Long Overdue Summer Catchup part 2

August was hard for us in lots of ways, but also very full of God at work, culminating in moving into our very own God-gift of a home September 3rd! So many small and big miracles happened to get us here it would take a very long time to tell the whole story. Here are a few highlights:

For the ministry trip to Virginia:

• Pastor Steve, the friend who hosted Michael and the girls in Virginia, was healed of cancer through prayer during their visit - verified with medical testing and all!
• His wife told that testimony to her Muslim boss, who then asked Steve and his elders to pray for her father. The family was so touched by that act of kindness that they are now watching the Chosen to learn more about Jesus.
• Michael’s plane to Virginia was delayed. That gave him the chance to share the gospel with his seat mate and it changed the man's life. 
• A new family has joined the church after their daughter was delivered of a demon and gave her life to Christ.
• Michael’s seminar on spiritual warfare was very well received. It led to a pastor repenting on behalf of a church, and shifts in participants’ theology and understanding of spiritual warfare.
• Grace and Jasmin led a well-received workshop on worship.
• Michael, Grace, and Jasmin got invited to do prayer counseling for several people with dramatic results: a family is reconciled, a former church leader is being restored to leadership, and heavy emotional burdens have been lifted from several people.

For our housing situation:

• A couple from our church generously opened their home to us while we waited for the house purchase to go through
• On Elizabeth’s first meeting with a realtor, she was shown this house that we now own - no time wasted hunting for the right house
• Improbable and spontaneous offers from many funding sources to pay for a downpayment
• We still got a mortgage/HELOC to pay for the house when last year’s income on paper was ridiculously low
• The home we now have is in the area of town we spent time in the AirB&B saying how nice an area it is - and God kept this one for us despite it being aggressively low priced in a sought after neighbourhood. It’s even just one bus ride away from Aiden’s university and next door to a fantastic wooded park for dog walks!

Long Overdue Summer Catch Up

It's hard to believe that it has taken me until Thanksgiving to find the time, heart, and brainspace to write this catchup! SO. MUCH. HAPPENED!

First off, the good stuff.

We spent a week in Sylvan Lake at family camp celebrating NiNi and YeaYea's 50th wedding anniversary. We rented an AirB&B in town and commuted to the camp daily for the morning and evening services, and one day we stayed the day to enjoy some water/beach activities. Of course, we celebrated big with food: Twice - once for YeaYea's birthday at "home", and once for their anniversary at a restaurant in town. It was a just right week of soccer and games for the boys, a few camp social evening activites, worship and word, time together and time alone as needed, and celebrations and prayers.

Then, we parted ways and our family drove south for the weekend to spend with Mom's brother and family. Which was one of those way too short visits that you wish you could expand fourfold: cousins who haven't seen each other in person since they were 3 reconnected and talked a mile a minute with a million brilliant ideas of what they'd love to do together if only they could. Then we drove back to Edmonton and we began the journey home.

Only not quite. Because right in the middle of our week in Sylvan Lake, we received a rather abrupt email imforming us we couldn't return to our house and would need to find another longterm housing solution. This was a rather flabbergahsting message as at that time we had one week before our plane landed in Halifax with now nowhere for us to stay!

All the same, hearing the news there with family and in a place where we "just so happened" to be listening to messages on suffering well morning and evening was proof enough of a loving heavenly Father taking care of our hearts. Still, it did hit hard, and along with other behind the scenes struggles, rather muted our enjoyment of the end of the week.

We landed in Toronto and spent a day with family there, eating fantastic Chinese food, of course! Being welcomed, cared for, and given offers of help was balm to our hurting hearts. We considered staying, as offered, but we needed to return to Ottawa for Mom to finish renting out our apartment there - it proved to be extrodinarily difficult considering how many people expressed interest! Just another thing pointing to the importance of the upcoming preaching and presentations in Virginia.

Ottawa friends loved on us as well, and we stayed in their carriage house apartment for almost a week as we tried to sort out what to do when we got to Halifax with no home to return to, and Grace, Jasmin, and Dad attempted to prepare their materials for their presentations.

Imma lavished love on us - opening up her small home for us to come to and caring for us as only moms can do. Because of our extra week in Ottawa, we now only had a day before Dad, Grace, and Jasmin flew to Virginia. Mom and Aiden spent the morning hunting certain items in the storage unit where all our belongings had been moved to from our house. Grace and Dad worked on finishing presentations. Jasmin attempted to find space to replenish some social battery. And that evening was a chaos of unpacking to repack for the new trip. But it all got done and nothing got left behind - though Mom had to buy some long pants as she couldn't find some from storage!

Aiden and Mom stayed with Imma while the others were away, enjoying nearly daily swims in-between hunts for housing and negotiations to rectify the eviction. Lots of amazing God stories happened in two different places then that deserve a separate post.

Summer Away from Home part two done

 A long car trip with older kids is much smoother - even a 5:30am to 7:30 pm one.

Mom still quite likes to drive - she drove the whole way except a 3 hour stint that Jasmin drove. (Dad worked on preparing for upcoming presentations/preaching)

We really are creatures of habit - we spent way too long figuring out where our Edmonston lunch stop had been so we could do it again!

