Tag Archives: family

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.

 

Converting Psalm 136 to Speak of Your Family

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Converting Psalm 136 to Speak of Your Family
Many churches practice responsive readings of Psalm 136, where the pastor or worship leader reads the first line, and the group responds with His love endures forever. Here’s how Psalm 136 starts:

Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good.
      His love endures forever.
Give thanks to the God of gods.
      His love endures forever.
(After a few more lines urging thanksgiving to God, the theme swings into a line-by-line description of what God did for Israel:)
to Him who alone does great wonders,
      His love endures forever.
to Him who struck down the firstborn of Egypt
      His love endures forever.
to Him who led his people through the wilderness;
      His love endures forever.
to Him who struck down great kings,
      His love endures forever.
and gave their land as an inheritance to His people Israel
      His love endures forever.
This type of responsive reading was practiced in songs and chants for several thousand years by Jews and later by Christians as well.

After studying all 26 verses of Psalm 136, I thought of making up a responsive reading about the “great wonders” God did in our own family. Here it is. We plan to use it the next time some of our family members come together.

As you read of God’s Wonders in the Popjes Family History, I hope you will be inspired to make up something like this for your own family.

 Responsive Reading of the Popjes Family History
Give thanks to the Lord for He is good.
      His love endures forever.
To Him who preserved the Popjes Family during the 2nd World War
      His love endures forever.
And brought out the family to emigrate to Canada
      His love endures forever.
To Him who revealed Jesus to Jack as Saviour and Friend
      His love endures forever.
And led the family through three cities to settle in Red Deer
      His love endures forever.
To Him who called a girl to be Jack’s friend,
      His love endures forever.
And take Jack to an evangelical church
      His love endures forever.
And led Jack to attend a Bible College in Calgary
      His love endures forever.
To Him who brought Jack and Jo together and blessed their marriage.
      His love endures forever.
To Him who called Jack and Jo to become Bible translators
      His love endures forever.
And led them to live and work among Brazil’s Canela people
      His love endures forever.
To Him who helped Jack and Jo to translate His Word into Canela,
      His love endures forever.
To Him who made many Canela people from all the villages His children.
      His love endures forever.
Give thanks to the God of heaven,
      His love endures forever.

 

 

 

Halloween, the Celebration of Fear

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Halloween, the Celebration of Fear

Spiders!


This week, fear-inducing scenes surround us. Figures of demons, devils and ghosts startle us as we walk into the mall, ducking to avoid spider-filled cobwebs hanging in doorways. Theatres advertise horror films, and Halloween costume parties are replete with vampires, witches, and warlocks. Yes, this coming Monday is Halloween, the yearly celebration of things we fear.

We usually think of fear as a negative emotion. Jesus kept telling His followers, “Don’t be afraid.” But there is also a positive side to fear.

What We Fear Shows What We Value
I have lived for extended periods in nearly a dozen countries. People in every culture and society consider their bodies important. They all dread suffering a crippling accident or debilitating disease. They profoundly respect loaded firearms, powerful machinery, poisonous snakes, and disease-carrying insects. Fear is what drives us to doctors for medical advice, while others call on shamans or engage in other actions that they believe will keep them alive and well.

One of the most positive aspects of fear is that it helps us to understand ourselves better. What we dread shows us what we value. To determine what things I value the most, I recently listed six things that frighten me the most:

  • I fear committing “moral lapse” sins. I read of fellow Christian leaders, speakers, and authors who, through pride, abuse their power as communicators. Others, through greed and envy, embezzle ministry funds. Others, through lust and gluttony, sin by inappropriate sexual conduct, overeating or drunkenness.
  • I value my fellowship with God and my reputation with those who know me. I value the respect of my wife, my family, and my colleagues. I value my current public ministry as an author and my history as a leader, speaker, and pioneer Bible translator.

 

  • I fear suffering a crippling physical or mental injury or disease.
  • I value serving God with my mind and body. I value physical comfort and freedom from pain. I value exercising a wide range of life choices and options.

 

  • I fear messed-up relationships with my family, friends, and colleagues.
  • I value our interdependence, helping each other to succeed, and the resulting mutual respect and appreciation.

 

  • I fear poverty.
  • I value being treated by God as His money manager, to give to those in need, to meet my personal and family needs; and to finance the cost of publishing what I write.

 

  • I fear losing all my computer data, my creative writing, personal history, my fifty-plus years of daily diaries, and a lifetime collection of photos, etc.
  • I value the written record of what I have done and experienced in the past because I constantly learn how God has led me, and I tap into it for my writing ministry.

 

  • I fear that our children, grandchildren, and their spouses may suffer the same sort of losses and troubles that I fear.
  • I value that God listens to my wife and me as we pray by name for each member of our family. We are like the apostle John who wrote, “I have no greater joy than to hear that my children are walking in the truth.” (3 JN 4)

So What?
During this Halloween week, let’s remember that even if some of our fears come true, our souls are safe. As children of God, we can sing, “Though trials should come . . . It is well with my soul.”

