I Definitely Need This Study!

This morning a dear friend and sister in the Lord sent me a copy of a bible study she is working on by Steve Johnson titled, "30  Days to Coping with Delay".  It is about learning how to better handle life when it seems God is taking his sweet time and then some to answer prayers that seem to us in need of far more quick responses than what we are getting.

At first glance the study seemed simple enough; based on Abraham and Sarah praying for a child and the terribly long wait they had for Isaac's arrival.  However the first question based on Proverbs 13:12"...hope deferred makes the heart sick." caught my attention. The question is "How do you feel when hopes are delayed?"  

Confession time:  Ummmm....without even taking time to think much about it I had 5 words/phrases, boom, just like that! And ALL negative! Yikes! (frightened, hopeless, resigned to the worst possible outcome, undeserving of God's attention, confused as to whether or not I have been praying for the right kind of answer) In other words every response EXCEPT "trust" (in God's wisdom to answer correctly in HIS time).  WOW, how incredibly embarrassing is that after all the years I have been trying with varying degrees of success to be a disciple of Christ??!!!? After all the years of seeing God answer prayers at the last possible second, and perfectly, how could these be my instant first responses to the question?  Aiii yiiii....I have some work to do in my relationship with God, that's for sure.  I am most grateful to my friend for passing this study along to me.  Never too old to learn so that is a good thing! God is so incredibly patient and for that I am most grateful!!

A Cool Old Church Building

In the course of our travels last evening we came across St. Mark’s Episcopal Church in the Bowery. It is the second oldest church in Manhattan with a history of being the longest site of continuous worship in NYC. In 1660 Peter Stuyvesant built a chapel on his farmland (bouwerij) there. The fieldstone walls are a giveaway as to the age of this present iteration of the church building. (1795) The church angles across the corner of the intersection so the little park we sat in before dinner looks right at the front doors of the church. The church has a history of supporting the performing arts and our son has attended a number of concerts and poetry readings there in the past couple of years. Last night an interesting looking group of dreadlocked, Jamaican garbed young men carrying interesting looking guitars and instruments unknown to us were setting up to play in the lovely iron gated side yard of the church. Didn’t get to hear them play, but wish we had. 

A Lovely Episcopal Service Yesterday!

We are waiting for the cleaning staff to arrive this morning so we can request they not use the carpet deodorizer that has been making me so asthmatic since we arrived. Then we will go out for a late breakfast at a diner a few blocks away.  

Our son was supposed to meet us for dinner last evening but is afraid he may be coming down with a cold, so we have rescheduled for this evening in hopes he will be feeling better. He is scheduled to move into his new art studio tomorrow and my husband will assist, so I will have a day to toddle off on my own. Our son gave me several dozen quarters this weekend so I will try to do laundry in the morning before taking myself out for a fabulous lunch of some kind. 

Yesterday morning we attended a lovely service at the Church of the Incarnation, only a few blocks away. One of the founding families was the Morgans so it is well appointed, neo-Gothic in style and oh so welcoming. The highlights were:

-the enthusiastic greeting we received from the very talented organist….so well trained and experienced in classical music! 

-the beautiful baritone voice of the tattoo’d, man-bunned soloist who performed a piece from Mendelssohn’s Elijah, Ave Maria, and he sang Go Down Moses the way it is meant to be sung…richly, deeply emotional….  Then after the service, since the church printed up a short memorial to Dolly Parton, he went to the piano and sang 9 To 5, which got the congregation clapping and bopping along before walking out if the church with big smiles on everyones’ faces.

-the rector, who was the cheeriest woman ever and who gave a marvellous sermon on Moses and the burning bush, how it transformed Moses and how our own personal encounters with Christ should transform us. It was inspiring!

-returning to the Book Of Common Prayer Eucharist service. There is a depth to the older English used in it that, I’m sorry but, the Book Of Alternative Services lacks. It was fun trying to remember the old wording of the responses and Creeds without looking at the prayer book, haha.

Assuming we are available next Sunday morning and the following Sunday I think we will return for the services. It was a treat to find such a vibrant church so close to “home”. If you are interested in what the church looks like check out their website. We watched parts of the service again last night and it was odd seeing the backs of our heads as we went forward for the Eucharist. Hahaha….don’t you just hate seeing yourself on video? I do!

Already An Update On Maman!

 Just in the past few minutes since I posted the request for prayer for Maman, I have received an update that her permanent pace maker surgery is likely going to be pushed up to tomorrow instead of Friday. The situation for her is very serious indeed.  Thank you for praying.

Please Could You Send Up Prayers For My Friend's Maman?? Thank You, Thank You!

I have just received a request for prayer from my friend. Her mother was taken to hospital unexpectedly today with a heart issue, died temporarily while awaiting her temporary pace maker.  Now that she has that, please pray that she may be able to live until her permanent pace maker is put in on Friday....nearly two days from now.

Maman is a strong person having lived a beautiful technicolor life as a journalist of many years and is now in her early 90's.  She is a woman of vibrant spirit and her family needs and loves her very much.

My friend and her husband are leaving right away to drive many miles to the hospital where Maman will have her pacemaker surgery. Having lost my own mother a few years ago I know the fear of spending an hours long drive wondering what is going to greet you in the hospital room once you arrive.  Please pray for my friend's peace of mind.  Thank you SO much from my friend Jay.  

