Wednesday, 29 March 2023

The cloud is moving...

This week is a very full one. Three afternoons are dedicated to staff training times for our "Children at Risk" training course that begins next week. In addition, I'm continuing my search for a new place to live; yesterday I had to drive twice to the nearby town of Coín (that's around 80 kilometres in total) to view possible houses... neither of which seems to be the solution for now. And, of course, I'm packing up my current home - living amidst the chaos of piled up furniture, neatly lined up suitcases and a crazy mix of packed up cardboard boxes.

Yes, the cloud is moving (as it did for the Israelites in the book of Exodus) and this week I will leave the house where I've lived for the past thirteen years. Tomorrow will be the day of the main move: we're hiring a van to move all my furniture and boxes to a basement storage area in another part of town. I'll probably move myself and my animals over in the evening... and on Friday I'll be back at the old house to do a lot of thorough cleaning.

So, apart from the CAR staff training times, I've had to almost clear my schedule for the next three days; there's still a whole lot to be packed up here and I can see that it's going to take most of the day, and probably well into the night, to accomplish. For some reason, packing up the kitchen stuff, glasses, cups and plates, seems to feel the most overwhelming and will be one of today's biggest tasks.

The hardest thing at the moment is the uncertainty around my upcoming ministry trips. I had short teaching and training trips planned for May and June... but of course it's impossible for me to simply leave the country if I have no home. I can't leave my belongings and my animals with relative strangers (who didn't sign up for the job) and just abandon the ongoing search for a place to live. Yet, some of the ministry plans (like a trip to teach in a youth ministry training school in Switzerland), were already planned a long time ago. It's hard to be in this position and not be able to confirm plane tickets yet, and I can only cry out to God for a solution.

Thanks for your prayers as I make this temporary move and continue to trust God for whatever other moves still lie down the road.