It is MUCH warmer in Ontario than NS! Having forgotten, we had brought changeable weather clothing that has gone unused

Staying at Fiat Farm in Russel was lovely! Such a welcoming family, peaceful location, and soothing daily rhythms - even though our coming did upend said rhythms…

Children who willingly engage with adults are delightful!

Nearly tornado-like storms are rather sobering amounts of power on display

Dad and Grace were often engaged and busy while we were there, but Jasmin and mom found some rest time, and Aiden a nice mix of joining in farm chores and computer science final project work.

Jasmin discovered that she actually notices the differences in the background bird calls between the provinces

And then, from our own Airbnb, life sped up considerably - even though the plan was to have some down time for Dad to prepare for his presentations and preaching in a few weeks and fill up Jasmin’s social tanks for next week with the cousins.

In between all-day get togethers with friends and extra last minute meetings, we managed to discover lovely walking path in the forest edging for daily “green therapy” 

Lots of “Kiros time” events = lots of little minor irritations and distractions: Mom started having nerve pain down her legs. Dad’s knee suddenly gave out, leaving him with a limp.  Tech starts offering a nice confounding crop of failures. Simple phone exchanges end up taking much longer with phone tag. Emotional buckets get too full and spill over at inopportune times. Our renter here gave notice so we’ve had to field ad inquiries, viewings, and process applications as well.

But also

New friends that we gel well with. 

Deepening friendships are so life giving! 

Sharing growth together is such a lovely God-gift.

Serving and being served family to family is precious. - even when it is stretching

Today has been an in between day of preparations for the next leg: 

Organizing and negotiating - yet again! -  what stays (in the car) and what goes (on the plane). 

Discovering the answer Mom’s been suspecting all along: can we manage to fly with only “personal items”? (No, we can’t - the size is too small for more than a day trip’s worth of things)

All those last minute tasks: Gathering items from all around the house. Creating last meals out of odds and ends for foods. Last laundry. Task lists for the morning before we leave.

And then, tomorrow, a drive to Toronto and flight to Edmonton!

The Rest of June

We’ve tumbled and fought our way through the rest of June…

Some lovely interludes intermingled with the difficult, the aggravating, and the complicating!

Mom got an MRI on her elbow (requested back in March when it was super sore). Almost cancelled it because it was an inconvenient time and location and her elbow is not exactly fully healed but very liveable - was it worth it? She went, fully expecting clear results. Lo and behold, within a few days she has a results call with a doctor telling her that there is nerve thickening and tendon tears! So it is back to light physio and bracing until she can get into the sports injury/arthritis clinic.

 Jasmin turned 19! We managed to have a tea party with games and a movie birthday on the day with a friend and then Mom and Jasmin squeezed in her Puffin tour present the following week. It was rather foggy, but they did see lots of birds, seals, and even a sun fish! They didn’t come back with too many bird pictures as they were mostly occupied with watching them through Imma’s binoculars! Jasmin did take a lot of rock photos though - for drawing references…

Both Dad and Aiden also had blood work done for our new family doctor and had follow up calls, though nothing serious or previously unknown.

We attempted to help Imma with her needed chicken coop improvements. Between rain and schedule complications, we only managed two mornings and one of those was muted by rain. Still, the new and improved coop only needs one more thing before it is ready for the chicks currently living in her closet.

We’ve enjoyed our neighbour’s generous offer to use her BBQ no less than 3 times: two birthdays and one just because the day before we left. For Aiden’s party, for the adults on Jasmin’s birthday while the kids had the tea party and games, and on our last day to use up as much of the food we had left as possible. It’s been a great experience - and Dad has turned out to be a pretty good BBQ chef :) 

We’ve fought with our bank for access to our own money and lost almost a whole week of time, thought, and energy wading through hours of hold music, automated systems, and customer service agents who don’t have access to fix anything out of the box… But, on the last possible day - even though it is a Sunday - after much contingency scramble planning, our account is back online and useable! Thank you God!

Aiden took a challenge exam at Dal for one of his first year courses. He was so chill about it! Great that he wasn’t anxious or uptight, but we’d have liked to have heard a little bit more about it than we did!

We’re quite near Hemlock Ravine Park, so we’ve all explored (and gotten lost/turned around in there) it. Mom went for a walk with a friend there and ended up tracking at least 5km! Lovely walking, but then she had to spend the following weeks being careful and treating her feet nicely so the hints of returning plantar fasciitis pain didn’t become a summer-long problem again. Mom got a bit jealous of Dad being able to do all the summer exercises and right now she can’t - again.

Grace got a long-awaited physio appointment and came away with a regimen of joint strengthening exercises that take her nearly an hour a day… but although she does feel the difference, it is still a difficult task to keep motivation for that many stretches!

Grace also set to putting in motion the necessary Chinese exam she needs to apply for her master’s degree at Payap next summer. And discovered that all her research and planning of last year no longer holds true and she has a fair bit of study to accomplish between now and January to pass the updated required level of proficiency… not much of a problem except the rest of the summer won’t be very conducive to language study…

Jasmin’s fully finished her course work and client calls and can finally take a break - only now we’re off to Ottawa, Toronto, Edmonton, and Calgary! Let’s hope we can find rest and peace time for her. We’re off tomorrow…