[ Best viewed @ 800x600 or 1024x768 ] Please be patient ... the first time it may take 20-30 seconds to display Excerpts from ... The ecstasy, dangers, agony and rewards of falling in love with A Contemporary Christian love-story (and a real-life Fairy-tale)

(Warning: This is somewhat heavy stuff) Now it's finally time to start ...
Editing "the old witch" out of the rest of our Love-Story.

Some of you may wonder why there is no photo of Jennifer's birth-mother in this website, and why even the 2 small photos showing Jennifer with her dad have his identity protected? Well, telling this particular story is not plausible or even worthwhile if we cannot be truthful about the challenges that were foisted on us (directly or indirectly) by Jen's birth-mother's choices. It's hardly the same story at all if we never mention Jen's parents (especially the mother) though just as in the original Snow-white tale, her dad is not really mentioned much at all either. I mean - try to imagine telling the Snow-White story without ever mentioning the Queen (or King) ... there's just not much story left to tell. Still I felt that it was necessary to strike a balance between telling a worthwhile story and using this story as a means to get even with an old enemy, and I did this by very aggressively protecting their identity. Almost no one knows Jen's maiden name and though some would view us showing their photos here as not exactly unjust, it would also make our family look rather petty and mean-spirited and would subtract substantially from our love's story. So, in the entire story, you never see an actual photo of her or enough of Jen's dad to be able to recognize him - even if they were your neighbors. Throughout this story you get a "sneak-peek" at "the Witch-queen's" soul - and though that's quite revealing, I did not delve into how Jen's dad got to be the President of the company - and how his best friend, the then President of the company, Harvey, ended up dead. But anyone  familiar with the story of "Naboth's vineyard" in the book of Kings, may have noticed that I allude to Jen's birth-parents as a "Jezebel and Ahab" team,  and that comparison is indeed well deserved. It's doubtful that even their neighbors know what they truly are like, as they deserve an Oscar for acting, pretending to be exactly the opposite of what they really are. I mean, what can be said of a woman who declined to have anything to do with (or even attend) either of her daughters weddings? Many years ago, I noticed a pattern ... whenever Jennifer wanted to do something creative, her mother sabotaged her efforts. So, when Jen told me she wanted to write a cookbook, I said: "Sounds great dear, only I have one condition before I throw my support behind you, yet again. Do not even mention this idea to your mother, just send her the book when it's published". Jen agreed. It's worth mentioning that when Jen had her first book published and sent the first copy, signed to "dearest mommy ..." she never even heard back! Then when it became a National Best-seller months later, at my urging, she sent another autographed copy, of that book, and still never heard back ... that is until I wrote and complained to the mother about her meanness, then Jen heard back alright - but it was the most scathing letter she ever received, and not a nice or congratulatory word was in it! But, we hear from our sources, that the old lady proudly shows her daughter's books to neighbors, while acting the injured party ever so convincingly. Of course, a classic Narcissistic trait - is using everything and everyone as objects to draw attention to herself, while manipulating others to get them to believe what she wants, also to say what she wants to hear. Doesn't this sound just a little weird and mean? Well the irony is that while we have gone to great lengths to protect her identity ... she is running around her neighborhood showing everyone Jen's books, not stopping to think that just maybe one day one of them may achieve the seemingly impossible feat of  finding some way around all the obstacles I have placed in their way to order some of Jen's books! Then what they will effectively discover is the key to "unlocking Pandora's box" (so as to say) since each book has (on the back-cover) links which can lead them to this story, already read by many millions of people around the world and, well, totally blow her cover and expose her for whom she really is. Clearly - though we have declined to try to exact justice ourselves, or to take revenge into our own hands, it is my opinion that God may well seek to use her own disingenuous ways to unmask her and unravel the disguise she so carefully employs, which is of course the one thing she fears most of all, as "Keeping up appearances" motivates most of her behavior. What an irony that would be - her running around acting like the proud mamma who has been cruelly deprived of her daughter's company by a horrible son-in-law ... while all the time sowing the seeds of her "unmasking" and of her own demise. It's especially ironic considering how she was inadvertently used for Jennifer and I to first come to each other's attention. So she alone holds the key to the exposure of her own "dark deeds", and she doesn't even realize it. I don't know how we would ever find out, but having seen just some of God's justice in action, I'm quite content to just leave it all to God. However, we do now know this much: God's plans are never 1-dimensional or simple, but beautifully complex and elegant. So, some time ago it occurred to me that (just maybe) there is a very special person in "the queen's" neighborhood ... one that God cares deeply about, and that it may well not be for the mother's benefit that we did much of what we did! Why? Well, as you have read, she was the catalyst for our family to deliver a very important message to her door-step, but (as a needed cover) also to each and every doorstep of that entire neighborhood, late on Easter-eve in 2005 - which is still a mystery to the entire neighborhood, no doubt. We have to allow for the possibility that God wanted that message (and one day this love-story?) to impact that special someone's life in ways we may never understand. You know, if that really is the case, then all of our collective family pain will have served a truly awesome purpose, and we'd very much like (somehow) to find out about it - but even if we don't, I hope that "special someone" will reflect deeply about how much trouble God went through just to reach them and deliver the message that they are truly loved by Him ... and, by the way, "welcome to the family", as our real family are those blessed people who have found God (the King, the true Father) who get to know who Jesus (the Prince) is, who Love God, Worship God and then serve God, in whatever capacity makes sense or is possible for them.