Rest In Peace Brian

The church lost a treasured worship leader, singer and songwriter today in the death from cancer of Abbotsford's Brian Doerksen.  For the past forty years my husband and I have enjoyed singing Brian's worship songs in many different churches and it is an incredible loss to the Christian community.  Please pray for his wife and six children, two of which have severe special needs.  While we are grateful he is no longer ill and suffering, he leaves behind a family who needs him.

May he rest in peace and rise in glory...... 

Happy, Happy Weekend!

 It has been a fulfilling weekend despite the never ending rain and thunderstorms!  In the next seven days we have one day of forecast sunshine midway into the week, but more storms are forecast for that evening and then onward to another few days of rainfall.  At this rate, if this is the result of global warming, either our area will end up becoming a permanent icy wasteland or turn into a jungle habitat....rain, rain, rain, rain, rain and more rain!  What a miserable summer weatherwise.  Our weekly rainfall forecasts are very similar to those on the west coast, but our temperatures are a bit cooler and slightly less humid..so far anyway. I am already wondering what next summer will bring!

Yesterday was a wonderful day despite the weather:  we attended the diaconal ordination of two people my husband has been helping to mentor along their pathway to eventual fully ordained priesthood.  There was a good turnout of people at the service from the church that was sponsoring them, also quite a number of clergy from other parishes were robed up and in attendance, the Bishop gave an inspiring talk to both ordinands that the rest of us were fortunate enough to be able to hear. It was thrilling to receive the Eucharist Cup for the first time from one of the two new Reverends. The delicious snacks in the visiting room afterwards kept me from going into a coma after eating my breakfast far too late after sleeping in accidentally, then not having a proper lunch for, as it turned out, 8 hours!!  I so enjoy returning to this church to see old friends and get caught up.  We spent a long time visiting and snacking and enjoying the beaming faces of the two new deacons in our diocese.  What an edifying and encouraging time for us in our little diocese who have seen so many large drops in church congregational sizes, a dearth of acceptable clergy, financial restraints etc.  Now not only do we have these two very capable new ministers who will spend one year as deacons and then be fully priested, but there are several new hires coming into the diocese who are very capable and experienced priests already. AND they are younger with young families...YES!  As far as clergy hires go we are set up well for the future.

A small piece of cake and a couple of crackers and cheese doth not a late lunch make, so just after 4pm my husband and I found ourselves ensconced in a booth at a restaurant around the corner from the church munching ourselves silly on chicken wings, fries and mounds of cole slaw.  As soon as our massive meals arrived we took out our take out boxes we brought from home and put half of our meals into them for lunch today.  Getting two full meals out of the deal made the price even more reasonable than it already was.  The service was excellent yesterday and our waiter got into a philosophical discussion with my husband before we left to drive home, hahaha.  There is something about my husband's clergy collar that starts up theological and philosophical discussions with many of the restaurant servers we meet around here. hahaha What fun! There are some very bright minds out there "slinging hash" and attempting to create fulfilling futures for themselves.

My husband and I both slept badly last night due to our brains fixating on a few issues we are dealing with and those thoughts kept going around and around and around.  I managed a little more than 4 hours of sleep and my husband got closer to six hours....4 too few for him as a rule....so I was the only one that toughed it out and went to church this morning. I figured perhaps being out and about might perk me up, and it did temporarily as I was able to sit with my coffee buddy who was also sans husband this morning, but as soon as I finished my lunch at home after church I was asleep in my recliner chair, tv blaring away for no reason at all, while my husband had a nap in his office. hahaha What a pair!  The thunder woke me up after an hour of sleep, so I staggered into the kitchen to wash some dishes and do a few more small chores.  As soon as I finish this post I am going to do a bit of reading but I am not sure I am going to get more than a few pages read before I doze out once again.  

We have few plans thus far for the coming week.  Not that we don't have plenty to do right here at home, so hopefully the lack of social commitments will make room for lots more downsizing around here. We have another load of "goodies" to take to the thrift stores and to recycling so once we get those things loaded into the car there will be that much more space for my husband to work in the basement as he continues his sorting and tossing out project.  He had also hoped to build the hangers necessary to attach our canoe and our friend's canoe to the side of her house at some point this week, but so far it looks like the ongoing rain is going to scotch that idea.  Maybe the week after???? 

The Usual Working Around the House Saturday!

 Gosh, but I find Saturdays difficult!  It seems to be a really great day for my husband to work on sermons and articles he is writing, but I nearly lose my mind every Saturday.  Yes, I could get out and shop or look about at some little art galleries, but Saturday is the day working folk and school children are off and so of course it gets rather crowded at most venues and restaurants.  With it being Father's Day weekend, some places are even more crowded than usual today from what I can gather.

So today I did the laundry. hahaha Happy Saturday!!  Good to get it done and I can iron tomorrow or Monday afternoon.  Great to get the exercise going up and down the two flights of stairs as well, although that second hip is giving me grief over it.  Dang it, but I really am going to have to get a prescription for Naproxin to get me through our US trip this summer. Oh well...I was on it for hip number 1 the last time we visited our kids there.

