Sunday 19 October 2008

A BEAUTIFUL SUNDAY AFTERNOON

I received an email from my lovely German girlfriend Marianne on Friday to find out if we could catch up Sunday afternoon.

Marianne and Wolfram came for afternoon tea and then stayed for soup. Wolfram wanted to discuss the poem "Tyger, Tyger" by William Blake with Roger. We had the most delightful afternoon and covered lots of topics. We do enjoy their friendship. Marianne was one of the first German ladies I met when we arrived here. She lives in a small mountain village about 1/2 drive from Schopfheim.

We had another wonderful opportunity to offer friendship and a listening ear.

God is so good.

Wednesday 15 October 2008

Live experience - right place, right time

Following on from "Just Walk Across the Room" I thought I'd tell you this little story.

Yesterday Roger and I had the absolute privilege of going to Luzern with a group of friends from Centrepoint Basel to have a tour of the KKL Cultural Centre. There were 16 of us altogether. Most of us took the train down there.

At this bad economic time for us Aussies living abroad, we wondered whether we should go ahead with this tour, but we had committed ourselves over a month ago and would have had to pay anyway.

I knew everyone on the trip apart from 2 people. One Aussie lady visiting her daughter who has just had a baby and another English lady who has been living in Basel for 20 years.

To save money Roger and I had brought our own lunch with us and we were going to sit in the sun on Lake Luzern and enjoy the surrounds whilst most of the others sat in a stuffy restaurant! We walked with 3 other ladies of which one was the English lady I had never met. Of course the question "why are you here" was asked so I shared with her about 'building' an Christian Community in Basel. Well........my goodness........! Can I say at this point that sometimes we wonder if we are making inroads here, wasting our time, going to slow, etc, etc, etc. Then an experience like this happens and we go ' W O W ' ! ! ! This lady just poured her heart out to me and at the end wondered herself why she had done it! Her husband of 28 years just walked out on her 3 months ago and she was totally devastated! But things are happening in her life, she is finding herself again, making good decisions and knows people are coming into her life for a reasons.

RIGHT PLACE, RIGHT TIME

It's that easy - or that hard, whichever way we want to look at it.

We are both sick so are probably just a little bit down at the moment. Would value your prayers for us both for a quick and full recovery (it's been too long). Coughs are bad.