Musings From the Conways in Canada
March 2025, Issue No. 1
By Pearlyn
The First Check-in
I have often wondered about the stories of people we’ve seen in airports. The holidaymakers with their emanating excitement, business travellers and their fast-tracked transitions, and that group of travellers who are obviously heading to their country of residence, but who equally obviously aren’t native to their destination. I’ve wondered most about their stories – what compelled them to leave their place of birth to seek out life in a new land? Was it what they hoped it would be? What had they left behind? How had they been changed by the process of leaving and beginning again?
I guess we’re writing our own answers to those questions now. Not that we have any, yet. But this is an attempt to hold ourselves to the discipline of reflection, with the hope that it will push us towards clarity of thought which precedes learning and growth.
We’re coming up on three months in Toronto and so, three main thoughts to
put down in words about the time that has passed.
God’s Church
We continue to be amazed at how God is working through His people all over the world. We came to Canada to join Christ Church Toronto, a church of about 250 on the city’s east end. It is a faithful community of believers who are actively trying to follow God in the world, in this city where so much is broken and so many are lost. We have been thoroughly encouraged by their warmth and generosity in welcoming our family to Christ Church. In late 2024, Christ Church Toronto purchased a building after seven years being a nomadic church.
The story of how this building came to be, has been for us yet another encouragement of God working through His people, who remain faithful and obedient to Him. The building we now gather in used to be the Estonian Baptist Church – built by Estonian immigrants who fled their Soviet occupied homeland in the decades following the second world war. Over the years, the Estonian Baptist Church wrote and recorded songs of worship and sermons, which they radioed secretly back to Estonia, to encourage the Christians who remained there.
There is a room in the church, full of old equipment and tape all catalogued and dated precisely. Small acts of faithfulness, the impact of which we will only know when we see Christ on his throne. When the congregation dwindled with time, they were left with a building that was often empty. When the opportunity arose, they chose to sell the building to Christ Church instead of condominium developers who had offered a hefty sum for the land, prizing the things of the world to come. Today, praise rings out from the church and Lord-willing, for years to come.
Courage
The children have had to be so much more courageous than we imagined back in familiar Singapore when we were preparing for the move. Since coming here, they have had to make new friends in church, school, swimming and adapt to how even familiar things, like swimming, are different here.
Lydia (with the yellowhood) went for her first meet less than a fortnight after joining their swim club here. When she had to do her warm down after the races, I watched her observe, then tail some other girls who looked like they knew what they were supposed to do. She followed them, slipped into the lane with them and did her laps.
The boys have had to step up too. In February, the children’s school held a Speech Meet and a Skate-a-thon. In the space of three weeks, they had to learn to skate on ice and prepare to recite a poem or Scripture in front of judges and their classmates. We are happy to share that with lots of wobbles, some falls, and real questioning about whether they’d get the performances memorised in time, they did it. (They are now preparing to perform a musical in May. School is intense here, eh?)
Slowing Down
We have also been learning to take things down a notch. Things simply don’t
happen as fast here. Passed the driving test? Your license will come in the mail
within 90 days. Got a credit card? It’ll come in the mail in about two weeks. We
went through the Singaporean responses to these timelines (hopefully with
filters on….), but this is what it is. So we’re learning to roll with it, and actually
beginning to appreciate that because the other party is not likely to act so fast,
it means I don’t have to deal with this or that thing right now. There is
something good in it, and we are learning to channel our inner Treebeards.
The hymn below captures well the meditation of our hearts as we plod on here in Toronto, giving thanks to and leaning on our good God who watches over all our days. Keep on keeping on. Further up and further in.
Awake, my soul, and with the sun
thy daily stage of duty run;
shake off dull sloth, and early rise
to pay thy morning sacrifice.
Lord, I my vows to Thee renew.
Disperse my sins as morning dew;
guard my first springs of thought and will;
and with Thyself my spirit fill.
Direct, control, suggest, this day,
all I design or do or say,
that all my pow’rs, with all their might
in Thy sole glory may unite.
Praise God, from whom all blessings flow;
praise Him all creatures here below;
praise Him above, ye heav’enly host;
praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.
