On Wednesday night Dan and I went to the homegroup of the community church we are (so far) kind of half involved in. Normally one of us goes and the other stays home with Abby and Alex. But this week one of the husbands in the group offered to babysit our children so that we could both go together. This in itself was an out-playing of something we then discussed at the bible study - how as a kingdom community, we should be giving to each other and, also, receiving.
Each Wednesday one of the couples cooks supper for everybody - for about six other couples and two single guys. We cram around their dining tables for dinner, with wine, and then have some lovely singing and a bible study.
This week as I looked around the crowded room, it struck me how these people are so determined to serve each other, to be there for each other, and they really do it. It is a great testimony. We have been helped so much by many of them. We have been to all their homes for meals, and to some more than once. And after a short bout of inviting people back (we managed three meals!), I haven't really felt up to it in the last couple of months. So I looked around feeling as though all I have done is receive receive receive since moving here. It is humbling to be the one who is new and not feeling all that confident. And also not feeling very known. It is a reversal from by the time we left Uganda, where I felt like quite a seasoned Africa person. I knew how to cook there and have people over for meals, we would have entertained new people who arrived on campus and hopefully helped them feel settled (although Abby Bartels deserves the crown for that ministry!), shown people around Kampala, lent people books... Now it is all turned around and I have to ask people where to buy things. I don't really mind that side of it though. Probably the thing I am feeling most bad about is not having people over for meals, when Dan and I love doing that. I just don't feel like I can get my head around it at the moment.
But the point being made in the study was that in God's kingdom, we need to receive from each other as well as give. If there weren't people who need to receive, who would the givers give to? For now, just for a bit longer, I have to accept that I am in need of receiving. I do really appreciate the way our new friends have encircled us and been so generous to us. One of my new women friends who is a obstetrician and who worked in Bangladesh as missionaries until a few years ago, asked me if I wanted to be her prayer partner last week. It felt like a life-line was being thrown to me, I am sure she didn't expect such an enthusiastic, OK maybe even desperate, response! Yes please!!!!!
It is so good to be part of God's family.
Friday, 27 January 2012
Tuesday, 24 January 2012
Food...
I haven't yet said anything about enjoying all the variety and availability of food on offer back in the west (apart from the challenge of buying it from massive supermarkets, one of my early rants.)
I think we have done pretty well at adjusting to the plenty here, without going overboard. Dan and I have been loving the variety of cheeses, and above even that the availability of good chocolate. We do miss Ugandan pineapples, bananas, and watermelons. But we have been relishing cheap tangerines, apples, plums, grapes, and berries when in season.
Living on a limited budget here, so far, has meant that we still eat simply, and don't eat out much. I think we have gone out for pizza twice, and Subway twice... literally.
But I have to confess to yesterday. Yesterday I ate badly... It started with not feeling like eating breakfast, but being hungry on the way to work, so I breakfasted on a Snickers bar bought on the high street near my office. Then a guy brought a tin of candies to work, and with not much encouragement I joined the fray and spent most of the morning popping strawberry creams interspersed with orange creams.... At lunchtime it was someone's birthday so we went out for Pizza Hut buffet (OK, my third pizza restaurant since being here). Later I stopped in to buy supplies for Alex's packed lunches, and on the strength of finding a deal - 24 bags of crisps for the price of 12 -, I treated myself to just one bag when I got home. Then felt the urge, and gave into said urge, to make brownies!
I must have gained about a kilo.
Oh well, so long as I don't make a habit of it. I was really good today, honest.
I think we have done pretty well at adjusting to the plenty here, without going overboard. Dan and I have been loving the variety of cheeses, and above even that the availability of good chocolate. We do miss Ugandan pineapples, bananas, and watermelons. But we have been relishing cheap tangerines, apples, plums, grapes, and berries when in season.
Living on a limited budget here, so far, has meant that we still eat simply, and don't eat out much. I think we have gone out for pizza twice, and Subway twice... literally.
But I have to confess to yesterday. Yesterday I ate badly... It started with not feeling like eating breakfast, but being hungry on the way to work, so I breakfasted on a Snickers bar bought on the high street near my office. Then a guy brought a tin of candies to work, and with not much encouragement I joined the fray and spent most of the morning popping strawberry creams interspersed with orange creams.... At lunchtime it was someone's birthday so we went out for Pizza Hut buffet (OK, my third pizza restaurant since being here). Later I stopped in to buy supplies for Alex's packed lunches, and on the strength of finding a deal - 24 bags of crisps for the price of 12 -, I treated myself to just one bag when I got home. Then felt the urge, and gave into said urge, to make brownies!
I must have gained about a kilo.
Oh well, so long as I don't make a habit of it. I was really good today, honest.
Friday, 20 January 2012
Something I learned today...