Our kids wrote to us today about the possibility of spending 3 nights in upstate New York with them the first week of our holiday. They know how much we are NOT going to pay for three nights of cabin accommodation there when we have already paid for our apartment in the city, BUT they want to cover that cost.  It is a beautiful cabin with a lovely outdoor barbeque area, which greatly appeals to our BBQ King son and our daughter in law has been talking about this sort of possibility ever since we told them back the end of April that we were coming for a whole month.  The cost of the cabin they want to rent for 3 days made us gasp, so we told them if they truly want to pay for that, okay, their choice, BUT we are paying for the food, train transportation and event entry fees.  Just waiting to hear back from them as to whether or not this is going to happen.  I know they both want to get out of the beastly hot city for a few days and I can't blame them as I too would love that!  Guess we shall see what their decision is. They are nothing if not full of interesting ideas!!

It has been a lovely warm day with only a bit of a breeze wafting through the tree tops.  Not great to be stuck in the house all day, but I have been enjoying the unusual quietness outside on the lawns.  Over the past week all the African kids have found other friends in a different area of the complex to play with, so they are gone over there right after school during the week and took off across the parking lot once again early this morning, not returning for more than a few minutes at lunch time.  Moh and his brother have barely been outside playing in the past week and it seems their family has had a serious falling out with our next door neighbours, so Moh and his brother are not playing with the two boys next door now.  The indigenous kids in our part of the complex have been packing up trucks and vans with camping gear, either heading out before school ends this coming Tuesday or getting ready to go as soon as they are free at that time.  They are too busy packing to play outside.  The other slightly older kids are heavily involved in baseball and soccer now and so by 8am every weekend day they and their parents are gone to practises and tournaments. Wow, it is so quiet around here lately it is downright eerie!! We miss the kids playing outside, yelling and kicking balls and riding bikes and fighting. haha

Our one truly beautiful day this week, today, is apparently a one off, unfortunately.  According to the forecast we have very heavy rain on the way tomorrow, followed by another two days of showers.  The poor tomatoes are so far behind I am not sure how much of a harvest we will get before we leave for our vacation this summer.  We assumed we could pick and freeze a fair crop and that we would have already picked a fair number of our wee cherry tomatoes, but nope.  There are only three tomatoes that formed nearly two weeks ago but are still dark green with not a hint of ripening. I noticed two more blossoms this morning....TWO!!  That will make a total of five tomatoes in the first three weeks of this month...that is assuming they fill out and ripen sufficiently to be eaten.  Sigh.... We need sunshine and heat for our plants now! The bonus of the rain in our province is that the forest fires are not starting and getting out of control because the rain in that area of the north has not had the accompanying lightning strikes....yet anyway.

We made a big decision yesterday to drop out of the one Bible study group we have been attending twice a month regularly for the past three years. There seem to be other things coming up for us this fall that will leave us unable to keep that commitment regularly.  That is disappointing on the one hand, but on the other hand it will be nice to have some new things to do. It will also leave us more time to invest in our small care group that began meeting some months ago and that has proven to be not only a good spiritual learning time, but also a time of deep and personal fellowship with a few folk who are significantly younger than we are and who help us restore our flagging energy levels. We don't meet nearly as often as the Bible study group does, but we enjoy everything from Bible studies to movie nights to group dinners....it is so much fun!  

My husband is doing the scripture readings at church tomorrow, so it is nice for him to have a service task that is super easy, much easier than teaching and preaching.  Next weekend we will be out of town to attend the ordination of two of the deaconal candidates he has been mentoring, so that will be really fun. AND it is on Saturday!  A GOOD Saturday for me for a change! hahaha

Well, if we survive the heavy rain that is supposed to fall tomorrow, it will be a nice relaxing Father's Day.  My husband is a great father!  Another of his many gifts!! 

Cold On The Outside, Warm On the Inside! YAY!

 It has been a very happy Sunday thus far.  My husband had not even a hint of any stomach issues before he ate breakfast and we headed off to church this morning. He did well teaching his class and he enjoyed the church service.  For the first time in a number of weeks, he was happy to hang around afterwards and chat with quite a number of people. Mrs. Social Butterfly here just loved that!!  I managed to stumble through the Scripture readings in the church service....quite hilarious and I will share another time what a bozo I was today....and then after a promising start weather wise to the day, (sunny and not very breezy), we left the church building to discover a very cold wind blowing and another grey sky awaiting. I didn't even wear a coat to church this morning, just a longer sleeved top, BUT no matter, we still walked to the library outlet a block from the church to pick up a book my husband had on hold. I was so pleased that my new, better way of walking resulted not only in less limp, but also didn't make the big thigh muscles on the front of my operated leg ache like they did the other day walking to the area community library box. YAY!

We walked back to the car and drove down the street to DarBar for lunch.  It had been nearly six hours for us both since breakfast, but my husband's beginnings of a tummy attack began only about one minute before the food arrived, so he ate well and the attack had no chance to get a hold.  YAY AGAIN!

