Wahoo! Skidoo!! Thai Food! - Whatever Next?

Yep we finally got to go on the skidoos on Saturday! We’d never been on them before in our lives, so another first in Canada. For those who don’t know what a skidoo is, erm, see the pictures below! Seriously, they are like a jetski for snow. They have two skis at the front and a drive caterpillar track at the back and drive like a motorbike but you don’t have to worry about gears. You’ve probably seen them in movies, especially James Bond type movies, they usually chase around at high speed on them and then the baddies’ ones explode spectacularly, which is rather surprising given the small amount of fuel they actually hold! Goodness only knows what fuel the baddies use.

Anyway, I jumped on the back of Cody’s skidoo, Heather on the back of Val’s and off we went on a seriously exhilarating ride. After a while they stopped, showed us what to do and then it was Heather’s and my turn to drive with Val and Cody as our passengers. It was such good fun! We were probably out for around half-an-hour and then we went back to the house. After Val and Heather went in I then went out solo following Cody. If the first ride was fun, this next ride was amazing! I only got up to about 60kmh (about 40mph) but that seemed pretty fast for a first go! I asked Cody and he said he sometimes gets them up to 120kmh, a bit more than I was ready for. Maybe after a few goes? Pwah!
I don’t know when we’ll get another chance to go out on the skidoos, the snow has melted again and who knows what the weather is doing? Jim can’t remember a year like it, and he’s just turned ****. Well he’s a few years older than H and me anyway! I’m wondering if it’s us coming over here’s messed the weather up for them. Wouldn’t be the first time!

Thai curry - Mmmm
Today’s excitement was thanks to Dave and Tanys Mosher, Jenny’s brother and sister-in-law, who gave Heather and me a Thai green curry kit for Christmas. Jim and Val were looking forward to it just as much as we were, an enthusiasm that remained even after Val came into the kitchen and her face transformed in shock at the potent smell wafting around – it smelt hot! The meal finally made it to the table and Val was the first in, and… Whoah!!!! I think she found it a bit lively, or maybe she was just suddenly overcome by a passion for a large drink? Our deepest thanks go to Tanys and the lady in the shop who suggested using only half the amount of the provided curry paste rather than the full packet as recommended by the recipe. If we’d used the full amount I think I may have found it getting toward the very hot end of the spectrum and I think we may have lost our landlady. As it was I found it happily spicy and wonderfully delicious. Sadly for you all I didn’t get my camera out, so you’ll just have to imagine what it looked like, chicken strips in a white curry sauce with red peppers and spring onions. Yum!
Val is now converted to Thai food and is looking forward to us getting the ingredients to be able to use the rest of the curry paste. So, many thanks Tanys and Dave, should you get to read this blog entry.

“What next?”
This seems to be the great question that many of our friends are asking which is, I suppose, quite common amongst early twenty somethings and as many of our friends are in that age bracket we’re not too surprised they’re asking this question. What has caught us a bit off guard is finding ourselves asking the same question ourselves! Do we return to Morpeth come the summer or do we stay in Canada for longer? Either way, what do we actually do? With our church at home in flux, starting on the process of investigating whether a merge with the local Baptist church is viable and whether this is what God wants, we’re not even sure what we might be going home to – a slightly unsettling thought! If they do join, will we become Bapticostals? :-) As we pray for our own direction we find ourselves praying with passion that God would strengthen and direct the church leaders at home, that they would clearly know God’s will in all of this. If you’re reading this and you’re in either of the churches, I really urge you to pray for the elders in both churches, they need our support – and remember to tell them that they have your prayers behind them, that will really encourage them. If you’re not in one of these churches but love the Lord Jesus, please do pray for the leaders of Morpeth New Life Christian Centre and Morpeth Baptist Church that God would give them the direction they need. Thanks.

However things turn out at home, we have known from before we were married (heading towards 15 years ago now!) that we never wanted to just be pew fodder but to actively serve God in whatever church He placed us in. That has certainly been our lives these last few years, and no less so here in Lloyd. We have been working alongside Pastor Lyle and Laura and it seems the main thing that we’ve been learning here is how they lead the church and work with the people. It strikes us that through our time here God is perhaps preparing us to lead a church someday; whether that happens and when that might be, only God knows for certain, but whatever the case, it remains our passion to see young people discipled and trained up and catching hold of all that God has prepared for their lives. When you catch hold of even a part of it, boy it’s a life worth living!