Today Dan and I were in the car, driving across the Cotswolds to visit my godmother, who is suddenly very ill. In spite of the circumstances, it was also good to have a chance to be going away somewhere together, just the two of us.
But I learned something I should have realised before, about Dan. He is actually immune to stress. I did kind of know that before. But today, I was trying to explain to him why the anxiety feelings I have been getting are unbearable rather than just a nuisance. I compared it to having, nearly all the time, the tingling sensation that shoots through your body when you nearly have a car crash, for example, or when you have a near miss of any kind. I assume most of you know what I mean - that feeling of a sudden rush of adrenalin zooming through your veins, bursting though your chest and along your limbs. Some mornings recently I have been getting that whenever the phone rings, whenever the children told me they were hungry, whenever anything was asked of me. Which is why I am now trying to get it dealt with. But when I described that to Dan he told me that, No, he never gets that feeling. Never. He has never had that burst of tingling through his veins. This explains a lot... No wonder he could stand on top of the bunjee jump at the Jinja Nile Resort, looking around happily and waving his arms over his head - unlike my brother who had his eyes closed and was praying! No wonder he can jump off eighty foot cliffs into a rolling river, and encourage our ten year old son that in a couple of years he can do the same. No wonder he can wait until eleven o clock the night before preaching a sermon to start preparing. He never feels nervous!
I am simply amazed that Dan is being so kind and patient with me when he has NO CLUE how I have been feeling. I mean, he understands, he sympathises, but he has no experience of it himself. Wow. Lucky him. But I do wonder how he is still alive.
I am simply amazed that Dan is being so kind and patient with me when he has NO CLUE how I have been feeling. I mean, he understands, he sympathises, but he has no experience of it himself. Wow. Lucky him. But I do wonder how he is still alive.
Monday, 16 January 2012
Not so different...
On Saturday evening Dan and I took part in the family village hall service at my own village church. This is the village we moved to when I was eighteen, so my family have attended the church there for the last 22 years. In that time there have been a lot of comings and goings, including no less than five different vicars. But some of the people there I have known since I was a teenager. And my parents have virtually run the church for much of the time, being church wardens, on the PCC, running family services, Alpha courses and Lent courses, doing readings, intercessions, flowers, cleaning, graveyard tidying, grass mowing... It is a tiny congregation - twenty people there on a good day, but it can go up to forty for a special occasion. Normally the service is held in the ancient granite church, which is beautiful, and usually very cold.
But the monthly family service is in the village hall and is very casual and low key, with a view to drawing in non-church people. Which does work.
There were about forty there on Saturday, and we were given the sermon time to show our power point and talk about the work of UCU in Uganda.
It was good to be able to pass on a big thank you for the twenty years of regular prayer and financial support. It has not always been brilliant, but we have had a very good connection with our link co-ordinator, who has been very faithful at sending us all lovely birthday cards and presents, and putting our monthly prayer bulletin in the parish magazine. And of course my parents have done their bit to keep the link alive and kicking.
But what struck me the most as we told our Uganda stories on Saturday and showed our pictures, was this: as I talked about a Ugandan friend who died leaving behind his wife and five children, my eyes met those of a family friend whose wife died last year, leaving him with two college-age daughters. As we mentioned Dismas being chaplain of Butabika, there was another friend trying to shush their teenage son with cerebral palsy. As I asked for prayer for a Ugandan friend with a disabled daughter, I looked over and caught the eyes of a couple whose son has a progressive disease, as does the husband. I could go on. The problems, struggles and prayer requests of our Ugandan friends are known by the people here, even in this small congregation. Whilst the names of the illnesses may be different, and the resources here for healing and treating them may be more plentiful, even so sickness, loss, miscarriage, marriage difficulties, unemployment and yes even financial worries, are common to the human experience. We all need the hope of better things to come, we all need the help of the people around us, friends and family, we all need God's comfort and sustenance. We are not so very different.
But the monthly family service is in the village hall and is very casual and low key, with a view to drawing in non-church people. Which does work.
There were about forty there on Saturday, and we were given the sermon time to show our power point and talk about the work of UCU in Uganda.
It was good to be able to pass on a big thank you for the twenty years of regular prayer and financial support. It has not always been brilliant, but we have had a very good connection with our link co-ordinator, who has been very faithful at sending us all lovely birthday cards and presents, and putting our monthly prayer bulletin in the parish magazine. And of course my parents have done their bit to keep the link alive and kicking.
