I turned 51 on 6 January. Since that was Sunday, I was honored at a birthday tea on Wednesday instead. So if you haven't read before what we do at birthday teas, I got to choose what kind of dessert/treat I wanted (it's hard to choose when you like so many things but I settled on lemon meringue pie), they sang happy birthday to me in whatever tune I wanted, someone read the 51st psalm, and I was to reminisce on past birthdays, especially a fond memory.

On Thursday we had a seminar at the Centre of 13 people. It went very smoothly. Ed and I are getting much better at getting all the details put together for seminars that it's not so much stressful as it is tiring.

There have been two different people ring the Centre's doorbell during the day this week to inquire about what our Centre does. One was a young girl in her 20's who was in the neighborhood interviewing for a nanny position just down the street from us. She said that she saw our sign and that if she gets the job she would be a live in nanny and wanted to get to know the neighbors and that she may come to church. The other was a Jewish man who lives nearby and was curious about us. He looked us up on the web, saw that we run mediation workshops and have a lot of books on mediation and he was intrigued.

Every day seems to bring something interesting. Except for the time when the electricity went off for 12 hours and has nearly ruined our servers and we have been without the main workings of our computer system for all this week. It's crazy how dependent we have become on email, the internet, etc. Well at least I have gotten a lot of piled up filing done waiting for the system to get repaired.

We have two flats that we let out, 16A & 16B. 16B was just occupied and 16A is close, so we will have new neighbors to get to know. Actually, in 16B is David George, from the states who has been here for more than a year and needed a new place to rent. He is originally from PA and is a Menno. 16A hopefully will be rented to an elderly couple. More on them if and when they decide they want it.

In closing I ask that you pray for a 20 year old girl in our church who is dealing with cancer. She has gone through much chemo and now has a recurrence and it doesn't look good. Her father died five years ago today of the same cancer. Her mother is in our home group. It gives me much to think about. She is the same age as our youngest daughter, Hilary.

Thank you to everyone who reads this blog and thinks and prays for us. We think about all of you often.