Calling this letter an update will easily be the biggest understatement of our entire ministry. I have so much to tell you that I’ll have to contain myself not to make this letter three pages long. In September, things were going as scheduled with our annual Sweet-Corn Fellowship, which marks the transition from our spring/summer schedule to our fall/winter schedule, which basically means that instead of going soul winning after our midweek discipleship groups, we have a Bible study with everyone. We had an incredible youth activity at a local corn maze too! One of our teenagers, Timothy, got his friend Alex to come, and he has been coming fairly consistently every Sunday now. Alex is not saved yet, so please pray for him. The last thing in September that I thought would be the highlight of this letter was my trip to Manitoba for the Canadian National Pastors’ Conference. To greatly understate yet again, it was a great conference and a great encouragement to me.
My wife didn’t come with me, but we stayed in contact. One night, she hinted at a surprise that she had for me when I got home. I thought she had baked me a cake or something, but when I got home, she revealed to me that I had something else “in the oven.” On the wall of our apartment, my wife had plastered “Welcome Home, Papa Bear”! Surprise—a baby was on the way! We haven’t really talked about it much (because it’s not a comfortable topic), but for the majority of our 18-year marriage, Liz and I have been trying to have a baby but have, up to this point, been unsuccessful. This announcement on our wall brought me to the point of weeping for joy!

October became a blur, as we had to scramble to try to find a doctor, get tests done, and have an ultrasound. My wife’s best guess put our little one at maybe five to six months along in development, but on my birthday, October 1, we found out two great surprises! First, we were having a little girl, and second, my wife was not five to six months along—she was eight months pregnant! There are a lot of reasons that we won’t get into that we didn’t notice that she was pregnant, but suffice it to say that we thought other issues were going on which we could not have imagined were actually caused by a pregnancy. We were overjoyed and overwhelmed to learn that we didn’t have months to prepare for her, but rather weeks, as her due date was estimated at October 27. We did all the prep work that we could and enjoyed the bit of our pregnancy that we had left. Our little one loved to jump in Mommy’s tummy at night, but she would quickly settle down when I talked with her and told her to go to bed for Mommy’s sake. She even leapt in my wife’s womb one Sunday as she heard my singing!

To our great surprise, on the morning of October 20, my wife’s water broke around 5:00, and we headed to the hospital. We weren’t exactly ready, and we had to scramble to get a hospital bag ready on the fly. We hurried to the hospital to see what they would do, and we were immediately admitted to the birthing ward. Twenty-one hours of labour later, on October 21 at 2:06 a.m., Abigail Hope Hebert was born! Abigail means “her father’s joy.” I have wanted to name our daughter this for a long time if God ever gave us one. She is truly my joy and the answer to one of my longest-awaited prayer requests. Her middle name stands for the hope that this little one has brought into our lives. Furthermore, I’m so incredibly proud of my wife. She is tougher than I ever realized. Minus some post-birth complications that were quickly resolved, all has been going very well with her recovery. What amazes me is how we had been praying and even struggling over childlessness, especially during this year’s Mother’s and Father’s Day holidays, only to realize that God had already answered our prayers and had already made us a mom and a dad before we ever realized it. Now Abby is home and growing like a weed. Please pray for us as we begin a new chapter of life. We have so much to learn, but as we have learned firsthand, God will provide!

His servant and yours,

Brian Hebert