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