Snow, Saskatoon and other Stuff

I’ve been away from blogging for a week or three due to busyness, frying my brain with a bit too much programming of Word macros and having to take some time out as a result. However, I seem to be coming back up to speed, which I am happy about, so here I am again in blogspace.

Some good clean fun
It seems everyone is going to Flixster to write and read film reviews. I haven’t succumbed myself, despite Heather inviting half the world to join, I guess I make up part of the other half of the world, in fact, being Heather’s “other half” I shouldn’t be surprised at this!!
Anyway, Flixster or not, we did decide to hit Blockbuster tonight and hummed and hahed over “The Net2” or “In Her Shoes”, but then we came to “Chicken Little” and the little kid in both of us won. Drama, action, romance and an alien invasion, what more could you want from a movie? Val and Jim realised we were enjoying it as sitting downstairs with visiting friends they could hear us laughing aloud upstairs. If you want a fun, harmless bit of entertainment, I’d recommend it. The other two movies will have to wait a bit longer, but we do have $2 off any rental in April, so one of them may not have to wait too long!

Snow and even MORE snow!
The last two or three weeks have indeed been full of life, last week there were seriously strong winds and snow such that we decided it safer to stay at home rather than venture into town. Val pleaded with us to decide this knowing that the truck we drive would get stuck in the slightest snow. Having had Jim tow us out of a couple of small drifts as the wheels slid into the drifts the day before, we were quite in agreement. It was quite gratifying when both Jim and Pastor Lyle agreed that driving the truck in such conditions was anything but easy, it wasn’t just us being pathetic Brits. Heather and I went for a walk one of the mornings that we stayed at home to look at the road up to the house. It was three feet deep across the whole width of the road for big stretches and so we took advantage and made our first ever snow angels. Sadly the snow was a bit hard so the results weren’t too impressive, but I was glad to cross this off from my list of winter activities to yet experience. Ice fishing and skiing remain on the list, but I’m not too worried about that.

With Takoma and 3 ft of snow!

A snow angel!

You may be wondering if the road was that bad how anybody got into and out of the house, well Jim keeps a path clear between the house and the farm over the fields, so that’s the route they take. We probably could have managed this part in the truck, but as soon as any significant drifting comes across the road, the truck loses speed and then just gets bogged down altogether and no amount of jiggling it back and forth makes any difference. It sure is different to anything we’ve experienced back in England.

Saskatoon with Dave and Tanys
Last weekend we were in Saskatoon for a day conference on the Saturday and jumped at the opportunity to extend it to a weekend visit with Jenny’s brother and sister-in-law, Dave and Tanys. Between arriving on the Friday at 6pm and leaving Monday morning at about 8:45 we ate steaks at the Keg, white chocolate brownie at Moxies, chicken curry that we made, Mexican quesadillas that they made and large amounts of Munchie mix. We also played a couple of games of Puerto Rico, went to the Mendel art gallery, visited their church, experienced our first Mario party (courtesy of their Gamecube), spent 45 minutes relaxing and chatting in Tanys’ parents’ hot tub, petted Berkley the dog, and chatted just getting to know each other. It was a wonderful weekend and one we shall remember for a good long time. We are hoping that rather than flying to Ottawa in the summer to visit Gord and Glenda before going home to Morpeth, we might be able to do a road trip there with Dave and Tanys instead, driving from Saskatchewan to Ontario. That would be SOO amazing! We really hope it will work out that we can do it.

In Moxies with Dave and Tanys

Oh, the conference was very good too!

Slipping back to Ol’ Blighty
We have booked our tickets home from Ottawa and will be taking the same flight as Steve, Jenny’s youngest brother who is visiting Jenny in Morpeth for a couple of weeks. We are flying on the 1st of July to arrive at about 8 in the morning on Sunday 2nd July in Glasgow. We are both looking forward to going home to see folks and experience again some of the things we have missed whilst here in Canada, and at the same time we are sad that we shall be leaving some wonderful friends here and many of the amazing experiences we have had this year. At this moment we are thinking that we shall be staying in Morpeth when we return home instead of coming back to Canada to live, but we are open to the possibility that God may decide to call us to live out here. We are continuing to pray that God would make it clear and suspect it will become so when we return to the UK.

Second Servings
Second Servings is the monthly service for senior members of the church which runs on the last Thursday of each month. I must say that I do find it much less stressful and tiring than MOPS where Heather and I look after a bunch of 4-8 year olds! This week I was speaking at Second Servings and decided that I should just share some passion rather than try to teach anything particularly deep. As it was I probably ended up sharing stuff that really is very deep yet extremely inspiring. I was preaching from Revelation 4 and Psalms 89 and 97, looking at how wonderful our God is and how the demands of His righteousness and justice are satisfied in Jesus sacrifice for us and how His love and faithfulness go before Him and so meet us before His righteousness and justice do.
Many of the people came up to me afterwards to thank me for the message and to say how encouraged they had been by it – that really did my heart good. Whilst being here in Canada it has been so refreshing the amount of encouragement I have received from people each time I have preached, not something I am used to back in the UK. It has also been so touching the number of people who have said to Heather and me how much they will miss us when we leave, we really feel appreciated primarily for who we are rather than for what we do. Such comments certainly make it easier to consider the idea of returning to and staying in Canada if that’s how God leads us. It’s funny how as we moved further north in the UK we found people more and more friendly and then coming over to Canada, we find them even warmer still. Maybe they’re making up for the cold winter environment! This isn’t a bash at the British, simply an appreciation of our friends and extended family here in Canada.

Saving my brain…
Finally I should like to thank Jenny for her brilliant idea of creating Magneto style helmet to protect my brain from the evil rays of the computers that I work with. It is her theory, and I am inclined to agree, that computers are inherently evil and are out to destroy us. They use methods such as frustrating our attempts to use printers, or they simply try to fry our brains using their deadly computer rays. My problem is usually the latter and so her brilliant suggestion was to take note of Magneto’s defence against Xavier in X-Men and use a helmet such as he has. I was unable to persuade Heather to design me a very elegant model (I’m not sure she’s convinced that Jenny is right) so I created one myself, maybe not exquisite in style, but as you can see below, very effective in practise. For those of you who work with computers and find your brains being sucked out or fried from the inside out, I cannot recommend such a helmet too highly! As you can see, it takes a little getting used to, the first time of wearing it is quite an experience, but it soon settles down. Even Yoda decided to give it a try, although I sadly suspect it is too late for his little brain.

Weird to wear at first

But you get used to it

And then you can see it really works

Even Yoda the cat wants to try it!

Well, it’s time I went to bed, I guess. I have a men’s conference at the church tomorrow (Saturday) and may be needed to operate the projector software as Pastor Lyle speaks. It is a “Good husband / Good father” conference and I’m sure it will be a great blessing to all who attend it.

This blog has been brought to you by the number ‘1’ and the letter ‘S’.

Steve