Cast the Net Far and Wide

                                 A CRY - A MISADVENTURE – AN ANSWER Oh, the excitement!   It was time for the annual school trip.   Rather than the usual educational trip by one class to a museum or farm, the annual school trip was more like a community event.   All year long, families saved up and planned for the day-long trip to Canada’s Wonderland, near Toronto.   Children whose parents could not go were assigned to another parent, usually the parent of a friend, so that they would have companionship.   Once there, the families were on their own, needing only to return to the bus by a certain time.   To disadvantaged children, as some were, it was educational to leave the reserve and travel to the Toronto area, to see new sights.   And it was fun! Rien and I were unable to go with Stephen one particular year.   Judy, the public school principal, had put Stephen with one of his best friends, in the care of his father.   In the back of my mind, anxious thoughts were nagging.   T

  Tailings When you go out into Christian volunteer work and your young children (aged 2 and 4 when we left) had no choice in the matter but had to grow up on two native reserves, you wonder if you should have made them suffer in this way.   Then your daughter goes to Bible College, becomes a missionary to Africa in charge of an orphanage of sixty children. I think of the scene in which repairs were being made to the orphanage and my daughter held her own with the African workers who wanted to be paid before they had finished the work.   They threatened my daughter, a young white female-against their rules, with reporting her to her boss.   Her famous response: “I don’t care if you report me to the Pope; you are not getting paid until you finish the job!”   This is no reflection on African workers in general. Then my son, currently vice president of construction in a developing construction company, agreed to be dunked in water at a “Dunk the Boss” event just because the proceeds wou