What goes up must come down
Fireworks
They go up in a flash and come down in a sparkle. New Year's Eve in Funchal. Looking at the blog I see that I had not posted since the flash/bang/sparkle that night. And the crazy thing is that I have spent hundreds of hours at the computer these three months, and not blogged once!
Besides the church work, I have my consular work (more news about that in the near future) and freelance translation work, our major source of income after giving up my position as an English teacher and simultaneously losing all support from American churches in 2000. This translation work is what "went through the roof" in the past three months. The requests for translations had been building over the last couple of years, and almost two years ago I asked our daughter Joy to help out so I could handle the work load. So far this year the amount of work has more than doubled over the same period a year ago, and it has pushed us both to the limit at times. Thanks to the Internet we have been able to work together, and because she is in the US 6 hours behind our time here, there has been more than one occasion when we worked "non-stop"... As I went to bed, she was starting and when she went to bed, I was getting up to start a day's work here.
Why the increased work load? A major cause is the economic crisis Portugal is going through--similar to Greece and Spain. Unemployment is now over 16%; in Madeira there are now 25,000 unemployed. More are added everyday. Some of our church members are on that list; one family, at least, has had to turn their house over to the bank because they couldn't make the payments.** How does this give us more work? More and more people are emigrating to find work, and one of the largest sectors is that of nursing. Over 100 nurses have applied for work abroad, and graduates of nursing schools are openly told that their best bet is to go abroad. Most of them are headed for the UK, and all of them have to have a certain number of documents translated into English. Guess who is asked to translate those documents? There's always a tight deadline, too.
Hopefully the work load will come down a bit, but according to the news reports, a firm from the UK will be coming to contract as many as 50 more nurses. (I only mentioned nurses, but we have translated documents for several doctors and engineers, as well.)
**Our church has constituted a relief fund specifically for helping church families in need. There are four or five families who are currently receiving aid -- some in food gifts, others in direct cash to cover utilities, bus passes, and occasionally a mortgage payment until unemployment checks start coming in. A couple of our members worked for 6 months without being paid, until last month their employer, the owner of a large chain of supermarkets on the island, had to finally close the doors of his businesses. They have now applied for unemployment benefits. While they were employed, they received nothing; as unemployed, they will have some income to meet expenses with, and pray that some door opens before those benefits are cut off.
Cantatas
After the Christmas Eve presentation of the Christmas Cantata in Portuguese, we sang it twice in English and once again in Portuguese, whereupon we immediately started work on the Easter Cantata. Last Sunday, we sang it in English, with a good number of people in attendance. People "accuse" us of being professional in quality, but we know better. We also know God has added His blessings to the musical presentations. Tomorrow, Easter, we will present the cantata again, this time in Portuguese.
We can't measure the effects of the music, both special and our week in/week out singing, but a tourist told us a couple of weeks ago that when he asked the staff at his hotel about our church services and how to get to the church, one of the receptionists told him she lives very close to the church. She mentioned that she has been blessed many times by the music coming from our church.
Closet
Returning to the thought "what goes up must come down", that goes for all that we as human beings build on the earth: pyramids, coliseums, and Parthenons---businesses, houses, and closets.
Back in 2005 we did a lot of work on our house (see February posts), but I didn't put up any pictures at the time.
I can tell you it got a lot worse before it got better! But it did get better, and one of the projects was putting in a wall-to-wall closet in our bedroom. But what goes up must come down. Yesterday it did. This series of photos starts with a view of the closet with the first two doors removed and progresses until there is nothing left but some dirty walls.
Start to finish: about 10 hours of work. "Whosoever builded that closet, lest it should fall down in pieces, put many screws therein. I, who dismantled it, was forced to remove ever so many screws therefrom." I know there was no skeleton in that closet because I would have found it. (Silverfish, yes; but no skeletons.)
This is the opening round of work that should complete the total renovation of this house we bought back in 1977. It's only taken 32 years, but it looks like we might make it, after all.
Of course, like everything else, it is temporary...all things shall pass with the Lord's coming...all things except for the spiritual work we have built in faith, the harvest of that which we have sown to the Spirit. But we thank God for the temporal blessings He grants us and desire to use them for His honor and glory.
