Canada Diary – Part 9

Having reread yesterday’s entry I feel I should make it clear that the bishop didn’t actually give me an episcopal massage herself.
Today was pretty non-stop in a good way. We drove to Quinn and Maddie’s church, which is a good 40 minutes away – his parish is roughly the size of Portsmouth Diocese. The morning was a Messy Fiesta with people from Spruce Grove and further afield: I was very flattered and bemused that one couple had driven seven hours from the NW Territory to be there, and one lady had come straight from night shift to join in. There were about 18 of us.
The afternoon held a real Messy Church with a few families there – holiday season has just begun, so many people were already away. We simply did the ‘body of Christ’ theme and enjoyed some snacks and sandwiches and a huge cake together. I need to think through how best to help leaders who have to cope with very small children of their own while they’re leading.
Packing up… finding lost keys… discovering what echoes are in the empty hall… out to an Italian restaurant for a meal… icecreams on the way home… packing up suitcases… it’s 19.30 now here, and it’s been a long day. Again a sense of God going ahead of us and wakening the same ideas in clergy here as feature in Messy Church, so that Messy Church is just a fleshing out of what they had already imagined.
I saw a squirrel. It was a very small squirrel. My disillusionment with Canadian wildlife grows.