| Dear friends and family, Christmas 2004 Rachelle, on the other hand, had a smarter idea: last June she turned 18 years old, graduated from high school and went over to Europe with her best friend Marla along with Jim and I for the month of July and …… stayed!! She first lived three months with my brother and his family in Lagos, Portugal where she helped clean the apartments and look after the property. Since mid-October she’s been living with another one of my brothers in Oosterhout, Netherlands. As of last week she has a full-time job, a part-time job and her command of the Dutch language is increasing at lightning speed! An excerpt of her letter follows below. Needless to say her brothers are now wondering whether they should have done what she is doing –– jealous? Just a little I think. I myself ended up making two trips to Holland this year. I first went in the spring to attend my parents’ 50th wedding anniversary. This trip was made possible by my friend Fr. Rud Smit (the Dutch priest who visited here the previous year) as he organized several speaking engagements which financed my trip. I preached at weekend Masses, gave three talks, and the culmination was to preach at my parents’ anniversary Mass. It was the first time that I did this kind of public speaking and giving witness in my native tongue. This was both a challenge and an incredible privilege. This visit resulted in a most valuable reconnecting with people in the Dutch Catholic church, which I welcomed with a warm heart. Then on July 1st, as mentioned earlier, Jim and I boarded the plane with Rachelle and her best friend Marla, and headed to the Netherlands, Belgium, Portugal, Spain and Gibraltar. Most of the four weeks were spent with family and some friends close by; Spain and Gibraltar was our get-away with a rented car for five days. The family page on our websites show some photographs of our visit to some special “creatures” on Gibraltar! It was the first time we were in Europe without going to France; we also did not make it to Switzerland where we have good friends who we’d love to see. This will have to wait until another time. Our friends from Germany, the Melzer family, met us for a day in Arnhem (NL), and we had a most enjoyable retrouvaille with them. The Kilkepers reunion (a group of friends from my late teen years) in a small café near Tilburg was a special highlight –– the gift of friendships rekindled after several decades is a true miracle. From the warm and lively encounters at the reunion, we can expect some of those old time friends to come knocking on our door in western Canada in a few years! It was exciting to be with my brother Erik and family in Lagos, and to see firsthand their new venture there of renting apartments and catering to the tourists (www.algarve1.biz). They are creative, hospitable and very energized by the challenges and opportunities that this new business venture is providing them. We left Rachelle behind there and Marla reluctantly returned to Canada with us. Jim and I celebrated 25 years of marriage this year. We gathered with family and friends at the end of November to give thanks to God, to share great food, music, dancing and fun together. Many among you who could not be there in person made sure to send us your well-wishes and prayers. We realize more strongly that healthy marriages don’t just happen; our marital love produced fruit in optimum growing conditions, i.e. growing in a caring community of friends. The saying “It takes a village to raise a child” can easily be applied to a marriage “It takes a loving community to grow a healthy and long-lasting marriage.” We are immensely grateful that all of you, in big or small ways, far and near, have contributed to the climate in which we have been allowed to grow three beautiful children and a love that has facilitated our growth both as individuals and as a couple. We ended last year’s Christmas letter as follows: Well, the transition phase has only increased in scope this past year. Just to reassure you, though, we are quite well and healthy in many ways. When so many in our circle of family and friends struggle with health problems, we can at least be grateful for that! Most questions are work-related and therefore related to where we should be living. Our youngest daughter gone from home now, Jim turning 60 last month, and I still commuting way too much between work and home (180 km one way), we desire some basic but major changes. Such questions have been forming in both our hearts now for well over a year, but answers seem slow in coming. Jim loves his gardening and seed-growing/selling but is tired of working alone and feels the need to cut back, yet without quitting altogether. It is also clear that the faithful and growing customer base of his seed business Prairie Garden Seeds (www.prseeds.ca) points to a significant need for his organically grown seeds, so doing away with the business would not be a good