But what struck me the most as we told our Uganda stories on Saturday and showed our pictures, was this: as I talked about a Ugandan friend who died leaving behind his wife and five children, my eyes met those of a family friend whose wife died last year, leaving him with two college-age daughters. As we mentioned Dismas being chaplain of Butabika, there was another friend trying to shush their teenage son with cerebral palsy. As I asked for prayer for a Ugandan friend with a disabled daughter, I looked over and caught the eyes of a couple whose son has a progressive disease, as does the husband. I could go on. The problems, struggles and prayer requests of our Ugandan friends are known by the people here, even in this small congregation. Whilst the names of the illnesses may be different, and the resources here for healing and treating them may be more plentiful, even so sickness, loss, miscarriage, marriage difficulties, unemployment and yes even financial worries, are common to the human experience. We all need the hope of better things to come, we all need the help of the people around us, friends and family, we all need God's comfort and sustenance. We are not so very different.
Sunday, 15 January 2012
A Dose of Peace from c 1650
I came across this poem by chance yesterday. One or two of the lines are a bit "twee" for my taste. But, whenever I read something written hundreds of years ago, it makes me wonder at how people so long ago knew so much of the same things we know, and had the same feelings we have. Amazing.
Any dose of peace is a good thing in my book.
My soul, there is a country
Far beyond the stars,
Where stands the winged sentry
All skilful in the wars:
There, above noise and danger,
Sweet Peace sits crown'd with smiles,
And One born in a manger
Commands the beauteous files.
He is thy gracious Friend,
And - O my soul, awake!-
Did in pure love descend
To die here for thy sake,
If thou canst get but thither,
There grows the flower of Peace,
The Rose that cannot wither,
Thy fortress, and thy ease.
Leave then they foolish ranges;
For none can thee secure
But One who never changes -
Thy God, thy life, thy cure.
Henry Vaughan 1621 - 1695.
Any dose of peace is a good thing in my book.
My soul, there is a country
Far beyond the stars,
Where stands the winged sentry
All skilful in the wars:
There, above noise and danger,
Sweet Peace sits crown'd with smiles,
And One born in a manger
Commands the beauteous files.
He is thy gracious Friend,
And - O my soul, awake!-
Did in pure love descend
To die here for thy sake,
If thou canst get but thither,
There grows the flower of Peace,
The Rose that cannot wither,
Thy fortress, and thy ease.
Leave then they foolish ranges;
For none can thee secure
But One who never changes -
Thy God, thy life, thy cure.
Henry Vaughan 1621 - 1695.
Thursday, 12 January 2012
The No 94 bus
It took me a while to figure out that the No 94 bus goes from just around the corner, and ends up a three minute walk from my workplace. Fantastic.
The first time, I automatically walked halfway towards the back and sat without any thought somewhere on the left. When I told Abby and Alex later about the bus, their question was: "Was it a doubledecker?" "Yes..." "Did you sit upstairs?" "No..." "WHAT??? You went on a doubledecker bus and didn't sit upstairs??! What a waste of a chance!!!"
So now, every day I go on the bus, I head straight for the curly stairs, turn to the front, and sit in the seat right in the window, surrounded by glass, sailing along above the hedges and garden fences, watching the sky and the trees - and it is a lot more fun... I hope to take this as a life lesson - Don't Waste "Chances"!
The whole bus experience is the opposite of how it would be in Uganda. For one thing, it is totally safe. Yes it picks up speed at times, but basically it chunters steadily along, keeping in the right lane, never over-taking, pulling out slowly, stopping in the yellow boxes exactly where it is meant to stop...
For another thing, the bus leaves at the time it is scheduled to leave, every ten minutes in this case, on the dot. You don't wait for it to fill up, for more people to come, for the driver to go and pee or buy a coke...
For a third thing, you sit alone, rarely even sharing a double seat with anybody - in fact so far I have never shared my double seat. Nobody's shoulder or thigh pressing into yours, nobody's breath across your face, nobody pushing themselves past you to squeeze into an impossibly small space next to you. I did actually talk to someone on the bus sitting across from me, once, and heard his sad story of how his lady friend died and her family then rejected him. But normally I stick my earphones in, switch my brain off, look out the windows, and have thirty minutes of peace and quiet and try to draw in peace from the trees and fields. And pray... (but not that I'll survive the journey.)
For a fourth thing, the bus is a green option and therefore you can feel really good about it. It saves me adding my car's emissions to the atmosphere, and it doesn't puff out black clouds like many African buses do.
I love going to work by bus and choose it any day over driving, whereas in Uganda, OK I admit it, I only went by matatu about three times, ever. I had done more of my share of going by "public" in Zimbabwe, and I did not feel like exposing myself to the discomfort and risk of the buses in Uganda.
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| Here you never get this... |
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| It doesn't start or end like this... |
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| You never get this... Hmm.... my version might seem pretty dull, predictable, and overly "safe" now I come to think of it. But, I am ready for safe, and for peaceful, for now. African buses will still be there when we come back for a visit, and I probably still won't ride them... |
Monday, 9 January 2012
Quiet pastures and still waters...