He was exhausted when we got home,  but he usually is after teaching a lesson....he has done SO well today with his health. I am so very grateful and pleased for him 

He had a wee nap in the car while I went next to the pharmacy to pick up a prescription....that I called in last Wednesday and that no one could find. hahaha  The pharmacist finally got fed up with the amount of time it was taking....nearly 20 minutes and still no sign of it even though it showed up on the computer as "filled", so he refilled it and apologized that someone had misfiled it, but he wasn't prepared to go through all of the over 500 filled prescriptions to find it. hahaha  It is SUCH a busy pharmacy. I am very grateful to him for doing that...it made life easier for us all. hahaha

We finally got my tired husband home for his nap, but as we were coming up our back stairs, one of the neighbourhood kids....Bully Boy no less...appeared from somewhere and said, "Are you rich?"  Huh???  We assured him that we most certainly are not and got no further conversation from him.  My husband pursued it and asked him why he wanted to know that, so he confessed he is trying to sell coupon books put together by local businesses as a fundraiser for his school....he is, as we discovered, in Grade 3. He had just been told by another neighbour that they couldn't buy one of his books because they are not rich. hahaha Hence his question to us. Being suckers for helping kids with school fundraisers over the years in every town we have lived in, we asked if he had one of the books for us to look at. He took off at the speed of light back to his own unit to get the book for us to see.  As it turned out there are quite a few coupons we will be able to use between now and the fall, so we filled out the sales form and handed over the $30, knowing that we will enjoy using the coupons, that we are helping out a neighbour kid who is going to have a very difficult time selling coupon books for that price in our complex filled with immigrants who are barely able to pay rent each month, PLUS we want to get to know Bully Boy to see if we can create a good relationship with him in case we have to intervene in future when he is beating up other kids just below our back porch! hahaha Perhaps we can meet his parents eventually.  We now know that his name is Mohammad, so we don't have to call him Bully Boy any more.  He is more of a fellow human now that we know his name and less of a caricature of the typical bully.  Great transaction all around.  Now...have we opened the flood gates to every school represented in our complex that is having a spring fundraiser??? Word will get out that we purchased this book, just you wait and see, hahaha.  No worries...as long as we don't get multiple kids all from one family wanting to make sales, I think we will be able to cope with the costs of helping at least some of the kids out with their fundraising. hahaha  We shall see how many more kids approach us over the next month.

We arrived home to a message from our son, hoping to chat after not having a chance to contact us over the past couple of weeks, but by the time we found the message he was off having studio visits to show off some of his works to whoever.  At least he is wanting to chat and he will call us back at some point in the next week hopefully. He is just completing and preparing to transport a couple of works to the Esther 3 Art Fair....a much smaller fair than he is used to, but it was far less pressure getting a couple of works ready than it would have been to prepare 5-7 works for the larger fair going on at the same time in NYC. He has shown in that one before and done well, but he has been too busy with work and with making decisions on changing his artistic style, that he was grateful to opt for the smaller fair this year.  It is all good.

I think I am going to go now, while my husband is having a decent nap, and play an old computer game, Fishdom 3.  If I ever get lonely I can always play this game where the cartoon fish "talk" to me in between rounds.  It is a very cute game for old codgers like me who don't want to be too intellectually or strategically challenged. hahaha  

A blessed Sunday to you all.   

A Wee Bit Of Cultural Experience Next Week!

We are looking forward to enjoying a bit more of a classical music cultural experience next week.  Two fellows from our church are performing their final piano concerts for their Bachelor of Music degrees and we have been invited to attend.  The concerts are taking place in a proper concert venue here in the city that we have enjoyed being in for chamber music concerts in years past, rather than in the less beautiful university student concert spaces, so it will be an evening of excellent performances and classical music.  YAY, something to look forward to indeed.

My husband was able to eat breakfast this morning at exactly the right time to stave off another tummy attack and even managed to get to the early adult education class at the church, AND stay through the entire church service as well, despite being so tired.  After the service I assumed we would come home and he would eat more yogourt or pancakes or some other bland meal.  However, he said that as he was sitting in the church before the service he remembered that the last two times he has had bouts of this nature one of the main healers of his tummy was Indian food.  I have the same memory, so for lunch we went back to DarBar.  He had the mildest spicing possible in his meal, didn't overeat and at this point, nearly two hours later, his tummy is showing no signs of postprandial upset.  If he can survive another hour without any reactions, it should be safe to say he will be okay, at least until after dinner tonight.  He may finish his leftovers for dinner, or switch back to pancake blandness, but at least it seems he will finally have a full afternoon off from his tummy ache.   The adult class this morning was on the use of the Hebrew word "hesed" in both the Old and New Testaments.  Like most words translated from one language to another, the full meaning is not directly, fully translatable so it makes for interesting discussions about how it has been translated into English by the various biblical translators.  It often appears in our Bibles as "lovingkindess", a word that was coined by Myles Coverdale and included in his printed translation of the Bible, (1535),  slightly pre-dating the King JamesV ersion. (1611)

It is only going to about +8C this afternoon and by Thursday morning we may have more snow, but at least we will remain above zero for the next three or four days.  The sun is shining, the clouds are currently thin and the breeze isn't too strong.

Now I am signing off to spend some time in prayer for our daughter-in-law.  She is supposed to be going home today from Texas, but bad thunder storms and possible tornadoes are forecast in the area close to the Dallas airport so we are concerned about her travel possibilities.  Looks like she will be okay driving back to El Paso, but then it gets dicey for her if her flight to Dallas is badly delayed or cancelled due to weather....honestly, at this point it seems there is always some kind of issue lately with every flight that members of our family are booked into.  Praying hard for this dear girl!!!

A Blessed And Joyous Easter Sunday Be Yours!

 The Lord is risen! 

He is risen indeed! 

Hallelujah!

