Tag Archives: Answers to Prayer

Praise God with Us for His Blessings in 2025

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Praise God with Us for His Blessings in 2025

In the past couple of weeks, I looked over my daily diary entries from 2025 and was impressed by how many good things God had done for us. I wrote a prayer of thanksgiving to God. He prompted me to share the facts with you blog post readers, since many of you have prayed for us. Thank God with us for these many answers to prayer:

January: Jo came to church with me for the first time since her back surgery in mid-November. She no longer has lower back pain, but does have a dropped foot and needs a walker. A friend gave Jo a high-quality wheelchair so that I can push her in it when she needs to travel farther than she can with her walker. I started applying Zostrix pepper ointment to stop the jabbing pains in both of Jo’s feet. Our grandson Aidan became engaged to a lovely Christian girl from Arkansas, and they asked me to perform the wedding ceremony in May.

February: We decided that this will be our last winter on our acreage. We followed up on our mid-2024 research of potential retirement facilities and hope to be accepted by one in Stony Plain. Aidan’s fiancée, Lin, visited us in Canada, and we finalized the wedding ceremony details. When my recliner chair broke, Leanne helped me choose a new one.

March: On Sunday, Jo, holding onto her walker, was able to stand for all four hymns for the first time. We celebrated our 63rd wedding anniversary with a special dinner at the Sawmill restaurant. Jo was fitted with an Ankle Foot Orthotic brace to help stabilize her dropped foot.

April: I completed the retirement forms for Wycliffe Bible Translators, effective later this year after 60 years of service.

May: We enjoyed our few days in Arkansas, where I performed the ceremony, and we celebrated Aidan and Lin’s Wedding on May 4.

June: Jo hosted her ladies’ coffee visit for the first time since her back surgery. Jo and I enjoyed a surprise visit with a Jamaican man whom I had recruited 22 years ago and trained to be the director of Wycliffe Caribbean, and we were pleased to see he was still active in the organization. We signed the final papers for our move into a suite that will be vacated in September at the Forest Ridge Place retirement home in Stony Plain.

July:  We had a formal inspection of the suite. We completed making out our wills with a lawyer and sent email copies to our daughters. We are learning to switch from a lifetime of extreme frugality, holding onto things we might need someday, to extreme generosity, giving away vanloads of our books, clothing, furniture, tools, and household items to our daughters’ families and to the Mennonite Central Committee thrift store.

August: Our daughters helped us sort and give away large quantities of dinnerware, glasses, dishes, and kitchen equipment to the MCC thrift store.

September: We provided the banking information to pay our monthly lease and began moving items into the suite, measuring the space and buying suitable furniture, since many of our current pieces were too large for the limited space. The new furniture was assembled and finished by our daughters and their spouses. Wycliffe had an online alumni celebration, and I gave a brief report on the most personally significant part of my sixty-year-long career with Wycliffe: the Canela translation program!

October:  We moved our bed into our suite on October 11 and began our new life there. I sold the gold filling from a tooth, a few thin, broken gold chains, and a small ring for $380!

November: I had some biopsies done on a large brown area of my scalp: sun damage, but not malignant! I regularly tell a brief God-story about our translation ministry at the weekly hymn-sing meetings. Jo has already learned the names of many of the 120 residents in this complex. Pray that I catch up with her soon.

December: Jo and I praise God for the large direct personal gifts we have received, some from longtime ministry partners, and some from new friends. We are now living a totally different life and need God’s help to live it well. We are reading The Power of a Praying Grandparent and the Seasons of Marriage. Join us in thanking God for our upcoming full two-week Christmas vacation with sixteen of our family members, hosted by Kurt and Valorie Jones in San Jose, CA. Yes, we’ll take some pictures and publish them on in our blog post for January.

Note: Our longtime email address jack_popjes@wycliffe.ca will no longer work after December 31. Please use jackpopjes@gmail.com and popjesjo@gmail.com from now on.

 

God Answers Prayer By Arranging Coincidences

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God Answers Prayer By Arranging Coincidences

The Problem
“When we return from this upcoming furlough,” I told the Centre director, “Jo and I plan to concentrate on Bible translation with our Canela co-translators. In the village, however, medical emergencies frequently interrupt us, and our Canela helpers’ social responsibilities often distract them. So, we want to invite them out here to the Centre in Belem periodically, to do intensive translation, and work through problems with a consultant.”
The director said, “That’s good to know, but there is a lot of competition here for the rooms in the study centre. Could you work with them in your house?”
“No, not well. But I have a plan. Would the maintenance department oversee the construction of a second-story study room on our storage shed?”
He shook his head sadly and said, “We don’t have enough staff. We’re already swamped with work.”

Prayers During Furlough
Jo and I prayed regularly that God would find a way to meet this vital need. Our furlough was very encouraging, we settled in a city with an active Wycliffe Associates (WA) volunteer group. They helped us find a place to live and some families invited us out for meals and visits so that they could learn about our ministry.
One day a WA couple, Oscar and Yvette invited us for lunch when we “happened to be” in their neighbourhood. They asked about our ministry, so we showed photos of the Canelas and told them of our plans to focus fully on translation after furlough.

The Pleasant Coincidence
They surprised us, when they said, “We like to go on mission trips to do carpentry work. Is there anything we could do for you in Brazil during the coming Christmas holidays?”
“Yes, there sure is!” we said and showed them photos of our house on the Belem Centre and the storage shed in the corner of our lot.
“That storage shed is built very strongly on thick hardwood upright poles with heavy hardwood beams across the top to hold weight. We would love for you to build a second storey on it and extend it at one end to make a covered carport.”

