At Home in Hamilton
The months have flown by since we landed in Ontario back in March. It’s my great joy to tell you that we are finally settled into a rhythm again—thanks to prayer and support from our family, you and our loving A Rocha community. In this newsletter, I share some of the experiences from the last few months with the intent to bring you into the ministry of A Rocha, show our gratitude to you and inspire you to worship our creator God, who is reconciling all things to himself.
Biking to work at Environment Hamilton!
We start in Hamilton, our new home. This is now home for us on multiple levels. First, A Rocha has an official Ontario office in partnership with Environment Hamilton (see picture). The space is downtown and reflects our intention to be directly connected with the revitalization and transformation efforts that are already happening in the City. It is strategic because Environmental Hamilton has its finger on the pulse of the Environmental narrative in Hamilton.
Second, Lindsey and I found a lovely 80+ year old home in East Hamilton. Our mailing address is at the bottom of the email if you want to write us or even visit! Through the journey of searching, purchasing, renovating and moving-in we have seen God’s spirit at work and can testify to his love and care through stress-filled times. Here’s one quick story to highlight this part of our journey:
The previous owners (our new friends!) let us put the sold sign on!
We started seeing houses the day after landing back in Ontario. Twenty-five houses were the subject of much conversation over the two weeks until we decided to move our search to from Dundas & West Hamilton to East Hamilton. The first house we saw in East Hamilton seemed promising compared to previous visits but by this time we were tired–especially after making an offer that fell through. My dad kept saying that “you’ll know it when you see it”. and we thought this might be the one. There was talk about drafting the offer but in the meantime we saw one more house. This second house in East Hamilton had crossed our path online but we didn’t really look twice.
To make a wonderful and long story short, we visited the second house in East Hamilton and left knowing that “this was the one.” The purchase process unfolded fairly smoothly and, because this was a private sale, we ended up becoming friends with the family selling the house! Since then, they have had us over for dinner and we have introduced them to Olivia. Our gratitude runs deep for this family and God’s grace through the purchase of our first home and a warm welcome from our eclectic group of neighbours.
Do Birth & Reno’s go together?
We humoured ourselves with this question as we walked a parallel journey of welcoming Olivia into this world and starting house renovations on nearly the same weekend. Lindsey has likely shared this story through email updates but we reflect and relate to Mary & Joseph’s pilgrimage and birthing story. In fact, through the birth of our girl I’m learning two realities of our Christian narrative. The way God, in his mission, sent his son into the world to be wholly dependant on humans. And in that, the thin-line between the place we call home and the unseen, where God dwells.
Our beautiful girl at 1 1/2 weeks.
I’m also learning about the thin-line between the place we call home and the unseen place where God is. It’s what Annie Dillard talks about in For the Time Being; Olivia’s birth was an unguarded moment when the divine became transparent to us. Through this, God is renovating my heart and teaching me to care for creation in new ways every day—it brings me to worship our creator. Do you relate? So maybe the answer is yes to the above question: birthing and renovations do go together.
What is a Bioblitz?
Darren Brouwer and citizen scientist do water-quality surveys to create a baseline at Cedar Haven Farm
Shifting back to A Rocha’s ministry, on May 25th we hosted a BioBlitz at a 95-acre property in Freelton, Hamilton. A BioBlitz is a short, intense team effort to discover as many different life forms as possible in one location. No two BioBlitzes are ever the same, as they are a reflection of the area, the weather, and the organisms present at the time.
Locally, it involved about 35 researchers, citizen scientists and kids working together to identify as many species as possible in a defined period. Our A Rocha BioBlitz lasted 3 hours and we discovered over 200 bird, plant & tree species on Cedar Haven Farm.
In part, the following quotation summarizes the purpose of our BioBlitz: “We care for only what we love. We love only what we know. We truly know only what we experience.” Steven Bouma-Prediger, For the Beauty of the Earth.
It’s also part of A Rocha’s incarnational mission—through restored relationships between people and places we are learning how to grow in relationship with God our creator, and the natural expression is a life of worship. I personally think that working with A Rocha and learning about these biblical truths allows me to go beyond the church walls and worship God through my whole life. That’s my prayer for you too.
Upcoming Events
Planted in Hamilton – Click for details
