Month: August 2010

Final Sunday

Today was our last Sunday at the Heath Evangelical Church. It is a bit sad to leave all our good friends behind, and we really felt the love of the people today as they came to say goodbye. We will the fellowship. But we will be in touch, and it will remain our church, as Heath Evangelical Church is our sending church.
We had a blessed day, and were invited out for lunch.
Tomorrow, the lorry is coming at 8 am, and a goood number of people have told us they were coming to help. So hopefully, the lorry will be on its way before the end of the morning, and the cleaning will be quickly done. Our ferry is at 8.30 pm in Portsmouth, so we have plenty of time before leaving.

Twitter Weekly Updates for 2010-08-08

  • Just a few more days before the big move. What have we forgotten to do? #
  • Front Page – Post-Reformation Digital Library – LibGuides at Calvin College http://libguides.calvin.edu/prdl #
  • Going out for a run, making the most of the fact that the kids are in Dan yr ogof with their mum and some friends. #
  • 4 days to go before moving to Brittany. Thanks for yout prayers. #
  • @gethin_aj No, it isn't, we've done that and I've seen some friends there once who had done the same. in reply to gethin_aj #
  • To packing there is no end. #
  • RT @davidpmurray Pastors, please take a break http://post.ly/q0iT #
  • No cooking today. The kids had chips and are now in bed. The parents are having curry. #
  • On the way to the shop, a man was lying on the floor, people were trying to ressucitate him and get his heart to restart. Life is short. #
  • 7 days to go before moving out. #
  • Incredible read: Temporary marriage | Cranach: The Blog of Veith http://www.geneveith.com/temporary-marriage/_6023/ #

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Google Wave is no more

I’ve read in several places that Google is stopping development on Google wave. See for example this article on the BBC website: Google drops Wave because of lack of users.

That’s a pity. I had only just started exploring this exciting new platform. I had thought it could be used by the French UFM team in order to collaborate on various ministry ideas and projects. The different teams are quite distant and it could have been a good tool.

But we still have our monthly Skype meetings to keep up to date with each other.

Moving is more than packing you know

Everyone who has moved recently will remember that moving is not just about packing up and putting things in a lorry. It is also about administration. There are lots of things to remember: Electricity company, Internet, Phone, Gas, HMRC for the benefits, Bank… On the other side, we must also set up everything on the other side. The fact that we are moving abroad makes things more challenging.

It has at times been frustrating. When I tried to sort out insurance for example. Each time I tried to have a quote on the web, I could get to a certain point, and got stuck because they wated also my present address and phone number. These being british, of course the site didn’t accept them. Then, when I tried to phone, most numbers were special numbers which I couldn’t call from abroad. And when I could get through, I was welcomed by a machine.

I did get to speak to a couple of people, but either the system had crashed, or the advisers were too busy. So at the end, I got a quote from someone based in Guingamp, the representative of AXA, and I went for them because they were the first human beings I got to speak to, no machine, and I got a quote pretty quickly.

Same to sort out the electricity, it took me ages to find a nuber I could phone from abroad. Internet could take time to sort out as I don’t have the phone number of the previous tenant.

But to be honest it hasn’t been as bad as I expected. Most things have gone smoothly. There are still more things to do, but we’ll get there. I am expecting some problems nce we arrive, as France is renown for its bureaucracy. But it’s ok, we’ll manage.