The commissioning of Joshua

 These chapters are very interesting in Numbers. Again women are mentioned as the only children of a line coming down from Joseph (Chapter 27) and the Lord has decreed that they should inherit their father's portion. God establishes the right heirs as sons and if no sons then daughters, and if no child then brothers and continuing back through the generations to establish the right heir. I never really understood burnt offerings before but the explanation in Chapter 28 is quite explicit and easily understood. These are pleasing offerings to God and in specific time frames, Sabbath offerings, monthly offerings, Passover offering, Festivals like the day of the first fruits. The idea of not working on the Sabbath at your occupations puzzled me as a child. For the burnt offerings it is mentioned that this is a pleasing odour to the Lord but not working is a holy convocation. A holy convocation is a sacred assembly or formal gathering of believers called together to worship God, for instruction or spiritual renewal. 

In the Christian world that I grew up in I was conflicted by this idea because people still did work and gradually it was defined as a needed service and so avoided conflicting with the holy convocation ideal. The Christian world has moved far away from that original concept of the holy convocation on the Sabbath (Chapter 28) (in the Christian world this is celebrated on Sunday for just the actual time of the service). I myself go to Church on Sunday with YouTube. I went through a period of time when I was nine and ten and found this idea of burnt offerings of animals that I saw on the farm and so many listed and I can see those reading now in Numbers. They were troublesome in my mind and I blocked out that idea of sacrificing animals and indeed refused to eat meat for a while. But hearing the stories of the First Nations and their thanks given to the animals which they ate was sort of a balm on that worrisome mind of mine. Moses is instructing the people of Israel because he knows he is not going into the Promised Land and must prepare them so that they continue to celebrate God as God has commanded. 

Packages mailed off to the Archives should arrive in the next week. The material that Edward carefully collected through the years can be useful to people researching the Kip/Kipp family name. He collected a lot of material in the United States where the Kip/Kipp families lived. Although I helped him to collect the material,  I did not absorb any of it particularly because I was not interested in genealogy but simply helping him with his collections. I do not know the Kipp families that he is related to and it just seemed practical to put it all in a repository where any of them can go and see it. At 80 my time is short ahead of me and I especially did not want to see any of it thrown away after all his work on it. 

Top floor cleaned yesterday and it is the main floor today. A huge amount of cardboard went out this week for the collection. We have replaced all of the drape rods and drapes in the house now pretty much. They were getting old and needed new ones. 

NATO will buy ten of the SAAB jets for reconnaissance which is good news as we had debated doing that as part of our fleet but really having them as NATO possessions is an advantage. Germany and France are very much moving to the forefront in NATO. France in particular is heavily armed and nuclear capable. The United Kingdom also increasing their military (they too are nuclear capable) and they too have an Arctic presence. I feel that NATO is progressing forward very quickly and in particular has command of the Arctic which is important as the ice melts. Canada will be part of that protection cover for the Arctic along with Norway, Sweden and Finland with Germany and France. The other countries in NATO are also committed but the heavy work will probably fall to the countries that neighbour on the Arctic plus France and Germany (and Denmark). We will hear at this meeting how much the United States will be involved I think as they to have an Arctic presence with Alaska. Greenland is also part of NATO and the protection plan but Greenland (protectorate of Denmark) has a very small population so need the support of the surrounding nations on the Arctic along with Denmark, Germany and France). I am sure we will hear quite a bit more on all of that. Russia continues to try and provoke NATO but they are a purely defensive organization. 

Russia still is living in the times of the 1800s with no concept of a world view that wants peace. I was pleased to see China say at the UN Security Meeting that it is time to wind down this war against Ukraine. Russia continues to murder the people of Ukraine and especially in Kyiv the capital. They are satanists. 

Probably not much work done today but time will tell.

Solitaire puzzles to do.  

 

 

Yes, the submarine purchase is moving forward

 Picking the proposal from German (and Norway as they also have the same subs) has a huge advantage for NATO and Canada. The crews of the three countries can train together and we are all part of NATO. We will be working together in the Arctic and having the same submarine is an enormous advantage. When I was a child Canada had the largest Navy of all the countries at the end of the Second World War and it continued thus for quite a while. London, Ontario was a military city with Wolsley Barracks being the home for the 1st and 2nd RCR and the 48th Highlanders. They were the largest employer in London when I was a child. We even had Sea Cadets along with Army and Air Force cadets for the young people looking towards being in the military or just for the training which is always excellent. 

Thank you Prime Minister Carney for pushing this ahead month after month. It has been such a long time coming as it was in the 1980s that proper expenditures were made for the military although there could have been more even back then. 

