SNOW!!!

Well we had a little bit of it last week, enough to get excited about, but not enough to do anything worthwhile with. Of course, it would have to come when we were driving to Edmonton and back in a day! After this, the weather warmed up again and the snow was all gone within two days. Still, it was exciting and has got us looking forward to a White Christmas – Yippee. If we don’t get one in Ottawa we shall be very disappointed, but here’s hoping. Last year was the first time I ever remember seeing snow on Christmas Day, so hopefully it was just a bit of a practice run for this year for us. Anyway, here are a couple of photos we took on our travels last Wednesday.

News from our new home
We have settled into our new home with Jim and Val very easily. It is wonderful to have a place to be able to go back to at the end of a day, or to be able to stay at during days off and to really be able to call it home. It has been a superb answer to prayer and we are so enjoying our time with Jim and Val, often staying up far later than we ought, just chatting about all sorts of things. We used to do this with Jenny in Pegswood and it is something we had missed a lot, so to be able to do the same with Val and Jim has been a real blessing.

For the cat lovers among you, you’ll be pleased to know the cat is living up to standard expectations and enjoying sleeping wherever it can. It’s a bit embarrassing to admit that I am really very fond of this little cat, but I’m not proud. The current favourite in the list of possible names is ‘Little H’ because it always seems to be following Heather around. The name seems to have stuck more than any other, time will tell.




While ‘Little H’ dreamt of mice and other feline delights, I was dreaming of other things…


Heaven, I’m in (chocolate) heaven…

One thing where the UK excels over the Canadians is in chocolate. When we first came to Canada in February 2004, we discovered that although it looks the same, Canadian Dairy Milk is NOT the same as what we have back at home. Time has shown that our chocolate is simply better (even the Galaxy chocolate for those weird people who think it’s better than Cadbury’s.) Biting into a Canadian Dairy Milk bar just doesn’t do it! I could say their chocolate sucks, but I wouldn’t even recommend sucking it! :-)

All is not lost, however, as my dreams have recently become reality and at least two of the stores in Lloyd are currently importing Cadbury’s products and so we can enjoy the real thing at last. Superstore now sports Flakes (my second favourite after Twirl) and Walmart is currently selling the 1kg bars of Dairy Milk, though I suspect this is only for Christmas. There is nothing quite like relaxing with a piece of good chocolate and so we are now very much less stressed and I can write this blog with the luxurious flavour of Mr Cadbury’s best ever recipe melting in my mouth. Mmmm…

Sunsets
Canadians may not manage to do good chocolate, but they can sure put on a good sunset. While we have been here, we have experienced some of the most breathtaking sunsets we have ever seen. I wish the camera could do the scenes justice, but at least you get a little bit of an idea of what we are regularly treated to. The province of Saskatchewan is called the ‘Land of the Living Skies’ and we have been learning why.




Preaching class
For the last three weeks I have had the privilege of being in the preaching class that Pastor Lyle has been running. Although I have been preaching for eight years I have never had any formal training in preaching and have rarely had any helpful criticism of what I present. It has been really helpful these last few weeks to be able to have some very helpful input and to be able to grow in this area.
During our leadership team meeting last week, Laura managed to drop me into preaching this week. Given that CPC (Central Pentecostal College) was to be visiting on the weekend in the morning services, Heather suggested we could maybe do a little IBOLT slot in the evening. This idea escalated until it ended up with me preaching in the evening and Heather giving an introduction to IBOLT. It was great to preach again after a few months off, although it wasn’t until about 5:00pm that I finished a draft of my notes that I was happy with, the meeting starting at 7:00pm! I preached on how God has hand-made each of us for a purpose (Ephesians 2:10) and how God’s Word helps us prepare for that purpose (2 Timothy 3:16-17). I felt I had done a good job, but the number of people who have stopped me or grabbed hold of me, or spoken to Heather to thank me for the message has been quite amazing – I have never known anything like it! After a tough, tiring week during which my confidence had been given a bit of a hammering, it was so encouraging to receive so much affirmation. I now have to prepare a mini-sermon for our next class based on Revelation 9:11. Could be interesting and more than a little stretching!!!

The Basement
After visiting Edmonton on Wednesday for an IBOLT meeting and then supper with Sasha and Michelle, looking after the four year olds and older for MOPS (Mothers of Pre-Schoolers) on Thursday morning, Friday was a very busy day as we raced to finish the basement ready for the youth in the evening. I spent the morning helping shifting old carpet from the sanctuary floor out to a trailer to take to the dump. After that I went with Pastor Kenny and H to get some computer bits and an A&W lunch for us all. Having eaten I then spent the afternoon setting up four computers in the basement, putting them together, installing software, setting up user accounts and a pile of other things so that they’d be ready for action in the evening. At 7:00pm, when the youth started arriving, I finished the last bit of work and then they leapt on board, surfing the net and chatting to friends over MSN. It was very rewarding, totally exhausting, and I still had to write my sermon for Sunday!
Hopefully I can get some pictures together for my next blog entry.

Christmas is coming
Christmas is accelerating toward us with ever increasing pace bringing all the extra events and activities that are normal for this time of year. We have the church Christmas concert involving the children and youth, the MOPS Christmas Buffet, the church staff dinner and I expect a few other things to look forward to before we fly to Ottawa for Christmas and New Year with the Moshers. While we are away there will be the Christmas services and a New Year’s Eve party which we shall be sad to miss, but you can’t do everything and we shall be enjoying ourselves anyway. It will be interesting to see any major or minor differences in the way Christmas is celebrated over here, and to see if we miss being in the UK as it’s our first Christmas abroad.

