Whatever He Says

By Belinda To give some context to our day today, I am adding a link to a previous post:  Remembering Uncle John   in memory of a dear member of our family who through his visits to us in Canada, became known and loved by many of our friends, and also by those who have read about him here on Whatever He Says. When Paul and I were here in January I wrote about our hope to scatter his ashes; in  Memories and Mortality ; but it proved too difficult to get everyone together at that time. But today six of us gathered high in the breathtakingly beautiful  Malvern Hills , near the town that is Paul's birthplace, to scatter Uncle John's ashes in a place that was special to him. Paul and I were there with Stephen and Sam, Uncle John's sons--and Arthur and Liz, close friends of Uncle John's.  We met at the place called Wyche Cutting, overlooking Herefordshire and Worcestershire. The photographs don't do justice to the panorama below us. The r...

By Belinda  We spent a quiet afternoon with Stephen, Paul's cousin. Their fathers were brothers: Ronald and John. Uncle John passed away in the spring of last year and Stephen and his brother Sam have boxes of diaries and photos that they are slowly going through; piecing together the chronology of a family's life.  We looked through many envelopes with photos and negatives, all in a brown paper bag with the word "Photographs" written on the front.  As Paul and I drove home at the end of the evening, both of us had the same response to going back through generations of his family in photographs: his grandparents with their grandchildren; those babies now grandparents themselves.  We were struck by the brevity of life, seeing them all there in a paper bag, spanning 80 years and  realized that we won't go on forever any more than they did, although we don't face or think about that fact usually. It wasn't a maudlin thought, but a prompt to slow do...

By Belinda  I worked hard all day in our loft room. I hoped that I would get a good chunk done today and finish it off on Monday. I stopped at 4.00 to go to the library and get a few groceries we'd run out of and when I got home I made dinner and had a break with Paul. We enjoyed the film  Amelia , about the life of legendary American pilot Amelia Earhart. By the time the film was over and the dinner things in the dishwasher, it was 10 to 9. I decided that I had enough energy for a little more work on the loft room. An hour and a half later, to my surprise, it was DONE! Kevin can move in any time he likes now. I thought that I would throw out a lot more stuff than I actually did. I confess to shuffling more of it than I should have kept, to other parts of the house, but a lot of magazines did get put in the recycling bin. I intend to have a second go at the stuff in the low cupboards that run along beneath the roof on one wall of the loft room, after Christmas. Spe...

 By Belinda (Written Oct. 31) It's my last day here in England, and from that precious day, 2 hours stolen for lunch with Uncle John and cousin Stephen, at The Coach and Horses  in Weatheroak. There, I entrusted the 200 pounds sterling from Whatever He Says readers , into Uncle John's care. He will send it to a pastor in a province close to Orissa in India. Uncle John held the fat white envelope containing 10, 20 pound notes, in his hands and said, "Can you thank them?" So that is what I am doing! He is going to send me a photo of the pastor, which I will post when I get it. I know a little more of what has been going on with this man since I told the story of "The Bird in the Window" (see sidebar for link.) He used to be a businessman and realtor before entering the ministry. While in real estate he helped a doctor find the perfect house. The doctor later went to Dubai to work but has since returned. When the doctor heard that the man w...

By Belinda He's 81, but for the past decade he has traveled tirelessly: to Kazakhstan; Turkey; India; Kenya; Nigeria and Tanzania--several of these countries he has visited repeatedly. He has gone whenever and wherever the call came to preach or teach. In between missions trips and being at home in Worcester, England,  Paul's Uncle John comes here, to our home in Canada, to rest and be spoiled a little. When he arrived with Paul's cousin Stephen, two weeks ago, we noticed that his latest trip had taken a toll. He looks more frail, and it's hard to imagine that a few months ago he was traveling across India by train at night, and preaching in stifling heat by day, on a schedule that I would have found exhausting. Shortly after arriving home from India this time, he fell ill with an unidentified illness which has only just been pegged as Dengue fever, the result of a mosquito bite. On Friday evening, our friend Jamie came over and had dinner, and afterward...