Hopefully each student and family has been contacted by a teacher, principal or school official

The BC government offers this and ODN gives this link to any student or parent interested

Keep Learning

Our neighbour to the south is having a hard time – the biggest problem in the world – next to China, Italy, Iran and other countries.

Here are some more facts – top ten

A note to my readership:

1. This is very serious
2. Canada is blessed with a good health system and vast distances between towns, tribes, cities and groups….
3. Our job is not to gloat but to isolate as much as possible with the belief this world wide situation that YOU cannot control or I CANNOT control – will come to end…. sooner than later we should hope.
4. Walk, breathe, drive, phone, internet it, keep in contact, wave, smile, stay positive – Mother Nature is our friend – respect her.

Now if you are going to get involved here – get serious

We all know a scenic hill for this?…..

1. But the project today is?……
2. More interesting is the when and the who and the big story

We are not interested in speed but the best description of what is desired by ODN – then I will decide if anyone gets a bottle……

SINGING THE BLUES                                                       

It seems to me that most people are singing the self isolation blues.  The common complaint heard over the phone these days seems to be “I am so bored”.  Most of us are at the ten or twelve day part of our fourteen days of staying isolated.

I agree it is really hard to find something to do to occupy us for days on end but we have to alter our thinking that we really need to be entertained to keep us happy.  I think most of us spent the first few days at home by catching up on those jobs that we had been putting off for ages, the boring jobs of cleaning out closets of no longer needed items.  arranging photographs in albums, doing some long awaited mending, in fact all those jobs that we put off because we have something more interesting to do.

My first few days at home I did a thorough house cleaning then I sorted my winter clothes and put them to the back of the closet, bringing spring and summer clothes nearer to the front, in the hope that I would soon be wearing them.  I went though drawers and took a look at swimsuits that I put away last fall, hoping they would be in good enough shape to wear for another season. I swim almost every summer day so like several suits to alternate. Many of the ‘not too bad’ items of last fall look decidedly thread bare in the spring sunlight, so out they went.

One of my favourite pastimes are crossword puzzles, but they only entertain me for so long, so I took to playing solitaire on my PC, engaging for a while but after an hour of putting a red five on to a black six, it gets boring.  I love to read but keep full length books for vacations when I can read for hours and not be interrupted, well I thought, this is a kind of holiday, so settled down to a book. Trouble with reading is it makes me drowsy so it was a couple of hours of reading then a ten minute nap.  I did this several times through the day and found that I didn’t need to sleep at night. Laying there, wide awake in the dark is extremely boring, so after a couple of sleepless nights, I restricted my reading times to two hours in the morning.

I still need to walk my dog and do that twice each day.  Down to the hike and bike trail, walk down to a bridge, cross the river and then walk back the other direction, through the park and back home.  This takes me about forty five minutes then home for coffee. After dinner it is shorter walk then back in the house in time for Jeopardy, where I pit my wits against the contestants.

This sort of routine goes on day after day and I feel rather like a hamster on a wheel.  My life seems so mindless, just trying to keep busy. How did our parents manage to live this kind of lifestyle right through two world wars?  One of the reasons they were never bored was because they didn’t have time to sit around. Their laundry took all day to wash and then hang outside to dry.  No machines to assist with this so quite often they would have to move laundry to and from the line to avoid the rain. All clothes were of man made materials that took forever to dry and then all needed ironing.  Most husbands wore white shirts with collars that had to be scrubbed before laundering, then starching and ironing. No permanent press convenience for our moms, even handkerchieves were boiled, dried and ironed, and forget disposable anything.  Laundry was a major chore.

Cooking meals was also a long chore, daily shopping because nobody had refrigeration, so meat, if available, was a daily purchase.  This was supplemented with huge amounts of potatoes and veggies, to disguise the fact that the meat was of such minute quantities. In those days there was nearly always a steamed pudding for dessert, so the evening meal must have taken much of the afternoon to prepare.

Women of the forties didn’t have many labour saving devices and certainly no television to watch, but evening would usually see the whole family sitting listening to the radio, listening to a comedy show or some form of light music.  Kids didn’t wander off to their own rooms to entertain themselves as the only heat would be in the kitchen or living room, the family spent time together until it was time for bed.

Our parents didn’t have much of anything but didn’t have time to be bored.  In Europe sleep was quite often interrupted by the air raid siren, which meant a bombing raid by the Germans.  Children were taken from their beds, blankets would be grabbed and the whole street would assemble in an air raid shelter, sometimes for an hour or two, sometimes for all night.  The daylight would see them emerge and go back home, but sometimes their home was gone, destroyed by a bomb.

