Craig Grunert from Yorktown, SA, Canada. Friend, we’ll miss you…

Every so often, in every life, you receive those shockingly painful blows of reality. They come as telegrams, emails, phone calls, a knock on the door in the middle of the night or a soft touch on the shoulder, but they always send a cold shudder up your spine – someone close has died. We didn’t talk much, but I felt an instant bond. Maybe it wasn’t so much spiritual as it was a sense of brotherhood; we were both farmers.

I didn’t realize it at the time, but Craig Grunert raised 7,000 acres of canola near Yorkton, SK, Canada. He attended church as a child, but had not gone for the past eight years; though his wife and daughter rarely missed. As a child, he spent several months in an orphan home with his twin brother.  Perhaps that was part of the bond that was so easily formed as he toured our rice farm, and as I shared the dreams we had for the development of the Church in Cambodia. He was comfortable with spiritual things, and I assumed he’d known Christ a long time. It seems they met in Cambodia.

Craig was here early last month with his wife Sherry and daughter Caleigh; son Justin, was home. After Craig’s return to Canada, he attended church. He talked about the work of FCOP here in Cambodia and was inviting everyone who would listen to come to a special showing of the pictures from his trip, to be held on April 28th at the church. Instead, it turned out to be his memorial service. More than 600 people attended.  His pastor, Des Klingspoon, explains, “Craig had changed – something really shifted. God used it (the trip to Cambodia) to soften his heart, and he fit in with us all like he had always been part.”

Sherry and the family wholeheartedly grabbed onto a memorial fund idea – The Craig Grunert Memorial Rice Plant.  They encouraged family and friends to make a donation to plant rice in Cambodia instead of buying flowers. Thus honoring the memory of a passionate farmer by seeding a harvest that will go to feed orphans in Cambodia, a place that he had made a real heart connection with.  Jesus put it this way, “Very truly, I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.” May God bless the Grunert family!