After eight years I finally got some new glasses.

I first started wearing glasses in grade 8 and I have had the same prescription ever since! Like all glasses at the time, they were huge. They were so big they often pressed into my cheeks when I smiled. I kept those glasses for a very long time and I liked them so much that after several years I bought new ones that were basically the same style. Thats me, always keeping up with the latest fashion.

When I was in university I went to a new, smaller style of glasses (the ones pictured on the left). They are still huge by today’s standards, but in 1990 they were “in”. In 1999 I again purchased new, even smaller glasses (middle picture). These ones started to affect my vision in an irritating way as the bottom of the frames were in my field of view. I soon got used to it and just tipped my head down some to see things that were lower. Last month I got a new set of glasses, and again, they are smaller still.

Now I really notice the small size. The bottom of the frame is right in the comfortable zone for reading a book, looking at my keyboard, seeing food on my plate, etc. The doctor told me that I likely will never need bifocals, but my newest glasses kinda feel like that anyway. I find myself either peering down below my glasses or tipping my head down lots more, so much so that my neck is actually getting sore. From a distance I probably appear like someone struggling with bifocals.

I recently found my 17 year old glasses and tried them on. The prescription is the same, so I can see just fine. It was kind of like an IMAX theater where the screen takes up all your field of view.. life on the big screen without any borders or frames to infringe my vision. By comparison, my last pair are like watching life on a wide screen TV. Still comfortable and acceptable, but much smaller. In contrast, my newest glasses are kinda like watching a movie on an iPod.

Oh the trials of being a slave to fashion.

Who wouldn’t like to be asked that question each month? I had never been asked that question before today, but that is what I will be getting asked at the end of each month here at GoodSeed. The catch is that the amount I request is coming from whatever happens to be in our donations account.

Naomi and I will be learning a lot more about budgeting this way.. some months will see more in missionary support than others, so we have to maintain a balance to cover the months that our support will be low. This is very different from our previous missionary experience where two regular paycheques each month were based on an average of the previous year’s support and what our support goal was.

This will definitely encourage us to live more by faith as “faith missionaries”.

Since I will no longer be having to wear a tie to work each day, I was forced by a certain spouse of mine to eliminate some of my older ties. I did have quite a few as I had inherited my dad’s huge tie collection so I had a very respectable collection of unrespectable ugly ties.

I decided to offer the ties (good ones and some of the ugly ones) and some of my other dress clothes to the male students at WOLBI. On one of our trips to the dining hall I took an armload of ties and other stuff to donate. I made an announcement about what I was going to do and was immediately surrounded by wide-eyed, hungry looking young men. I felt like a wounded fish in a shark feeding frenzy with all these guys circling around me. Anyway, after the mad scramble I think everyone got something.

On the Friday of that week I heard that a new weekly tradition had started, Troy’s Ugly Tie Day.

What a legacy to leave.

Years ago as a student at Word of Life Bible Institute, I learned to sing the WOL theme song, complete with actions. It is a real RA! RA! kind of song and was sung every week at the big Presidental Chapel and at just about every other special event.

Another phenomena that I noticed was that a lot of the staff and visiting WOL missionaries met their wives at WOL.. this was before I suspected that I had done the same thing.

I heard rumours that there was a variation of the Holding Forth the Word of Life song that was about an ugly wife. Unable to find this alternate version, I decided to write my own.

The first public performance of this song was during one of these chapels. I was only a couple rows behind the Director of WOL International and the other top guys in the front row. Ironically, I was also standing next to the rather beautiful Naomi at the time. There was about six hundred people there, so my version was not heard by many, but Naomi heard it. After a minute she stopped singing the authorized version to turn and stare at me, her jaw slightly open. I don’t know if it was because of my lack of singing ability or the words I was singing. She married me anyway.

My brother-in-law knew about this song, so when the wedding came around, he arranged for us to sing my version with a mens choir. So yes, I sang Holding Forth My Ugly Wife at my own wedding reception.

Obviously, the song is quite inaccurate.