Editors:
Roelof & Theresa Janssen
Box 154, Neerlandia, AB
Canada T0G 1R0
e-mail: inhpubl@telusplanet.net
No. 12 July, 2004 English Edition
Dear Family and Friends
Welcome to a glimpse of life at our home. It has been another eventful year in which we have enjoyed God’s goodness. Our home will be the same as your home in it’s variations of joy, sorrow, pleasure, pain, disappointment, difficulty, and success. Daily we deal with our own sinfulness and wonder how God can continue to desire us as His children. What a joy and comfort to know that He upholds us in all things, picks us up when we fall and sets us on our way again. It is pure grace and we marvel at His goodness. This past year has been one of having things done, undone, and not done.
We would first of all like to share a marvellous event with you. On May 10 the Lord granted us a covenant child whom we named Michael William (just like his uncle). We stand in awe at the mystery of birth. More and more one cannot understand the wonder and beauty of it. It truly is a miracle. How thankful we were to be able to take this little one into our family. We all just love him thoroughly. The comfort of holding him in your arms never grows tired. The children enjoy him too. Paulina and Roelf Kars are old enough now to be a little mom and dad too. Roelf Kars especially has a real knack with our baby. He told me once that he wants to be a very good father. Delightful isn’t it! Michael seems to like him too. Katriena is a good helper too. There are so many jobs she does already. The oldest help with household chores, business chores, Paulina bakes delicious bread, farm chores, with the little ones (even with disciplining :-) !).
Yes, those farm chores. Roelf Kars faithfully milks the cow — his cow! Yes, he bought his own cow: a Holstein/Jersey cross. She even gave birth to a little bull for him. That will be a freezer full for us sometime. But, we don’t just have cows. Paulina has taken over my chores for the undetermined future. With a new baby the time to enjoy the goats is very limited for me. Paulina enjoys taking care of them and has learned to milk quite well. On April 13th our one doe gave birth to twins — a little buck to sell and a little doe to increase our herd. It was very exciting. The children then decided to start a contest: who would be next, Mommy or Rolinka (the cow)!?! Mmmm, I just smiled. Well, Mommy lost. The calf was born on May 7. As you can imagine, it all made for an exciting spring. And then of course we may not forget the chickens who daily supply us with eggs. We like that very much but we would also like to see a brood of chicks running after mama hen. But it doesn’t seem to happen. Maybe some day.
We are enjoying school again. After Michael was born we had a few weeks holidays. We picked it up again and hope to continue to the end of July. After that we hope to attend Wendy Janssen’s wedding in Smithers. Wendy is Roelof’s niece who came to Canada from Australia. She hopes to settle in B.C. so hopefully we will still see her from time to time. Hinne has the honour of being ring bearer. He is thrilled at the prospect. After we come home from Smithers we will have to get into the full swing of harvesting the garden. The four oldest children have their own garden plots so they will not only have to help in the big garden but clear out theirs too. It’s so exciting for them to sow little seeds into the soil and then see tiny leaves popping out of the ground. All their hard work was worth it. Often little feet will come flying inside to tell Mom that such and such a vegetable is up. Those beaming faces are wonderful. Mommy made a silly mistake (taking after brother Joel I suppose). I very nicely planted a row of beans and then even more nicely planted a row of lettuce over top. Well, they are both doing very well, so it is a peculiar looking row. Ah well, that is the fun of gardening. Last year and this year a kind of caterpillar got their stomachs full eating our berry bushes. Roelof attacked them with a vengeance. The bushes are loaded with fruit so we are not going to let them destroy our bushes if we can help it. When the garden is finished it will be time to dig into school again. It means summer will fly by. But while it’s here I’m drinking it in. I just love the warm summer days. Shoes on and out you go. The children revel in it too: biking, cutting trees, working in the garden, running, jumping, climbing trees and ropes, and just soaking in the sunshine. When Maria wakes up in the morning the first thing she usually says is, "Buite!" (which means, I want to go outside). She can turn door handles now, so before you know it she will be outside in whatever state she is: in pyjamas, in very few clothes at all, bare feet, socked feet, in any way she can. Juliana follows suit in her desire for the outdoors, but she is much more conscience of propriety. You dress according to the situation, and if she isn’t sure she always asks. Juliana always tells me what she is doing or what she is going to do. Maria just does things. She has a mind of her own! No exaggeration! But she is cute too. She is learning how to talk — how we laugh sometimes. But do not leave anything lying around because it will be made very good use of. Let me tell you one of her exploits. One of the children had been gluing and left the glue bottle on their desk. Are you laughing already? Thankfully I was given the grace to laugh too because it was a sight to behold. On the floor lay a puddle of glue with a pencil case full of pencil crayons strewn about in that gooy white fluid. There was also glue on the desk and on Maria. There had been plenty to go around because it was a new bottle. Well, after enjoying herself for I don’t know how long (but long enough for glue to dry substantially) I came into the kitchen and . . . Oef! How do you handle that. It took quite a bit of patience to clean that up. But I sure laughed when I had to literally peel the clothes off my little daughter because they were stuck! Well, that’s Maria!