Oscar and Yvette excitedly helped us plan the project: a bedroom for the Canela translators and a large study room. We designed these rooms with large, screened windows, leaving a narrow, photography darkroom in between. On the lower floor, we planned a basic bathroom and an outside stairway.
“Our tools are in the shed. Just give the maintenance director a list of materials you need, and he will have them delivered.”

During their Christmas holidays, Oscar and Yvette travelled to Brazil and completed the project before going home.

Original shed and expanded second storey study room, etc.

Problem Solved
When we returned from furlough, everything was just the way we had imagined it would be. The rooms had large ventilating windows on three sides which provided lots of cooling air and light but no direct sunlight. Writing tables lined the windowed study walls.

Another Prayer and a Coincidence
Later we heard that, in answer to Oscar and Yvette’s prayers, a dozen young men “just happened” to arrive from the States on the very day hundreds of heavy cement roof tiles had to be carried up to cover the roof. It was hard work, but they completed it within a few hours. The next day they left for their volunteer work destination.

Prayers of Thanksgiving to God
We used those second-story rooms constantly during the rest of our ministry life in Brazil! “Thank you, Lord God, for Oscar and Yvette and for our “just happening” to meet them that furlough. And thank you for their generosity, paying for all their own travel, and for spending their entire Christmas vacation working long hours to complete this vital project.”

Icing on the Cake
When, many years later, we left Brazil, the Wycliffe Centre bought our house, and we received several thousand dollars more than expected because of that super-useful second storey on our shed.  This added blessing also came because God called Oscar and Yvette to serve Him through their carpentry work.

Note: Names have been changed to protect privacy.

 

Childhood Memories of Mama During World War 2

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Reports of the war and suffering in Ukraine filled my mind with emotional childhood memories of the Second World War in Holland.
A Thank You Letter to My Mother
Since Mother’s Day coincides with this week’s celebrations of the 77th anniversary of VE day—Nazi Germany’s unconditional surrender to the Allies—I thought of my mother who died at age ninety-seven, eleven years ago. Here is a letter I wrote her:

Dear Mama,
Seventy-seven years ago, Canadian soldiers fought their way through Holland to Hilversum, our city, and freed us from fear and oppression. I was seven years old when Papa took me to cheer the Canadian soldiers in their tanks driving down Main Street. Thank you, Mama, for shielding me from so much of the horror of the war.

I was only two years old when the enemy overran our country. You sheltered me and you and Papa tried to live a normal life. The year the war started, you gave me a little brother, and cared for him day and night for nine months until he finally died of an inoperable heart defect. I often wondered if you ever got over that stress and loss.

Two years later, you gave me a little sister, and two years after that another little brother. All this time you and Papa kept searching for food to feed us all. I woke up some nights to the sound of gunshots in the neighbourhood. I got used to it and slept right through it. But did you, Mama? How could you, when you knew Papa was out there, in the night, after curfew, bartering for food? How could you sleep when you didn’t know where he was, or if he was safe? How did you live through those weeks he was gone and finally arrived with one jug of cooking oil?

When the grain for porridge was gone and there were only two potatoes left in the bin, I didn’t know. But you knew. And you prayed that God would protect a sack of potatoes Pake and Beppe, your parents in Friesland, had hidden in a fishing boat coming our way. Thank you, Mama!

I ran to the house one afternoon, excitedly pounding on the door to be let in, shouting, “De moffen komen eraan!” (German soldiers are coming!) You quickly yanked me indoors and shushed me, “Don’t shout this warning outside, tell me when you are inside.”
“The soldiers blocked off both ends of the street,” I said. “They are taking some men out of the houses and putting them on their trucks.”

I already knew those men would travel in train cattle cars to slave labour camps in Germany. Papa quickly dragged the buffet in the back room away from the wall, rolled back the carpet, yanked open a trapdoor, and clambered down into the darkness, telling me, “Help Mama push everything back into place.”

I was only five years old, and I was used to Papa often living under the floor. But, Mama, how could you sleep when you knew that any night, rifle butts could pound our front door and Papa would have to rush down the stairs into his hiding place?

Finally, in the last winter months of the war, our rescuers bombed all the railway bridges. That stopped the trains to Germany and the raids. Papa came out of hiding; we took our bikes from their hiding places. One day Papa took me for a bike ride out into the country. When we returned, I excitedly told you about the fun day we had.

“The airplanes came and Papa and I threw down our bikes, and we jumped down into one of those trenches beside the road. And I saw the Germans shoot at the airplanes. And then they hit one and I saw the smoke, and I saw the parachutes. And then we got to the farmer, and he put the rabbit in the bottom of Papa’s bike carrier and covered it up with vegetables. And then the soldier stopped us on our way home and poked his gun among the vegetables. And then the rabbit poked his nose out and sniffed the gun. And then Papa gave the soldier a package of cigarettes. And then the soldier walked away.”
No doubt you prayed hard during that fun day: that all three of us, including the rabbit, would arrive safely. Thank you, Mama.

Then, finally, liberation! No more night curfews. No more food smuggling. No more hunger. No more waking up from shots in the night. No more listening to the BBC news in Dutch on earphones from a secret radio hidden above the linen closet. No more trains of cattle cars with begging hands sticking out through the cracks in the boards.

Thank you, Mama, for looking after me during those terrible years.
Your grateful son, Jack

PS: And you 7,600 Canadian mamas—you whose soldier sons died to liberate our country—I continue to thank you for your sacrifice.