Well I’d better sign off before Christmas arrives!

God bless you,
Love,
Steve

Busyness - The Enemy of Blogging

At last a return to the blogging keyboard after three weeks of crazy life!
Hmm, that makes blogging sound like a swear word, but I enjoy blogging.
Yep, the last three weeks have been uber busy and any spare time has been spent collapsed in bed, on a sofa or even two evenings, in the theatre (cinema to the British) so blogging had to take a back seat, much to my disappointment.
Anyways, what's been happening...

What a funeral!
Lorne’s funeral was amazing. It was such a joyous occasion and at least two people have become Christians or rededicated their lives to Christ as a consequence! It was a privilege to be part of it.

Living on a farm
On the Sunday after Lorne’s funeral, Verna asked if we could spend the week with her up at the farm to keep her company. We happily agreed and so I found myself driving Greg’s black truck, following Heather, who was driving Verna’s car, out to the farm on Sunday night. It’s a 40 minute drive into Lloyd from Verna’s so that meant getting up earlier each morning to get to the church for 9:00 and we stayed up quite late most nights keeping Verna company. Actually, it wasn’t just Verna, we also kept Buttons the dog and Monty the cat company. Monty is quite a mature two year old cat, but Buttons is a crazy-go-nuts tiny little black dog, the same size as Monty, and she wildly dances round in circles whenever you come in, go out, or do anything else that makes her excited.
It was wonderful to be able to enjoy Buttons entertainment, she made us all laugh many times. Not that it was a sad time, Verna is quite an amazing lady who has determined to not be put out by the fact that God has taken her husband home. In fact Lorne was the second husband that Verna has outlived and she is quite an example to those around her. I know I couldn’t let go of Heather so easily, but Verna is made of different stuff! We were concerned that she might not be grieving properly, but from what we can see, God is so central to her life that He has made it easy for her to let Lorne go.



Geese!
Whilst driving to Lloyd from Verna’s each morning we saw more geese together than either of us had ever seen. In the UK you maybe see as many as thirty geese together at a time. Here in Canada, we must have seen at least a thousand flocking over a newly harvested field, it was an incredible sight. We took some photos and video, but they really don’t do justice to the scenes we saw. Yes all those little black dots ARE geese.

A REALLY crazy week!!!
That leads to last week which had us moving back into the church from Verna’s, another visit to THE LAUNDROMAT, helping to prepare for Chris and Shawna’s wedding, moving out to the farm where we are now living, going to and helping at the wedding and then church yesterday. Yesterday evening Pastor Lyle talked about pressing into the Holy of Holies and then the leadership and prayer teams formed a fire tunnel for anyone to go through which was awesome. I was operating the laptop for the projector so didn’t get to pray which was sad, but afterwards everyone else made a prayer tunnel for those who had been praying to go down, so I jumped in and got seriously prayed over! Wow!

Today (Monday) is our rest day and we slept in until midday and I have now just finished writing a sermon for the preaching class that Pastor Lyle is running at the end of each Tuesday afternoon for the next few weeks. It’s great that he’s doing this as I’ve never had any training – formal or informal – so it’s good to be able to pick up ideas and methods for preparing and presenting sermons.
Tonight we have Shawna and Murray around for an Indian supper and then it’s back to work again tomorrow. Hopefully this will be a quieter week, but only time will tell.

So that’s why I haven’t blogged lately. I can’t seem to get into the idea of writing short little blogs on a more regular basis. I guess weekly seems a good idea until everything goes bazonkas and then you find it’s two weeks and then three! Well, here’s hoping I can get back to at least weekly.

A new home and a new friend
As I mentioned, we’re now living in a new home. Well new to us, the building has been around for quite some years, but it’s nice to have somewhere to call home at last. I always baulked at calling the church building home, it was more of a sleeping place but not somewhere to relax and just let it all hang out.
We now have a bedroom and a living room of our own to be able to enjoy and invite people to. Sadly, we don’t have high speed internet access at the farm, but that’s a small price to pay for living in a quite, relaxing environment with a family and having a place you can really call home.
We do have a new friend. We think it’s a female and a name hasn’t yet been decided upon, but the cute furry little kitten that arrived here about a month before us has been working its way into Heather’s and my heart! I know many will laugh at us, me especially, given my previous attitude to cats. However, over the last couple of years I have determined to not hate cats but to try to enjoy them, and God has given me a testing ground here with a rather adorable little grey bundle of fluff!
Heather and Val call her Frankie because of the striking blue eyes, but for some reason I don’t like the name. Any ideas?

Snow?
I know I’m supposed to be all grown up and frown at the idea of snow coming, but I never really did manage to do that convincingly, and with the prospect of more snow than I’ve ever seen in my life, I’m a weenie bit excited! I have been promised a go on the Skidoos at the farm, skating on the lake in Lloyd and I shall finally have the opportunity for making snow angels and throwing snowballs until I’m sick of them!
A big kid? Yep, guilty as charged and happy to enjoy another of God’s wonderful ideas.

Blessing upon blessing!
Last week was really amazing for us in terms of God’s blessing. We had three significant financial gifts between Sunday and Wednesday, the offer of a home to live in with a family and then moving into it within two days! The financial gifts made it easy for us to book our tickets to Ottawa for Christmas which we have been wanting to do for a couple of weeks but waiting, to no avail, for a sale on the tickets.
We are now really looking forward to Christmas and New Year with the Moshers and are particularly eager to see Jenny again who will be there while we are. It will be nice to have a quiet Christmas with such a subdued, calm family.
God bless you.
Love,
Steve