Moving house

For a month now we have been working on the new manse :

* wall-papering

* painting

* setting new floors

* cleaning

* planning (where will we put this or that ? what colours should we use - given what we already have ? How can we modernize 2 bathrooms using the existing tiles, floor tiles (yukky!) and on a budget ?

* moving our stuff over from our flat to the house little by little, box by box (but not too much since if we haven't finished a room, we can't occupy it.

We've run out of heating fuel, the floor boards we had are broken so we had to purchase a whole new batch, one lot of wall-paper was awful to remove and took many people and hours to clean. The carpet we wanted for Claire's bedroom was not available in 2 shops .....

All of you who have launched into the housing adventure (and this isn't even our own house!!) will sympathise with the joys and woes we are experiencing. But one day, we will be settled in and this house is dedicated to the Lord's work, so it is worth it. We are very thankful to some of our church members for their valuable help and impressed by their tenacity and endurance. On the other hand, we are rather ashamed of our own lack of physical condition. We've been living with muscle stiffness for the last month!! Always look on the bright side of life .... we are losing weight !

Pascal still has major pain in his shoulders so each night we put heated cabbage leaves on and keep them there with bandages. It works really well helping to reduce pain and improve mobility. We used to recommend that for breast-feeding mums suffering from mastitis ! So keep using the old-fashioned methods. And it really doesn't smell bad - only at the cooking stage.