Sunday Night Trip to Waldheim

The small town of Waldheim, about 30 minutes from my hometown, Hague, has for 70 years, run a July Missions Conference, for which the 3-4 churches join together and take turns using their facilities. It is usually a week or more recently half-a-week, when missionaries home on furlough from the Saskatchewan Valley area are invited to come give short reports and show slides of their work.

The Conference committee works out a budget which tries to meet the financial needs of each missionary, whether single/couples or whole families' financial needs. Some years they have raised as much as $30,000-50,000 or more. All from a large rural area with mostly farmers and small town residents - (lots of retired seniors too!) come.

We eagerly listen to their reports, watch their slides and go chat with them at their display tables in the foyer before and after the service.

My earliest memories of attending there are from the early 1960s and then the only building large enough to hold the crowds was the hockey rink in Waldheim. When my baby sister, born in '59, and my brothers became restless, I was told to take them to the car. I didn't like missing the speakers, but I was grateful that the windows of the arena, which were like trap doors that opened from the bottom to let breezes into the building - allowed me to listen to speakers like Dr. Theodore Epp from the USA, as long as I could keep my siblings hushed up in in the car.

I am sure my passion for missions and missionaries began back in those late July mission conferences.

Now, during our recent COVID shut-down years, the conference had to be canceled. This year,they started up again. I was thrilled when I heard that!

I mentioned my plan to at least attend the Sunday evening service to my friend in a nursing home, whom I try to visit at least once a month on a Sunday afternoon. She was already lame on her right side since - as a baby, she got spinal meningitis. At the start of COVID she had not just one, but two cancer surgeries and has been bedridden since then. However, in the last few months she's been getting physio therapy to help her walk again. She told me she could walk if holding onto the rails along the hallways walls, and had been practicing getting in and out of a car.

I asked if she'd like to come along to Waldheim with me. She said an immediate YES. (She remembered coming with me some years ago, along with an elderly friend who used to be a missionary herself. She died in February of this year at 97). We'd had a picnic supper in a park there before the conference meeting.)

I prepared a picnic supper for us again, but what I didn't know was that my friend expected to go in her wheelchair. I used to lift Mom's, Gr'ma's and my brother Tom's wheelchairs in and out of the trunk of the car, but I had not done that for many years. I decided to be a good sport and do this, even though I had not intended to do it again, as I had fractured my lower back when I put Tom's wheelchair and out out of the trunk 12 times as we went to make arrangements for Dad's funeral together.

I'll spare you the detailed, play-by-play account, but yes, I believe one of my left ribs had a pop, and when I turn suddenly to the left, or stoop, or pick up something heavy, I am quite aware of that spot.

I was fortunate in that a stranger stopped to help me get the wheelchair in at the nursing home and others stepped up to help when we arrived at the church, and when we left. But when I had her back at her nursing home....I was on my own. Well, God was my Helper!

I'm going to have to insist that in the future she must be able to manage with nothing more than a walker. I can understand her great desire for an outing. She enjoyed the service, and I also enjoyed some hugs with missionaries that I have not seen for a number of years!

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