Life in the Fast Lane

It has been five months since I last sat down and thought to myself "I don't have a lot to do, I should write an update." Why? Because the last 5 months have been FULL. Yes, all capitals are required. I have been living life on high speed for several months and with summer, thankfully, life and work will slow down for a time. Here is a bird's-eye view of what has been going on.

March

• in early January Wycliffe's Toronto Office was put up for sale and we expected it to take five to six months to sell. Instead it sold very quickly and with a closing date of March 16th (which also happened to be the last Friday of March Break). So the first full week of March was packing the office and the first Monday of March Break saw me at our new office storing everything that was being moved over. We had 20 years worth of office stuff to sort through!
• also in March we bought a house and put our home on the market. The house we bought is only about a five minute drive from our old house but puts us within the same high school boundary lines as 95% of our kids' classmates. 

April

• Though we left our old office in March, our new location was not yet ready for us. For several weeks each Toronto staff member worked from home. On April 2 and 3 we began the process of unpacking all the boxes, which we had stored at the new location, receiving delivery of office furniture, setting up computers and networks, making sure phones worked, etc. This was a long and busy week and I was grateful to have two colleagues from our head office - our properties manager and one of our IT staff. We are now located in a building owned by SIM and shared by us along with OMF (moving in in mid-August), Jews for Jesus, Interserve, and the Langham Partnership.
• Jeff traveled to Alaska for ten days, during which I traveled to Campbellville, Ontario (near Milton, on the west side of Toronto) for a week of meetings with my member care colleagues. During these meetings we worked on the next budget, reviewed and updated policies, and walked many times around the building trying to find cell phone signals :) Thankfully Jeff's parents came up to stay with the kids and Grandpa Green did a great job on his own with them for a few days while Grandma was at her own work meetings.
• The week after we both arrived home Jeff and I both spent a day in Guelph. One of the ways, perhaps the only way, our jobs overlap is in relation to Cree Bible translations in Canada. Each year Cree Bible translators come together for a training workshop in Guelph. The projects represented are split between Wycliffe Canada and Canadian Bible Society. While Jeff went to teach at the workshop, I went to meet with Wycliffe members who also work in these projects often as trainers and consultants. We did not, however, manage to go on the same day.
• During the last week of April Jeff was in Italy for work meetings. This was his second last training/orientation meeting for working with Canadian Bible Society. 

May

• Directly after Jeff's trip to Italy, I was in the Kitchener/Waterloo area for a two day program called Discover Wycliffe during which people interested in Wycliffe can come and get an overview of the who, why, what, and hows of Wycliffe Canada. I taught two sessions during this time, one on health and one on cross cultural living. 
  

• We moved house on May tenth, which means over the past several weeks we were also packing! With the help of our small group and Jeff's parents we loaded up a large UHaul (which. by the way, I drove!) and moved about 1 km away, and set up home for the last time, honest. 
• Two days after moving Jeff left for his last two-week on-campus residency near Boston, Mass, as part of his D.Min. Those two weeks were not without hiccups in our new house but my folks came down for five days and helped me set up, buy carpets and other things, and enlarge the patio and put in a small garden. A lot of work but I am so grateful for our home and them. We are in a very friendly neighbourhood.

June

June was truly meant to be slow. I had planned for it to be slow. And even now I look at my calendar and there are not big events. But there were several little events:

• numerous plumbing appointments (it turns out we have a stream under our house; I am not joking, I promise)
• meetings with members overseas who are facing some challenges in their assignments, with members returning to Canada for home assignment and needing a space to process, and meeting with others moving back to Canada and deciding what is next for them
• one of my members died suddenly in early June
• Ana was baptized!
• the girls' school's end-of-year festival, which I love to help run and makes an 11-hour day from set-up through tear-down
• finalizing an agreement to send Wycliffe Canada members to somewhere we've never sent our members. This was exciting though laborious work and came to a satisfying conclusion a week ago. 

Going forward, the summer is expected to be less busy, at least that is what the calendar says. With the kids home every day I leave the house at 6 a.m. and work till noon. While that is awfully early for this night-person it lets me spend more of the daytime at home and truly, our kids are not moving much before 10 or 11 a.m. anyway.


As you read above, there are many things I am thankful for. As you give thanks with me for the things above, please pray for 

• rest over the summer
• Ana, who is having difficulty falling asleep at night because she is alone in her room
• Eli, who will be starting a new school for gr. 10 - he will be back with his classmates from gr. 8, so this is a plus
• the members returning to the field after a time in Canada - that I would do due diligence in ensuring each member is ready to return (sufficient finances, sufficient rest, mentally, spiritually & emotionally healthy...)
• two families who have returned to Canada permanently, that each would know where and how God is leading them next