move. We love our place on Murray Lake –– its micro-climate makes it probably the best location in the province to grow garden seeds. However, Jim has joined an organic gardening project at St. Peter’’s Abbey in Muenster, some 300 km east from here, where there would be great opportunities to work with others doing similar seed growing. There is only a slight problem: the region is known as a “frost-pocket,” meaning that frost can hit there almost every month of the year making seed growing a very risky undertaking. For the most part, my work in the church, both Roman Catholic and Protestant, is rewarding. I have opportunities to teach, write and preach, thus empowering women and men to grow in their Christian faith (see www.malotg.com under “Scheduled Engagements”). Working intimately with Scripture through these opportunities is beyond a doubt my greatest joy and inspiration. I am currently working on a second book, and write regular contributions for several Canadian Catholic publications. I could expand my involvement in the Saskatoon diocese, but for that to happen I would need to live in the diocese –– hence another motive to consider a move. Incidentally, Muenster is in the Saskatoon diocese. However important and fulfilling it is to be a female leadership voice in my church, I also know challenging times of tension, pain and difficulty, times which sap my energy and obscure my sense of direction. Such times make me re-assess regularly where and how I can serve God to the best of my ability. I am learning that yesterday’s answers sometimes become today’s questions. So it feels like we’ve spent most of this year living in “Advent”- mode: watching and waiting for a sign, for a call, for clarity, for direction, for a birth of sorts. Waiting is hard at the best of times, in our personal lives and especially in a world of violence and war, in a world which conspires against the cultivating of patience, peace and justice, in a world which is blind to the limits of creation itself, to the limits of its own goodness. Waiting in faith and hope, however, pulsates with promise, like a pregnancy filled with new life growing in secret. Faith and hope is our strongest human driving force. We sow seeds, hoping they will grow. We teach and preach, hoping to be heard. We help out at the food bank, hoping to alleviate poverty. We work for justice hoping to build a peace-filled world. We raise children, hoping they will turn out good. Faith and hope are the surest signs of God’s Spirit animating our lives. It is the realization of that hope which we celebrate in the birth of the Christ-child and it is to this we commit our lives in the coming year: Majesty in the midst of the mundane. Mary gave birth to her firstborn, a son. Wishing you and your loved ones the Faith and Hope of Christmas, Marie-Louise & Jim Below follows an excerpt from Rachelle’s FIVE PAGE (!) letter: So yes, here I have two jobs now, the first one that I got was at Domino's Pizza and that is going alright, so much different than my good ol Family Pizza in North Battleford! At Domino's pizza, the majority of the people that work there are guys all around my age so that is lovely. And it seems as though everyone is like instantly your friend when they hear that you are from Canada, well I guess just the fact that you are from another land and it is something/someone new and interesting. But everyone is so curious and asks a bazillion questions and what not. One of the questions that I liked was, "I hear that most people have really big yards/gardens there, is that true?" Hahaha because here in NL there isn't enough room in the lil country for everyone to have decent sized yards so most people just have lil peep small gardens/yards. And then one night at Domino's Pizza allll the guys in the place were naming big cities that they knew of or heard of in Canada and yea it is fun to have everyone talking about Canada for once and not all about freakin America (no offense to the Americans that receive this, you are all sweet :) ). Oh and at Domino's Pizza I get 3.91 euros per hour about. So that's awesome, haha. And here I only work Friday evenings 5pm-10pm, Sunday evenings 5pm-8pm, and I think they want me to start working Tuesday evenings as well, 5pm-10pm. My second job I just started at on December 3rd. It is at a packaging factory so it's not the funnest but I don't care I need money and the people there are really nice and pretty fun to work with so it makes the days go by a little bit faster. This factory deals with brands that are having a sort of sale and we put the things together. Like say with your box of laundry detergent that you buy at the store, there is a free tshirt or something like that attached to it, well we put the two things together, or three things, whatever it may be. And my lil department does shampoo and conditioner, so every day I get to look at THOUSANDS of L'Oreal shampoo and conditioner bottles and we