So our house is officially for sale, for those that we haven't already told... we listed it with century 21 and our first showings start tomorrow. I have to say I am partially excited and partially a little sad to be leaving a house that we both put so much heart into... I mean we even named it how silly is that. What now you ask, well for the interm we will be moving into my parents till summer and then we take it from there.
2005 - 2007There is a story told about the philospher Socrates about how he was lecturing to a group of students around a body of water. One of the students posed a question to Socrates, "When, great teacher, do I know when I am truly seeking knowledge." Without answering the student Socrates got up and walked over to him, he then pushed the students head underwater and when the student finally tried pushing up for air Socrates let him go. When the student had collected his composure Socrates said to him, "when you desire knowledge as desperatly as you were desiring air to breathe you know you are truly seeking knowledge."
This can applied to us as Christians; when we desire God as much as we desire air to breathe, only then can we be assured that we are seeking his will.
For some time now Laura and I have been sponsoring a child through Compassion Canada, a little girl from Thailand named Noi. Both of us have been blessed by her pictures and letters, and hopefully blessed her in return with ours. Recently I have had the feeling though that I would like to do more, I have always felt a tugging towards mission oriented work in some capacity but with school and everything that is going on never felt like I was able. Every once in a while we would get a mailing from Compassion with the regular updates about a program they had called the Child Advocacy Network and after some thought and some prayer decided that I would see what was involved and if I would have the time to join. As it turns out the time commitment was whatever I had time for and given our schedule that is my kind of ministry, so as of this week I have become an official, since I can say we were unofficial before this, Advocate for Children. That being said I would love to see you all pray about sponsoring children and if you have any questions please feel free to discuss them with me or with Compassion Canada.
Let me relate a little story about the trip home from Christmas holidays for you all. It explains my newfound intense loathing for North West Airlines. We left the Grandparents house in South Londonderry at around 3:00 am for the 2-hour drive to Albany, NY and arrived exactly one hour before take off as requested by any airline, so far so good. We boarded the plane and everything seemed to be going smoothly right? Wrong! We got as far as the runway but couldn’t take off, the computer needed rebooting, so we headed back to the gate for a reboot… that done we taxied back to the runway… and the computer still wasn’t working… back to the gate for a reboot, taxied back to the runway… and no dice, back to the gate for a reboot, luckily third time was the charm and we finally could take off, sadly we were now severely behind schedule and it therefore missed our connection in Detroit, MI for Minneapolis by 20 minutes. Did northwest help us out, well in a manner of speaking… the next flight to Minneapolis caused us to miss out connection in Minneapolis to Winnipeg, and the next flight to Winnipeg was not till 7:15 pm and we arrived in Minneapolis at 11:30 am, you do the math. Now I need to interject a little back-story, because at this point it just seems like I am complaining about an inconvenience. While we were in Vermont Laura got the flu, then Grandma got the flu, then Marnar (Mom) got the flu, and finally Grandpa got the flu. I thought I had escaped the wrath of the insidious bug, I thought wrong. It just waited till the most inopportune time, that time was boarding our first flight. Ever throw up into a bag surrounded by people in the close quarters of coach? I can tell you what that’s like. Ever get the chills and feverish feeling associated with the flu and not have your bed to retreat too, but rather have to try to rest uncomfortably on segmented airport waiting area chairs with nothing but your jacket to use as a blanket and having to use public restrooms to take care of all the other business associated with the flu? I can tell you about that too. To make matters worse, when we finally arrive in Winnipeg a full 9 hours later then we should have originally arrived, we found out that NWA had lost my bags. And did we receive any compensation for this troubling experience, of course not that would have been the nice, we want you to fly with us again response, something NWA is apparently not good at giving.
Christmas vacation is over and we are heading home in a couple of hours... Do we want to? yes..and no. Yes because it will be nice to see family and friends and pets again. No because this is one of the most beautiful countrysides I have seen and I can hardly wait to move here and call it home. Not that I won't miss Manitoba as it has been home for so long, but a change will be refreshing..
