Commuting and computing...

I'm "commuting" this week between two homes and two sets of animals. While my friends are away for a week, I'm house-sitting at the villa, and looking after their dog, cat and chickens. This is the villa that serves as a leadership retreat centre, so I began the week by preparing breakfasts for a small group of leaders who were finishing a few days of consultation about ministry and missions in the Catholic nations of the world. Now that the group has left, I've been cleaning the rooms, washing all the bedding, and getting things ready for some new guests who'll arrive next week. That's the "indoor" part of my job for this week. The "outdoor" part involves feeding the chickens, cleaning the hen house, checking for newly laid eggs, watering the citrus trees which will provide us with lots of oranges and lemons over the winter months... and, of course, taking the dog for her daily walk in the nearby woods.

Then, at some point during the day, it's time to head back to my own house and check up on how Tamba, Teddi and Tobi are settling in to their new home. They're beginning to get used to the flat now, and they welcome me at the door when I arrive to give them fresh food and water for the day. Teddi continues to enjoy sitting on the balcony and is beginning to get himself noticed by the patients who go in and out of the health centre.

Once the "commuting" is done for the day, it's time to start the "computing." One of my goals for this month is to make further progress on the curriculum project I'm working on this year: translating a manual of pre-teens resources from German into English. This involves working for several hours every day on the computer.

Then there are also a number of church meetings to be hosted at the villa: the prayer meeting tonight, the youth group tomorrow evening, and the church service on Sunday evenings. And, just to add even more of an international flavour, I'm going to be speaking this week to a group of ladies from Norway. (They're from the church that's attended by one of our S-PCYM students and they're in Malaga this week for a ladies' retreat.)

Well, that's all for today. I'd better go now and hang up the laundry...