Just awoke to this happy remembrance so I hope and pray I can live out that good news today and always. Don’t know what this day will bring, but I want to keep the Resurrection in the forefront of my mind. 

Would you be able to send up a quick prayer for our son and his wife? She has been ill for several days and yesterday he was coming down with yet another sinus related, migraine-like headache. I can’t remember when his appointment is with the ENT specialist, but hopefully it is soon. Thanks for praying for help for them this weekend.

The Ascent Of Jesus, The Descent Of The Snow!

 I so enjoyed our church Easter choir concert this evening. Christ’s journey to the cross was well portrayed through music, song and narration. Then the exuberance of the music toward the end of the concert celebrating His resurrection….it was an exciting expression of the joy and hope given to us by the raising of Christ from the dead.

The inspiring concert was followed by the latest weather report: a large snow system is winging its way across the province from west to east, leaving us with about 10-15 cm of snow over the next 36 hours. Sigh…..what a miserable end to the month of March, but hardly unexpected on the prairies. Hahaha….ya’ gotta love it here, right? 

Urgent Prayers Needed For A Church Friend...Thank You Prayer Warriors....

We received an urgent prayer request for Carol this morning:  she was admitted to hospital last evening, diagnosed with double pneumonia, dehydration and Sepsis.  As of today she is on full life support and it is not looking very positive.  Please pray for her, her husband Em and their children and grandchildren.  She is not elderly and is a long distance walker, not at all ailing healthwise, so has been in great condition over all until this hit her a few days ago via a cold and serious sinus infection.  Thank you for praying.  The whole family is in shock, understandably.

From My Prayer Request List Of The Other Day....

 For those of you friends and family who have been praying for the Arab Theological Baptist Seminary in Lebanon, here is their latest prayer request update:

Pray With Us for Lebanon & the Middle East - CBM - Canadian Baptist Ministries 

Thank you for your continued prayers for them.  You can check out their Facebook page to get more "daily details" if the Lord has led you to be a prayer warrior for them.

Blessings from them to you! 

Dear Weather: MAKE UP YOUR COTTON PICKIN' Mind Already!!!!

 Gosh, what a day outside!  The temperature rose overnight to just above zero, so there was enough snow and topical ice melt that my husband had to slosh his way out to the car early this morning and drive it around from the lot to our front street so I could go along for the ride to church.  It was far too dangerous for me to try to cross the puddles and remaining ice ridges on the back yard going out to the car lot.  The sidewalks around our place were bare and only a bit wet in places.  The sun never did shine today through the thick grey clouds, but the temperature rose to +6C so there was some melting action, but a chilly wind cut down on any major melting of the remaining snow and ice.  Now at 5:30pm there are tiny snowflakes drifting around, we may get some freezing rain once again and we are on our way to an overnight low of -9C to -11C depending on what weather website I check. Brrrrrrr.....freeeeeeeeeeze.....will it ever be safe for me to go outside to walk by myself???

I should not complain.  In the area of west central Saskatchewan where we spent 5 years before moving to Regina they are having a terrible snowstorm that has resulted in miserable highway driving conditions and power outages all afternoon covering a wide swath of small towns and villages in the north west and along a narrow band all the way to the southern end of the province.  If they are getting such a storm t his afternoon...the area is between 4 and 5 hours to the west of us....what are we going to end up with by tomorrow morning???  We have car repair related errands that have to be run tomorrow and the following day and they will require me to do a fair amount of driving in the new car on my own....blecch! When it comes to driving on snow and ice I am becoming a terrible Winter Wimp!!!  The temperatures will not rise above zero again for a fair number of days and some of the overnight lows are predicted to be in the low minus double digits.  So dear weather:  are we having early spring or prolonged winter?  Make up your gosh darned mind!

Apart from the small stresses related to weather conditions it has been a great day! 

Our adult class on poetry this morning was very good! A local poet was our guest speaker and she shared her thoughts on poems by Robert Frost, George Herbert and Malcolm Guite, as well as one of her own recent works that focused on how God told her he still loves her after she made a glaring life error!  She was very vulnerable in the poem and very honest. She seems a most humble person.  We so enjoyed her presentation.  I am learning so much more about poetry in general...styles and forms and interpretation.  These classes will I think assist me as I continue to enjoy my giant sized tome of World Poetry. 

We enjoyed church even more than usual this morning  because we were participating with prayers and Scripture readings.  I am starting to realize that the thing I am struggling with the most, being a former pastor's wife with my husband being fully retired now and us not having our own parish, is being able to be super duper party pooper involved in the church services each week.  As my energy and mental acuity have begun improving overall the closer I get to a fuller recovery from last spring's surgery, I am realizing I am not quite as content as I have been to just sit in the pews like a lump every Sunday morning. Since we are unable to join the church in a recognized membership role, our abilities to assist are rather limited and I certainly accept that, but wow, it is really nice to be asked to do things once in awhile. It has been a LONG while for me, so I really had fun today. (and please don't suggest that I get involved in the after church coffee hour extravaganza, thanks anyway, because that never was my thing and is the one aspect of church community life I am beyond thrilled to have given up). The sermon was very good this morning, the minister talking about giving God our full attention, and there are some things I need to think about in my own walk with Him going forward.