We are also living through a war, the enemy doesn’t bomb our homes but it can destroy our spirits if we let it.  This state of affairs is very likely to go on for some time as each country battles with our common enemy. Instead of the military we have an army of doctors and nurses who are fighting a real battle.  Instead of griping about being bored, lets see what each one of us can do to make life better for ourselves and those around us. We will come through this war, maybe not in the next few weeks but like any battle, it will end one day, so lets hunker down and get ready for however long it takes.

New pickup procedure developed in response to the CoVic-19 guidelines.

The Oliver Food Bank will be open on April 1 during regular hours to serve those in need who live in Oliver.  On April 1, the Food Bank will be distributing larger quantities of food to last for 2 weeks.  Clients should come prepared to take home larger boxes and/or bags of food than normal.  Clients must show their Food Bank card through the window of the entrance door and then when directed to stand behind the red line which is 6 feet from the exit door to receive their food.  Ensuring the recommended social distance from all others is necessary for the safety of all clients and volunteers.  Anyone who has been out of the country during the 14 days prior to April 1 or has a cough, fever or other symptoms of illness or has been in contact with someone who is ill must not come to the Food Bank for the safety of all.

The Oliver Food Bank will be closed on April 8 but is expected to be open again on April 15 and every 2 weeks after that until further notice.

Julie Van Dusen
Oliver Food Bank

Yusuf Losuto

When I am tempted to complain about the inconveniences and destructive consequences of the current health and economic crises, I am wise to remember the following personal encounter during the year we were in Africa.

When my wife and I were in Kijabe, Kenya on a one-year short term mission, Yusuf was a student in one of my classes at Moffat Bible College. Some students would typically invite the teacher to come to their villages for a weekend. It would include visiting and preaching. I would gladly go every time I was asked, so when Yusuf invited me I agreed to go. I might have hesitated had I known the background to his story.

At age 12 his job was to be the goat herder for his father. The Pokot tribe Yusuf was born into was a nomadic tribe in a remote area of Kenya. Life was very difficult due to poverty, semi-desert conditions and tribal conflicts. Yusuf and 6 other goat herders his age were attacked by Turkana rustlers on horseback. The boys had spears, the Turkana had guns. Yusuf managed to hide under a bush. The other 6 were killed.

Understandably, Yusuf pleaded with his father to let him go to school instead of herding goats. His father refused because school wouldn’t make him a better goat herder. Yusuf didn’t want to herd goats – also understandable – so he ran away to a school run by missionaries. The father came to haul him back home but Yusuf fled again. This time the father threatened to kill him if he ran away again. “You won’t have to,” declared Yusuf. “I’ll just commit suicide.” The mother intervened and Yusuf got to go to school when a missionary agreed to pay for it. He started school at age 12 in a language (English) that he didn’t know. He stuck it out, graduated, became a Christian and was now (1992) a student a Moffat with the goal of going back to his tribe as a pastor. By this time the father’s attitude had mellowed.

Yusuf the Pokot, Biwot the Kalenjin, Dixon the Maasai and John the Kikuyu piled into my car. After the pavement and the gravel road petered out we drove through wilderness until the acacia thorn bushes prevented further progress. We passed a gravesite where Yusuf’s grandfather was buried. He was a Pokot hero for killing 100 Maasai enemies. I have a picture of Yusuf and Dixon shaking hands over his grave. We walked until we spotted beehive-shaped huts that served as this clan’s living quarters.

I say ‘clan’ because the father had 4 wives and a large family as you see in the picture.

 

Each wife had her own hut that she had constructed herself, a 2-day project each time they moved unless a previously built hut was still there. A tree branch cot with a goat skin was the bed, 3 stones served as the kitchen fireplace and a few ‘tools’ and a spear hung on the wall. Some metal cups and a plastic pail told me it was the 20th century, not the 15th. At the father’s command the whole clan gathered to listen to this white man, a rare guest. Some were visibly reluctant.

The idea of a Creator is generally accepted in these tribes so I briefly traced the story from creation to the cross, with Yusuf as interpreter. The focus was on God’s loving provision and forgiveness. There followed traditional expressions of thanks to the guest.

Then Yusuf and his brother brought a goat to me and asked if it was good enough. Puzzled, I said it certainly was but Yusuf decided to get a better one. There in front of me, while one person lifted the front legs, Yusuf plunged a spear into the goat’s heart, caught the blood in a bowl, and brought the goat to the women for meal preparation.

The men and some of the boys went for a walk where I saw a pond available to cattle and wild animals. This was the better source of water. A green algae covered the brown water in a slough that was the other option. The meal was delicious except for the chai made of tea and either goat’s milk or camel’s milk. I had seen the water source but refusing hospitality was a great insult.
Within one hour after the 6 hour trip back to Kijabe I became really sick for three days. I believe it was the Lord who kept me healthy long enough to drive back. There was no other driver.

Two weeks later I went on another ministry trip with a different student. I wanted to do what I could during the one year I was there.

Henry Wiebe