2018 Ken Martin Family Update

A Few of our Favorite Things... in 2018 A Favorite Person (for Ken & me) We’ve had another year of ordinary and extraordinary experiences as a married couple - times of laughter and feeling close to each other and times of tears and working through challenges or misunderstandings. We celebrated our 30th anniversary in October. We plan to extend the celebration by going on a two-week trip to Costa Rica at the end of January. We’re so excited – the day Ken booked our flights and made the reservation for our week at a seaside resort, we were practically dancing with happy anticipation.  A Favorite Family We are so blessed to call this particular group of people, The Kenites, our family. We always enjoy spending time with our little tribe, whether it’s in our own living room or backyard, on a trip, at a cottage or at a local event. Some family time highlights this year include the February Family Day outing that Ken, Kerra and I had when we visited Kayleen at Faith Builders in Guys Mills, PA (where she was a student in a two-year teacher training course). We got to sit in on her classes and interact with some of her classmates. Later, our whole family attended Kayleen’s graduation at FB on May 19. Another lovely together time was when we all stayed at a cottage near Tobermory, ON for a few days in August. We greatly enjoyed relaxing, canoeing, playing games, cooking, reading, and exploring/hiking at The Grotto, a gorgeous area on the shore of Georgian Bay in Bruce Peninsula National Park. For last year’s Christmas gift, Ken gave the family tickets to a play, “To Kill a Mockingbird”. It was very enjoyable to watch that (and then discuss our impressions of it afterward) one evening in September. There were also the rather impromptu gatherings for family birthdays or “just because” that were special, too. We all love being with Rolin & Joy at their house in Hawkesville (about 10 minutes from our house) and with Ricky & Jasmine in their basement apartment home in Etobicoke, a district of Toronto, where they moved in September to be closer to Ricky’s school (he’s finishing up a 3-year course in graphic design at Humber College).  A Favorite Visitor In July, a fine young man named Carlin Atkinson started showing up at our house some weekends. His main purpose in coming here has been getting to know Kayleen better. Carlin comes from Lock Haven, PA, but his current job is at Faith Builders as “the IT guy”. He is smart, keen on details, and is very thoughtful of others – especially Kayleen. 😊 We love it when he comes. Other visitors we enjoyed hosting at different times throughout the year were “Bear” (aka Keith Yates), our blind, burly, beloved friend who pays us a visit every fall, Schrock relatives who came to take in a birthday celebration for “Grandpa Brenneman”, and Kayleen’s FB friends. For instance, when the Faith Builders Chorale came through our area, Kayleen had the nine girls in her class here as overnight guests. Ken gave me some outdoor furniture for my birthday this year. I liked using the umbrella table and chairs out on our new backyard patio area numerous times this summer when we hosted groups such as Ken’s Grade 10 classmates, our small Bible Study group, and some of our orchard workers when their relatives were up from Trinidad for a visit.     A Favorite Trip In July, Ken & I, Ricky & Jasmine and Kayleen went on a trip to Wisconsin and Minnesota where we had three family reunions – small, medium and large in size. We started out by spending several days with my family, the Tribe of Dan as we call it, at a church campground (with cottages) on the shores of Clam Lake, WI. We did the usual eating, gabbing, playing Wiffle ball and reminiscing that we do at Schrock reunions, but we also did a unique activity which made special memories. As a family, we sang the choruses and some of the solos/duets/special parts of the cantata “David the Shepherd Boy”, directed by Dad. From that campground we traveled to Camp Jim in MN for a big Kauffman reunion, which includes my uncles & aunts and their descendants on Mom-Eva’s side of the family. On the way there, we stopped at a park where we met Ken’s sister Laurel and Verlynn’s family for a picnic and a few hours of visiting and playing Spikeball. That was the mini reunion in between the medium and large ones. Fun times were had by all. A Favorite Church Social I’d actually be rather hard pressed to choose a favorite among the ethnic meal, the literary/talent night and the weekend-long church camping event as some of the church socials we had this year. Ken & I were the senior couple of the team to plan Grace Church’s monthly activities, so we put extra thought and energy into these times. It was rewarding to see the large group enjoying what we had designed for an event. Perhaps the latest events with our church family have been more special with the knowledge that these will be the last with Grace Church as we know it. We are starting a second congregation in the Kitchener-Waterloo area. Lord willing, this new group will begin to hold services in March of this year. Our family plans be a part of this new venture.   A Favorite Outing In March, I took Kayleen & Kerra and Joy & Jasmine, my “Dear Daughs and DILs”, on our third almost-annual KM Ladies’ Outing. We four locals (at the time) drove to Erie, PA on a Friday night and Kayleen drove over from Faith Builders to meet us there. We had a nice supper at a restaurant near our motel that evening, after which we hung out in our motel room. We had a good discussion on our one-word theme for the weekend this year - “change”.  