Linz in Focus

After almost a month offline, we have internet access again.   I’ve had so much spare time on my hands without it!!  So we’re now planning to be here until January.  I have work til December.  Yesterday would have been my last day at work. It was quite strange.  I’m glad it wasn’t my last day as so many people were away on holiday or for other reasons, in particular the friends who I’ve worked with the longest.

We’ve moved into our flat in Musselburgh.  We’ve left some really good friend in Queensferry but it looks like we’ll be staying in touch.  On the plus side, we’ve been able to see much more of folks we have had not so much contact with over the nine years we were "far away" in Queensferry.  We’d better not get too used to being on our friends’ doorsteps!!  But its nice while we have the opportunity.

We’ve not worked out school for Lee yet, but we think we’ll try to send Rachel to the same Nursery as her cousin.  The kids are getting used to living in a flat but sharing a room has its trials … especially for Lee!  His wee sister is very chatty at bedtime and well - chatty whenever Lee wants a bit of peace…

We have plans to go to the Keswick Convention in Buckie next week and to a Mission Weekend in Orkney at the start of Sept.  We can also go to some churches that had no spaces available for us before the Aug to see if we can fit into their Autumn programmes.  Our funding is growing, I guess we would like to see it at pretty much ready to go level by end October so we can spend November, December preparing for the move, as our recent experience shows that moving home and support raising don’t go well together.

Thanks for praying even when you don’t hear from us. 

It often feels like there’s nothing to write here at the moment because so often we’re feeling like nothing obvious is happening.  Except even thats a deception … today we moved the bulk of our house contents either into storage or into our new flat in Musselburgh.  We bought the flat hoping we’d be able to rent it out when we move to Austria.  Its a bit smaller than our house.  But there’s a lot of things I really like about it … because of a mad on-call situation at work, I never actually saw the flat until yesterday when we got the keys … Kristine did the viewing with her brother-in-law, Scott.  So that was kind of wierd.  But Kristine is relieved that I really like the place.

But in the week leading up to this so much has happened internally.  We are both really feeling the turmoil of leaving the house where we’ve brought Lee up since he was 4 months old, and where Rachel has always lived.  Kristine is more attached to the actual house than I was, but we’re both feeling the stomach swishing about this being the first step to something very new.  The house move means we’ve done something irreversible about going to Austria … Until Friday we thought this might be a quick first step … but we had asked ECM to help us plan the next few months by giving us some idea how likely it would be for us going to Austria this summer.  Bottom line is we need to plan on spending the Autumn in UK and maybe even Christmas.  While this spreads out the number of changes we’re trying to make at one time, and gives us chances to build a wider support partnership across more churches and groups, we’re really concerned over how Lee will be schooled.  Home schooling? … or one term in a new school with new friends only to leave 3 months or so later?  We’re not confident about our ability to do the home schooling …  Can Lee get through this without getting all screwed up about change and stability?  Also we’re living in a smaller space which we have to pay for so do I ask to keep my job for a bit longer?  How do we make more support partnerships?  We feel a bit exhausted and that translates into how we look at our options … are they exhausted too?  We know they’re not, but right now we need to feel they’re not.