Home again.

As I said we are now back home and I feel fat, the food is just too wonderful. We are getting straight after our time away though, it is rather nice to not to have to get straight back into the routine but to ease back in (what routine I hear you ask? Good question actually, haha). The last time I went to Cyprus with Ian and the kids, Ian had had to sleep for a couple of hours and then do a 24 hour shift, not easy, this time we had a lie in. It is funny that the last time we returned from Cyprus we returned to snow in England and today it has been gently snowing all day here in Latvia and the forecast is for more of the same tomorrow. I had thought the snow might have disappeared by the time we got back as we had heard it had got fairly mushy, no chance we strike again! If you look back to last years blogs you will see that we brought the snow with us to Latvia, they hadn't had much snow last year until we arrived.

It has been an interesting week in Cyprus, we went out for a Cypriot meze meal on the Wednesday with some of the doctors from a charity foundation and they were busy trying to convince Ian and I on the joys of living in Cyprus, they would love him to move across and it certainly is tempting when you see the oranges on the trees and squeezing the juice of freshly picked lemons from the gardens onto your food. We do not however feel our time in Latvia is over though but we do wonder if we might spend some time in Cyprus as it would be invaluable for Ian to practice in the labs and to be able to develop tests as well as train up the next lab technicians, the experience would be useful here in Latvia that is for sure - well if the funding could be found that is. Later on in the week there was a an interview on the internet with the new finance minister for Latvia and interestingly enough he thought that medical services had good growth potential. Maybe just maybe!

I was supposed to be revising for my exam this last week but I am afraid not much got done - well kind of. I am doing a course in Development Management so spending an afternoon talking about NGO's (non-governmental organisations which are organisations who either help others such as Christian Aid, Oxfam etc or campaign such as Greenpeace, that kind of thing just in case you didn't know and always wondered. Mind you that is only a small snippet of the range of NGO's ) and their relationship to the UN with a friend who has experience of that kind of thing is very useful for increasing my knowledge for my course. I also chatted a lot to our friend's maid who comes from the Phillipines and found out a lot about the country and the people who live there also very useful. We also spent many hours sat around the table chatting about Cyprus and finding out about life there as well. Well those are my excuses and I am sticking to it - mind you I have a lot of revising to do this next week to catch up. 

One of the things that was interesting this week was chatting about faith with others who are not necessarily on the same wavelength as us. The verse 1 Peter 3:15 is very useful

“But in your hearts set apart Christ as Lord. Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. But do this with gentleness and respect,”

In some ways we were challenged (not that I think they were aware of the challenge but I was) as to what we believe. I know there is a lot of commonality with many religions regarding family matters, morality in a general sense etc but there is not a commonality regarding who Jesus is and therefore it can be hard when agreeing on many things to be able to speak into the situation with gentleness and respect when they seem to be in error. Part of my prayer during the week was "Please Jesus don't let me forget who you are!" I called out for fresh revelation of Jesus and what he has done for me so I didn't get sucked into the 'we can all live together happily if we just accept each other as we are and the whole world will be put to right' - we can't because we are fallen, we all foul up no matter how hard we try and we need the redeeming, cleansing power of the Holy Spirit to transform us and the world around us.

 We can be salt and light and you don't need a lot of salt and light to transform the world thank goodness but how to convey that message with gentleness and respect when so much that can come from the perceived Christian community is anything but gentleness and respect. The experience of those we chatted to was of dominating elitist thinking coming from the "church". Oh Lord! How misrepresented you are at times. Yes you are the only way to the Father but how wonderful you are at lifting those who are downtrodden and unloved. Well I hope we managed to convey the specialness of having a relationship with you and not just knowing about you.  

Photos from Cyprus:-

Wild Cyclamen

House in the middle of a field of mustard

The hot baths of Kourian ruins near Limasos

A Byzantine mosaic

Tree near the ruins