11 March 2011

“Heaven’s delights will far outweigh earth’s difficulties.” Anon.

Someone once said to me, “ for the Believer in Christ this earth is the worst hell we are ever going to  experience, but for the Unbeliever this earth is the best heaven they are ever going to experience.” These last few months have sure helped me to cast my eyes Heavenward. I wonder if we will ever have to move houses in heaven?

It is amazing how fast time has flown by this year. The 1st of January we started the big move, knowing that it was going to be a task. Our first step was that we had to move the owner of the new place we were renting, to her place in town. But before she wanted to move she wanted to fix that place up. And so in an attempt to get things rolling we spent a lot of time and resources helping her to get her place ready. It took a month!!!. The 4th of February we were able to start on our new place. Firstly, we gave it a quick coat of paint on the interior and it was wonderful having friends around to help us. During the painting stage it dawned on us how big the house actually was. What a transformation and we thank Hilton Baptist so much for organising the paint for us. It was meant for the old place and we had started to paint that, but it was more than sufficient to paint the new place as well.

It was then onto getting water into the house. There are two beautiful wells on the property, but water sitting at the bottom of a well is of no use unless you can get it out of there and into the plumbing system. A few days working at it and we had water in pipes, except it was very brown from the dirt in the pipes. But a couple of weeks later and it has cleaned up quite nicely. Still need a bit more pressure so when next in Lusaka will be getting a pressure pump.

Next task was to start the task of moving our animals across. Fortunately the farms are not too far apart. The pigs, rabbits, chickens, ducks were all loaded into a truck and moved. Talk about Old MacDonald!! The cattle we walked across and they arrived safely. Sadly, just before we moved the cattle one of our best milking cows became sick and aborted a very premature calf. We lost the mother, but the calf is growing well.

In the moving process it is amazing how some days things can go so right and then other days things can go so wrong. But one thing I have learnt and in fact am still learning is that you just have to take every thing just a step at a time. If you stop and look at the whole picture life can be quite dawn ting at times, but taken in bite size bits, manageable.

Well by next week we should have completed the move and then will take a few weeks to try and get life and animals sorted out at our new farm. In the long term it is going to be wonderful and when the going gets tough, I just have to keep reminding myself this.

It has been a challenging few months, but it has also been wonderful to see how the community has rallied around to help or offer words of encouragement.

The family has settled down well and Lynne has started school with them again. The Math teacher, that’s me) is still busy and will hopefully be back in full swing in a few weeks.

Looking so forward to sharing our lives with you again!!

God bless you!