My dear husband decided that since I worked very hard doing laundry yesterday...okay, yes, I over did it, but it felt SO GOOD to do so much other work along with the washing....that I was not to cook today.  After he promised I would not have to cook, he realized that he is suffering from a couple of nights of poor sleep and not up to cooking either, so we ended up going out to London Belle for lunch after church. hahaha  We both had a chicken burger with lots of lettuce, tomato and jalapeno pepper rounds and a side of tomato bisque soup....SO YUMMY!  There were very few other customers in the restaurant so we were free to talk about whatever we wanted to, relax and have the full attention of the heavily tattooed wait staff....my goodness there are some amazing tattoo artists around here.  The one girl's tattoos were incredibly well done and represented various places in North America where she has travelled.  Since we were one table of only two needing service, she had plenty of time to tell us the origin and meaning of many of her tattoos and it was most educational and fun. The large ring piercing in her nose was also very interesting and the metal, in the bright lights of the restaurant, picked up the carrot orange dye in her hair and flashed it around the room, so her whole face sparkled as she walked about.  I so enjoy chatting with the older teens and 20 somethings. Their culture is radically different from my own and it is always a good learning experience.  We got to chatting because she loved my dress motorcycle jacket.  It is perfect for this kind of "what the heck is going to happen next" kind of weather...warm and wind resistant and long enough to cover the extra long black dress sweater I was wearing over black and white pants today.

To force myself away from physiotherapy and more housework this afternoon I had a delightful time reading and playing video games on my computer while my husband alternately watched tv and napped.  It was a marvellous "old geezer" kind of afternoon.  Now it is nearly 6pm and for the sake of my blood sugar I suppose I am going to have to come up with a bit of light dinner for myself. My husband prefers to put his own catch as catch can meal together after our big lunch, so I will enjoy doing the same.....maybe some bread and hummus or crackers and cream cheese with green olives, or a slice of bread with melted cheese....something simple with a bit of fat for digestion and a large sized drink of water to wash it down and make me feel full for the rest of the evening.  Lately eating any kind of snack before bed, even a protein only with no carbs snack interferes with my sleep, so a "whatever is handy" kind of dinner with only two carb units and then nothing but a glass of water before bed helps with that issue.

So now we are waiting to see what tomorrow holds with the weather and our likely necessary car repair and tire pick up chores.  We are excited that our once a month evening small group is getting together tomorrow evening.  We are the oldsters in the group so we really look forward to spending a couple of hours with good friends who are fifteen to twenty years younger than we are, but who accept us as part of their spiritual and even social circles.  They are a fun bunch and we spend a lot of our time laughing. It is a great bunch of people. Then next morning my walking partner is coming for a visit. Looks like the weather will prevent us from taking even the walk around the complex I was hoping for, but we always have so much to talk about that the time will fly by and be over too soon.  Again, a much younger person who is willing to share her life with us and we have a lot of excellent conversation.

A Happy Conversation To Begin The Weekend!

 What a happy morning we are having!  We slept long and well, had a leisurely breakfast, got showered and dressed and then had a surprise visit on the phone with our son.  There is something about his presence, even at a distance, that bring us great peace.  Knowing he is well and happy gives us a great emotional boost as we begin another dreary weekend, weather wise. He is recovering from his busy work trip in Chicago this past week, is immersed in preparing income taxes and preparing the very last item needed to continue with his visa application. He has two paintings in the works for a small NYC art fair in May. His wife is somewhere upstate with a small theatre company doing a magazine interview with their playwright who also happens to be one of her local drama heroes, so she is also happy and enjoying life right now.

My husband is busy writing emails this morning and I am doing great huge loads of laundry, so I am getting lots of exercise going up and down all the stairs in this suite. It is good for me and no longer bothers the ruptured tendon in my foot to the degree it did a couple of weeks ago.  I was able to finish composing the prayers for church tomorrow, so I am very pleased about that.  Sometimes the inspiration doesn't seem to hit me until very close to presentation time and other times are like today. Sit, pray, think, write, print off and that's all folks.  Thank you Lord for the ideas AND for the much shorter length of the prayer than the last time I was doing this.  The congregation will also be grateful for that, I guarantee it, hahaha.

 

Shredded!!!

I feel as shredded mentally as the huge stack of papers I just finished shredding physically....wow, I feel like I have been run over by a semi rig today.  So does my husband!

Although we both slept long and well last night, we are still recovering from the lack of sleep the previous night.  It seems the sloggy, groggy, foggy feelings due to lack of rest hit us the day after, instead of the day of.  

However, the day was not a complete waste!  YAY!  I spent nearly two hours shredding old paperwork and then vacuuming up the mess I made when I didn't realize one edge of the bag I was emptying the shredded papers into had not covered the bin holding the shreds....sigh....well, it gave me something else to do this afternoon, hahaha.  

I got my physio done today and saw a bit more improvement in how many seconds I can stand now on the operated leg and my husband is seeing other signs of improvement in how badly I limp when I walk, so it has been an encouraging day today. Wow, only 9 months to be able to stand on that leg unassisted for a full 8 seconds, (hear the sarcasm along with a groan and a grimace). I know that sounds horrible, ridiculous even, but if I can hold it for 8 seconds now, maybe 3 months from now if I work hard I will be able to stand for the required 30 seconds.  Right?  Of course right! I can DO this!!!!

