Bart Blair

9 Years Ago Today...

9 years ago today I married my best friend. We had a bunch of people join us for breakfast and we made a promise to live the rest of our lives together. This is what we promised...

I promise to give you the best of myself and to ask of you no more than you can give.

I promise to respect you and to realize that your interests, desires and needs are no less important than my own.

I promise to share with you my time and my attention and to bring joy, strength and imagination to our marriage and our family.

I promise to grow along with you, to be willing to face challenges and changes in order to keep our life together healthy, alive and exciting.

I promise to love you in good times and bad, with all I have to give.

I promise to be faithful to you in mind, spirit and body.

Most importantly, I promise to walk the path that God has paved for us and to stay faithful to His ways in the way we build this life together.

I promise all these things completely and forever.

. . .

Wow! It's been an amazing ride so far, my love! No regrets. Not one!

 

Two Boys in the Hat

Medicine Hat: The First 7 Days

I can't believe it's only been a week since we arrived! We've laboured from sun-up 'til sundown every day for the last week trying to get unpacked and settled in. Here are a few notes on things that happened and that still need to happen:

• 80% of the boxes are unpacked; garage and office still loom
• Got a Costco membership; we've resisted for years, but with gas $.10/litre less at Costco, there wasn't much of a choice!
• Elizabeth applied for PT job at Ashley Furniture; with her Alberta mortgage license still in limbo, looking for some short-term income.
• Silas and Ephraim started school; only a half day this week. And the fun begins next week when they start riding the bus!
• Scooter having too many accidents in the house; not sure if it's the cold weather or just confusion about the environment change, but we haven't had problems like this since we first got him!
• Sarah has dropped off a number of resumes and job apps; looking for something soon and on an easy bus route from the house.
• Oliver and I had our first church planning meeting; so much to do!
• Met a couple of neighbors and got a meat pie; what else would you expect as a welcome gift from the French-Canadians next door?!
• Snow, snow, snow! Medicine Hat is on a record pace for snow this winter; we're hoping no one blames us for bringing it from Ontario!
• First chinook; temps went from -16 to +1 in a day - feels like spring already!

A Respite from Unpacking Boxes

Who needs a gym membership when you get to shovel snow every day?!?! So far, since our arrival in Medicine Hat I think it's snowed every night. The locals are all promising that this is not the norm. Besides, we've got a chinook on the way and the promise of four days above freezing should get some of this melted off.

Yesterday we registered the boys to start school. Tomorrow will be their first day. They are excited and nervous. Interestingly, the school that they will be attending has half-days every Wednesday, so their first day will be a short one.

Since today was the last of the their extended Christmas break (nearly 4 weeks), I decided to spend some fun time with them. We (Sarah and I) took them over to a local pond (3 minutes away) where I shovelled some of the surface for them and they skated for a bit. This was Ephraim's first time on skates. It was important to him to get some practice in because he will be skating regularly with his class at school.

An Alberta Landing

Wow! We made it! The last 72 hours has been remarkably...well...remarkable!

After our challenging travel night across Saskatchewan, we got up on Friday morning with the plan to rent a van, leave ours in Moose Jaw for repairs and make the trek to Medicine Hat early enough to meet the real estate lawyer to do the legal business. That plan didn't go as planned. Without getting into the lengthy details, let's just say this - Enterprise may want to change their motto from "We'll pick you up" to "We'll let you down."

We ended up driving our 6-cylinder van on 5 cylinders in a snow storm, -20 degrees and 80km winds across western SK into eastern AB. We prayed the whole way and, thank the Lord, we made it. By 3pm we were in the house on Sunrise Street.

You'll note a variety of expressions in the photo that Oliver took of us as we arrived at the house; cold, tired, relieved, exhausted, etc.

The moving truck arrived on Saturday morning and by about 4pm we were unpacking boxes and beginning the process of setting up our new home. The house is a fair bit smaller than the one we just left and we've already realized that even more purging will need to take place as we settle in.

The house is only 10 years old so there's not a lot of big work that needs to be done. We'll need to do lots of painting and we're finding little oddities here and there that will need modification, but for the most part, the house is quite livable as it is. Much to Elizabeth's relief, we will not need to labour over the house as we did our last one - being over 30 years old.

Elizabeth has met one neighbour so far; Chris who has a son the same age as Ephraim. And I've already connected with the Telus installation guy, Justin. It just so happens that Justin is a recent immigrant from Oakville, Ontario who loves baseball and fishing. We've already discussed getting together for sports and beverage.

This week we'll get the kids into school (probably Wednesday) and begin to map out the next few weeks as we begin to develop a plan for work and church planning. We're excited on all fronts, but realize there's big work ahead.

Today's Auto Adventures

Uh-oh. 150 kilometers, or so, south of Moose Jaw the van started to chug a bit. Something is just not right...

Stop for gas in Midland, SK. Back on the road. CHECK ENGINE LIGHT FLASHING. Van not really going. U-turn. Back to gas station.

After our one hour detour in Midland, SK the mechanic (Mr. Short of Shorty's Auto Service) could only replace a spark plug. No experience with Mazdas (Japanese cars ain't too popular around here). We drove on to Moose Jaw with a cylinder misfiring and the Check Engine light flashing. We wrote down the numbers of 6 towing companies as a safeguard.

We've rented a van for tomorrow am. We'll leave our van at Canadian Tire auto service and head to Alberta in the rental. Elizabeth and I will have to drive back some time next week.

Extra expense. Extra stress. No fun. But at least we weren't stranded in the middle of Nowhere, North Dakota. Praise God for that!

Thought at 3am...

Thought at 3am...

Maybe the reason most people struggle to grasp the vision for church planting is because they can't imagine the infinite context of their holy relationships.

They only see the immediate implications of disconnecting from people they love and with whom they share close, intimate relationships. My guess is, those relationships will be far more intimate in Heaven.

Sometimes, in order to effectively plug into God's big plan for the world's redemption, we have to be willing to disconnect from our earthly relationships and form new ones.

It seems to be a matter of casting eternal vision beyond the finite world we live in.

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