Hello:
Thank you very much for your prayers. I flew out to Winnipeg Monday morning, but as Daryl posted, Jennifer was taken off life support shortly before I got there. There was a double funeral yesterday. Ralph and Jennifer were both well know and loved in the community and they had to rent a larger church in order to accommodate the people. Ralph had a responsible position as a Farm Management Specialist with Manitoba’s Department of Agriculture. He specialized in computer software applications to help track farm business, crop and stock management and he developed many applications to increase Manitoban’s farm productivity. Many of them are posted and can be downloaded free of charge on Manitoba’s Agricultural site.
Jennifer was an exceptional young lady, loving and extremely helpful and extremely efficient. She will be missed as much as her father. She looked and acted much older than her age. She was a vibrant, transparent, talented, friendly young woman.
In spite of how serious her injuries were, I was very hopeful until the end that God would heal her, but it wasn’t to be.
Thank you for keeping the family in your prayers. The hardest part will be for the mother, Neva in the weeks and months ahead when all the friends and family return home and she carries on. I’m glad to say she’s accepted this very well under the circumstances. She’s been an inspiration to all of us. We knew how much she loved both of these dear ones, and she’s bearing up heroically.
One small thing that those of you who may or may not know her could do is to visit her home church web site,
http://www.hendersonhwysda.org/ and you’ll see towards the bottom of the page that a trust fund has been set up at CIBC for her children. There are instructions there on how to contribute to it, so I’d encourage you all to pray about it and give if you feel impressed. I should add one or two more comments.
Ralph and Neva have a long history of helping others – relatives and non-relatives alike. They’ve taken in the destitute often for months at a time, traveled tens of thousands of miles to nurse their parents dividing their own family for weeks at a time. This fall they persuaded their father and great aunt to come live with them. This was after they agreed to keep my two younger children for this school year. In November, Neva’s father who had just settled with them about a week before died in her arms, likely of a heart attack brought on by congestive heart failure. She was very close to him. He was 86. When this second tragedy happened, the members of the household included the 98 year old feeble Aunt, a dear women, six children, and two adults. The Aunt is still with her and she plan to keep her and my two until the end of the school year. She is an amazing, worthy woman.
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