Guest Post: Summer Reflections (By Peter DeWit)

This is my husband, Peter DeWit.

He wrote a note on fb and I wanted to re-post it here. He had asked me to write about our summer, but I didn’t get around to it. He is a great writer and I loved reading about our summer from his perspective.

Peter Writes…

I am usually very reluctant to go back to my home country. It means hours of tedious travel, public speaking, raising funds, and often poor mattresses for my bad back. And I could say that all was pretty well true for much of my time in Canada. Nonetheless something happened in me to strengthen my heart and to return my lost love for Canada.

If you love surprises, so do we, and the surprises began and kept coming…

The beauty of early summer.  I have always had a love for ancient cultures and inspiring landscapes. While visiting England I have experienced the silent awe of walking the ground that was trod by kings and queens of antiquity. The very soil exhales history. While in France the narrow roads winding through fields of green and quaint villages whispered and tickled my soul. The centuries of cow paths now turned  into roads and soldiers’ foot battles must have happened mere inches from our presence. How I want to also boast of my native Holland and it’s windmills and brick roads reminding me of a heritage of hard-working people who knew how to tame nature’s fury; not to metion the ancient cheeze and the salted licorice! Seriously, everywhere one would glance one would be greeted with a monument of man or nature that said, “We have been here way before you, yes, for countless generations.”

But my ‘Oh Canada’, so young, never gave me the sense of majesty and history like my birth continent. As I drove the back roads I saw uneven highway being gobbled up by unhappy growth and the wildness surrounded by sad-sack fences that needed human mending. The major highways were tedious with weeds and uninspiring landscapes. And yet this summer the boredom was replaced by a pulling-in of the beauty of the Maples and Spruce and the wild untamed. I found the green of the grass thick with splendor. The hours on rivers warmed by summer’s heat invigorated my body with nature’s wild and dark-watery embrace. The cool evenings blessed me consistently, giving relief to hot days. The evening fireflies showing off their incandescent wonder delighting our eyes and inspiring a kiss or two by the Sacred Pond.

Then there was the joy of reconnecting with my church life.  This was one place I wanted to ignore, the church stage of pressure of performance , it seemed to kill the natural bent of the land and my heart. How could I avoid putting on a good show in these big buildings built explicitly for the show? Standing in front of hungry-for-validation-ears I wanted to validate myself, to justify my presence and their support of my ministry, or my mission. I asked the Lord to bless me with  Jabez-like provision. I also told the Lord to free me from the worry, the need to ask for money, even if the iron was hot and the shirt needing pressing. I had booked every possible weekend but one. It too got booked in the city of Ottawa on the very day we celebrate our country. It was like Jabez’s prayer was stretching the centuries over and upon us as we gawked with the tens of thousands for a sight of English royalty and being rewarded with a fleeting glimpse. My adopted daughter, who had spent all of 17 months of her 14 year-old life on Canadian soil, squealed with delight on the shoulders of her mother, “I am so glad I am Canadian!”

And there were the unlikely friendships that were conceived unnaturally in Thailand by unknown Canadians who had come to experience first-hand our lives. Instead of fading like the dandelion they took on a new shoot like the bamboo. Barbecues, boat rides, Wonderland, and horseback riding filled and thrilled our days. My family was blessed to live in the heart of Toronto the good for almost a month because of an unlikely friendship. And financial pressures were relieved when a Pastor asked his church near the beginning of our time to bless us so we could have fun without continually thinking about expenses.

Surprised by the response to our message. This could be really the better part of it all. After twenty years of spiritual and physical and mental labour in Thailand we had nothing really to boast about, save the grace of God. We spoke of our trials and failures and the dangers of entitlement. We shared of our changing perspective of what defines the good life. And then we closed the thirty minute presentation raising our Ebenezer to the sufficiency of God’s grace.  Our scars speak not of shame, but of faith’s survival and renewal. So many words of encouragement afterwards left us thinking that the time spent in trials and testings may have had a deeper purpose than we thought possible.

I told my family that I was sad that we could not stay longer and see the snow fall and the air explode from our lungs on a frosty day. I was falling in love not only with the rugged beauty but with the Canadian way. It was all so wonderful and the stories and memories of the summer of 2011 will keep us riding the wave for a while still. Thank you Canada for your land nd freedom. And thank you to the Pentecostal Assemblies, you have blessed me so much and remained my spiritual family for a long time.

Our Summer on the Streets

Have you ever wished you could fold the corner on a day, a day so richly illustrated in what you recognize as future memories, knowing that you’ll want to turn back to it easily? Or have you left markings along the way like Hansel and Gretel so that you could get back to that place with no trouble at all? Summer took us far away… From Bangkok to London and Roserrow and St. Ives in the UK, then off to Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal, Moncton and other magnificent places in between. Here are a very few of the pages whose corners I’ve turned…

After visiting England for a wonderful Cornish holiday (photos to come in a future blog) we landed in Toronto. Prior to the holiday there was a year-long search for a house-swap, ‘our Bangkok for your downtown Toronto’, and we were ecstatic when friends saw our search and let us have their College and Yonge condo for a month while they were out of the country.

Then to Ottawa for Canada Day

Where we managed this quick and hazy photo of the beautiful face of the Duchess of Cambridge, more commonly known as Kate

Along with a photo of Will’s hand waving out the partially opened window.

We spent some time in the country with campfires, bullfrogs, fireflies and friends

And we had lots of fun doing things that you can do only in The Great Big City, like getting on TV when the City TV news crew arrives and sets up right in front of you. That’s my daughter wearing the yellow t-shirt and very visible red shorts. She made it on the news! She also took the liberty to run through the water in the fountains.

My daughter was born in Bangkok, so she lives and breathes and thrives on The Great Big City life and is always game for any urban interaction. She especially enjoyed this urban art at the St. Lawrence Market…

There was a very interesting man who stood on the north-west corner of Yonge and Dundas, everyday, in an attention-grabbing t-shirt. If you are from Toronto you know exactly who I am talking about. We called him ‘the beLIEVE guy’. This photo was taken from inside the Forever XXl shop. He stood there with his Bible and handed out pamphlets, and intermittently he would shout ‘ beLIEVE!’ , not necessarily to anyone in particular as much as directed at everyone. Once we saw a tiny white particle that looked like a tooth fly out of his mouth as the ‘be’ syllable exploded and landed on the sidewalk.

We loved visiting Walking On A Cloud where our son worked. This was our last visit just a day before we left for London.

When we left Toronto on Augsut 7th we enjoyed a 10 hour stopover in London.

Again, our daughter isn’t afraid to engage with the city

And here we are home again, on the balcony in our room, back under this familiar sky that kidnaps our shadows for days and weeks at a time. The Big Mango, Bangkok. Sigh…