An up & down week

Another week has flashed by. I started on Monday seeming to be getting ahead -- I moved the summer stuff from the garage to the shed and cleaned up enough to get the car in. (We were getting tired of having to scrape the frost off all the time).

I made a Red Cross run and took a lady to the Group Health Center for adoctor's appointment --while there I caught up a little on current events by reading the various news magazines lying around. Ioften am pretty oblivious to those things when I'm focussed on a major prject (as I have been since September with the "statistics for Engineers" course.)

I also had to respond to some suggestions from the "client" on the course. It is a "work in progress" and we are attempting to find a balance between 'lecture", discussion, and hand's on problem solving. It is a "customized" course aimed at meeting the needs of the specific group and that is difficult because the participants have a wide range of prior expereince. Some need a lot of "instruction" , others just need a refresher and exposure to the software tools that comewith the course. Each week it seems we understand better what works and what doesn't and need to make adjustments . It has taken more effort to prepare for classes" this "2nd time through" than I had anticipated. But it is still significantly less work preparing and I have had time to fill in some "gaps" that we missed the first time through. It will be good tofinish this Friday and have (at least) a month off.

I also had a short discussionwith Paul & my brother Rob at the church building--dealing with outfittingPaul with a new computer (He had a nightmare experience with a "lemon" - faulty hard drive that the supplier was unable to resolve and needed a replacement while continuing the battle with the original supplier) and a discussion on some ministry issues we are dealing with.

Tuesday was devoted to making preparations for a ministry information session Tuesday night. I had been asked to review the "roles & responsibilities"of the various ministry areas--since we had a number of new people involved and had made several changes with Paul coming "on board" in July. We are also embarking on some major "construction" projects which required setting up a "project management group".

Late Tuesday afternoon our son Chris called with the news that Tammye's sister Marlene had died that morning. She had been ill with a Parkinson's like disease but her death was unexpected. She had a heart attack and died in her sleep. -- She would have been 60 to-day (November 26). We pray God's blessings for her family as they deal with this loss.

While we weren't close to Richard and Marlene, they had been a part of our "extended family" since Tammye came into Chris's life in the early 90's. ThroughTammye and the occasional get together, we followed their lives and the lives of their their children Christopher(who is now a policeman in Toronto - (inspired by a "ride along" with our Christopher about 5 years ago), Jennifer (a teacher) and Jessica (still in school).

Chris and Tammye drove up on Wednesday and left Sunday morning. It was an unexpected (and mixed emotions) visit with them and with Hunter & Camdyn. Linda & I tried to spend as much time as we could with them -especially the kids to let them talk through howtheywerefeelingabout this. Tammye's mother was killed in a car accident when she was a teenager and Marlene as the oldest sister had been a mother figure for her. We took the kids to see the Bee movie Friday night and took them to the funeral on Saturday (and brought them home after the church service rather than have them be part of the graveside service).

In the midst of all this, I came down with a cold. I hope I didn't pass it on to the kids. The cold got worse as the week went on and I didn’t go out at all yesterday. I think I'm on the mend today. We also had a couple of "panicy" days when we heard from Sarah that Will had aserious croup and she had totake him toemergfor a ventalin treatment. It tears Linda's heart to be so far away when here grandson is ill. By Friday he seemedtobeon themend--hopefully he has bounced back to his usual bubbly self.

Saturday, I made a quick trip to the place where the "BBB" is stored to disconnect the battery and do some other small things. (We hadn't done that last wek because John thought I might need to move it after he had gotten more of the vehicles in but it turned out that it wasn't going to be necessary.

Linda spent several hours on Wednesday counselling Wendy & her daughter about their situation. Friday --much to our relief - she got a clean bill ofhealth from theheart specialist fter having undergone several stress tests-- which were initiated because of an incident last spring when she had (what we now believe was) an anxiety attack while travelling in the mountains-- she reallydoesn' tlike heights!!

Well that was our week. God continues to be there for us and we seek the good he has promised we can find in all things.


One thing from my "virtual visits" this past week. You might enjoy this "You Tube" video (Thanks to Neva for pointing it out to me) "New Again"by Brad Paisley & Sara Evans
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-NaSROohLzs

GodBless
Charlie