It's been an eventful weekend. I decided this summer I was going to go trail riding at The Ranch, and finally I booked a two-hour advanced ride for this past Friday evening. It was a perfect day, and the ride was idyllic, a challenging but beautiful meander through fields, woods, steep river banks, and the riverbed. To make it more exciting, my horse, Cisco, a flea-bitten grey, suddenly decided to throw a little bucking fit for no apparent reason. I've sat a lot of bucking in my day, but my seat isn't what it used to be, and this was completely unexpected. I went flying and hit my bum, then my (thankfully, helmeted) head. After lying still to assess the damage I realized that a) I was in one piece and b) I'd kept hold of the reins, something I was inordinately proud of. The guide offered to switch horses with me, which turned out to my advantage. His horse, a big Appaloosa, had much smoother gaits than Cisco and was calmer, so the ride ended peacefully with a magnificent moon rising over the cool summer twilight. Apart from a fair amount of soreness (much of which is simply due to not having ridden regularly in ten years), some scrapes and bruises, I'm fine.

However, my brain was perhaps rattled more than I realized, because after being kindly given a ride to the bus stop I simply got on the first bus that appeared. The driver turned out to be a horse person, so we chatted happily for several moments before I suddenly saw a sign for Hamilton. I live in Toronto. I pointed this out to the bus driver, who said "Oh! I wondered why you were going to Hamilton when you told me you lived in Toronto." There was nothing for it at that point but to keep going, so she took me into Hamilton and told the next driver for Toronto to allow me on without paying extra fare. She was really a very nice person.

While waiting for the bus in Hamilton, a young Philipina girl with a suitcase came and sat next to me. We started talking, and before long she was pouring out her story. She'd left a nannying job in Hong Kong because she heard Canada would allow her to sponsor her family, but she'd ended up imprisoned by an abusive employer who threatened her and took her money and her belongings. One night she managed to sneak to her employers' computer while they were downstairs and send a quick email to a friend. The friend contacted the police, and eventually she was rescued and taken to a shelter. Now she was headed to Toronto to find another job. She was a Christian, and her faith and hope in God remained strong despite what she'd been through. She encouraged and challenged me, and I was able to help her find her way from the bus to the train and then to the subway in Toronto. Perhaps she was the entire reason I'd taken the wrong bus...God has reasons for such twists and turns in our lives.

Most of the rest of the weekend was taken up with entertaining three visiting French girls. One is staying for a semester at the University of Toronto, the other two are friends who'd come along to see her settled in. They were beautiful people, and it was a lovely reminder of how deep and immediate our fellowship in Christ is even with Christians we've never met from the other side of the world. I've experienced it many times with Christians from many different parts of the globe, and it's always wonderful.

But it's very late, and I'm up too late as usual. Tomorrow's another day, and another recreation day as our church is going to the beach. One of these days I'll actually get some work done...