This morning we spent a second or two thinking about the month of March. It started when Edgar mentioned that Samuel wanted a new month. He was tired of March. I think we all agreed with him. Other years the weather would have brought this statement. Although we are waiting for spring to arrive in Alberta (the snow just doesn’t want to leave us yet), the bigger reason is circumstances this year. Sometimes I’ve agreed with the trite phrase “I wish I could wake up and realize that it’s all a big, bad dream.” And yet, the peace and nearness of God is so precious that I am hard pressed as to what I would like better:  His closeness or the absence of cancer in our lives.

It’s not been easy. No, it’s a hardship that we would have gladly omitted from our life if possible. First the cruel fact that Mama had cancer. Then the wait for an appointment. BTW, I totally agree with the fact that it takes patience to learn patience. But praise the LORD for His faithfulness. We got a call on Monday, March 17 and then an appointment for the next day. After waiting in the Health Science Centre quite a while, (waiting again :-)), Mama saw a Doctor. She seemed very positive so we were very glad. She arranged for Mama to have a surgery to remove a greater area of skin and a lymph node removed. That surgery was on Thursday of this week. Mama and Daddy left for Calgary on Wednesday already since they wanted to do some tests beforehand. We children stayed at home. On Thursday, Tante Janice had invited us for lunch and supper. May God Bless you for your efforts, Tante Janice. We really appreciated that. We left soon after supper since Mama and Daddy were home already. What a blessing to be a family again! What a relief to hand the responsibility of being in charge to more capable shoulders!

Although Mama didn’t feel well yesterday forenoon, she is doing a lot better. We are very glad to have her around even if she isn’t quite herself. Tante Marcie brought us supper yesterday and yours truly was very relieved to have it taken care of. Daddy and I went to Grassy Lake to look at a car and… yes, he bought it. A 2007 Dodge Caliber. I’m looking forward to driving a smaller vehicle. 🙂

Mama is planning on taking all four of her daughters to a Ladies’ Retreat in Montana on April 9,10, and 11. At first I wasn’t very excited but now that we are planning on going (if Mama feels strong enough), I’m starting to get excited. The day before we leave, Mama has an appointment in Calgary to get the results of the surgery. Please continue to pray that she will have good news for us. We are hoping for the best: a Mama pronounced free of cancer!

So, even though God has been close to us this month, I am not sorry to see March march on.

Trusting the All-Powerful,

Yesenia Unger

“Why does this song keep rolling through my head?” Daddy wondered as he came home from Men’s Seminar a few weeks ago. He didn’t know but he decided to enjoy it. The verses of this hymn are worth a lot.

How firm a foundation, ye saints of the Lord, Is laid for your faith in His excellent Word! What more can He say than to you He hath said, To you who for refuge, To you who for refuge, To you who for refuge to Jesus have fled?

Fear not I am with thee, O be not dismayed; For I am thy God, and will still give thee aid; I’ll strengthen thee help thee, and cause thee to stand, Upheld by My righteous, Upheld by My righteous, Upheld by my righteous omnipotent hand.

When through the deep waters I call thee to go, the rivers of sorrow shall not overflow;  For I will be with thee, thy troubles to bless, And sanctify to thee, and sanctify to thee, and sanctify to thee thy deepest distress.

When through fiery trials thy pathway shall lie, My grace all sufficient shall be thy supply; The flame shall not hurt thee: I only design Thy dross to consume, Thy dross to consume, Thy dross to consume and thy gold to refine.

The soul that on Jesus hath leaned for repose, I will not, I will not desert to his foes; That soul, though all hell should endeavour to shake, I’ll never, no never, I’ll never no never, I’ll never, no never, no never forsake.

(E. F. Miller)

‘ “Why?” “Why us? We’re the perfect family.” “Why now?” ‘ Questions like these and others found their way into my diary. I realized that I was already letting the seed of bitterness take root. Even after this realization, the “why’s” didn’t get answers. I still do not know why God has let Mama have cancer but I do know that He doesn’t make mistakes. I started trusting God and His Will and I got perfect peace. It was so great that I couldn’t sleep. I had to write about it.

‘ “And the peace of God which passes all understanding shall keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.”

“When Peace Like a River” what a blessed state. My heart is overfull. God is so near. This peace is so great, it almost feels wrong. Shouldn’t I be worried? I mean, this is serious. Why am I so calm? Thank you Lord for Your Peace and Your Nearness.’