We discovered that some issues we have been having with our WiFi, particularly with getting my iPad back online after having to reset the whole system when it occasionally completely crashes, computers, iPads, tv system and all, SEEMS to be related to my husband's occasional use of his Ubuntu.  Each time he uses it, and that isn't very often, we have to reset the system and then all goes well with the PC's and the tv, but my iPad stubbornly refuses to reboot its WiFi connection, even tells me my password code for connecting to our WiFi site is incorrect...which is most certainly is not.  Shutting off the iPad, waiting for awhile before trying again to connect, does not fix the problem. Each time this has happened, including today, the iPad only comes back online after Ubuntu is shut down.....to us, not being computer wizards, this seems very strange, but at least we know what to do now when and if this hassle happens again: wait until the Ubuntu is shut down, reboot the WiFi connection and all will be well.  We hope that is the problem because it is easy to solve.  

Looking forward to church participation this coming Sunday. My husband is going to read the Scriptures and I am going to do the prayers.  I am wondering how much I need to write down ahead of time, do I even need to do that this time, or should I just wing it, charismatic style?  Maybe some crib notes so I don't miss some particular requests, but apart from that I think I may just wing it.  Spontaneous prayers from me are usually considerably shorter than when I start writing prayers down to read.  Why, I am not sure, but that is how it is most of the time. Perhaps I will give the congregation a break this Sunday and ask the Lord for the ideas to pray about as I go along.  Could be a complete disaster, right?  Well, I am in the mood for a challenge, so maybe.....I will let you know how it goes......

The past couple of days have been spent inside and I am getting rather antsy to get out of this suite.  We were supposed to be picking up our old vehicle's summer tires today but they haven't arrived yet from the storage facility and to be honest it is probably just as well we didn't have to go out.  This morning we awakened to an outside covering of ice pellets and a bit of snow. The ice pellets were easy to sweep off the deck first thing in the morning because they had the consistency of large grains of salt. However by this afternoon, even with only a slight warming of temperature, they melted just enough to run together into a big, tough mass of icy snow that would have been difficult to move with the shovel.  Very grateful we got our decks and steps cleaned off with the broom before that happened.  The weather forecast for this weekend has been revised and we will be receiving much colder temperatures than originally forecast. Yes, there will be a couple of days slightly above zero, but +3C is a far cry from the original +8C we were expecting.  Oh well, we are another day closer to spring.  

Now the decision regarding what to have for dinner: I ate the rest of my portion of the beef stew last evening so I know my husband is having his stew tonight.  So....should I finish the tuna salad I made at lunch time, or make a pita pizza, or make a veggie salad with some seed toast, or thaw some baked beans.....all kind of plebeian fare, but on this day of feeling mentally miserable and physically exhausted, these are the only sorts of things I feel up to preparing for myself....yawn........

 

Just One More Request, 'K?

 Just got word from a friend that a very delicate and long awaited surgery that has been waiting to happen for two or more years, that was already cancelled the first time it was booked over a month ago and was rescheduled to tomorrow, has again been cancelled!! No explanation, just cancelled, just like that!  NOOOOOO!!!  Em's condition is very serious, could cause life long disabilities if not dealt with,  and the amount of pain killers being taken over the past few years to control the agonizing pain is just unreal. Those pain killers cannot be taken for a week prior to surgery and so this is the second time Em has had to go through the painful experience of not being able to be on meds.  I am horrified and I cannot even imagine what Em is going through.  Please, please go to the Lord with me and with Em's family as the Lord leads you and seek God's help for Em to cope with yet another unexpected wait for help. Thank you!

In happier news my husband spent the morning preparing a lovely beef stew that cooked all day in the oven.  Yum!!  I made a banana loaf, so we had a marvellous feast of good old fashioned prairie food tonight for dinner.  Just after we finished eating, one of our Nigerian neighbours came to the back door to deliver a tax receipt to us from his church.  The poor fellow has not ever adjusted to winter weather after 5 years here, so he came into the kitchen to warm his freezing hands....a short walk across the parking lot between our places was enough to turn them brilliant red!  I ladled out a good sized carton of the stew and sent it home with him for his family. The carton was almost too hot for me to handle, but our friend wrapped his hands around it tightly and gave a contented sigh before departing back to his own home across the parking lot. hahaha  Although it was much warmer today than it has been, he was "trussed up like a chicken" in felt lined, knee high boots, a thick toque, massive puffy parka, but he had forgotten his gloves at home, hence the icy hands.  I am glad we had something he could take home as a hand warmer!  He said he planned to eat the hot stew as soon as he got in the door to warm himself up completely.  

How on earth to immigrants from warmer climates ever get used to our bitter prairie winters?? I admire them for being willing to try so hard. 

Although we woke up to thick frost covering everything outside, the day did warm up somewhat and so I took a short walk outside on the cleared sidewalk in front of our place.  I walked in each of the two directions from our front door until I ran into the spots where melted snow had run down from the higher lawns and frozen onto the sidewalk. Then I turned around and came back. So, not a long walk, but it was great to get outside with no particular purpose but to exercise and enjoy the fresh air.

