Light Party

We had our annual 'Light Party' at church tonight. While many kids dress up in Hallowe'en costumes for a bit of 'fun', we wanted to provide a place that our kids club could come to that would promote the light that only God can bring into our lives through His son Jesus. This is a serious matter, and what is now seen as a harmless pursuit is in reality promoting the forces of evil. Satan stands for deceit, darkness and evil. God is love, grace and light.

Dan the climber

Today Dan and I went for a walk looking for bits of rock that Dan could climb. Unfortunately it was high water so many of the small beaches around our coastline were covered making access difficult; or rather, making the chance of Dan getting wet very real as what exposed rock there was, was precipitously growing out of the snarling waves. However, we found a bit here and there for Dan to do his 'spiderman' act on.

Lydia's exams and Dan's visit

Well, after much preparation and hours of grueling study, Lydia has commenced her examinations. Last Friday saw Lyd and I starting the marathon trip by car, train and bus to an examination centre in Bristol to take the first of her RE 'O' level (yes, 'O' level) examinations. We repeated the journey this Monday take take part two and are looking forward to English later this week and next week. The journey started at 9am and we got home about 7.30pm! Why Bristol? You may well ask, but don't!

It was great to have a visit from Dan (son Dan) who will be 24 years old next Sunday - wow! You can see him above teaching Julia the finer points of chess, such as teaching her that rooks (castles) can move across the board as well as up and down. Dan has had a couple of job offers recently, to become a manager for Threshers and as a hospital orderly or something. But next month he will be interviewed for a place at Haven Banks in Exeter, to train to become an outdoor activities instructor. Life is exciting! The wall goes on - more about this soon; and we need to re-model the church kitchen to take the new dishwasher that we have bought. Oh, and Christmas is coming! This means we need to start looking at material for the Christmas family service. We have an interesting 'service' from Spurgeons called 'Sing like an Angel' that we are going to adopt.

Another week

Another week has sailed by with a spell of fine weather bringing out the yachtsmen, making the river work busier; but also giving the builders the chance to get the wall building well under way. It is a long job entailing unloading 30 tons of rock from dumpbags into buckets, then by hand up a few steps into a power barrow before being unloaded by hand into the gabion baskets that the wall is built with. Very heavy labour, but a chance for me to loose a few pounds and help keep the labour costs down a bit. Unfortunately, I have not really been able to take advantage of the weather to sail Jireh. She is now located in her winter berth on a pontoon in Dartmouth, making it very convenient to get out to her on the yacht taxi.

29th Anniversay meal

Monday 6th October will be Lynns and my 29th wedding anniversary, so we decided to celebrate it by having a meal together on the 'Res Nova' a floating restaurant on the River Dart. Now we very rarely go out together so this was a real treat for us. Having taken numerous yotties to and from the Res Nova whilst water taxi driving this year I have been able to ask what the food is like. Of course, it matters not to us what the food is like - just to gaze lovingly into each others eyes lovingly is celebration enough! It was an extremely wet and windy night, but this made it all the more cosy - until of course when we walked home and got caught in the rain. Anyway, happy anniversary darling (For Lynn).

The continuing wall saga

A few blogs back I mentioned our garden wall that had collapsed. Well, our neighbours have now discovered that we are responsible for the wall so have handed over the work, and the costs, to us. The current tally is £14k, but we haven't had the structural surveyors bill yet, and we need to compensate our neighbours neighbour for letting the workmen use their garden for access and such. On the plus side our neighbours have said they may contribute to the costs, but we cannot guarantee this. These things really test your Christian charity, but I keep reminding myself that I need to act as Jesus would have: with patience and gentleness. Anyway, the work has begun!