Weather Talk

April has been a quiet month. Nothing exciting. Nothing remarkable. I am left to talk about the weather.

Fall has arrived - an unusually wet fall. Normally by this time on the year in Lesotho the rains have diminished and we enter that period of endless Indian summer, but not this year. So instead of warm days and cool nights, it is mostly cool rainy days and cooler nights. We are layering up and have already pulled out the heaters to keep at least parts of the house warm.

Wendy has moved into the kitchen. It has a door shutting it off from the rest of the house, which means a confined space. A confined space we can easier heat so she, and I, spent a lot of time in the kitchen where we can keep the temperature cosy. I envision that we will become exceedingly familiar with our kitchen as the temperatures drop further, though we do have a couple of windows elsewhere in the house where we can sit and warm ourselves on sunny mornings.

I don’t know if I will ever adjust to southern hemisphere seasons. The cool weather makes it feels so much like October. This week we even had our first frost. Rather than Easter, it seems time to start thinking of Christmas. Ah, but this year we will get a break. We are heading back to Canada for a couple of months of summer there, and will skip out on two months of winter here. Wendy is committed to teaching one more year at least in Africa, maybe more, so we will be heading back, arriving for the beginning of spring.

We will then see what unfolds over the next year and decide what and where life and God will lead. I am already working with the Mustard Seed leadership team to develop the structures to enable them to feel comfortable carrying on with me supporting them from a distance. With the Internet there is much that can be done from a distance to provide support.

We will arrive in Canada on July 01, Canada Day. We are looking forward to seeing family and friends again, including our wonderful sons. There life adventures continue. Jared, we will possibly see less of as he expects to be working in the Northwest Territories with the Geological Survey of Canada. He has completed his degree in B.Sc. Geology, has been admitted to a Masters in Geology at Simon Frazer University and will be beginning his program there in the fall. Dylan will be back in Central Alberta after eight months in Nova Scotia where he has completed the first year of a Masters program. I may have to don coveralls and rubber boots when we visit him as he will be spending his summer working on an organic dairy farm west of Red Deer. Byron may be the one we can catch up with the easiest, visiting him in his own house, complete with dog, in Wainwright. But, even with him things could change should he be sent off on some further training.

We are looking forward to seeing many of you again, and will have a busy two months traveling in Alberta and British Columbia. On our return flight to Lesotho, we are stopping off in Washington D.C. to spend a few days with Wendy’s sister Chris and her husband.

While we are experiencing early winter weather here, I notice that winter is reticent to depart there, with late snow storms in much of Alberta and even in parts of B.C. Gee, maybe I can get used to southern hemisphere seasons when I see minus degree temperatures in late April in Alberta.

Stay warm.

~ Benno ~