The Canela people, among whom Jo and I worked as Bible translators for twenty-three years, were terrified of evil spirits and the malevolent ghosts of their ancestors who were intent on sickening and killing the Canelas. When they received God’s Word in their language, huge changes came to believers who knew God’s powerful Holy Spirit now lived in their bodies, and they had nothing to fear from spirits and ghosts.

Hundreds of millions of people, however, continue to live in daily fear, beset by Satanic forces. They don’t know that Jesus, the Son of God, has overcome Satan. They, too, need to hear Jesus say, in their own language, “Trust in me, don’t be afraid.”

Our Forever Family

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An Adoption Decision
The Canela chief and elders’ council made a significant decision during the first week that Jo, our pre-school daughters, and I lived in the Canela village. The next day, Jo was taken to one house and I to another, where we went through an elaborate ceremony. It took a long time to cover most of our bodies with hawk-down, glued on with sticky tree resin. The parts of our bodies not covered with feathers were painted with vivid red ochre. Then we walked to the central plaza, followed by women carrying pans of food and other gifts for the elders to share.

The chief made a speech, and although we didn’t understand much at that time, we did catch on that the two families in whose houses we were feathered and painted had adopted us as their son and daughter. We were now irrevocably citizens of Canela society, with all the rights and responsibilities of born Canelas.

Yet Another Adoption
Many years later, after we were fluent in Canela and had translated Luke, Acts, and a few epistles in a first draft, Jaco, a young man, surprised me, “I am a Jesus follower.” He was the first believer!
“How did that happen?” I asked him.
“Well, I was reading some of the carbon copies of Our Father’s Words that we translated, and I asked myself, ‘Jaco, how long are you going to just read this stuff? When are you going to believe it?’ So, I got up from my hammock, walked out to look up into the sky and said, ‘Great Father in the sky, I have been reading about the way you want us to live, and I realize I am in a terrible situation. Please do something for me.’”

“So, what did the Great Father do for you?” I asked.
“He adopted me into His family,” Jaco said, using the same term that described what Jo and I went through when our Canela families adopted us.
“You and I are now brothers because Jesus is our Older Brother,” I said.

We had not yet translated Romans and Hebrews, but I explained that Jesus is God’s Son, and he died and rose again so that God would adopt men and women who believe in Him (Rom. 8:15) and so that Jesus could call us younger brothers and sisters. (Rom. 8:29, Heb. 2:11).

The privileges and rights that Jo and I acquired when the Canelas adopted us were forever. They reminded us of Eph. 1:3, “the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places.” God’s spiritual blessings were forever, not having anything to do with wealth and health on earth, but of treasure and new bodies in heaven.

A Long-Lasting Effect
Jo and my adoption took place in 1968. We lived among the Canelas for twenty-two years to complete the literacy and Bible translation program. Scores of Canelas became Bible reading believers. We were away and out of touch for nineteen years. Then we returned for a visit, not just with our three now-grown daughters but with their husbands and their children—eight of them. When the sixteen of us walked to the central plaza, forty-one years after Jo and my adoption, to greet the chief and elders, they immediately received us all with great delight and ceremony. It was as if we had never left. Even kids and young people who had never met us greeted us as long-lost relatives, which we were. The Canela blessings, rights and privileges were still in effect.

In the same way, when God the Father adopted us as His Sons and daughters, making Jesus our Older Brother, he conferred eternal, unchanging blessings on us. Let’s remember that all the spiritual benefits we receive through our relationship with Jesus are forever, not to be confused with good health, a great job, a large bank account, and a pleasant life on earth.

 

The 30th Anniversary

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A few days ago, on Monday, August 10, Jo and I celebrated a significant anniversary of a major life event that took place on this date in 1990, 30 years ago. It was a Friday, and the location was on the central plaza of the main Canela village in Brazil. The occasion was the distribution of the newly printed partial Bible, which Jo and I translated for and with the Canela people.

A Major Investment
Starting in 1957, we spent 11 years in studies, training, and preparation for the ministry of linguistics and Bible translation in Brazil. For the next 22 years, we focused on producing a literate society and a partial Bible in the Canela language. It was a 33 year-long investment. A long time, but it was worth the effort!

Eternal Results

A generation growing up learning about God from the Canela Bible

We are thrilled to think that of the several thousand Canelas now living in the main village, a whole generation was born and grew up in homes where a Canela Bible was present. These 20 to 30-year-old parents are now themselves raising families that have access to God’s Word in their language.

Our Heartfelt Thanks to God
Our hearts are full of thanks to God for choosing Jo and me, and our family, to be involved in this significant task. We especially thank our daughters, Valorie, Leanne and Cheryl, for being part of our team. They played a vital role in developing deep relationships with Canela friends, playmates, and families. Right from the very beginning of language learning, they helped us sort thousands of slips of paper with Canela words and definitions to produce a dictionary. During school vacation, they spent many hours helping adult Canelas learn to read. And they prayed with in-depth personal knowledge for the Canelas and us.

Our daughters had to sacrifice much: the loss of grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins back in Canada with whom they connected only briefly every five years. During their school years, they spent up to three months at a time in a boarding school on the mission centre separated from us while we worked in the village. When they graduated from high school, they left Brazil, and we were apart for years.