I read Daily Light for my devotions and after the diagnosis, almost every entry was for me.

Proverbs 3:5,6 Trust in the Lord with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding. in all thy ways acknowledge Him, and He shall direct thy paths. Trust in Hm at all times; ye people, pour out your hear before Him: God is a refuge for us.

Psalm 55:22-Isaiah 53:4 Cast thy burden upon the Lord, and He shall sustain thee.–Surely He hath borne our griefs and carried our sorrows.

There were many more and I was very blessed, especially as I had been missing ‘life’ in my devotional life.

Now we know (at least partly) why this song came to Daddy. If you have time, read it over again. It’s such a blessing and a comfort.

True, melanoma cancer wouldn’t have been our choice. But what would be? I had been sensing that a hardship was probably on our doorstep. I was praying that we as a family would draw closer to God and I realized that it would probably mean something difficult. As you look at the lives of godly people that you have respect for, what do you see in their history? Blue skies, green pastures? More likely it was the Valley of the Shadow of Death. This thought frightens me. I’m human, I don’t want hardship. I want an easy life. But I also do not want a shallow Christian life. What kind of sift/funnel am I holding between me and God? “God, I really do want to be like You, but please, don’t use __________.” Am I placing God in a box, limiting His ability to transform me by His Almighty Power? If I do this, I also limit the amount of Grace God can pour into me. Now this sounds complicated and scary. However, all I need to do is to be willing to be obedient and accept God’s will for my life.

I don’t know what the future will bring. Sickness? Death? Or Healing? Health? This is all unknown but I do know that God is on the throne and that He holds the future in His hand. In fact, He knew before the creation of the world that our dear Mama would be affected by melanoma skin cancer. Should I not, then, trust Him completely and totally?

Written from Yesenia’s Perspective.

P.S. If you have the book, Angels Over Waslala read the chapter “Under the Shadow of the Almighty” replacing the word ‘robbers’ with the word ‘cancer’. That expresses my heart.

This blog has been too left-behind lately, don’t you all agree? I thought what I had to post wasn’t interesting enough but now that I’m at it, I don’t know what goes first. An important thing to me is our renovation so I guess I’ll update a bit on that. During our cold snap, the guys (meaning Horizon’s crew) reframed some walls. A little over a week ago, the insulators came and sprayed all the exterior walls with a damp proofing insulation. The rooms that have that insulation are now warmer than the rest of the basement. Yesterday, the “handy-man” came and installed the bathtub. One big disappointment has been that we don’t know if we’ll be able to use our wood stove. We’re praying that it will work. The inspector hasn’t been here yet.

Alright, enough of my ‘hobby-horse’ topic. Daddy’s just now on his way home from a Kingdom Discipleship for Men Seminar. We really missed him. We had a busy week though.

On Tuesday, Tante Janice and Tante Gloria came over and Joshua and I went to Medicine Hat. I was late for my piano lesson because I had forgotten which time he said last week. It was different than usual because the Conservatory had a Magic of Music thing were teachers came from different parts of Canada (at-least) came and taught selected students.

On Wednesday, it was 3 years since our dear cousin Caleb left this world. The Aunts and Cousins came to Grandma and Grandpa’s house for the Aunts to quilt. At snack, we reminisced about Caleb and Tante Marcie told us more about how she felt when they lost him.

On Thursday, we went to Tante Janice’s (Uncle Nacho wasn’t home either) and re-upholstered their kitchen chairs. We did ours not so long ago.

I won’t tell you what we did on Friday, just in case Daddy reads this. Or what we’re planning on doing today for that matter.

My apologies for not pictures. It is my fault but I feel like blaming it on busyness and the fact that we lost our pictures. Rejoice with me that I am able to get all the pictures that I posted on the blog back onto our iPhoto library, full quality. Praise the Lord!

I’d better move on with this day, working on the ‘surprise’ and praying that Daddy will make it home safely. He’s very tired so we’re praying that he won’t fall asleep on the way home.

Trusting the Shepherd,

Yesenia

A lot has happened since I did the last blog post. A lot of you have received emails from me and so this post will not be all new for you. The week after we got back from Montana, I had a wonderful week. I could do all my schoolwork in a day and then help Mama besides which hadn’t really happened in this school year yet. The next week was (so far) one of the worst school weeks for me. On Monday, our laptop crashed. Well the hard drive got erased after a strong magnet came in contact with the laptop. This was very discouraging as we do Rosetta Stone, Math, and Typing on the laptop besides keeping financial records and storing our music and pictures on it. I had put our music on an external hard drive and (I thought) all our pictures. On Thursday we went for piano lessons and I dropped off the laptop at Future Shop. The technician there said that it would cost $150 plus the price of a hard drive.

