1. An Important 50^th Anniversary
   Tomorrow, Friday the 21^st of June is National Indigenous Peoples Day. And here is an amazing coincidence!
   This June is the 50^th anniversary marking a series of pivotal events in our lives with the Canela, a Brazilian Indigenous People group.
   In the first week of June we met Canelas for the first time, and the Canela chief communicated with me through a little Portuguese and a lot of gestures, inviting us to live in his village to serve his people by doing medical work, and teaching them to read and write.
   In the second week, I ceremoniously received the Canela name, Prejaka.
   The third week, after ten years of study and training, we moved into a temporary Canela village to begin our twenty-two years of service.
   And, Yes, next year, in 2020, the Canela will be celebrating the 50^th anniversary of the new village site where we lived for decades in one of the first houses to be built.

2. Why I Identify with Indigenous Peoples
   I paid close attention in a grade five history class in Holland when I heard that the Frysk (Frisians) were the earliest known indigenous people of Holland with their own Frysk language and culture going back to 700 BC. I am a full-blooded, indigenous Frisian since my parents, grandparents are Frisians, born in Fryslan—now called Friesland.
   

   My great-grandfather’s family. My grandfather is the second from the left, in the back row.

   When the Batavian immigrants arrived in Holland, coming down the Rhine river from Germany along with Romans from Italy around 100 BC, they displaced my indigenous Frisians ancestors who ended up living in swampy areas along the north coast of Holland, in Friesland. A half million Frisians still speak their own language. Yes, the Bible has been translated into Frisian.

3. A Major Reason to Celebrate!
   Our family is giving thanks to God that after three and four months of surgeries, complications, chemotherapy, multiple tests and exams, Jo, wife, mother and grandma has been pronounced cancer-free. Yes, we are celebrating!

4. Summer Focus on Writing Memoirs
   This will be the last InSights and OutBursts post until September. I am taking my traditional blogging break over the summer. Not because I am going to stop writing. Oh no!
   I am working hard on the second volume of my memoirs—the years from 1950 when I arrived in Canada as a twelve-year old boy, to 1966 when Jo and I in our late twenties arrived in Brazil with our three pre-school children, one of whom was only four months old. Those sixteen years were a time when God prepared us for our decades of service in Brazil.
   So, the working title is The Preparation Years. The third book will be The Production Years. The first volume, The Misadventures of Hansje, is the Prequel.

5. Summer Family Vacation and Reunion
   In the first two weeks of August, we will have a family vacation with some camping, and at least one day of family reunion with my siblings and their families. God is good. More reason to celebrate!
   Here’s hoping you will all have great reasons to celebrate this summer too!

It happened to me in the early years of television in the late 1950s. The small Baptist church I attended had the opportunity to fill a half an hour of Sunday afternoon air-time on the local television station.

Since I frequently sang in church, my part was to sing a solo, and I chose How Great Thou Art. I felt at ease since I had sung this piece many times, and my favourite pianist was with me to play the piano. I was a recent high school graduate and still years away from voice training in Bible school, but was confident I would do well, even though this was my first no-do-over, live television performance.

On cue, I smiled at the camera, the pianist played a brief introduction, and I launched into the first verse and chorus, followed by the second verse and chorus. All was going well.

My First Mistake
As the pianist played the customary interlude before the last verse, I happened to glance to one side of the camera and suddenly saw a monitor with my face on it looking off to one side. The unexpected shock blanked out the words for the third verse. When the pianist played the third verse, I just stood there smiling into the camera, then sang the chorus again and thankfully, I was done.

I had never forgotten the words of a song before, and I felt terrible making such a mistake, and on live television!

My Second Mistake
The next morning at my ditch-digging job, a plumber came by. He looked at me and said, “Hey I saw you sing on television yesterday afternoon!”
Before he could say another word, I apologized for forgetting the words and went on and on about how it had happened. When I finally ran down, he said, “It sounded great to me. I didn’t notice any problem. I’m just glad to know another Christian is working on this project.”

A lesson on not taking myself so seriously, and learning to laugh at myself.

Another Mistake—and Laughter
Decades later I was the main speaker at numerous missions fund-raising banquets. At one banquet while greeting guests, I met a dozen teachers. So, at one point in my after-dinner speech, I thanked the teachers for coming and told a stirring story of a teacher who had taught our daughters in Brazil. The audience spontaneously applauded, and I opened my mouth and closed it again, having forgotten where in the speech I had interrupted myself.

