No, no one has asked me yet what a typical week is on home assignment. I can't say we've had a typical week yet, and we probably won't ever get there these twelve months. We've now been in Australia for a month and our weeks have included:
- collecting furniture
- shopping
- setting up home internet
- sorting out stuff we've had stored for 4 ½ years
- figuring out how to make a functional home and office from the stuff we own and the stuff we've been given
- buying a car
- sorting out red tape—including stuff related to driver's licences, applying for Blue cards (child safety clearance), changing addresses, insurance
- debriefs of various sorts for our organisation
- medical stuff—bi-annual checks for our organisation, hunting down referrals to specialists, skin checks, blood tests etc. (this has actually taken up a lot more time that you might imagine)
- starting to get involved in mid-week events at our home church
- university open day
- social time—with our eldest son, with good friends
- driving lessons
- preparation for speaking events coming up
- a prayer meeting
- meeting with other members of our organisation to catch up
- walking and orientating ourselves to the local community
The hardest thing to set up was our dining
room/home office. Without an extra bedroom
we've had to juggle our living area to accom-
modate a working area too. It turns out that
this large table doubles quite nicely for work
(except for me, thankfully I am able to
work at the shorter desk you can see in the
corner).
Phew! In between all that I've been trying to do my best to relax by having a coffee break on our deck with a book in the afternoon, when I'm home. Other things that have helped me feel more grounded have been household management things—meal planning, grocery shopping on a regular day, regular basic cleaning, and baking.
"There’s a big difference between living and visiting." That phrase that popped into my mind recently. A lot of what we've been doing is related to living here. We're not on a brief visit or trip. We need to, as best we can, establish our lives here for the next 12 months. That's been hard work, and it doesn't feel like it's over yet, though perhaps the pace is slowing as we gradually tick off once-off things.
Two weeks tomorrow we're flying to the west coast for 18 days to visit churches and others over there for work. That deadline looms large. We'd like our sons to be as settled as they can be at this time so they can manage independently for the longest time we've ever been away from them. We also want to be as prepared as we can for the speaking work we'll be doing over there . . . alas we're still waiting on replies from several people, so it's more last minute than we're really happy with.
Ah, God's got us on our toes. But I'm reminded that he's the God who goes before us (Deut. 31:8) and that his mercies are new every morning (Lam. 3:22–24, KJV, more modern versions say "compassion"). And these are the truths I need to be repeating to myself when I dream/drowse in the early hours of the morning and my thoughts get filled with anxious thoughts.
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