Yesterday after church I was longing to "get out" - to go off into the countryside, explore something of our beautiful new region, and just to get out, into the open spaces and fields. I had given Dan a book for his birthday entitled "50 Walks in Gloucestershire", so I grabbed this up and more or less randomly picked a walk, virtually threw Abby and Alex into the car, and off we went, leaving Dan behind working on a paper...
The walk started at an ancient chapel called Odda's Chapel, which was built by the Saxon Earl, Odda, in 1056 AD (think Beowulf, or King Arthur) while shaggy haired English people were living in wood and mud walled thatched huts, and wearing roughly woven canvas and skins, and fighting each other in various kingdoms over the land. Odda's Chapel is one of only a handful of complete Saxon buildings left standing in England - many parts of Saxon buildings remain, incorporated into cathedrals, castles, and churches, but this stands complete as it was, with a medieval wing added onto one side.
After a while pretending to be Saxons, we set off on what turned out to be a beautiful walk along the wide River Severn, up through a valley, past a village and some farms and back again. It was a glowing crisp wintery afternoon, the very air a tonic to the soul. It was so peaceful. Abby and Alex romped ahead like a pair of dogs out for a run in the fields.
He makes me lie down in quiet pastures... he leads me beside the still waters... he restores my soul.
The walk started at an ancient chapel called Odda's Chapel, which was built by the Saxon Earl, Odda, in 1056 AD (think Beowulf, or King Arthur) while shaggy haired English people were living in wood and mud walled thatched huts, and wearing roughly woven canvas and skins, and fighting each other in various kingdoms over the land. Odda's Chapel is one of only a handful of complete Saxon buildings left standing in England - many parts of Saxon buildings remain, incorporated into cathedrals, castles, and churches, but this stands complete as it was, with a medieval wing added onto one side.
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| Maybe what Saxons looked like... |
After a while pretending to be Saxons, we set off on what turned out to be a beautiful walk along the wide River Severn, up through a valley, past a village and some farms and back again. It was a glowing crisp wintery afternoon, the very air a tonic to the soul. It was so peaceful. Abby and Alex romped ahead like a pair of dogs out for a run in the fields.
It was just what I needed...
He makes me lie down in quiet pastures... he leads me beside the still waters... he restores my soul.
Friday, 6 January 2012
Birds
Here in England we do not have the incredible array of bright and colourful birds, that we enjoyed so much in Uganda. But we do have our own little range of winged visitors, and we have put a bird house in our garden and do enjoy watching the little lot who come. Apart from the first one, which shows a great fat wood pigeon squeezing himself into our birdfeeder, these photos were not taken by me I must admit, but they show you the different kinds of birds we have seen here, and you must admit, they are not bad. Don't Knock British Birds.
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| A bluetit |
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| An English Robin |
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| A Great Tit |
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| A Nuthatch |
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| A Blackbird |
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| A Magpie |
A Fruitbowl minus the F...
Now it is definite, I must be losing my marbles. Oh well. This bowl of roots is doing my heart good. I do come from farming stock - my mother was a farmer's daughter and they lived on the farm which was in the family for many generations, although sadly sold on her father's retirement. Not that I grew these roots, I just like the look of them, all earthy and rounded, and going in tonight's stew...
Tuesday, 3 January 2012
Heeelp!
Well after a few Christmas days of eating, drinking, enjoying friends, family, games, and cosy log fires... that early morning worrying, that seems to be focussed on my new job, came back with a vengeance. Without going into detail, I now know what a real panic attack feels like, and have rapidly become a firm fan of beta blockers! So far the conclusion of those I have talked to seems to be that it is most likely an accumulation of all the stress of the last year, finally bursting out, after all the uncertainties have been slotted into place. Honestly we have so much to be thankful for, so many answered prayers, yet at times I am more tense now than I have ever felt in my life before.
I started back at work today and it went fine. I am off tomorrow. But come Thursday morning the nerves will be back, if the pattern continues. I would appreciate prayers that we can sort it out properly, and for me to get enough routine and rest and exercise and alone time so that I can get my balance back, and know God's peace and joy.
Not a great start to 2012. Let's pray it will end up being a fruitful and amazing year, for you and for us too as we continue to find our feet here in Gloucester.
I started back at work today and it went fine. I am off tomorrow. But come Thursday morning the nerves will be back, if the pattern continues. I would appreciate prayers that we can sort it out properly, and for me to get enough routine and rest and exercise and alone time so that I can get my balance back, and know God's peace and joy.
Not a great start to 2012. Let's pray it will end up being a fruitful and amazing year, for you and for us too as we continue to find our feet here in Gloucester.
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