Adriane and Val - The Guzak girls
From there we left for Spiritwood Sk. and spoke at the Belbute Church that was built and pastored by my late uncle Adolf. We enjoyed the warm welcome of Floyd and Dora Berg that took over from my uncle. My cousin Sal Orange hosted us and we were so happy to be in a house trailer, rather than in a holiday trailer when the cold weather hit. We expected it to be colder in Saskatchewan, but weren’t prepared for the snow storm we encountered on our way to Weldon. It was snowing and blowing when we awoke so we thought we’d better head for Regina as quickly as possible. The road was treacherous; we crept our way along on glare ice. There were a number of abandoned cars and trucks in the ditches, but thankfully we made it there safely and were warmly welcome by our relatives.
Our last stop was in Calgary where we enjoyed getting reacquainted with Ralph Sasse, that is pastor of the Calgary Community Church. We first met Ralph’s parents in Barrhead, AB. and later visited them in Novo Hamburg, Brazil where they did missionary work for many years. It was such fun to speak Portuguese with him and his wife Brazilian Claudia.
Allan Lagore, from Freedom Outreach, was one of the featured speakers and two of the men who have been through their recuperation program gave very encouraging and heart warming testimonies.
Our journey ended with a trip to Ft. McMurray for their annual mission’s conference. We were hosted by our good friends Dawson & Winona Winsor and were pampered and completely spoiled. We enjoy our time there so much and re-connect with so many longtime friends. There are 40 nations represented in the McMurray Gospel Assembly congregation and we got to meet many of them, got to speak Portuguese again and tried our hand at communicating with the Spanish speaking Columbians that were there. We were reminded that we are one big wonderful family in Christ.
We also enjoyed a couple of nice evenings with our grandchildren Amanda & Russell, and Earl met a cousin for the first time. He happened to be working in Edmonton and we met him at his hotel, so now we have personally met another of Earl's relatives, James Trekofski.