It was also our turn to bring snack to youth night so we shopped for that. A big job out of the way! I had a very busy day on Friday: school, watching Horizon work next door, cleaning the house, and preparing snack for 40-60? youth. This was our first ‘normal’ youth night after Christmas so there was a lot of youth. I was worried that I wouldn’t have brought enough snack. While we had devotions, I prayed for the miracle of the five-thousand. Guess what? I brought leftovers home. Now you might think that it was coincidence but I choose to believe that it was the hand of God.

We found out that the laptop is still under warranty but that it could take up to 13 business days for it to be fixed. This was disappointing but what were we to do about it? We did the schoolwork we could and waited. Yesterday we went for piano lessons again and I had a very good lesson. Corrections with Compliments, what a blessing! Mama and the children did shopping while I had my lesson and then afterward we did some more shopping. It was later by the time we got home but a surprise awaited us. Daddy had the laptop! They had been working close to Medicine Hat. Daddy left early and once he got home, they called him and said that the laptop was done. Eric was still at the job so Daddy asked him to pick it up. I started putting our stuff back onto the laptop since it was like a new computer. I found out to my great dismay that not nearly all of our pictures were on our hard drive. Except for a few here and there, I was missing almost 2 years of pictures. The photographer’s greatest horror especially as I had just gotten a new camera. I found a program that can take the deleted pictures off of our memory cards so I hope (after $40-50) that it will do the trick. I had just emptied all of our memory cards because I though they were on our hard drive. If I would have double checked my previous backup onto it, I could have saved a lot of grief but I have decided not to live on regrets. So just a friendly reminder, data is never quite safe even on a computer.

BTW We have worked a lot in our basement the last few weeks. My room is stripped with no wall between it and the bathroom. An en suite? Not quite. Daddy cut a bigger window into my room and now there is a layer of fine dust all over it. We’re hoping to work there more tomorrow. This renovation is a challenge for us as we don’t know if we’re staying in this house or not. If we were to stay, we would go more thorough but what if our house sells and we find an acreage. We’ve been praying for wisdom and God’s leading.

Our bi-annual family-reunion/camping trip didn’t work this summer because we had three babies ‘lined-up’. We decided to do it during the winter this year instead. On Monday, we left Canada and headed for Kalispell. We oldest cousins wanted to go snowboarding but they didn’t want us to do it during the trip so we left one day early. We met at a motel in Kalispell. We got there earlier so the children had a lot of time to swim.

Leandro and Micah both weren’t too fond of the pool so they had fun on the laptop.

On Tuesday, we got ready and left for Whitefish Ski Resort. I was sick on Monday and had almost given up snowboarding but on Tuesday I felt better and decided to go after all. Once we got to the resort we found out that my snow pants weren’t in the trailer so that made my decision for me. I was disappointed but I wasn’t over my cold anyway so I just watched.

The triplets and Samuel took two half-day lessons since they had never snowboarded before.

On the way up the magic carpet.

After snowboarding, we headed to Glacier Bible Camp. Everybody else was there already.

 

The snowboarders had enough for one day.

Two tired buddies.

Playing Farming Game

Playing with their new lip balm.

Danielle

Natalia

Three happy amigos

Abigail

Daddy helping prepare breakfast.

 

If you don’t recognize this girl, check her adorable bib.

These boys were not impressed with their job of drying the dishes.

My job was to load the dishwasher. (BTW Operating a commercial dishwasher is lots of fun)

Playing with perlerbeads

The dishes were very hot.

 

There was a nice sledding hill which gave the children and their parents a lot to do.

Jaden

Elfrieda and Evan

Danielle again

Mama and Leandro

Waiting in line at the top of the hill.

Uncle Rudolf trying the snow scooter.

Tante Annie and her little boy, Joash.

Leandro

Tante Joelyn and Sheryl

Sisters.

Duplos

Busy cousins getting the decorations ready for supper.

Cody and Leandro

Little cousins in matching outfits. Damian and Joash

Grandpa

Elfrieda and Evan again.

Three happy cousins.

 

The ‘oldest’ cousins. (These are some of my closest friends.)