The next day we went to some bookstores, thrift stores and regular shopping places. After a lovely late lunch at Olive Garden, we headed home, getting back to our menfolk in decent time on a Saturday evening. A Favorite Announcement One Friday evening in October when Ken and I were home alone, Rolin phoned to share some special news. We are going to be grandparents! Yay!! I think if you would have sneaked up on Ken or me during the next few days after that, you could have easily caught us smiling to each other or to ourselves. Rolin and Joy’s baby is due to arrive in April, so we have a few more months to prepare for grandparenthood, if there is such a thing. Certainly the wee one is already mentioned in our prayers.  Some Favorite Joys-after-mourning March was a difficult month for us. One chilly evening we got the startling news that Martin’s large apple storage building in Vienna (MFFF orchards site, located a good hour’s drive from here) was on fire! The entire structure was destroyed, along with apple storage equipment and a quarter of last year’s apple crop. The heaps of twisted metal and blackened fruit in the smoking ruins made such a disheartening scene, but it wasn’t long until tendrils of hope began to appear in the whole situation. And always, there was the gratitude that no human life was lost in the fire. Clean-up seemed to take a long time. Over the summer, rebuilding commenced with the promise that storage space would be available in the new building for the 2018 apple crop. God arranged for this to happen, using the skills of many workers. The electrical work was delayed considerably; the equipment was finally up and running “on its own” weeks after all the harvest was in, making us thankful for a powerful generator in the meantime. Around the same time as the storage fire occurred, Ken’s dad got the results of some medical testing he’d had and it wasn’t good news. The doctors discovered cancer in his colon. In May, Dad Martin had surgery to remove the cancer. Thanks to the Great Healer, the surgery was successful and Dad didn’t need any further cancer treatment. It is such a blessing to see that Dad’s health has recovered over the months since his surgery. Now he is waiting on another surgery date - he is having a lot of pain in his one hip which needs to be replaced.  A Favorite Lesson Learned Kerra attended SMBI, a Bible School in PA, for a 6-week term in the Spring. She also went on the week-long choir tour following term, so she was gone seven consecutive weeks in April and May. Since she had teaching responsibilities at Countryside School, (teacher’s helper in Gr. 1, tutor in Gr. 2, music teacher for Grades 1-4, teacher of a few other classes) she had to find a sub for those weeks she was absent…and it seemed – at the time – to make the most sense to have her mom fill in for her. I was glad to make it possible for Kerra to experience Bible School and for the most part, I enjoyed my teaching stint, but I was not prepared for just how much it would stretch me. At times I allowed my perfectionism to reign and took the job too seriously before I learned heavy dependence on the Master Teacher. Still, there are numerous fun – and funny – times I recall from my time at CCS. One day the second-grade boy I tutored had the word “mission” in his new spelling list; to introduce the word to him I asked if he’d ever heard of someone going on the mission field. He nodded and pointed to a picture of a field out west in his spelling book and declared that it was a mission field. This same student, a farmer at heart, told me in spelling class that he didn’t know about the town kind of mayor, but he knows about a mother horse “mayor”. I chuckled over this sentence on a first-grade girl’s paper: “One time the hiderow whent of.” (Perhaps it would help you in decoding this message to know that here in Canada we sometimes refer to electricity as “hydro”) Another lol moment was the time I was waiting on a second-grade boy to come in for recess and one of the girls in his class told me that I’d be waiting a long time because he was in England! Turns out he was in London, ON for an appointment that day! A Favorite Quote In closing, here is a quote that describes our thoughts well as we stand at the Year Gate, thinking back over 2018 while peering into 2019: “And I said to the man who stood at the gate of the year: ‘Give me a light that I may tread safely into the unknown.’ And he replied: ‘Go out into the darkness and put your hand into the Hand of God. That shall be to you better than light and safer than a known way.’ So I went forth, and finding the Hand of God, trod gladly into the night. And He led me towards the hills and the breaking of day in the lone East.” This was written by Minnie Haskins as a preamble to her poem called “God Knows”. Minnie served as a missionary in India for awhile; does the last line, “in the lone East”, refer to India? Could we also read into it an allusion to Jesus? He is our Daybreak, and He will return for us one day, “splitting the eastern sky” as some songs describe it. Into your life wherever you find yourself right now, may your Daybreak dawn! With Love for our Favorite Friends! Thank you for your friendship and your contribution to our lives. It is truly a gift. Gratefully, Ken & Danette, Kayleen and Kerra Martin