My husband Dave is now a member of the Faith and Life male choir and I joined him when he gave his first performance at a fundraising banquet for a Mennonite nursing home this week. I was seated beside a delightful woman named Marian who told me all about her years living in Berlin during the Cold War, the four-year old orphan she and her husband had adopted from Vietnam, and the wine tasting fundraiser she is hosting in her home in November for the Winnipeg Singers choir. We found we had endless connections. She and her late husband were good friends with the former editors of the Mennonite Mirror, a magazine for which I was a staff writer for many years. Marian’s husband was born in Gnadenthal where my Dad was born. Marian had lived in Newton, Kansas and knew my aunt and uncle there. She had been a nurse in the hemodialysis unit at St. Boniface Hospital where my mother was an out-patient and Marian had visited Hong Kong where I lived for six years.
I really enjoyed the talks at the banquet by the nursing home chaplains who described some of the things they try to do to enrich the spiritual journey of people nearing the end of their lives. This included assisting them in writing their memoirs, planning meaningful worship experiences, listening to their stories, helping them reconcile with their children, singing with them, guiding them down the path of forgiveness with people who may have hurt them, and in one case helping a woman find and reunite with the child she had given up for adoption.
It was an interesting evening. My husband’s choir sounded great and I got to bring home this beautiful table centerpiece. I took the Henderson Highway bus there and had the pleasure of walking the last kilometer or so to the Douglas Mennonite Church down the beautiful Chief Peguis greenway pedestrian trail.
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