National Adult Literacy Database

March 15, 1999

This week, we have a true story by Annie Reimer, from Okno, Manitoba. Annie was born in Manitoba, and she moved to Mexico when she was just a year old, then to Belize when she was thirteen. In 1985, she and her husband and their eight children moved back to Canada and made their home in Okno, a Mennonite community in Manitoba's Interlake region, where they now operate a small neighbourhood grocery store. For the past year and a half, Annie has been attending an ESL literacy class in the basement of the Interlake Mennonite Fellowship Church in Okno.

It's Real What My Parents had Told Me

by Annie Reimer

We came here to Canada in summertime. It was a cold summer that year, but it was nice. After summer the winter came, too. Now we experience the winter here in Canada.

My parents had told me, as long as I can remember, all kinds of interesting things about winter in Canada, about snowstorms, and about how nice it looks with all the trees hanging full of snow, and all the shiny hoarfrost on the trees, or the big snowflakes when they came down so softly. We often read stories or saw pictures or Christmas cards of winter in Canada. But that was just a story that our parents told us as long as I can remember, but I never had seen it before we came here.

Then I thought, "Now I can see the beautiful winter here in Canada that my parents told me about. It is really true. Now that old story they told me is really true. Everything looks so beautiful, just as they had told me, or even better."

I often thought that it was a good example of heaven, or of our Lord Jesus. My parents had told me that story, too, as long as I can remember, how nice and beautiful it will be when we are in heaven and we can see our Lord Jesus. And one day I will say it, too, "Now I can see it's real and true. It's much better and nicer than they ever had told me."