This puzzle was so addicting that it was done in one day. (1000 pieces)

Playdough

I was photographer for this family.

Supper on its way.

Arm wrestles.

Elfrieda, Mckenzie, Janaya, and Danielle.

Chubby Bunny (It’s actually a bit of a gross game if you ask me.)

Riverbank provided fun for all ages. We played quite a few interesting games including “Do you know how to play rabbit?”, “Camel”, “Candy shop”, “Physiology”, and a game that consisted of two rows of men touching fingers with a broomstick laid across the fingers. This broomstick had to be let down to the floor while all fingers were touching the stick: almost an impossibility.

We had a lot of fun together as a family.

We left the camp yesterday but had a hard time getting home. A few couples had to stay in Kalispell for the night, Frank and Elaine had alternator trouble, and the rest of us had lots of snow coming through the mountains and the rest of the roads were not fit for speed limit driving. But we made it home safely and we are very thankful. We came home to a lot of snow and cold weather.

Waiting for lunch…

 

Serving beans, Chile Colorado, two kinds of rice, etc.

Lindsay

Groszmama and her sisters-in-law and friends.

The cake

The ‘younger’ ladies

Groszmama with her son and his family.

Groszmama with her daughter-in-law.

 

Groszmama and her brother with his wife.

Another with his wife

Groszmama and the brothers she has left.

Happy amigos

Groszmama, almost hidden by her grandchildren and great-grandchildren

Groszmama with her daughter and family

A granddaughter and her family.

A grandson with his family

Another grandson with his family.

And another grandson with his family

 

The girls enjoyed their time together.

…for over a week already…

Sorry to all you readers for neglecting our blog. I often get frustrated at other bloggers for not posting more often but when it comes to me… I know why I’m not posting. Usually the excuse is busyness.

We have had a good time at home even though we are busy. We came home to a lot of snow. Saturday was spent cleaning out the trailer and cleaning up the things that were in it as well as getting back into routine. The program on Sunday went well and was well attended. We had Horizon Contractor’s Christmas Supper on Tuesday for supper. On Thursday, we had our last piano lesson in 2013. I don’t think my best lesson went better than this one did. On Friday we cleaned our house. I shouldn’t tell you this because it’s routine but I felt so fulfilled and it felt so clean that I went against the rules.

Saturday was our youth group’s Christmas banquet. After a very good supper, we played some very interesting games. i.e. Drawing a picture in a plate that was on our head, Left-Right, and a “Words-within-a-word” game. The gift exchange took quite a while with around 95 people, but at least it was interesting to watch.

Sunday evening we were part of a Homeschooler’s Christmas program. The girls got sick the next day and they said it was because they had been so nervous. I was so nervous that my voice shook in the solo part and I didn’t get sick. 🙂

Yesterday, I took all of my siblings along to Extended Care in the hospital and we did some carolling. In the evening I went carolling with a part of our youth group here in Bow Island. It was quite enjoyable and I was surprised at how well carollers are accepted. You know, if you would try this at any other time of the year, you would get doors slammed in your face. But now, you’re accepted with many “Thank-You’s” and “Merry Christmas’s”.

 

Merry Christmas from the Unger Family

To a lot of us, 40 years of age seems somehow “old” if you want to put it that way. But to me, Daddy isn’t old even if he is 40 now. True, he’s 24 years older than me, but he’s always been that anyway. And the saying I discovered on this trip describes it well:

Birthdays are good for you. The more you have, the longer you live.

Thank you Daddy for being our provider. Providing, not only the essential physical needs, but also the more essential spiritual ones. Thank you for being willing to be different and passing that on to your children. I realize that that is a needful virtue these days. As Christians in this world, but also in the world of Christendom where those who live according to the Bible and the conviction of the Holy Spirit are bound to be different.

Thank you for sacrificing your comforts for the happiness of others, especially your family. i.e. Spending your birthday in a van whose occupants aren’t in total agreement (or at least not in the best frame of mind) after a number of hours of traveling.

A personal thank you for doing your best to enable me to attend the program on Sunday. I know you would have enjoyed spending more time with friends and relatives and yet you sacrifice that so that I can be part of the program. (For those of you in the area, you are invited to the Cherry Coulee Gym in Bow Island at 4:00 Sunday afternoon for a Christmas program by the Tween Valley Youth.)

May God bless you with another happy and fulfilled year (or another 40?)

Yesenia, for the rest.

P.S. I hope to add pictures once I have better internet.