“Um, before I told this teacher story, where was I?” I said.
A lady near the front spoke up, “The Canela kids were stealing the learn-to-read booklets.”
“Right!” I said, “How could I forget that?” I laughed, the audience laughed with me, and I continued with my stories.

Decades of Mistakes—and Laughter
I had decades of practice laughing at myself. Arriving in Brazil, and learning to speak Portuguese, Jo and I made people laugh many times as we fumbled and stumbled our way through a sentence. And that was the easy part.

When we arrived among the uninhibited Canela, they screamed with laughter at our mistakes, repeating them to others for their merriment. They couldn’t wait for us to open our mouths so they could have a good laugh. We, of course, learned quickly to laugh with them.

I remember the first time I told a funny story to a group of Canela men, and no one laughed until the punch line. What an achievement!

The Recipe for a Fun-Filled Life
We Christians must take our mission, our ministry seriously, but never ourselves. God is very clear about this. “Do not think of yourself more highly than you ought.” Romans 12:3 (NIV).
Remember that every time we make a mistake, we are simply confirming our humanity.
We all like to have fun.

Well, when we learn to laugh at ourselves, we will never stop having fun.

I am writing the story of my life: my memoirs of the sixteen years in which God, the protagonist Hero, was preparing me to serve Him while Satan, the antagonist Villain opposed Him in every way. Here is one such incident:

 Satan Meant it for Evil, but God Meant it for Good.

For four months, I worked with a crew doing seismic oil exploration in the Three Hills area. The crew was a typical, hard-drinking, wild-living bunch of roughnecks. They knew I was a Christian and was earning money to attend Bible school that fall. But they wanted no “religious talk” from me.

Just before the September long weekend, the crew chief, Stan, and his girlfriend were driving up to Edmonton. He was giving a ride to Jimmy, another guy in the crew.

“Can I ride with you as far as Red Deer?” I said. “No problem,” Stan said, “but make sure you are ready for us to pick you up at your house on Sunday. I’ll phone you to let you know what time we’ll come by.”

That Sunday afternoon Stan called, “We’ll pick you up at your house tonight at nine o’clock. Be ready.”

“Stan, I will still be at church at that time. Please pick me up there. It is only one block off your route, right near the highway. It’s much closer than my house.”
“Well, okay,” he said, but I sensed resentment in his voice.

When the car arrived, I saw that Jimmy was driving and Stan, the crew chief, was in the backseat, cuddling with his girlfriend. As I got in the front seat, Stan scolded me. “I hate you changing plans on me. And especially for making me pick you up at a church!”

I didn’t say anything, and after fussing at me some more, he turned his attention back to his girl. He had often made it plain he didn’t think much of “church people.” But something was about to interfere with this pattern of thought.

A half hour later, as we were driving down the two-lane highway at sixty miles an hour, the car ahead of us abruptly slowed down. Jimmy slammed on the brakes, and to our horror we swerved hard to the left, sliding sideways into oncoming traffic. The right front brakes on Stan’s car were defective, something Stan hadn’t warned Jimmy about. The last thing I saw through my side window before the crash was a pair of headlights only yards away.

Next thing I knew, there was glass everywhere; my left wrist was broken, and my head hurt from smashing out the side window. People ran up and helped us out of the wreck, then held us up as we stumbled to a nearby house where I sat on a couch, dazed and in pain.

A policeman came in, and after talking to the driver, asked, “Who was the front seat passenger?” I raised my good right hand. “You are a lucky guy. The door post on the hinge side, absorbed much of the impact. If the car had hit the middle of the door, you would not have survived.”
Hmm, I thought, another narrow escape, someone out there sure wants me dead, but it’s good to know Someone Else wants me alive.

Since Stan’s car was a total wreck, he worried aloud about how we were going to get to Three Hills still fifty miles away.
“I’ll phone my Dad.” I said, “He’ll be in bed, but he’ll come, pick us up and take us to Three Hills.” I phoned, and Dad came.

Arriving in Three Hills after an hour’s drive, Dad refused the money Stan wanted to give him, saying, “Jack and I are Christians, and when we help someone in trouble, it’s as if we are helping Jesus.”

With that Dad turned the car and drove home, completing a 140-mile-long demonstration of Christian love.