They go up in a flash and come down in a sparkle. New Year's Eve in Funchal. Looking at the blog I see that I had not posted since the flash/bang/sparkle that night. And the crazy thing is that I have spent hundreds of hours at the computer these three months, and not blogged once!
Besides the church work, I have my consular work (more news about that in the near future) and freelance translation work, our major source of income after giving up my position as an English teacher and simultaneously losing all support from American churches in 2000. This translation work is what "went through the roof" in the past three months. The requests for translations had been building over the last couple of years, and almost two years ago I asked our daughter Joy to help out so I could handle the work load. So far this year the amount of work has more than doubled over the same period a year ago, and it has pushed us both to the limit at times. Thanks to the Internet we have been able to work together, and because she is in the US 6 hours behind our time here, there has been more than one occasion when we worked "non-stop"... As I went to bed, she was starting and when she went to bed, I was getting up to start a day's work here.
Why the increased work load? A major cause is the economic crisis Portugal is going through--similar to Greece and Spain. Unemployment is now over 16%; in Madeira there are now 25,000 unemployed. More are added everyday. Some of our church members are on that list; one family, at least, has had to turn their house over to the bank because they couldn't make the payments.** How does this give us more work? More and more people are emigrating to find work, and one of the largest sectors is that of nursing. Over 100 nurses have applied for work abroad, and graduates of nursing schools are openly told that their best bet is to go abroad. Most of them are headed for the UK, and all of them have to have a certain number of documents translated into English. Guess who is asked to translate those documents? There's always a tight deadline, too.
Hopefully the work load will come down a bit, but according to the news reports, a firm from the UK will be coming to contract as many as 50 more nurses. (I only mentioned nurses, but we have translated documents for several doctors and engineers, as well.)
**Our church has constituted a relief fund specifically for helping church families in need. There are four or five families who are currently receiving aid -- some in food gifts, others in direct cash to cover utilities, bus passes, and occasionally a mortgage payment until unemployment checks start coming in. A couple of our members worked for 6 months without being paid, until last month their employer, the owner of a large chain of supermarkets on the island, had to finally close the doors of his businesses. They have now applied for unemployment benefits. While they were employed, they received nothing; as unemployed, they will have some income to meet expenses with, and pray that some door opens before those benefits are cut off.
Cantatas
After the Christmas Eve presentation of the Christmas Cantata in Portuguese, we sang it twice in English and once again in Portuguese, whereupon we immediately started work on the Easter Cantata. Last Sunday, we sang it in English, with a good number of people in attendance. People "accuse" us of being professional in quality, but we know better. We also know God has added His blessings to the musical presentations. Tomorrow, Easter, we will present the cantata again, this time in Portuguese.
We can't measure the effects of the music, both special and our week in/week out singing, but a tourist told us a couple of weeks ago that when he asked the staff at his hotel about our church services and how to get to the church, one of the receptionists told him she lives very close to the church. She mentioned that she has been blessed many times by the music coming from our church.
Closet
Returning to the thought "what goes up must come down", that goes for all that we as human beings build on the earth: pyramids, coliseums, and Parthenons---businesses, houses, and closets.
Back in 2005 we did a lot of work on our house (see February posts), but I didn't put up any pictures at the time.
I can tell you it got a lot worse before it got better! But it did get better, and one of the projects was putting in a wall-to-wall closet in our bedroom. But what goes up must come down. Yesterday it did. This series of photos starts with a view of the closet with the first two doors removed and progresses until there is nothing left but some dirty walls.
Start to finish: about 10 hours of work. "Whosoever builded that closet, lest it should fall down in pieces, put many screws therein. I, who dismantled it, was forced to remove ever so many screws therefrom." I know there was no skeleton in that closet because I would have found it. (Silverfish, yes; but no skeletons.)
This is the opening round of work that should complete the total renovation of this house we bought back in 1977. It's only taken 32 years, but it looks like we might make it, after all.
Of course, like everything else, it is temporary...all things shall pass with the Lord's coming...all things except for the spiritual work we have built in faith, the harvest of that which we have sown to the Spirit. But we thank God for the temporal blessings He grants us and desire to use them for His honor and glory.
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