On Our Way
Our house is shut down. Our car is loaded. Our goodbyes are said. We are on our way! We are stopping for a last chicken dinner in Victoria Cove at Angie’s. Then two or three quick stops in Gander and on to Deer Lake. Pioneer Sessions tomorrow. If all goes well we’re on the boat tomorrow night.
Posted in The Summer of Our Thirtieth by jimt with no comments yet.
Farewells and False Starts
On Sunday, two days before Memorial, the congregation had a party for us. A nice cake – quoting Isaiah – was our send off (along with enough food for 10 other congregations!). They were profuse in their affectionate farewells and generous to help us on our way. The terrifying part is it felt more like a Goodbye party than a Going to Class party! I think there is some fear that we might only come back to pack our bags. Of course, to the best of our knowledge, we will be back to our assignment. Memorial was excellent! We had Ed Musseau from Gander give our talk. He has volunteered to help out in the congregation while I am away and he started by taking the Memorial talk. We had 55 in attendance, many from the community. The hard part was after. This was the major goodbyes, Hugs all around (especially hard on me!!), and many pleas to “come back”. Wednesday we started packing for real! Full day planned. Pack, clean up the house and be almost ready to leave on Thursday. The plan was to travel Thursday to Deer Lake, have our Pioneer Sessions on Friday (I have a part), Circuit Assembly on Saturday then get the boat Saturday night. It was a good plan. Saturday afternoon I get a call from Donna Musseau. She had wondered about our plan and checked on it. Unlike our assembly, the Corner Brook assembly is not on Saturday, but on Sunday! Pioneer Continue Reading →
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Times & Places
Leslie very kindly put together a quick list of what we are up to (so far) this summer. It’s kindda scary! For those that want to keep track of us, here you are: In Newfoundland April 13 we leave home April 14 Pioneer sessions in Deer Lake April 15 Circuit Assembly in Corner Brook April 15 Ferry to the mainland at midnight. Before Class April 16 travel as far as Edmonston – staying with Stephens for the night. April 17 Travel to Ottawa – arrive late Monday night. April 19 Travel to Bethel – overnight in Bethel April 20 Norval Assembly Hall April 21 Orientation Day April 24 Class starts After Class June 18 Graduation Day June 19 Travel back to Sherbrooke June 27 Leave for Home June 27 Tatamagouche Back to Newfoundland (briefly) June 28 Ferry to NL June 29 Travel to Ladle Cove July 5 – 9 Convention and St. John’s appointments Trip to Toronto Convention July 17 Fly from Gander to Ottawa July 20 – 24 TO Special Convention Touring the Headquarters (yea!) July 25 Travel to Walkill – July 26 Tour of Walkill July 27 Tour Patterson July 28 Tour of Warwick Travel back home Arrive in Sherbrooke July 30 or July 31 August 2 Fly back to Gander Now is that wild, or what?!?!
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Back To School
I always loved September. First day of school. Mostly I loved the new “supplies”. Fresh books, pens, pencils, and any other thing I could convince Mom was necessary. Everything bright, new and full of hope. Decades after school is a distant memory, here we go again! Who’d have thought the old dogs could take on some new tricks? And we started it off the right way … with new supplies! True, most of what we do will probably be electronic so we are packing tablets, a laptop and phones. However, being “old dogs” we still want paper, both books and notebooks, just in case. Probably get laughed at by all the young’uns. Our boat is booked for the trip out. We are hearing more and more reports of ones in our class. Its going to be great. Love the first day of school!
Posted in The Summer of Our Thirtieth by jimt with 3 comments.
It all started 30 years ago ….
