Busy weekend + a day or two

We are not quite sure where the last 4 days have gone! Our last post was Thursday, today is Tuesday morning and in between we have:
· Finished painting the hall and the living room
· Painted the dining room with base colour twice (will finish to day)
· Prepared the bedroom for painting
· Been out looking at carpets for living room and bedroom
· Bought carpets, brought them home and fitted them
· Mounted blinders in Lukas’s room
· Been to B&Q (paint, dust covers, screws etc) more times than we can remember
· Gone to IKEA to buy a coffee table, TV table, bookcase and a few other things
· Participated in Youth and Children councils Saturday and Sunday
· Been to 4 corps and 1 institution to visit the leaders (in one day!)
· Been to Divisional Band practice
· Seen Lukas of to his first day at his new school



That could of course be the reason why we have not posted anything on the blog, and maybe it is, but we try and convince ourselves it is because we still do not have any access to the internet from home, and we have not been to the office since Thursday.

Lukas Monday set of to begin in his new school. He looks really smart in his school uniform (and yes, we will post some pictures when we one day get around to installing software, copying pictures, bringing them to the office etc….) and he got of to a good start. Teacher is very friendly and as he also is the PE (sports) teacher, he of course is popular with Lukas. The class is large (30+ students), but Lukas already new the names of a good handful of the boys and had made good friends with the captain of the school football team. The school is playing a another local school on Wednesday, so Lukas is a bit upset he is not allowed to do any kind of contact sports until the new year.

Lukas also went to his first youth councils (which sounds really boring, but is a weekend of worship, fun, prayer, sports for the SA youths from our area or division). For the first time the event this year covered both for children and youths (usually has been 2 separate events) and so with at the same site there was actually 3 events going on for 5-10, 11-15 and 16+. It was really an amazing weekend. It was the children and youth leaders on our team who was responsible and they are very, very good. Lukas joined the 11-15 group and basically told us to get lost (in the nicest possible way of course) and he had a really good time. He did fund raising for a HIV project in Africa, played drums in a Samba orchestra (all drums), participated in the worship and prayer time and really enjoyed himself. We went around observing and helped to clear away at the end of the event . As mentioned it was really, really good and extremely inspiring.

Monday we started on our first round of flying pastoral visits with the Divisional Commander (our boss), who also is new to the Division. The plan was simple: 30 minutes visit and 30 minutes traveling to the next place - repeated several times. We managed 4 corps and one institution, only got lost once (not us, the DC!!!) and met some wonderful people in some very different situations. One corps leader jokingly referred to himself as an ethnic minority in the corps, which predominantly consist of people form Zimbabwe, another corps situated in a very nice suburb to Manchester, ministering predominately to the upper middle class and so on.

While Lisbeth and Alan were busy decorating and also shopping at IKEA, Henrik went to the Divisional Band practice. Surprisingly not because the rumour of my fantastic ability for playing the cornet had gone before me, but because part of my responsibility is to be executive officer for the band (another job I have no idea what entails!). I joined in as end chair cornet (that is last on the row of 2nd cornets!) - the Divisional Bandmaster actually has retired and moved to Scotland, but takes care of the band till the end of the year, and it is apparently my responsibility to find a new one, so if anyone is interested, please do contact me!

Today we are of to what Lisbeth as designated “hell day” - a day full of board and committee meetings in the office. We plan to leave home 7.45 and the last meeting begins at 19.00. This will be the first time we actually are participating in something (apart from the visits yesterday) and so we for the first time have a chance of really putting our foot into it, as we very likely will have no idea what is going on. Talking about something we know nothing about is not necessarily knew to us though, so we probably will get through it, maybe even without of anyone laughing out loud in our faces!

Yesterday my mobile rang for the first time - and as I looked at the number calling – 731 0037 - my heart beat an extra beat (to the uninitiated: Headquarters in Riga), reminding me of how much we miss everyone (as you probably can understand from the list in the beginning of this post, then there is not a lot of time to think or strength to think or reflect just now). It was Goran with a couple of questions - I was dying to ask him questions about everyone and everything - but there was not time, and if would not have been the right thing to do, but it felt really good to have just that little bit of contact back home, as it still is!

Apart from running to meetings all day, I hope also to have time to read a few blogs from Latvia today, just to catch up with what is going on - still is a bit unreal we are not going back, but at the same time it just felt really good when speaking to Goran to know him and Chris are there and knowing that everyone are in really good hands.

Because of our limited access to the net, our contacts both to Latvia, and also to Maria and Andreas have been very limited - so we will try and get the IT dept. to sort out our ADSL line today and then find out whether they will allow us to install MSN on the office laptop (which now is working) - when that is sorted out we just need to finish the decorating, so we also can sit down and open the computer!

Well, Dace has been complaining that our postings are getting as long as my sermons, so I better stop here and get ready to hit the road in time to beat the morning rush hour. (Actually so far traffic in Manchester is much better than in Riga - there are of course many more cars here, but mostly the roads are built for it, and there are no bridges everyone has to cross).