I better put Hinne’s name in before it gets forgotten. He is our quiet thinker. His eyes and ears just drink it all in and then he wonders . . . Can you eat if you stand on your head, because then food can’t go down? If you throw a stone into a cloud will it rain? Delightful questions. And it’s not only questions. Caterpillars, injured butterflies, bugs of all kinds get brought to Mommy for observation or medical treatment. Worms get re-buried (after being dug up for observation) so that they can make more air holes in the ground. On July 13 Hinne went to visit the foot doctor again. It was the last visit. Everything has gone so well. He continues to run, jump, bike, etc. Despite some other physical difficulties this past winter he smiles a lot and continues to grow and mature. He was allowed to go with Daddy and Paulina to Vancouver for a week to spend time at Richard and Rieneke Dykstra’s while Roelof and Paulina sold books at a convention. He thoroughly enjoyed himself and didn’t even miss Mommy, even though he did have to call her just because he wanted too. Hinne picked up school again too and is doing well. He loves to play with his big brother but is also very good friends with Juliana.
We are privileged with hearing lots of music in the house too. Paulina is an avid keyboardist. She is doing well on the organ and the piano and also enjoys playing the recorder. Katriena is working on it too and also does well. Juliana likes to sing (on tune) and so we hear things like, "Hall-u-a, hall-u-a." Today Paulina taught her to say, "Ha-lay-lu-jah." It worked. Then Maria pipes in with "Holy, holy, holy, holy, holy." Even in church, at any given time Maria will pipe up with singing, "Holy, holy, holy." We all enjoy singing and do it regularly.
Katriena is leaving little girlhood behind and entering big girlhood. Sometimes it’s nice and sometimes it’s hard. She is generally an enthusiastic worker. She likes her share of taking care of baby Michael. In fact, she has a finger which he loves to suck on. It’s the only finger in this household which he has taken a fancy too. Somehow, Katriena can stick that particular finger in his mouth and ahhhh, he’s as content as ever. We sure chuckle about that. Katriena and Hinne are our avid strawberry pickers. They bring in a continuous stream so it’s time to start making jam. Everyone is excited about that.
Business is going well. Roelof keeps busy but summer is what you might gingerly call the "slow" time. Yet, he is able to spend a fair amount of time enjoying himself in the garden. Once a week he takes the children swimming — that is, the oldest five. Juliana is thrilled to be able to go now too.
We have enjoyed various visitors throughout the year. It was especially good to have my Beppe (grandmother) visit us for a time last summer. My dad (Pake for our children) took her along when he came to help build our barn. And so Pake and Beppe flew to Alberta tp[-ogether. Juliana knew that Pake and Oma belonged together but now she always talks about Pake, Beppe and Oma. Somehow the three of them are now inseparably connected together for her. Other special visitors were Dad and Mom during the Christmas and New Year Holidays and Rachel (my sister in law) who came a week after Michael was born. It is so good to have those family (and friends) visitors.
Talking about travelling, Roelof convinced me to join him on the concert tour of Harm Hoeve and Noortje Van Middelkoop this past fall. Both of our concert artists took their spouses along so we enjoyed a busy tour together. We travelled through Alberta to southern British Columbia and back to southern Alberta to finish the tour. The day of departure for our guests was a surprise because we woke up to a roaring blizzard. It took twice as long to get our guests to the airport and then we had a two hour drive ahead of us to arrive at our evening accommodations. Well, we never made it. So, carefully we managed to arrive in a little town to find a motel. Everything was full. We had no choice but to go on to the next town, thankfully they were not full yet. So we went out for dinner and enjoyed a quiet evening together. When we finally arrived home the next day we were very thankful. Winter had struck and didn’t leave until late this spring. But now the robins are singing and the butterflies dancing on the gentle breeze. It’s summer. We have a new season ahead of us to fill with joy and thanksgiving, work and play, learning and practising. May God grant all of us a safe and pleasant summer. Good bye, until we write again.
Roelof and Theresa Janssen
Paulina, Roelf Kars, Katriena, Hinne, Juliana, Maria, Michael
For pictures look at:
http://www.telusplanet.net/public/inhpubl/webip/Michael.htm