Also thankyou to Premier Ford and Premier Smith of Alberta for the announcement on the plans to have an Eastern oil Pipeline to Sarnia. It is really better than Thunder Bay and then by the St Lawrence Seaway as a pipeline is the safest and fastest way to move oil.  Oil refined once again in Sarnia after all these years is such a perfect idea. Probably it will be a bit before that happens but just talking about it is such a good start. 

Parcels mailed off to the Archives at Canada Post and just under $100 in total for the two boxes. Edward would be pleased that we remembered to do that. It took me a while to get it organized but I am back into that once again as the Allen box should go next week and then work on the Family photo binders (40 of them) down to six to eight and all of the pictures of Edward's nieces and their families will be removed, labeled and an index prepared as the girls were very young when we married and might not remember all of the events. 

Must get back to Chromosome 1 once again and see what I can come up with but busy right now on other things. In the winter I will have more time. 

 

Fourty years have passed in the wilderness

 A second census is taken as recorded in Numbers and the fourty years have passed and only Caleb and Joshua remain as recorded in the first census. Caleb and Joshua had been the spies sent out as two of the twelve members of the twelve tribes of Israel and they had properly recorded what they discovered. God said they would survive to enter into the Promised Land. Neither Moses nor Aaron will enter the Promised Land. I found this second census to be very interesting as daughters were mentioned as the heads of families within each of the tribes. The numbers of Israelis (descendants of Jacob whom God renamed Israel) is a very large number once again just as the first census was a large number. God continues to punish any turning away from Him. The Old Testament section of the Bible is so different from the New Testament. Rules are always needed but when the severity slows down the ability of Homo sapiens to survive in a hostile environment God saw the need for a change although I do not see yet the promise of a Messiah in all these writings God does find a way to alleviate His punishments so that the Israelis, His chosen people to let the world know that He was the Creator God and no one else, continue to survive and flourish. 

I am finding now that rereading the Bible was a path for me to follow at this time in order to better worship God the Creator. At every stage of one's life I have read the Bible but generally in the style of the readings that are set aside for each day since the presence of the World Wide Web in my life. Before that I read as the readings given to us by my Church but not with as much meaning for me as I am doing now reading the Bible from cover to cover.  In my youth when I read the Bible from cover to cover it was less focused and with less understanding. It is too long ago now to remember if I was successful in reading the entire book (I suspect I skipped parts here and there but I did read huge amounts at the time). 

 Yesterday saw us putting together the British Columbia Kipp material to send to the Archives. There are now two boxes (one banker box and one smaller Archival Box all wrapped up in brown paper and labeled which will go to the post office in the afternoon. It was an hour or so of wrapping up the boxes and finding a copy of The Kip Family of America by Frederick E Kip printed in 1928 that Edward had used for his research and added to quite a bit with a genealogical table that he produced in Legacy and is on his website. It has taken me a while to move to getting this done. It was one of his many mentions in those last years before he passed away. 

It keeps reminding me that I must keep my work organized and headed out the door once assembled in order to not be leaving loose ends. But COVID certainly complicated all of that and Edward had concentrated on some other work the last couple of years and I think had just forgotten his intentions with this material. 

Next up is the Allen family material that is mostly in one box and will get that mailed off to the Allen family that I met in 2019 on one of our last trips to his cousins that he had exchanged letters and information with over the numerous decades since he started into genealogy back in the early 1960s (sixty one years of doing genealogy!). 

Then the 40 plus binders of family pictures to reduce down to six to eight binders of purely family material to organize that material for our grandsons to have detailing Edward's life in particular from babyhood to the last set of pictures just before he passed away (mine tend to be electronic as my younger sister has all the originals). They include his many planned trips into the United States with a couple of organizations that he and George Anderson organized over a decade and a half  between the late 1990s up until 2012 I think most of this material has been given to the organizing groups for whom they arranged trips into the United States and in Ontario. 

Time to do the Solitaire puzzles.

The Book of Numbers

God the Creator who brought the Israelis out of Egypt and now right to the Promised Land demands absolute perfection. Those who fail are destroyed and God ameliorates this punishment using Moses and Aaron as the catalyst that saves many of the Israeli people so that they survive since they have not actively defiled what God has done for them. I think that is what I understand from these chapters in Numbers. This time of Homo sapiens included many gods that people worshiped but the Creator God, the only true God, had a plan for the world and this was a time of trying to perfect all those who would be part of that plan. Joshua now appears in the writings. But it will be fourty years before the congregation of Israel will enter the Promised Land as God decreed that no one over the age of twenty years at this time in the readings of Numbers would enter the Promised Land. I am at Chapter 20 now and reading these ancient writings in July of 2026. 

