Easter at Darrell and Jess's

NWMC Farewell

We had our last Northwest Mennonite Conference Convention this last weekend. Mal gave our public resignation in his report, effective the end of August. They surprised us by calling us forward for a bit of a Farewell.

As you can see from our expressions, it included some humour. Our Office Administrator and some children did a bit of an African dance for us. Then they had a powerpoint presentation of some of the things Mal does as Conference Minister.

Mal was given some garden art for his retirement garden!

And I was given this beautiful Dining Room sign.

Then they finished it of with some cake.

In these last few months we'll visit many of the churches for the last time, and that will be difficult. We have so much enjoyed this work and these people. It's been enriching for us to make friends all over Alberta. We've stayed in a lot of different homes, experienced wonderful hospitality, come to love the various churches and feel like they are all a family. It's been a wonderful way to finish off almost 40 years of ministry.

We had our first church on Vancouver Island in 1972, 40 years ago. However, we did take 3 years off for a "semi-retirement" in Keremeos which turned out not to be retirement at all. But God is good, and called us to ministry again with NWMC and we have felt that the work with this family of churches has been a gift from God to us.

Dad's 96th Birthday

We girls were all together for Dad's 96th Birthday Celebration.

Irene made Dad's favorite - an awesome roast beef dinner and then birthday cake.

We gave Dad a book of some of the artwork he has done since he turned 80.

He enjoyed looking at it and some of the pictures immediately drew forth a story.

Then he requested that we sing for him, which we did while he took this picture. We sang old gospel favorites for quite awhile. Occasionally he sang along. It was a nice way to end the celebration. He got back to the Manor on time for a turkey dinner! I told him he didn't have to eat it all if he was too full, but he thought he would! Dad always did have a good appetite! :D

Moving Dad

Dad's new home. Hofers and Dakus moved him in about a month ago.

We three girls plus Joe just emptied and cleaned out his condo. Many trips of stuff went down the elevator!

It was quite a job, but so fun to work together as sisters!

In the evenings we sorted out stuff and took trips down Memory Lane. This is Mom's Autograph Book from 1939!

We were up until midnight sorting almost every night. Here we are taking turns choosing Dad's paintings.

Orion the Hunter

Last week I did another 3-in-the-morning stint of star-gazing. I was pleased that I got some pictures of Orion. Online I discovered some interesting things about it.

These are the main stars that make up Orion. The two angled stars at the top make up his shoulders with a faint head in between and above. The two bottom angled stars make up his feet. The three sideways, angled stars are his belt, and further below in some of the pictures you can see three stars that make up his sword. Double-click to see better.

Here are the names of some of the stars:

Rigel at the bottom is the brightest star and is the 6th brightest star in the sky. It is the left foot of Orion (think of him as facing you).
Betelguese at the top left is a massive red supergiant star nearing the end of its life. When it explodes it will even be visible during the day. It is the right shoulder of Orion and is the 8th brightest star in the sky.
Bellatrix is the other shoulder and is the 22nd brightest star.
Saiph is Orion's right foot and is a similar size and strength as Rigel but appears much fainter since its light is mostly emitted in the ultraviolet region of the spectrum which the human eye cannot see.
Meissa forms Orion's head.

Looking for Orion's belt is the easiest way to find Orion in the sky. It is most visible in January around 9 p.m. and is not visible in the summer.

Alnitak, the eastern (left) star in the belt is 100,000 time brighter than the sun and is 800 light years away. It is actually a triple star.

Alnilam is the centre star in the belt and is nearly twice as far from the sun as the other two but its luminosity makes it nearly equal in magnitude. It is 1340 light years away and is 375,000 times more luminous than the sun.

Mintaka is the westernmost star in the belt and is a double star; the two orbit each other every 5.73 days. It is 915 light years away and is 90,000 times more luminous than the sun.

The sword of Orion are multiple stars called the Orion Nebula and the Trapezium. Using binoculars you can see its clouds of stars, luminous gas and dust.

This is betelguese, the top left shoulder. (Mal calls it beetle-juice!) If you look closely it does appear more orangeish than the other stars because it is nearing the end of its life. A white or blue star is hotter than an orange or red star which is dying.

Colored Stars

For several months I've been noticing this extra-bright star in the sky and wondering what it is. After reading an article in our local paper I realized it must be Jupiter, which is visible until March. It is the third brightest object in the night sky, after the moon and Venus. It can be seen in the south, going from east to west, following the same path as the sun takes during the day. It won't come as close to earth again until 2022.

This is Jupiter close up; you can see its bluish tinge. After taking pictures I noticed that they showed different colors of stars and I wondered if that was just the photography, because I couldn't see colors when looking at the stars.

So I checked out Mr. Google and discovered that stars do indeed have colors according to their temperature. Blue, blue-white and white are the hottest stars and yellow, orange and red are the coolest. Blue is about 25x hotter than red.

This picture shows some of the different colors. You may need to double-click on it to see them better.

And it is true that our eyes do not perceive the colors when we look at the night sky. The reasons vary and are somewhat technical, but a simplistic reason would be that we do not see color at night. At night our pupils dilate to let dim light in and the resulting large aperture degrades image quality. Our eyes take about half an hour at night to reach maximum sensitivity.

In this picture I've increased the saturation to see the color better.

Taking pictures of the night sky is a challenge I'm still working on. If you photograph on an automatic setting the stars won't show. If you keep the shutter open too long, the stars will have tails because of their movement. After reading up a bit and experimenting I discovered that you have to focus manually and I increased the ISO to 1600 in these pictures.

I took these pictures at 4 a.m.! I wouldn't be doing that if it was -30! We've had such beautiful weather and it was relatively warm, although when I went back to bed it took me a long time to warm up! Even though it's dark in the evening the stars don't show up brightly until the middle of the night. Especially in town.

Now I'd like to get a beginner's book on stars so I can identify more!

Christmas 2011

Merry Christmas!
Jess and Darrell made us a new sign and clock combo which we have put up in our entryway.

Jon and Magan hosted the Christmas celebration on Boxing Day.

Darrell and Jess made a fast trip for the Boxing Day celebration and Tim and Juanita were able to come to our place and stay a bit longer.

Mal made a car game for Kaleb and Jack and they seemed to enjoy playing it.

This picture of a sparrow in the snow was taken earlier in the month. By christmas Day it was so warm that we didn't have a lot of snow left. Overall, December was unseasonably warm, which thankfully made for great travelling conditions.