To demonstrate the intricacy of God's plans .... imagine a widow in Canada dealing with the grief of her husbands untimely death, not to mention her children's grief, being contacted out of the blue by this slight blue-eyed old lady (a stranger to her) with a request to attend the funeral, which in her confusion, she grants - but not to a person coming to grieve alongside family and friends, as per stated intentions, rather to one [Audio] gloating that another person who "inconvenienced her" was punished, was dead. Meeting this couple walking down the street, you would never guess ... In fact, I'd wager that if you saw her (or them) walking down the street towards you, that simply by looking at her, you would have very little warning of what her soul was really like, how dark it really is - and therein lies a huge lesson for us all ... "Looks can be so very deceiving!"  If you've ever been fooled once by people like these, shame on them; if you're still fooled by them, shame on you! I'm so surprised that nobody asks this mother: "Have you ever tried being nice to your daughter and her family? Said nice things? Ever said you are sorry?" Of course she would say yes. In reality the answer is "no, no and NO"! Just in case you may think that the evil avoid God's justice here on earth, think (for a moment) on this ... Decades ago, Jen's birth-mother engineered a "heartless coup" for herself and her family in South Africa, at the expense of a family in the grips of the most desperately sad circumstances, at their most vulnerable moment - and her husband (Jen's dad) ended up as the company president, with his long-time best friend, Harvey, ending up dead as a direct result, leaving two little girls all alone and forgotten - in her mind, acceptable "collateral damage". But then, just as with Lady Macbeth, she started getting evermore paranoid, worrying obsessively that she would lose her ill-gotten gains, and so she plotted their exit from Africa to Canada, a move which caused Jen and I no small amount of heartache. Well, they were barely in Ontario, Canada, when her husband was fired from his job by the company president there (the man whose funeral she made sure she attended) and they were never able to regain their previous high status in society. She then panicked and moved the family to Kelowna, in the BC interior, where they live to this day, in that valley city with the main entrances at the north end of the valley and a floating bridge at the south end - at opposite ends of the main street, Harvey avenue. Surrounded by mountains and a lake, it is difficult not to encounter Harvey avenue, on an almost daily basis. So, she ran from Africa - from her carefully crafted dark deeds which ended up in the death of Harvey, just to end up "trapped", for the rest of her life, at the other end of the earth in a city where she is reminded daily, of his name. Coincidence? No. Of course she made sure to attend Harvey's funeral too, but not to mourn! Perhaps the images of his 2 little girls standing next to their dad and little brother's graveside, bewildered, crying, wondering what is to become of them, will flow through her mind and haunt her every time she encounters Harvey avenue, and that she realizes that it was all for naught anyway? Sadly these examples are by no means her deepest darkest secrets, just a sampling, but even so, if she is allowed to keep her disguise of "perfect ness" intact, she will have absolutely no reason or incentive to change and will get ever worse (if you can imagine that)  and go, unrepentant, to her grave, ruining as many lives along the way as she has been allowed to. So, if there is to be any hope for her at all, this thin veneer still providing a pretence of her "perfect ness" needs to be stripped away before she dies - not after! Only when she is exposed for what she really is, with no possible way of her recovering lost ground by any further pretence, then the only sensible solution to her dilemma will be: "To repent and beg for God's forgiveness." I believe God will see to it that she gets this final chance - but even so, will she then finally do the right thing? I guess only time will tell.