We have to get up between 6:30am and 7am tomorrow to get our old vehicle into the electrical repair shop by 7:30am. Then the following day we need to pick up its summer tires from the dealership that is storing them for us. I pulled all the paperwork together outlining the work we have had done on the car since about 2018, the paperwork proving that we took it in for a new airbag a few years ago when the old ones were recalled for having a safety issue.  That SHOULD be the last of the repairs and other details we need to accomplish prior to turning the car over to its new owners, our dear friends.  In a few more days it will legally be theirs.  So excited we can deliver it to friends that truly need a vehicle.

Soon my walking partner will be coming to visit and if the weather is decent, we will try walking me around the full outside of our complex, not quite 8 blocks round trip.  The sidewalks around the outside are fairly new, wide and if the warmth that is predicted actually happens over the weekend, most of those sidewalks should be free of ice, or nearly so.  I am really looking forward to it and hoping the weather will favour this little venture. My walking partner is most patient about the lack of distance we will have to cover.  I want to get started as soon as possible so that once all the ice is melted around the lake we can resume our several kilometre walk there. 

Please Send Up A Prayer….

 ….for a young friend studying in Amman Jordan. Many missiles are crossing over Jordan right now on their way to other countries during this present armed conflict and the fear is of shrapnel falling from the sky and injuring civilians when the missiles are shot down by air defence systems.  We are concerned. Thank you for saying a prayer for Dee. 

….also for BnD as they soon leave home in Canada to investigate the possibility of teaching at a university in Bhutan. They worked previously in Mongolia, India and China, setting up pilot programmes in universities and their families have enjoyed having them home again for several months, but the return to teaching is calling them once again. Please pray for wisdom for them in regard to taking on another pilot project in another new location. 

….for the Arab Baptist Theological Seminary in Lebanon as they continue to deal with the armed conflict raging around their country and try to keep their many international students safe, fed, housed and taught. 

….for the Anglican churches in our diocese in need of new priests. It is becoming increasingly difficult for churches of all denominations here to attract leadership to the stark environment and smaller rural parishes of the prairies. So many desire a parish in larger cities and many of the newly ordained are not willing to hone their ministry gifts in less convenient environs outside the major cities. 

Thanks prayer warriors. Woke up this morning with these particular requests heavy on my 💜 heart.

No Snow, But....

 ...but o wow, the wind overnight and well into this morning was atrocious!  It is a good thing the meeting out of town today was cancelled just in case of a snowstorm, because my husband and I got very little sleep last night. The wind report was telling us that the winds were gusting to 70k, but I suspect it was actually higher.  All night long our building was creaking, the siding was popping and there was a constant Whoosh Whoosh coming in through the bathroom ceiling fan that opens into the attic space.  Tossing and turning was how I spent my night, not sleeping soundly as I have been of late.  My husband gave up trying to sleep before 7am despite having sat up reading in bed until after midnight.  There is no way we were in any sort of decent shape to go driving off across the province for a meeting that was able to be postponed to a future date.

So we have both been dragging around all day.  We went out to get our R/O water jugs filled this morning and made some decent meals, but apart from that it has been a day for vegging and dozing out in front of the tv newscasts.  

I have had two full days in a row off from physio, so the ruptured tendon in my foot is feeling pretty good. However, I will have to get back to the hip exercises again tomorrow.  I think I will take Sunday off as a matter of principle and then resume my proper weekly schedule on Monday. Doing physio three days in a row earlier this week because we planned to be travelling today exhausted my hip. It was barely keeping up on Day Three.

Not sure what we are doing tomorrow. Guess it will depend on the weather and how we are feeling if we manage to sleep better tonight.  Sunday we aren't sure what to do. We will likely attend the adult learning class before the service at the church, but I think we will either come home after class or go church visiting instead of attending our own service.  It is a special 20th anniversary service to remember a time when many of the congregation members welcomed groups of refugees into their homes and our church was rented out to them for services on Sunday afternoons for over ten years.  Their congregations grew and both groups of refugees have purchased their own church buildings now.  We are combining for a joint service on Sunday. It will be packed with people, there will be standing room only by the sound of it and to be honest, I think we will feel like intruders if we attend.  We were not part of the church at that time and don't know much about the people groups who were welcomed in back then.  While it would be interesting to learn more, I am not sure we are up for the crowded conditions and exposing ourselves, through the size of the congregation and singing in each others' faces, to more colds and influenza than we have been already in the past week of gadding about all over town.  There will also be communion and according to the church bulletin we will be passing the elements in trays down the rows of pews and added chairs.  I admit I am still a bit paranoid about having other people breathing on and touching the bread and wine glasses I will be imbibing from.  Guess it is a holdover from the first days of COVID, but I am just not thrilled about it.  We have another day to decide what we are going to do.  We should be more excited about this grand event than we are...not sure what the real reason is that we are not.  The rest of the church members are practically jumping for joy! What is wrong with us??

We are in another weather cycle of a couple of days of slightly above zero temperatures followed by a couple of days of miserably cold temperatures.  Oh yuck!!  The nice crunchy snow path I was able to navigate safely out to the car yesterday was frozen into a smooth icy patch by late this morning and tonight it is going to go down to -22C.  It will be a chilly weekend, followed by quite a warm up and subsequently more snow by the next weekend.  The above temperature days are not enough warmer to constitute  the joy of a true chinook system. It is more frustrating than helpful to have them because the price of some minor melting ends up being even slipperier ice once the melt refreezes in the return to bitter cold.  Oh how I am looking forward to the spring season when all the ice will eventually melt away, never to return....until the autumn at least.