Rob and Cher's Ramblings: 2025 - 50th year Victory Lap

Dearest friends,

Fulfillment of the Promise

The Christmas season is such a special time of the year as we commemorate the promised fulfilment of the words of the Prophet Isiah in which he announces the coming of Jesus more than 600 years prior to it coming to pass

“For to us a child is born,

to us a son is given,
and the government will be on his shoulders,
And he will be called
Wonderful Counsellor, Mighty God,
Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.”
Isaiah 9 v 6

Family

As we head into the Christmas season our days have been filled with a set of inspiring concerts, which our grandchildren have participated in, preparing us to celebrate the birth of our Lord Jesus Christ!

We started with Peter, our youngest grandchild, who is 10 and in Grade 5 at Immanuel Christian School. He had a special speaking part in the annual church Christmas show, as he played the role of the son of the servant working in the inn from which Jesus was turned away. He also participated along with James and John in their school Christmas concert. Peter continues to relish life, loves Lego and Mindcraft, is learning violin and is often visiting friends or having them over.

Next up was Esther – now 14 and in Grade 9 at People’s Christian Academy, singing and playing the violin at her concert. The worship atmosphere was beautiful! Esther is growing up strong in the Lord and has a wide circle of friends. She occasionally manages a 100% pass mark in Bible class which is often attributed to the fact that her mother, Elaine, is her Bible teacher. Esther knows her stuff though, having been a faithful member of Awana, a Bible memorization club, since she was in diapers.

Sammy now 16 and in Grade 11 at Whitfield Christian School was part of a large and impressive School Concert held at the Canada Event Centre. It was an inspiring evening with all 300+ students worshiping and singing fun Christmas songs. Sammy sang in several groups, played the saxophone and conducted a piece for a band…all the while fighting a bad cold!! He is doing very well at school in his academics. His piano playing is a delight to listen to, and he often helps out with leading worship at his youth group. He was the youngest team member in the summer on a church missions trip to Thailand.

We wrapped up the kid's Christmas concert season a few days ago at John, James and Peter's school. John played clarinet, James the alto clarinet and Peter sang. They are at such a nice school, which is small enough that all the kids know each other and it has a lovely family feel about it. We are thankful that they can be attending this lovely Christian school as opposed to the rampant godlessness of the public school system.

Elaine is doing a great job of teaching Bible as People’s Christian Academy and is such a blessing to the young people she teaches and mentors. She also run’s a God’s Girls Club at the school every week. She juggles being a wonderful Mum, a Teacher, leading a Women’s Bible Study and somewhere in there she manages a host of hospitality and caring for friends.

Julia and Chris have very busy full lives with

11 people in their household. There are 5 of their core family. In addition, there are 2 young international students renting rooms with them. Finally, our great niece Mariah and husband Gianni and boys Kairo and Leandro are living in the basement. Chris has finally been diagnosed with fibromyalgia. Life continues to be a struggle for him. He lives with a lot of chronic widespread pain, poor sleep, temperature & light sensitivity, making him unable to drive, attend church or even watch TV. Julia and Chris love the neighborhood patch of forest which they walk in daily. Chris has become an avid bird watcher and photographer. He handles his situation with amazing faith and courage and manages a full-time job online at home! Julia continues to be SuperMom and somehow manages a large communal household, along with a solid dose of volunteering at the boys school and their church. Life is full for her but most days she is found with a smile on her face and a determination to make the most of life’s challenges.

Fitness

Rob plays pickleball regularly at our local community center. He plays in the weekly ladder competition. Through a miraculous intervention he was promoted to level 6 in the fall season. He had traditionally been playing at levels 7 and 8. He has managed all of this season not to be demoted to a lower level where he really belongs and he relishes the strong competition he is enjoying.

We are both enjoying our almost spanking brand new ebikes which we bought last year from a neighbor. There is no doubt it turns cycling into a much less strenuous means of seeing some beautiful parts of the countryside. We did two RV camping trips this year with different couples who joined us in doing some quite long rides.

Fun

Pumpkin Carving Fun

What do we do for fun? Life is busy, but we try to fit in as much fun along the way as possible. We enjoy some competitive games evenings with neighbors. We are part of a dinner club that has been meeting for 25 years. Initially we met monthly and had elaborate theme evenings. As we have all retired, and most have moved away from our area, we now meet a couple of times a year. Our themes now focus around our latest health reports along with the amazing feats of our grandchildren. We are blessed indeed.

With a candle inside they
were pretty impressive

A fun highlight for us is our family week at Fairhavens, a family Christian resort. As our family is growing we now have a group of about 20 or so of us. The children are looked after at each age level and the adults have their own worship and teaching sessions each morning, followed by activities of one's choice. Cher often plays lawn bowls and Rob tries his hand at pickleball. This year Rob decided that the Friday pickleball competition was going to be dominated by members of our family. He proceeded to try and coach members of the family to greater heights. His hopes were dashed when none of us made it past the second round. Sigh. We live to win another day.

Facing the Darkness

Cheryl and I have been very fully involved in advancing the work of Back2Basics which we founded about three years ago. Our goal has been to replace the current woke set of trustees with those who adhere to a more common sense set of Core Values which will return our schooling system back to a modicum of normality.

Our plans have been halted in their tracks in the last couple of months, as our Minister of Education has announced that he is going to dispense with elected trustees altogether pronouncing that school boards are a “political cesspit’. That has knocked us back a bit, having spent three years working hard towards getting a whole new set of trustees elected. Despite this setback the problems in the schools remain. We are now asking the Lord how we are to proceed from here. Watch this space.

Fifty

On December 20^th 1975 we were married in Cape Town, so 2025 has been our victory lap and parade all celebrated together.

To celebrate, we spent a month in May and June travelling to Wales, visiting Cher’s sister for a week. We then took the Chunnel to Paris and spent a few days walking the city flat. It was a lovely time. We wrapped up with a two-week cruise which took us to Denmark, Norway, Germany, Poland, Lithuania, Latvia and Sweden. This was a part of the world we have never visited, and it was fun to broaden our horizons in this way.

Elaine and Julia topped off our celebratory year by throwing us a lovely party in a small country community center close to Port Perry. It was wonderful to have 70-80 friends and famlly join us who we have shared our lives with. We felt very loved and appreciated. An added surprise blessing was having Cher’s sister Lynne arrive to celebrate with us. Who would have thought that 50 years could fly by so quickly? We are both so blessed to be in good health and we look forward to many more years together.