But God is no one’s debtor. He gave them dozens of uncles and aunts and life-long friends from among our fellow Wycliffe missionary families, also living on the mission centre in Belem.

The Large Team Back Home
We thank God for our extended families and for the friends we made during our decades of preparation and active ministry. Many became long-time faithful prayer warriors, encouraging correspondents (even with paper mail), and essential financial partners. We thank God for all of you, and we thank you for your part in bringing the Word of God to the Canela.

Our Co-Labourers in Brazil
Our thanks go up to God and to our fellow missionaries in Brazil on the centres, also the administrators, the teachers for our daughters, the pilots, the mechanics, the radio and computer technicians, and the PhDs in several academic disciplines, all freely sharing their expertise with us. We could never have completed this task without them. Frankly, we would never even have dared to start it without them.

We are also thankful for Bernard and Elke Grupp, the missionaries who have worked among the Canela for the past 18 years. They continually encourage us by sending reports of baptisms, Bible classes, the production of the Canela Illustrated Children’s Bible, and multiple productions in audio and video media like The Jesus Film in Canela.

Good Things From The Hand of God
Canela life has changed much since those long-ago days in the late 1960s when Jo and I began living with the Canela. Life expectancy has vastly increased. Infant mortality has drastically decreased. Most Canelas now can read and write in their own language. A whole generation has been going to school in town to be taught in Portuguese and is now growing up fluently bilingual.

Hundreds of people have prayed, given, assisted, encouraged, sacrificed and worked to make possible the Word of God in the Canela language.

Every one of us looks forward to that great worship scene in Revelation 7:9. “There was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people and language, standing before the throne and before the Lamb.”

Look! Yes, there they are! The Canelas!

 

After more than 20 years of meeting in the open air, the Canelas built a fireproof, waterproof church building patterned after local Brazilian churches.

Baptisms with plenty of witnesses

Adult believers baptisms take place frequently

Lots of children at special teaching sessions for them.

Many times the church just won’t hold everyone wanting to attend a teaching session.

 

Our Triune God Loves His People to Work in Community Just as He Does.

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The Story
On Sunday morning, the tinkling of teaspoons in teacups was the signal for me to slip out of bed and join the fun in my parents’ bedroom. Settled between them with a cup of tea and some Maria biscuits in my saucer, I joined them to sip, dip and nibble. After fifteen minutes of joy, my Mom would leave us to make breakfast, and the story would begin.

The stories usually were about a young man going out into the world to “seek his fortune.” I didn’t know exactly what that meant, but as he walked along the road, he would meet someone who had a special ability. One could swing his sword so fast he could use it as an umbrella during a rainstorm. The two would decide to seek their fortune together. Soon they would meet others with different special talents, and they would join the group.

Eventually, they would meet a problem, a princess held by a giant, for instance, and the young man and his group would devise a plan to defeat the giant and rescue the princess, each member using his unique skill. The result was often measured in bags of gold for each of them.

The Impression
Each story my dad told was different, but each had that same theme, and they made a profound impression on me. I make up similar stories to tell my children and grandchildren. When my wife and I went to Brazil as linguists, teachers, and Bible translators, I saw myself as the young man going out to gather a group of people with compensating talents to work together to “seek our fortune.” Wycliffe was a good fit for us since the agency values people with a wide variety of skills, but all of whom see themselves as a vital part of every translation team.

Working Together: It's the Right Thing to Do

Working Together: It’s the Right Thing to Do

The Result
As Jo and I lived with the Canela people, God led us to connect with men and women who had a natural gifting in various areas. We helped them develop these talents. One young man became very skilled at extracting rotten teeth. Others loved teaching people to read. An artist illustrated the translated Scriptures with sketches of Canela life. Several learned to type, and one had the knack of making sentences flow smoothly. At times, a dozen people worked together on various aspects of the translation work.

This way of working together interdependently fitted right in with the Canela culture. Together we accomplished things so massive, difficult and complicated, no single one of us could have achieved them as an individual.

The Contrast
Unfortunately, our North American culture glorifies independence. Our hero is the lone pioneer, conquering the wild west, building a log house for his family with his own hands, and clearing the land with his own axe.

Businesses, and even churches, in North America, spend much time and money teaching people to work together as a team. It doesn’t come naturally to us. We have a cultural bias against the concept. Only in sports like hockey or football do we value the team.

The Trinity
In that respect, Canela culture is far more godly than North American culture. Here’s why. God said, “Let Us make man in Our own likeness.” God is a community of three: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. They made human beings in Their likeness, to be people with the same need to live and work together in community as They had.

This kind of working community is a far cry from the military and industrial model of exploiting the labour of individuals to accomplish objectives set by generals or executives. The strength of the interdependent community lies in its people, not in its bosses. The more people grow in a deep appreciation for the variety of contributions from others in the community, the more productive the community becomes.

The Questions
So, is yours a godly (god-like) family? That is, does your family work together, as the Holy Trinity does?

What about your church? Are all the members engaged in ministry, each contributing to the whole with their own talents and abilities?