“For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus, to do good works which God has prepared in advance for us to do.” Ephesians 2:10

“I have come that they might have life and have it to the full!” John 10:10

“Where next?” We really don’t know at the moment, we hope it's Morpeth, yet are open to it being Canada, but what we do know is that God has wonderful plans and purposes for our lives. As we stick close to Him and give our lives to serve Him, we know He will unfold His plans in our lives. He has proved Himself faithful so far, and will continue to do so for the rest of our days.
If you find yourself along with us asking that question, “What next?’ I encourage you to consider the following verse and rather than worrying about the future, set your heart on worshipping and serving God and trusting Him to direct and lead you. Of course you should bring your future to Him in prayer, but don’t let it consume you so that you are ineffective today because you are too concerned for tomorrow – the only moment we can serve Him in is now, yesterday has already passed and tomorrow is yet to come.

“Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge Him and He will direct your paths.” Proverbs 3

Steve

Hair today, Gone tomorrow

Hey folks,
A certain item of great entertainment potential has been laying around in the church kitchen for at least the last couple of weeks calling to me to play with it. Today I could no longer resist the temptation, so here, for all to enjoy is...

Steve with HAIR!!!

And the hair is available in a beautiful rainbow of colours...

I hope you're not all too jealous of my wonderful hairdo, if you are, well the LGF kitchen is the place for you!!

Have fun,
Steve

Excitement in large chunks

Well, I've been away from blogging for just over a week and I've had a birthday, seen a rather tiddled cat, nearly got stuck in a snowbank and just missed seeing another Tuna Bake flambe!

It was my birthday last Wednesday (and yes I forgive all those who forgot!) and so on Tuesday I had a surprise party with Jim and Val, TJ, Jessie and Cody, Keith and Tina and their two little girls Julia and Hannah. Unfortunately nobody thought to get the camera out, so you can't see them all there, you can't see the 36 candles ablaze and you can't even see the whole cake, but here's what remained in the morning! Yum!

I had some nice gifts including two Muppet movie DVDs, obviously people realise that although I may be 36 in years, I'm still a big kid at heart. Val couldn't resist buying me the Mr Potato Head calendar where you can stick the arms and feet etc onto the blank potato. Here's Mr February...

Calm down ladies.

More fun

We had more excitement with Tuna Bake the other day! You may remember one of my earliest blog entries, when I was using MSN, and I described how the crisps on the tuna bake spectacularly caught on fire in the church cooker (http://spaces.msn.com/stevebelleguelle/blog/cns!4B64EDAE84127D4F!155.entry), well we had a repeat performance here at Val's! Heather used cheap crisps and up they went in flames, just like before - very exciting. Sadly I was upstairs at the time, but I certainly heard the excitement. After scraping the burnt crisp off the top we tried some Old Dutch chips and they behaved very properly. It just goes to show you can't use cheap chips for tuna bake and it also show how much grease is in those cheapie ones! Yuck!

Not content with causing that entertainment, Heather gave Yoda the juice from both cans of tuna. We're not sure whether he was drunk as a result or just feeling rather ill, but he sat on the heating vent for quite some time afterwards and his litter tray was rather wet a bit later - poor little thing! He just can't hold his drink!

Coming home from church on Sunday we had another exciting episode. It had been snowing quite a lot through the day and as we drove back toward the house we hit some heavy banks of snow on the road which caused us to slow down. Eventually we came to a halt and wondered if we were going to have to call Jim to come and rescue us about half a mile from the house. After a bit of driving back and forth we finally attained enough momentum to escape our little trap and made it back without embarrassment. Jim did laugh at us when we told him, but at least he was able to stay at home in the warm.

Monday we came out the bedroom and found it perishing cold downstairs - the heating seemed to have died - aaaaargh. I told Titus who said that the engineer had been out earlier and already fixed it. The ice forming on my nose seemed to tell a different story so after fiddling with the thermostat a bit I concluded my nose was right and the engineer had not quite done his job. I convinced Titus with my demonstrations of the furnace cutting out before any heat started coming from the vents so he rang his Uncle Dave who said he'd arrange for the engineer to come. I suspect the furnace overheard the conversation and so after about half an hour decided with great glee to start pumping out heat into the house again. Not totally happy, knowing how cantankerous such appliances can be, I rang Dave to tell him it seemed to be working okay and he may want to cancel the engineer. Of course, an hour or so after this, the furnace decided it was getting bored of heating air and so decided to see what would happen if it didn't do it any more. A further call, a wait for the engineer, some loud banging and the furnace was reminded that it could very easily end up in the scrap yard. Shortly afterwards it was happily spewing warmth into the house and our toes started defrosting. Hooray!

(Apologies to Jenny and Steve Mosher for copying what I wrote in my e-mails to you and plonking it on my blog! It just seemed too good to not publish!)

Well I'd better disappear, we have to visit the Post Office to post my two sisters', my brother-in-law's, and my niece's birthday cards, which will sadly be late - sorry! Can you believe my sisters share their birthday with Steve my brother-in-law and Sophie, my niece, has hers two days later! February is a busy month in my family.

God bless you.

Steve