We got home last night from a visit to our granddaughter Tami and the congregation at Carrot River. This morning I got up at 7:30 and prepared to face the day, then sat down at my computer and almost made a serious error in bookkeeping for a client. The light dawned on me in time and all is well, but I’m wondering if maybe my brain wasn’t yet firing on all cylinders this morning.

Our cats were happy to see us and by this morning they were peacefully resting as if we hadn’t been gone all weekend. We have five house cats, which no doubt makes us an oddity among Mennonites. But the cats seem contented and we are too.

I guess I’m an oddity among Mennonites in other ways. For one, I think French is a much more interesting and useful language than Plautdietsch, or any other form of German. But I love my brothers and sisters in the faith, even the staunchest proponents of Plautdietsch, and I feel loved in return.

Tami teaches in the private school run by the Carrot River congregation. This is her third year teaching there and this was the first time we have gone to visit her. The youth of the congregation put on a seniors supper every fall, inviting neighbours from the community. Tami invited us to the supper and so we went. It is a 400 km drive, not just a day trip. We left at noon on Friday and drove, the driver fuelled by Tim Hortons cold brew coffee.

It is over 20 years sice we had driven that highway, so the Millenium Cross north of Aberdeen was a new sight for us. It is a 100 foot (just over 30 metres) tall cross, erected by the Knights of Columbus and the Ukrainian Catholic Church as a memorial to babies killed by abortion. On the way home we saw that it is illuminated at night.

My wife has a cousin who lives about ten minutes from the church. They had never met before, but had visited on the phone. So Chris asked permission from Tami and invited Rita and her husband, Harvey Fast, and we sat together at the family supper. Rita, who is a Forsyth by birth, is in her eighties and still very lively. She and Chris visited a mile a minute all through the evening.

We spent our nights in the home of Earl and Karen Reimer. Earl gave me a tour of his repair shop Saturday morning and there I met his grandson who is in Tami’s class at school. He thinks Miss Klassen is a pretty neat teacher and I told him I thought she was a pretty neat granddaughter. We met Tami for lunch at the Prairie Angel Bakery and Patisserie in Carrot River, then went to see the house where she and the other two teachers live. In the evening another couple invited the three of us to join them for dinner at Gieni’s restaurant.

Tami’s car was involved in an accident a week before we came and she is now driving a rental car. Her car was parked on the street in front of the house and she was inside the house. She heard a commotion outside and looked out the window to see her car and a pickup truck facing each other with the front ends of both smashed in. I feel sorry for Tami who now has to deal with the insurance company and shop for a new car. I also feel sorry for the young lad who hit her car. He had only had a drivers license for a month or two and was driving his dad’s nearly new pickup. I’m not sure what consequences he faces, but I would not want to be in his shoes.

We worshipped with the Carrot River congregation Sunday morning. Earl and Karen invited a crowd to their home for dinner, including Tami and her fellow teachers. It was during dinner that a chance remark by someone clued me in to the fact that Natalie, the young lady at the far end of the table, was the daughter of Roger Penner who had attended the same school as Tami’s mother.

We said our good-bys at 3:30, gave Tami a farewell hug and headed for home. We made a stop in the town of Carrot River to fuel the car, a stop at Tim Horton’s in Melfort to fuel the driver, a stop in Saskatoon to buy a few groceries, and arrived home at 8:30.

I am struck by how little time it has taken for a cute little girl to become a charming and mature young woman. Of course, we did not have the responsibility of raising her. Our daughter and son-in-law raised her and her three siblings. We raised her mother and often felt we weren’t doing a very good job of it. With time it has become clear to me that our children need to know that their parents make mistakes. How else would they learn how to deal with the mistakes that they make?

What children need the most is to know that they are loved and that their parents, and grandparents, are committed to obeying the will of their heavenly Father.