Where in the World Have I Been?

Uninspired. That’s where I’ve been. I think I have a hard time reporting on what is “old” news for me. Knowing I needed to write about our vacation, that is long over and done with has kept me from wanting to write on my blog at all. So once again, I’ve decided to “move” on. I may eventually go back and fill you in on a few things from our participation in the Baptist World Alliance in Hawaii, but today, at least, I want to share more current events. If I don’t, I’ll never get going again, right?

This past week as been really good, as our church has celebrated its 126th anniversary.  Both Sunday morning and evening we had great services. Sunday night was different, as we had a “big band”, and jazz presentation of the hymns. The church was pretty full. As you can see the “youth” or “young adult” choir filled the stage. The theme for the month of August is “Be Involved”, with an emphasis on every member getting involved with the ministries of the church.

Tuesday was the actually anniversary date and we had a day of prayer. As we ended the day of prayer in afternoon, João asked for the “oldest” church members to come to the front and the “oldest” would pray. We had a stand off of the four people over 90! Isn’t that fabulous? The lady closest to João is 95 and she closed our day of prayer. I love our Day of Prayer. I confess the first year I was leery and afraid it would be monotonous. It is not! We have different people leading every 30 minutes, so there are lots of styles. In addition, there is small group, large group prayer, silent, musical, directed, individual… just about any kind of prayer you can imagine. At the end of the prayer meeting, we had cake and refreshments for our “birthday” party.

This coming Sunday, we will be ending the month long celebration with 10 baptisms and the Lord’s Supper. What a great month!

I have also started back to my art lessons and am currently working on two very different projects. I am doing an iris in colored pencils. I have a new found fascination and joy in working with colored pencils, although the work is very slow and extremely tedious. From the left side drawing to the right side, are about 3 hours of work and you really don’t see that much progress, but I was working on the shading in of a couple of the blooms, as well as the curtain in the background.

I think gripping the pencils has caused my fingers to get really sore and my arthritis in my right hand has been really bad. One finger is quite red and swollen. That may also be because of the very chilly/humid weather we had for a couple of weeks. I am NOT complaining, as I LOVE the cooler weather. Unfortunately it didn’t last and today it was miserably hot for me. A couple of times I thought my body was just going to explode from the heat. Tonight I gave in and turned on the air conditioning full blast. I drove João out of the study as he was freezing, but it was the only way I could put out the fire under my skin. At least I am not beet red anymore! I worked on a painting (with acrylics) that I have been anxious to experiment with.  I haven’t done much with acrylics, although I enjoy them. They are a totally forgiving medium (if you make a mistake, it’s easy to cover it up) and the work goes quickly. This was only about 90 minutes of work. It’s in the very beginning stages, but you can already see Galileo taking form. (By the way, it is Elly’s cat.)

Speaking of cats, I have the sad task of telling you that my sweet little (BIG) Sadik, my cat I left in Canada, passed away this week. He was around 15-16 years old (he was a stray/rescue cat, so we were never sure of his age), but the last 9 years of his life were certainly wonderful. Sissy, João and I were all a little sad yesterday when we heard the news. Mia got lots of extra hugs today.  Sadik was a wonderful friend, the most intelligent cat I have ever met.  I am so thankful that he was a part of our family for five wonderful years.