For so many years, to Jennifer, raised by her, she looked like "mommy dearest". Thus, with her vision clouded, Jen had no advanced warning that internally she was Snow-White's mother - obsessively jealous of her own maturing daughter, bent on destroying Jen's love, her life and thwarting all of her very normal teenage and adult dreams ... not quite what one expects from "mommy dearest"! To me (at first) she looked somewhat similar to my many aunts - all of whom I was very fond of, so naturally I expected kindness, consideration, acceptance and support for our love and family ... but none of these were forthcoming. Instead she turned out to be the most dangerous earthly enemy I've ever had ... and keep in mind, I grew up in boarding school from age 8 and fought in 2 wars. Having grown up in an all-boys boarding school, and having only ever being exposed to kind, nice women, I was conditioned to trust women way too much and be rather wary of men. So for the longest time I did not even see her sneaky well thought out attacks coming - until they were upon us. I soon learned that the devil is an equal opportunity employer! To our sons (at first) she looked like any Grandma looks, but soon they instinctively realized that she had little interest in them and only wanted their parents love and marriage destroyed (their family) them discarded and their mom - broken and alone, back worshipping at her feet, and it helped that they saw exactly this happen to Jen's sister (their aunt) and her son (their cousin). For our family it's pretty obvious - external appearances are just not a good way to judge people!

Jennifer's mother is nearing 80 years old now. She has never shown any remorse for any of her destructive actions (those aimed at us or at others) has displayed no signs of empathy for her victims (us and others) and has ignored every opportunity and call for her to change, declaring herself "perfect" with no need to change. Through the years she has proved that she is still quite capable of plotting, scheming and orchestrating all sorts of nasty attacks and has repeatedly done so. However we feel pretty confident that her age and her distrust and fear of technology is working against her now, and that she is just not likely to be able to find us in our new "far far away". Unlike the last couple of times we "disappeared", this time we have left no information with anyone she knows that knows us, that can be useful in tracking us down. At first for years we lived out in the open in front of her (so as to say) thinking that if we simply ignored her, she would tire of attacking us and just go away. Well, when dealing with "Snow White's mother" that just does not work! Anyone who has had dealings with a malignant narcissist knows that if allowed to, they will never stop trying to hurt or destroy you and will obsessively try to ruin your happiness and your life. You may as well strap a target to your back and chest, stand in front of them and taunt them - and if you think the courts will try to stop "a little old lady" from doing these kinds of things ... dream on! They really could not be bothered with family disputes, until there is a dead body - and even then they may try (in all sorts of ways) to excuse her actions. After all she's a little old lady, she is a mommy and a grandma, is slight of stature and even has blue eyes and little old ladies just do not do the things that Snow White's mother did! I mean really ... what a perfect disguise! Even the Brother's Grimm saw fit to change the villain to be the "step-mother" after years of trying to convince people that a real mother could be so evil. Well, we and others are living proof that (though blessedly rare) they sure can be!

Even though Jennifer has not been involved in writing any of this website's contents, I really do not want to have people feel that they can legitimately point fingers at us and say: "You are being disrespectful of your aging parents" ... and thus potentially forfeiting the benefit of the many valuable points this story does make. On this subject though, it does bear mentioning that they are not my family or my parents (even as in-laws) and that they went out of their way to make that point very clear to me through the years! As well, Jennifer and our children were not only firmly (and cruelly) rejected but also formally disowned by her mother - with her even using instruments of the state to deliver that message to clearly emphasize it! If only then she would have forgotten about us and left us alone ... but that didn't happen! As a result of her actions, we really are not bound by family ties or by the beliefs surrounding them, but still we prefer to err on the side of caution and thus choose not to expose them. They still do not know that this story exists and that it has been widely read. To keep it that way, even though their family and friendship circle is unbelievably small, we have (as you've read) excluded all of Canada (where they live) from reading this story ... which means that their neighbors know them only as rather strange reclusive people - but not as "The parents of Africa's Snow-white". This is a story about how love triumphs in the face of very determined opposition, about how a young woman survives her jealous mother's best attempts to isolate and enslave her or, failing that, destroy her. It could easily have been an instrument of revenge ... but it's not. It's pretty obvious to us now, in hindsight, that her idea of revenge was and is "a crafty well-cast spell" ... while ours is (and always was) "living and loving well" - despite her spells and many determined plots and schemes designed to thwart us! God's Justice seems to take many more imaginative twists and turns than ours ever could ... and we've witnessed a few classic examples already.

