Pure Delight

Can you guess what is happening here? The picture describes it all. The look on this young lady’s face is one of pure delight. But unless you are from the country you will not understand what is happening… but again… if you are from the country you may have never done this kind of thing either.

This next shot may help you understand.

The answer is “Milking a Cow”. To help educate a new generation of children (and even adults) the farming community organizations have developed this very “cooperative cow” that stands quietly and allows a hundred little hands to pull on her teats milking her. In real life – the old pail would have been kicked to the back of the barn when she disapproved.

All of the activities, that the hundreds of thousands of children and adults experienced this week near Peterborough, were at the International Ploughing Match (IPM). IPM is a place where the rural communities and the non-rural folks can meet – and amazing things take place. There really are not enough words to describe what took place.

When we arrived early we chauffeured in an amazing “rural limousine” from the parking lot along the main road to the IPM sight. And then from there on for the next hours we walked and walked and walked through a farmer’s fields – that had been transformed into a small city.

These photos may help to capture some of the size. We were hanging from a 175 high Sky Bucket from our Hydro Electric company.

The most amazing sight for myself was not all the machinery or the hundreds of displays. It was the literally hundreds of people walking through the IPM grounds with their new Walking Sticks. We had one as well. Many people came up to ask where we got the Walking Stick. This happened over and over again. Each time we were asked we referred them to a special tent where they could get the Walking Stick for free.

You may ask what the Walking Stick is all about. Well let me share this with you… there is this leather bracelet attached to the top of it… with six coloured beads on the leather piece. The Gold bead represents Heaven and God. The Black bead beside it represents Sin in our lives – in that all of us have fallen short of God’s plan for our lives. The Red bead represents what God did for us when he let Jesus, His Son, die on the cross for our Sins. The White bead represents what happens to us when we ask Jesus to come into our life and take the sin away – He “washes” the Sin away – He gets rid of it all. The final Green bead is the one that represents a New Life that we can live with God’s help. As you follow the leather bracelet further you arrive back at the Gold bead, now you are connected with God again and can look forward to Heaven someday.

Back to the special tent… there were about 20 or more volunteers seated in this tent with a smile on their face. They were apart of hundreds of volunteers that showed up this week to take part in this Christian Outreach to share the love of God and the message of Salvation.

When we went into the tent the place was a buzz of people talking and telling the story – over and over again. As I looked on every small group was at different stages of the presentation. Some were talking and others were praying. As I looked on the some folk were rising as they held their new walking sticks and were smiling. They had heard the story of Jesus and someone had just prayed for them.

The most important part of what happened was… the Holy Spirit walked out with them and into a New Life.

Please pray for the results of this powerful IPM outreach.