On a Journey just begun ... the smoke has cleared ...

Tonight as a Board we met and began to plan ... we looked back on what has happened in a few short days and we began to make plans ...

We started with the mundane - services, supplies and so on ...

We moved to the intimate - conversation about what we've lost and how we will inventory ...

Then we spoke tentatively of the future ... what will be ...

Our meeting tonight came on the heels of our Presbytery meeting in Brandon where a wave of support and care washed over us and carried us home knowing in our hearts and souls that even though this place we stand is a hard place, we are not alone here. Our sisters and brothers from Central United, who lost a building not that long ago, and our sisters and brothers from Brandon Hills who lost their building a couple of years ago, stood with us and lamented what our loss represents, not only to us, but to the community and the region of west man.

Then tonight the visitors from Conference office and from General Council came and stood in the ruins with us as we described what was once there ...

The decision of where we go from here is that of the Congregation to make on the 26th when we meet together ... and they can decide that. For now, we play the part of the wounded healer ... we have been called to rise from our place at the city gates and to venture into our community and tend the battered and broken and wounded ... our own wounds hurt and ache, but in ministering to others, we find ourselves ministered to as well.

This community will, as the Stan Rogers' song Mary Ellen Carter says so wonderfully - "rise again", and tonight we listened to the song as a way of focusing on the task at hand around the Board meeting ... it was significant that at the end of the song Stan moves from the boat lying on the bottom of the ocean and says - "no matter what you've lost, be it a home, a love a friend, like the Mary Ellen Carter rise again ..."

The people of Minnedosa, the people of Minnedosa United Church, the Church called Minnedosa United WILL rise again ... of that I have no doubt ...

I can not end tonight without expressing the profound appreciation I feel personally for the hard work and dedication that our Board Chair Linda Bertram has put in over the last few days in guiding us through this, and most of all I want to give thanks for the incredible work and commitment that Wilf Taylor has put into dealing with all things insurance and property since the fire. Wilf got on to it right away on Sunday and has been our rock since then ... I know that without his steady, calm influence I would have been finished long ago ... Thanks Wilf, you've done an incredible herculean task - and there is much work to do, but with you at the helm we're make our way through the troubled waters we find ourselves in ...

Today I appreciate the ministry that ministers recieve ...

dayenu,