It was supposed to be just a simple, easy summer. Nothing too fancy. Maybe actually go to an all inclusive for once in our life. Maybe get a certificate to an off-season condo for a week. Maybe two. Hey, 30th and all. Then the Toronto convention was announced. “Waste of time applying”, we said. “They’ll never take us”, we said. Then madly filled out the forms. Imagine our surprise! Ok, so we shifted to a new gear! If we were going to The Convention we certainly couldn’t plan any other outrages this year! This would be our trip. Could we maximize the benefits? We hooked into some easily duped and corruptible friends (who shall remain nameless, but whose initials are M & P) and convinced them to take us on a trip to see the new Headquarters in Warwick after the assembly! Let’s make it a Major Trip! Much wrangling of rooming, planning flights, how long to go, where to stay. Then, there was no more we could do. “Now we wait for 7 months with nothing”, said the oft wrong Leslie. The words barely out of her month we received The Letter. When you get a letter from Kingdom Schools, especially after having applied, there is a certain, sudden change to the effects of gravity. Notably centered near your midsection. Invited to the School. Starts April 24th. Arrive on April 20th. Course graduation (should we be so fortunate): June 18th. Now our panic upped considerably. Three months to get Continue Reading →
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Afterwords
We are back home. It has been almost three weeks away from the congregation so it is great to get back. Lots to do. Pioneer School was amazing. …. again. It just seems to get better each time. We are never going to know it all, and we definitely needed some honing. I won’t post much in the way of pictures or commentary on the School, but just a word on two meals. A kind sister whose daughter was in our class invited us all to her restaurant the 26th. Everything is closed in St. John’s on the 26th, so she opened up for a ‘private party’. She has a Smoke’s Poutinerie franchise. hmmmm …. We are a bit snobbish about this. We had poutine in the Magdalen Islands and they melted Mozzarella on top of it! ICK! Most places we won’t touch it. Just wait to get back to the Eastern Townships. We went expecting to be disappointed. It was great! I have had better, of course. How can you get better than buying it where the cheese was made the same day? But this was very, very good. The fries were perfect, the gravy was perfect and the cheese was as close as you can get this far from the source (they do get the cheese from the Eastern Townships apparently). Jeff, one of our instructors, serving us too! It was a really great feed. They serve all manner of combos – Pulled Pork, Chicken, Beef …. they Continue Reading →
Posted in 25th Anniversary by jimt with 1 comment.
Formosa Tea House
The highlight of Saturday was the Formosa Tea House. We started off the day with breakfast at our B&B then headed out to face the ‘holiday crowds’. Actually not as bad as I had feared. I picked up a bit kit for my new Leatherman. Now I have a screwdriver for every occasion! Yea! Then it was time for lunch and we had decided to try the Formosa Tea House Leslie had read the review from the above link and it sounded well worth a trip. Parking was bit scarce, but it turned out that we had a great spot directly across from the restaurant. It is not a place to order the “combo platter”. The menu consists of about 14 or 15 things. They suggest that each person order about 3. Then if you share them you get to try about 6. I wanted to order 8 things. Leslie is sure she ordered 7. We got 6. Good thing too! Dumplings, Spring Rolls, Sushi and a stuffed bun. The Stuffed Bun is like an Oriental Kapusta Bun. Yum! This is Bamboo Rice. It is stuffed with a rice / bean combo. Really good. And it is a TEA house, after all so …. Another wrapped dish. Sticky rice. I loved it! Below you can see shots of the inside of the Bamboo rice and the Sticky Rice dish. Lots of very subtle flavors. Wonderful stuff. We will come here again!
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Back to Abba
After five years we are back at the Abba Inn where we spent our 20th anniversary. It is an old manor in the downtown of St. John’s converted into a B&B. The rooms are nice, some are down-right special. The last time we were upgraded to a nicer room for the bargain price. This time we weren’t, but still nice. As you can see. We had plenty of our Anniversary picnic left over and scarfed that back for our supper. Along with our wine gift! Breakfast was not bad. Bacon and eggs, just a little over-cooked. We had company at breakfast. A Spanish couple from St. Pierre. Go figure! Now … off to face the town.
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Pack Rats!
Nice day again today! We had French Toast for breakfast and then drove off to Grand-Falls for the day. In five years on the Island we have not been there and we decided it was time. We stopped briefly in Gander to renew Leslie’s license (to drive, not kill) and on we went. Grand-Falls was very nice. Smaller than Gander (commercially, at any rate), older it seems, and sprawling. We found a restaurant supply store (toy store) where Leslie was able to get an even bigger baking sheet and fun was had by all. We then cut across to Lewisporte where we had heard there was good Chinese food. Indeed! Delicious. I had a combo dinner that spilled off both sides of a large plate and was piled two layers deep. Leslie went for beef & broccoli that melted in your mouth. Yum! On our way through Gander I stopped to pick up some Knob Creek, the rest of Leslie’s gift to me! Yea! Now we are packing like mad (with brief blogging breaks {BBB}) as we will head out early tomorrow. We check into our B & B for a night and see what we can find in St. J’s! To be continued…..
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And Tacos for supper! May not seem like “special” food to you, but I don’t remember the last time we had tacos! And Leslie was craving them too. That and more Black ‘n’ Tan did the trick! Give it another hour or so and we’ll stuff in Lemon Cheesecake and call it a day. Watched Fiddler on the Roof, Bucket List and now we can debate an evening show. Tomorrow we will be a bit more active. And less posting! ‘Night all!
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