put two shampoos and on conditioner together and then a plastic sleeve around em and then they get held together so that is the deal, very boring. And it is done in an assembly line so you get to do the exact same movement over and over, you get really sore muscles from that, and it is standing all day. I earn 3.54 euros an hour, which is above the minimum wage here which is calculated according to your age. And for me, 18 year olds, the minimum wage is 3.31 euros per hour. The older you are the higher your minimum wage is. If minimum wage here was even with the minimum wage in sask ($6.65 I think) then it would have to be 4.11 euros. So this is only a temporary job but from the way the boss has been talkin to me they want me to stay long. So that is good for the money. 40 hours a week and I get paid every wednesday. So I am there from 7:30am till 4:30pm every day except for Saturday and Sunday. So on Tuesdays and Fridays I have long days because I work at both places, from one place straight to the other. I am also getting Dutch lessons every Wednesday night from about 6:30pm till about 8:30pm and my teacher is so sweet! Her name is Monique and she is awesome. She said that she wants to take me out for like day trips too, like for instance shopping, or to another town or whatever and then she can monitor my Dutch and make sure I am speaking it and correctly and all that stuff, and she said when we do that she won't charge me anything because we will do it for fun. YAY! My dutch is going very well, I am still not 100% confident in myself when I speak it, so I still feel like an idiot sometimes but it's getting better. And I have to answer the phone at Domino's Pizza and take orders all in dutch!!! So yes that makes me extremely nervous, but I do it anyways. Everyone I meet is like, wowwwww your dutch is awesome for only being here since October 16th, so that makes me feel a bit better because people are so impressed with my dutch skills that when I make mistakes I don't have to feel too dumb because it's logic that my dutch isn't perfect yet. Someday it will be :). The next language I am going to start learning is portugese! On November 28th the Gommers family here (my moms side of the family) celebrated Sinterklaas at my Oma and Opa's (Grandma and Grandpa's) so that was really fun. Sinterklaas is a dutch celebration and it's like what they have instead of Santa Claus, they still celebrate Christmas here, but the presents thing with younger kids is done with Sinterklaas, in English he is called, Saint Nicholas. If you want to know about it look it up on the internet because I'm not about to explain it, lol. Anyways he gives presents on December 5th. And my lil cousins here still believe in him, so it was a very special celebration this year because it will be their last year in believing that Sinterklaas is real because they are 9 and 10 and around this age they usually find out he's not real. December 3rd we celebrated Sinterklaas here at my aunty and uncles with just the five of us (me, my aunty Yvonne, my uncle Ruud, and my lil cousins Monika and Viorel). Then December 4th was the last Sinterklaas celebration in Zwolle (another part of NL) and that was at Yvonne's mom's place, so Monika and Viorel's Oma (grandma). Another fun day. So a very busy weekend that was. We now have a beautiful Christmas tree up in the house and Yvonne has put Christmas decorations out everywhere and it is soooo pretty! And I helped Monique (my dutch teacher) put up her Christmas tree last wednesday, she has a lil apartment and it is just her and her cat that live there so she asked me to help her and I was like, SURE! It was lots of fun. On December 17th I am going to a musical that my cousin Maurice is in, he is 22 and has been taking part of these musicals with a group in his city for quite a while and I saw one when I was here once several years ago and it was great fun. It was Joseph and the Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat though so it was in English! This one is something about Alice in Wonderland and in Dutch so that will be the big test to see how good my Dutch really is! And things here at Ruud and Yvonne's house are really going great, they are a very sweet family and I really enjoy living with them, I'm glad they were so nice as to open up their house for me to come here! They really help me out whenever I need it and yea they are just plain great! So I live in a good house, I have 2 jobs, I'm starting to make friends at my jobs, I have an awesome dutch teacher where I get lessons once a week, and yea I'm starting to make money which means that hopefully soon I will be able to go on a lil vacation of some sort! Maybe just to another place in NL but hey, it will still be a vacation. I have a week off from the factory for Christmas so that's awesome! Will be a fun week for sure. MERRY CHRISTMAS TO EVERYONE Rachelle Ternier
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