Wet and wild

I sometimes feel that I can identify with tribal people who go out gathering firewood to keep their homes warm! Although we buy our firewood from a supplier in town, we still have to do a fair bit of gathering up smaller sticks and pine cones to use as kindling when starting the fire. And we've become very proficient "scavengers" - scooping up the spoils whenever a neighbour prunes branches from his fruit trees or throws out an old chair. Some time ago, we gathered up something that looked like half a tree trunk and, not having an electric saw to cut it into smaller pieces, we stored it up for a day when we knew it would be burned all at once. 

Today was that day. We woke up to violent winds and torrential rains, and quickly recognised that this was a day when we'd need to have a fire in the grate all day long. So our prize "tronco" was half in and half out the fireplace at the beginning... but, at the time of writing, is now more than half consumed and burning brightly in our living room.

We're hoping that the wild weather won't continue for too long. Yesterday we spring cleaned (or "winter cleaned") all our villas, in preparation for a couple of dozen people arriving this weekend for our upcoming coach training workshops. If it continues to be wet and wild, our sparkling clean floors will quickly be soiled by the muddy footprints and wheel prints of guests arriving from the airport.

Thanks for your prayers as we work with a new group of coach trainees over the next ten days.