The last days

This week is full of last days. Today is Ian's last day at work but he won't be resting as he has to train someone up. Tuesday will be the last day we sleep at the place we have called home for the last two years and Friday will be the last time we will be in it as we will be cleaning the house in preparation for handing over the keys. The packing men will arrive early tomorrow and start to pack away our belongings and I think that is when it will really hit me we are going.

Yesterday we got to speak at Timberline Oldtown (timberlineoldtown.org) and it was a real privilege to be able to pray for people who felt that they needed to leave the shores of certainty and step out into what God wanted them to do. The party afterwards was lovely, the food was great and the party low key just sitting around and chatting which is just what we love doing.

An email from a friend of mine reminded me that perhaps I haven't filled in all the gaps for my English friends as to why we are moving to Latvia now. Many of you know we always intended to go to Latvia but the timing wasn't right but we did feel that the timing was right to go to Denmark which enabled us to loosen the roots and we would be half way there with lots of holidays (vacation time) a whole six weeks plus public holidays. We weren't sure how long we would be in Denmark and I was praying about whether I should settle down a little more or be prepared to move and I felt God telling me that there was to be one more move between here and Latvia and that would be to the US and that would give us the key to get there. I knew that Ian would not be very happy about that as the US to our mind was such an intense and materialistic society and the thought of all those mega churches didn't fill us with enthusiasm. Ian was visiting the US at the time and I told God that he would have to enjoy his visit there if I was going to tell him this news. Almost the first words to me when he got back was "Fort Collins is a really nice place and the people are really nice" - it should be it has been voted the best place to live in the US. Gulp! I had to tell him. We waited a while and eventually an opportunity arose to go and live in Fort Collins working for the same Danish company, Dako.

Time went on and Dako decided to sell the Fort Collins site and it was bought by an American Company. We knew we weren't meant to stay in the US and Ian's secondment to the US was due to finish in February so we decided that we had to head back to Europe the problem was that there wasn't actually now a job in Denmark as they had moved all the flow cytometry work out to Fort Collins. Eventually, however, Dako agreed to ship us to Latvia as long as Ian resigned his job.

That is obviously the abbreviated version but I hope it fills in some of the gaps.

Now onto a totally useless fact and for all UK Children's Television fans this is not something you should try at home but did you know that it is possible to put a mobile phone (cell phone) in a 40 degree wash and it it still work once it has dried out? Okay Ian did have to take it apart a bit to drain out some water but miraculously the phone I left in my pocket still works.