Now we all are finally ready to take our leave of her - and probably, permanently.  As in the original fairy-tale, we notice that she is left dancing with a pair of "red-hot shoes" strapped to her feet, and in which (if she maintains that "she is and was always perfect") she will have to dance until she "drops down dead". Of course, there is a way to take them off ... but she will have to figure out exactly how. For our part, both as a family and as individuals, we forgive her for any of the hurts she has caused us, but the really doesn't mean as much as you may think, because the important forgiveness for any of her sins is really a matter between her and God, and that's whose forgiveness she should seek, since none of us have the powers to declare her guilty or innocent, to forgive her sins or, for that matter, to send her to Heaven or to Hell. Personally I doubt we will ever see her again ... but there may be a small chance that I'm wrong?

There will always be those that align themselves with her evil - we are, after all, in an epic struggle with only two sides ... "Good" and "Evil." Both exist and have their supporters. But what we have observed, is that those that align themselves with evil, bring upon themselves and their families a terrible and deserved curse. That has indeed been the case with her and her (blessedly few) support groups. For us this curse started abating when we understood what she really was all about - and distanced ourselves from it all, and from her. This curse was neutralized when we unexpectedly accepted her formal rejection of our family and took up God's invitation to join His family instead - but we still retained a tiny little "connection", by visiting with relatives that persistently curried favor with Jen's birth-parents (at the expense of our family and her other victims) and allowed themselves to be couriers of her abusive, aggressive messages to our family. In all that time we never saw them displaying enough "moral fiber" (between all of them) to even once say to Jen's mother: "No, what you are doing and expecting us to do,  is just plain wrong! Why don't you at least try and be nice to Jen and her family - even just once? After all, we have witnessed Jen and her family absorb your aggression for years now, refusing to retaliate in kind".  Well, as God warns us, "fence-sitters" do actually choose sides - the wrong side! So later God gave us an even clearer choice: "It's not just your family that are her victims, look at what she's been doing to your friends. Standup for what's right and good, support her other victims by taking a hard-line unambiguous stand against her evil." This we did, and now we are reduced to simply being "spectators", removed completely from her life. Now it's just between her and God - and while she still continues to fool most people - those who simply don't ask her the correct questions  ... she just cannot fool God! 
 

      At about this point, you should be thinking: "Do we really know that little old lady/man down the street?"

So, as some have pointed out: "Are you crazy? Your life has already been threatened for much less than revealing as much as you have here, are you not scared of what she may try to do to you all?"

No, actually ... for though I do not respect her, and some may think of her as quite idiotic, she is actually an "evil-genius" (And it's the "evil" part of that description that hampers her "genius" and gets her to do such ridiculous crazy things) and I'm pretty sure that she is actually finally smart enough to weigh her actions very carefully now - in light of recent events (and events past), since if she stops to think about it all - even slightly rationally, even just for a brief moment, she will very quickly realize that this (already most revealing) story came about exactly because of her past actions, and that it can now very easily make the QUANTUM-LEAP from a "small niche" in the story-world, to an even much more revealing story that will quickly gather momentum and spread like an out-of-control forest-fire (like the Okanagan mountain fire)  becoming one that everyone who knows her (or even knows about her) gets to read and hear about, i.e. all of her family, all of her neighbors, all of her countrymen and women - both past and present! Really, all she needs to do to promote this story to "wild-fire status" ... is just about anything dramatic. In fact, the absolute best thing she can now do to preserve her "disguise" - to not fully and irretrievably blow her cover, is to pray very earnestly that NOTHING untoward happens to ANY of us! For even if one of us develops a serious disease or dies a (supposedly) natural death, this story will immediately take on a life-of-it's-own - that's just the nature of these kinds of stories. This story is now irrevocably out on the WEB, it's existence no longer depends on us, so all it would take to ignite an unstoppable fire, is for someone on the Internet to say: "Shame! Did you hear what happened to to ..." and point to this story. From there things would proceed pretty much like after a lightning bolt struck in the Okanagan Mountain park, and someone said "Hey look over there, isn't that a puff of smoke?" ... who can forget how the next 6 weeks unfolded! So she really needs absolutely no (ZERO) more attention to land on our family, none at all, and since she and her ridiculous actions have been the reason that this story was written and came to light in the first place, about the very best thing she can do now is ... nothing! Trying any of her usual aggressive tactics would be like trying to douse a smoldering fire using gasoline! Instead she needs to now pray very earnestly - even fervently .... for a long, healthy, boring life to now descend upon our family, for all of us to just totally disappear and live out our lives peacefully, far away, happily and (hopefully) unnoticed - with absolutely nothing more unusual to report. Pretty Ironic, isn't it? The very things she would want to do to us - to vent her anger, would seal her fate and ensure her own destruction. But even if she continues to be driven by her "evil" part (rather than the "genius" part) and attempts to continue with "more of the same", we do take comfort in knowing that God has always protected our family so well - so much so that all of her plots and schemes have failed (or back-fired) in the most spectacular of ways ... and we trust, by faith, that this will continue. You see, long ago we spotted a fatal flaw in her thinking and strategies ... she never factored into her planning the fact that we asked for, rely on and have enjoyed God's protection. So we know that all her plots and schemes are doomed to fail ... because she cannot Control God! Well just maybe, by now, she has figured out this much too?

