Brief, Welcome Break

It's been a rough couple of weeks. I didn't exactly have the flu, but whatever it was was sufficient to keep me run down. That, plus extra work in the consulate and various matters to deal with in the church, has made getting out translation work very slow. It has been a battle to sit down and turn out the pages of text.

This moment is a kind of celebration. I still have work facing me, but I whittled it all down to one job left to do. But the celebration will be brief. I cannot perceive of getting through the first days of next week without being assigned more "urgent" texts to handle. This year is the 500th anniversary of Funchal's existence as a city, and the officials are making the most of it for tourist purposes. A by-product of that is the need to translate the programs, brochures, and historical texts into English. Besides any specific scheduling deadlines there may be for an individual document (concerts, seminars, or competitions), the overall theme smacks of a deadline: 2008 is the 500th year of the city, and leaving work undone until 2009 just won't do.

I do miss blogging... Not that I always have great news or dramatic prayer requests, but it is another outlet for a bit of creativity that serves until I can get back to my workshop and make furniture and do remodelling work. This, too, I am itching to get back to. The upstairs finished attic space is not really finished, you see. And while you may not have known that, Abbie makes sure I don't forget it. The ATTIC looms as the Last Frontier in the on-going saga of rebuilding this house we bought over 30 years ago. It is the challenge we face this year.

In closing, I leave you with a couple of photos.





Aerial view of Madeira from 10,000 feet on a clear day.
Not. The more observant of you will know that whatever this is, it is not Madeira, because it's the wrong shape. Madeira looks like this. But as you can see here the shape is more like that of Grand Canary Island.




So what is this really? It is a leaf about 1" (2.5 cm) in diameter, floating on the surface of a swimming pool at the whim of the soft evening breeze. The December sun was just setting and cast deep shadows across the ravines and valleys of the little island. I went by that same pool last week and the leaf was no longer there, of course. My life could be just like that leaf: a speck floating aimlessly across the surface of history, soon to disappear. But like the Psalmist, I marvel in the love of God, that He would take thought of where my leaf is headed in the winds of time and eternity. (Psalm 8)