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