The world has entered a phase where the temperature is very high across many parts of the world. It is summer and the sun beating down on the earth is at its strongest. But sometimes I do wonder if we feel it more now because of air conditioning; I do know that the temperatures are higher somewhat but not a huge amount. Into July now and this is generally the  hottest month and the driest. We have had a great deal of rain which has been wondrous for the land and the green grass everywhere is beautiful. Everything is green - the grass, the wild flowers, the trees with their bounty of leaves very thick this year.  Especially the Walnut Tree is heavy with leaves. 

Yesterday was a busy day and we ended the evening with a walk/kayak at Petri. Very pleasant and very crowded as many people enjoyed the swimming and the fresh air. The beavers have built a second beaver den as the family splits now and the older children move on to new homes. All of God's creation lies before Him as He listens and watches for the world to follow the commandments that He sent to us through Jesus the Son of God the Creator when He  came and lived amongst us over two thousand years ago now. The Christian faith developed from Jesus Christ and His followers. 

Today is Sunday, God's day of rest in the Christian parts of the world throughout all the centuries. Church on YouTube once again. 

A little work done yesterday as I work away on Chromosome 1. It is the most difficult of all the chromosomes to sort out the four great grandparent's portions to each of the five siblings tested in a family of seven siblings. The ancient portion at the beginning shared by so many and this is not small lengths. I am sharing many 30/40 cM portions with people who are at least seventh and eighth cousins and primarily descendants of colonial Americans. Their trees fascinate me in their depth taking them back to those very early days of colonists coming to the New England/New Amsterdam colonies (but were they Blake or Knight ancestors; that is the question). 

Solitaire puzzles to do.  

 

On to the way to Canaan - the Promised Land

 It is the numbers, all the counting that sticks in one's mind in the Book of Numbers and yet there are other happenings. The people of Israel are hungry and want meat to eat and Moses is overwhelmed by the responsibility so God assigns 70 elders to help Moses by working with the Israelites on the day to day problems that arise. The rules to follow are many and the knowledge of the land they are heading towards is lost to them by the generations between Joseph who was sold into bondage by his brothers and then sold again in Egypt and God taking them out of their bondage in Egypt back to the land of their forefathers. For the sake of Moses God softens his anger somewhat but the path is difficult for the Israelis as they finally head home but it is hundreds of years since their ancestors went to Egypt to buy food during the time of crop failure. Although this reading tends to be repetitive the numbers are overwhelming of people; of goods; of animals. One trys to sort it all but I am not sure that is what I am to learn as I read Numbers. 

Personally I am pleased with the decision on the pipeline. In the long run the people of a country always pay for the assets. That is what makes a country strong (corporations are not necessarily country supportive; their bottom line is what they look at, at all times, and one must be cautious at how dependent a country becomes on the corporations within it). The corporations benefit hugely from being Canadian (this Prime Minister has a good eye on business and economics and how a country should flow). The oil reserve in the oil sands is said to be worth  7 trillion (Alberta itself must be worth over 30 trillion with all the rare minerals). A good investment made by the government of Canada when Rupert's Land was slowly brought into Canada as provinces and territories.  The benefits will come as time passes but if people are in a rush to acquire what isn't actually their personal property then perhaps they need to find a new place to live although the world is pretty much taken up in terms of formed countries. It is only by the process of support by all of Canada that exciting things like this will happen (British Columbia is supporting the new pipeline as well and otherwise Alberta is landlocked or having to sell all of its oil to our neighbour to the south at a discount). The benefits of the land belong to Canada, provinces are just administrative units unless you have a lot of money to buy the province and anyone buying it for you is not going to be as kind as Canada is to you. Trying to take away from Canada is not democracy; it is dictatorship by the few. Plus you need to get the First Nations to agree to sell the land to you and why ever would they sell their birthright! I am not sure that the history education is adequate these days with regard to the forming of Canada, the acquisition of Rupert's Land and the creation of the new provinces/territories out of Rupert's Land. 

Strange that I would be reading about all the whining that was done by the Israelis in Numbers at the same time as the Separatists are whining that they actually might have to pay something to have a pipeline. Over time we might see the oil companies provide funding (one does realize that the bottom line is very important in order for them to stay solvent and beneficial to Canada) for this enterprise but the advantage of Canada mostly building it; we collect the money from those using the pipeline and the current Trans Mountain Pipeline (built by the taxes of all of Canada) will help to fund this new pipeline. One of the reasons I am leery of voting Conservative now a days is their tendency to try to balance the budget by selling our assets. I am leery of the Liberals but they tend not to sell our assets. 

A little work done yesterday but we had to pick up a number of important items at various stores and all that was accomplished in less than two hours actually. It is very warm here and it will continue for more days. 

A Happy July 4th to our neighbours and cousins in my case in the United States. Canada is giving a gift of 250 maple trees to the United States to help celebrate their 250th Anniversary.  

Solitaire puzzles are next.