Not trusting her at all, as an added insurance policy, we have uncovered enough details of her "deepest-darkest secret" - if you can imagine for a moment that what you have witnessed so far is mostly her "good-side", and I have put in place an automatic way to have that included in this story should ANYTHING untoward happen to ANY of us. In other words, if I get run-over by a buss, even if it's an accident, then the very next morning that information will "auto-magically" appear. Think of what happens to a locomotive if the driver is not at the controls - it slows to a stop, BUT I've implement the exact opposite of that mechanism in this website/story and elsewhere - so that this story will look more like a fully loaded run-away freight train unless I keep my hand on it's controls. So, she has a vested interest in hoping and praying for a LONG and HAPPY and HEALTHY life for us all! Years ago I'd never have gone to all of this trouble, but time and events have made me wary because she has the exact opposite of a "spotless" track-record! 

Part of me kind of hopes that she will not figure all of this out and step right into the trap that now is sprung and quietly awaits her, because just like EVERY time before, God's protection of all of us will prevail, she will fail again - and in so doing her fate will be irrevocably sealed once and for all.

In closing, if you haven't yet picked up on the finer-points of God's justice in action,  when an almost always imperfect human justice doesn't seem to deliver, consider this:

(1) She took cruel advantage of a Family in a desperate state, to further her own ends, and soon after something made her say to her husband "Stop the car ... let's give that young man a ride".

(2) She grew paranoid that she may lose her "ill-gotten" gains, moved the family to Canada, in so doing, worked hard to separate her eldest daughter from that young man - all to no avail!  

(3) In Canada, she did lose all her "ill-gotten gains" and was returned to her lowly status in life - with an added wrinkle, her husband was un-employed. So she went to his ex-boss's funeral, in Canada, but to gloat, not to mourn, and came back that same day to hear that while she was plotting to attend his funeral, her daughter was planning to leave for the opposite end of Canada.

(4) She forced her youngest daughter to abort her 1st child (The 2nd Grand-child) - and promptly lost all her grand-children, and it seemed, probably also her own 1st child - her eldest daughter.

(5) Then she got a message through to a grief-stricken man, that it served him right that his first-born, his only son, was killed - that that was her sweet revenge ... only to then definitively and forever lose her first-born child herself who, as you have read, was finally so disgusted with her mother's evil, that she and her family left Canada for good to live in a land far far away.

(6) For years she has lived in a city who's unavoidable main-St. has the name of her 1st victim.

(7) As she approaches 80, she is now unavoidably ever-more at the mercy of the only family she has left to care for her in her old-age, the one person whom she abused the most as a child and as an adult, the person whose life, loves, health and happiness she totally ruined - while working hard to make it look like it was "anyone but her" who did so - her youngest daughter, who will soon assume the mantle of caregiver to an un-recalcitrant but ever more vulnerable old woman. 

But before you start to feel sorry for her, remember she is NOT sorry for any of this - and think of her victims. If most people's plots and schemes had such spectacular records of failure, they'd long since have decided to change strategies, yet she persists. Now it's down to one last chance!

Most of all she urgently needs to reconcile with God, Whom she cannot control, bully or destroy.

Don't EVER believe that the evil get away with their actions - going unpunished here on earth ...

This photo, is of a plane-crash, on Sunday March 22, 2009 - inside the HOLY CROSS cemetery in Butte, MT. Below is an excerpt of what the SEATTLE-TIMES (and most papers) had to say about this tragic event:
"A small plane crashed Sunday as it approached an airport in Butte, MT, killing 17 people, including several children, a Federal Aviation Administration spokesman said. The single engine turboprop plane crashed about 500ft from the airport in Butte while attempting to land, said spokesman Mike Fergus. The Montana Standard reported that it crashed in Butte's Holy Cross Cemetery. Preliminary reports indicate the dead include numerous children, he said. There were no known fatalities on the ground, he added."

Ok, so bad things happen, and we are now so used to turning on the TV or reading in the papers about many such tragic events happening, daily, worldwide - so much so that we become somewhat de-sensitized. Well, there is much more to this sad story: