Happy New Year

It happened Wed, Dec 27... sometime in the morning the hard drive of my laptop packed in, checked out, died, crashed.
And with it all the data on it.

I found this blog where the author describes going through the various stages of grief: denial, anger, depression, bargaining, acceptance. I admit that I brushed along such an experience myself in the last couple of days. Though I won't change the drive myself. The machine is still under (extended) warranty.

The drive is not irrecoverably damaged. I don't think the read/write head scraped along the surface. But recovery is expensive (and somewhat inaccessible in Bermuda). Are the files on my drive really worth hundreds of dollars? Or is it just sentimentalism that makes me wish I had them back.

Life goes on without having access to some photos, some old word documents, and other stuff. I just have to learn to adjust, and live without them. Some information was important, and I will have to re-acquire it. Some documents were valuable as I had poured time and effort into creating them. But nothing is irreplaceable. They can be recreated, if necessary--probably not exactly as they were, but better, in that when I have to rewrite a document, recreate a presentation, I have to take the here and now into consideration, not the there and then that lead to the original creation.

And so 2006 ends with the painful rearrangement of my (still somewhat disorganised) life. Maybe all things really do work for good to those who love God (Rom 8:28).
I read a small book, Who Moved My Cheese, this morning.
My hard drive cheese was moved. It's gone. Time to adapt, move on, improve, and reap the blessings of the Master Cheese Mover.

Happy new year!

Ho Ho Ho

'Tis the season.... to remember that Jesus is the reason for it.
Or so I should write as a pastor. The reality is that a lot of people don't think about Jesus, but rather food, presents, decorations, and travel--on that note, if in London add this thought: will I catch my flight before Xmas is over?
Christmas posed that challenge every year (not the foggy one). And it seems that Bermuda is not too far from its 'motherland'. Only, it's a lot smaller. So most things here are on a smaller scale. Except for the Christmas decorations. Some are beautiful, others make you wish Easter came a lot faster.
Today I went to "town"--that's local lingo for the city of Hamilton--and the crowds and the traffic reminded me a bit of being back in England. Only the warm sunshine told of a different location. Yes the sun is still shining.

And the bus pass is still purple.

BUT... on Tuesday I met a church member at the airport. She's gone away for the holidays, and she wanted me to look after her car... :-D
So for a few blissful days, we've got a car. And it's a comfortable 4x4. I consider it a Christmas present.

Merry Christmas!

Is it really December?

My goodness... I've just remembered there's a blog that I used to write :-)
And it seems the months are passing as quickly now as did the days and weeks when we first got here. Tomorrow, 4 months ago, we left the UK--and arrived a day later than planned, thanks to the hyperactive gate personnel of Virgin Atlantic who would not let us on the plane. That's so long ago, yet the memory is still lingering...

So what's happened since Thanksgiving? Funerals is the first thing that comes to mind. Quite a number of them which I either conducted or attended. Moments to re-order one's priorities, and align them more along the values of Infinite Wisdom. Also moments to cherish what the old-time churchgoers call: The Blessed Hope!

At the beginning of the month Barbara and I had the chance to get off the island to attend a conference in Huntsville, Alabama--deep South, and freezing cold. That was quite nice, seeing how cheap stuff is in the rest of the Western world--good grief, is that the first thing that comes to mind? Commerce? Shopping?? Have I acclimatised already?

Do I miss the UK? It's difficult to say, one gets used to new surroundings astonishingly quickly.
Church life is good, but challenging--just like back in England.
Christmas is coming round, and with it probably some homesickness...

Temperatures have come down, not as low as in England, but low enough to feel "cold". However, the sun comes out every now and then during the day, and, unlike in England, is actually quite warm. The other day I sat in the sun, in a T-shirt and had to remind myself that it was the beginning of December. DECEMBER!

And? Well, the bus pass in December is purple.

Is it really November?

Happy Thanksgiving to all my US friends...

I can't believe it's November. Just thought about that today, when I was walking in the humid sunshine.
It's still in the mid 20's here during the day (Celsius that is!!).
But it's humid!
HUMID!!
90+%....

Happy Thanksgiving--well I'm happy, and I give thanks for the temperatures here. :-)

time flies....

....when you're having fun. Or when you're settling into a new environment and a certain routine is beginning to emerge. I can't believe it's been almost a month since my last post here. Apologies to all those who clicked on the link, and for weeks were greeted with the same-old-same-old.

So...what has happened in the last four weeks. Well, let me check my calendar. Maybe it's a memory-recall issue, or maybe it's just that the weeks are all merging into one fearture-less blob. I think it's the former.

We've had a church event that stretched over some weeks: old-fashioned tent evening meetings. It went on for 5 weeks. And when it finished I realised how much it had become part of my "routine". Now I look back, a bit over 2 weeks later, and it already seems so far in the past. Human memory, 'tis a strange beast.

On Nov 2 I left the Rock, for the first time since arriving here in August. An opportunity to attend a leadership conference in Baltimore, MD, was not to be missed. Taking off and having to do a 180º turn allowed me to look at Bermuda for a while before it disappeared in the distance (well, actually it disappeared behind the plane, but that doesn't sound half as romantic).
Bermuda is so.... small, I thought. It's a strip of land, 20 miles long and 1.5 miles wide, in the middle of the Atlantic, 700 miles off the coast of North America, 1000 miles north of the Bahamas, and 3500 miles off the coast of Cornwall.
Contrast Bermuda's dimension with what awaits the traveller when he approaches US mainland: lights everywhere, and so much space. And so many people. Bermuda's population rivals that of Tamworth in Staffordshire (just under 70,000).
Arriving in the US was quite an exciting experience. Imagine that for the last 3 month you were not able to drive faster than 45 mph (given a 22 mph speed limit) and the widest road nationwide is a dual carriage (less than a mile long).
Now, you hit the beltway, 5 lanes, at 85....
Excitement indeed.
And despite my misgivings in the past, I am now thankful for the invention that is GPS.
I even manage to get it to talk to me with a British accent!

And now, routine catches up, and it's time to take the clothes out the machine (up right, with a stick in the middle that messes up the clothes... but that's another story), and to put them in the drier.
Time flies when you're having fun :-)

Church service at Wembley Stadium...

Click on picture for big picture...
(front row: the man next to the lady in blue ( in the centre) is the leader of the opposition. left of him is the premier and his wife, and then another high ranking politician. you can see my head between the premier and his wife.)

Today I attended a church service in what is the Wembley Stadium of Bermuda. Since Bermuda is a lot smaller than the UK, so the National Stadium here is a lot smaller than Wembley.
But it was quite an occasion. In fact I sat two rows behind the Premier, the leader of the opposition, and the leadership challenger: if this had been England, I'd be sitting in the 3rd row at Wembley Stadium, behind Tony Blair, David Camron, and Gordon Brown, and their wives.
Everything is a bit smaller, and more communal here, including visibility of the politicians.

The service brought many different churches together over three issues: gangs and violence, an amendmet of the Human Rights Act in Bermuda which seeks to address discrimination of homosexuals (at the moment homosexuals are not allowed to show their affection in public), and the role of the church in society.
The second issue was the most delicate one. While one should not discriminate another person because of their sexual orientation--e.g. when seeking employment, or tenancy--most Bermudian Christians are concerned about legitimising public expressions of homosexuality. And so they came together to show their oppinion. And it was quite an occasion.
(Just as a pastor: the Bible legitimises only one form of human sexuality: a marriage covenant between a man and a woman.)

I loved the liturgical dancers. So graceful, modest, and yet powerful in their ministry. Unfortunately, I had to leave even before the first of three preachers spoke (one per issue). So I don't know what was actually said about each of the issues.
The passionate spirituality of some (not all) of the worshippers was also something that I was impressed by. Mental notes to take back to one's own church...

(again, I hope to be able to put some pictures up fairly soon)

Florence's legacy

The Bermudian phone book is quite a resource of information, not just phone numbers but all sorts of other stuff. Like satellite pictures of Bermuda--very cool.
And in one section it talks about water management.

Bermuda has very little natural sweet water. Most of our water supply is stored rain water.
Now, when a hurricane passes by with its low pressure, the oxygen level in the stored water drops and the water begins to smell rotten. And that's what happened to our front water tank (our house has two tanks).

So, enter the phone book:
In case of the water smelling like rotten eggs, aereate it.
Connect a hose pipe to the water pump under the house, run it up to the roof and let the water flow back into the tank. Well, I didn't do the roof, but just opened the cover of the water tank and let the water splash back in.

There are things in life you never know, do, or experience, until you venture outside your usual box.

My new license

Hurray.... I've passed my driving test.
Well, eh... sort of.

When I took my "written" test, some time ago (actually it wasn't written, it was on a computer screen, answering 20 odd questions), I received a paper with the dates for my practical tests, one for the bike and one for the car. The bike test was October, that's all I remembered. Until this morning. I thought I'd better check the little note with the dates, and instead of saying some time later in October, it said Oct 9--today! And it said: 9.30am!!
Now, in Bermuda you have to bring your own car/bike to the test. I don't have a bike...
But the rent-a-bike shop down the road does. So at 8.30am I rented a little scooter, 50cc and automatic. And off to the Test Ground I went (did I mention that I havent't ridden a bike since I passed my original test. In 1984)
It was all a bit nerve-racking. You had to, well first hand in the papers and wait. And wait. And be called up and outside.
Get on the bike, ride in a cirlce without putting feet on the ground or touching the cones. Ride in the circle again, this time counterclockwise. The zig-zag, no touching of lines or cones, and riding in a smaller circle. Then zig-zag back, and go straight through an alley of cones, without touching them--holy cones!
And after all that I was told I passed--yippey.

And then I got the paperwork back: passed to ride bikes class 2A with restriction 7 (translation: nothing bigger than 50cc, and only automatic)... after all that blood sweat and tears, well no blood really and no tears, but it's still warm enough for sweat... one out of three.
After all that I got a license to ride a little moped. Great...

But I had the scooter-moped thingy for a whole day, so off I went, exploring Bermuda, and taking part in the ritual car-bike dance on the windy roads of this island. But with only 50cc it wasn't much of a dance. Plus, remember the speed limit is 35km/h (yes, that's 22mph!!). I'm sure i didn't go over it, as I rigerously stuck to the car in front of me, and surely no Bermudian breaks the speed limit. ... ........... right.

So it was another one of those milestone days. Now I have a Bermudian driving license (with restrictions...).
Unfortunatley, I could only afford a 24hr rental. So the bike goes back to its fold tomorrow morning--just in time for the cruise ship tourists (who actually DO stick to the limit, quite annoying). And I'm back on the bus. I got an October pass.

Expired

Yesterday my bus pass expired.
Might as well, as I forgot to take it out my shirt pocket and it went through the washer and dryer. You can still read the important bits on the front and back plastic foils but the cardboard inbetween that gave the pass its "card" feel didn't fare well in the wash.

Public transport is quite good in Bermuda. On an island of barely 20 sq miles with a population of 68,000 (not counting cruise ship tourists) and having a total of 3-- that is THREE-- major roads across the island, one would think even a child could put together a good public transport system. Well, when the system fails, one recognises the somewhat more-than-childplay effort that goes into it.

There are only busses on the island, no tubes or trains. And those busses are small--no not like Jamaican taxis, but smaller than a London bus. But they are air conditioned (which works--often too well, depending on how cold the driver sets it). They have to be small, because the roads are not very wide. And the busses just about fit on them. The drivers seem to have a built in sixth sense about the dimensions of the bus. If you sit on the nearside, you can often see house corners and rocks pass precariously close to the window, while overhanging trees may shed some leaves as the bus brushes by (if the windows are open those leaves end up in the bus, near the back seats).
These busses run on time. OK, maybe there's a minute or two delay, but nothing like a London bus, and no they don't show up all at once here.

After a while you get to know the faces of the drivers and they may even recognise you as well. It's fun to greet and chat with them. Makes you feel more of a resident, an islander.

So we rely on public transport. The kids catch the bus directly outside our house (there are only 2 busses per day: 7.22 and 8.05). Barbara and I usually have to walk 10 mins down the road to the regular bus stop.

So why don't you get a car, or a scooter? Well, firstly I don't have a license. I mean, I do, but not a Bermudian license, and nothing else is recognised here. I am on my way to getting one. I passed the written test, and now I have a learner's permit, and I am allowed to drive a car with L-plates (oh the shame)--which makes me feel over 20 years younger.
Then there is the more tricky issue of finance. Cars (SMALL cars) are very expensive over here, not just to buy, but to license, insure, and fill up with petrol.
Maybe I'll end up on a scooter... Till then, it's time to get my October bus pass.

You never know who you meet

Yesterday I attended a funeral. A BIG funeral.
We had been asked if another church could use our building for a funeral, and I happily obliged. When I sat in church yesterday, I couldn't believe the amount of people in church (now there's a vision for church attendance...).
And I couldn't believe all the people I met, before the service, and after, and later at the "wake" (reception).

Bermuda is a small island. I have begun to get used to meeting the same people, such as bus drivers, post office workers, supermarket staff, and--of course--church members. So I was not surprised to see some of the bus drivers at the funeral. Just intersting to see them not in their regular uniform, and in church :-)

But it was the fact that I met a former premier (prime minister in Bermuda) Dame Jennifer Smith, a government minister Mr Michael Scott, and the first woman leader of the opposition in the British Commonwealth (plus the first female Attorney General of Bermduda) Dame Lois Brown-Evans, that struck another chord.
When, in England, did I ever meet such illustrous people. Did I mention that the leader of the opposition came to my installation service? That's like David Cameron showing up at North Wembley or Gloucester church to welcome the new pastor.

Adventist Pastors are not regarded as, "what church is that you're from again?" Our church is held in high regard. After all, 1 in 18 Bermudians is said to be an Adventist.

When the bus stopped outside the house to pick up the kids this morning, I recognised the driver from yesterday's funeral. So we had a little chat--as you do.... it's Bermuda.

IT'S COME HOME

Finally....

I have it.

Our long lost suitcase has come home!

I had a "hunch", an impression, guidance by the Holy Spirit--go to the airport, check it one more time (as if that helps... I thought). So on my way back from the main town--the route takes us pass the airport--I got off and walked to the Airline desk. I presented my situation and waited for the usual and inevitable "sorry Mr Burton-Schnüll, we have no information about your suitcase". Instead I heard, "oh, yea it's right here" I thought, she's kidding me right?! But no, off she went, and dragged our old battered suitcase into the room. I hugged her, I was so happy.

For almost 6 weeks I have lived in the no-man's land of not knowing, in limbo between "here it is" and "we've definetly lost it". Almost every day I wondered if they'd find it. Calls to the call centre (strategically located in India) were fruitless and only added to a feeling of helplessness. So my exuberance is understandable, though I had little time to explain all the details to the bewildered Airline staff :-)

Thank you God for looking after something seemingly so insignificant as a suitcase!
(and if I had a camera, I'd taken a picture to prove my point LOL)

It's coming home.

I just came across this news story on BBC News (click the heading). Hurricane Gordon -- actually, what's left of it -- is going to hit parts of the UK. How interesting.

Just about 10 days ago I experienced my first hurricane here in Bermuda (Florence). Then Gordon came and missed the island by a few hundred miles. So did Helene by the way, and that one is heading up to Europe too.

And now I'm reading that Gordon made it across the Atlantic and is coming home... But I guess it won't be quite as exciting. (Maybe Helene will be LOL).

the invasion

I wish I had a photo to show...
We've been invaded!

It seems they lay dormant for a month, or just let us settle in before making their move. Which they did with precision and determination: Bermudian ants.
They can be seen everywhere on the island: thin lines on walls and paths that are alive. Lines of ants walking to and fro, long lines that seem to originate in infinity and also end there. Where do all these ants come from?
There are less than 70,000 people on the island, but there must be billions of ants.

I had seen them, and admired their order. I remember sitting in a car showroom, while a sales assistance gave me this very amusing quote (small cars, BIG prices). There was a line of ants running down the side of the wall, following a corner in the wall, running along the skirting, disappearing behind the office plant, reappearing further on, and moving who-knows-where. And I thought, I'm glad they are not in MY house. So much for new-comer's ignorance.

And they cannot be beaten. We sprayed the lines and points of entry, but it seems that for every ant that dies, there are 100 waiting to come and explore our house.

We were of course forewarned: don't leave food around, they will find it etc. Funny thing is, there are NO ants anywhere near the food. They are in my study, behind cardboard boxes. Or on the living room floor, taking an interest in the computer keyboard -- yes I had to brush one persistent critter off just before typing this.

So when you think about the Burton-Schnülls in Bermuda, don't envy us for having a pink sand beach. Rejoice in the fact that British ants are nowhere near as persistent, organised, and numerous than their Bermudian counterpart.

That was it.... for now.

So in the end Florence came, made a mess but no real damage, and left.

It's Tuesday, 10am, the sun is out, there's a mild breeze, and it's back to normal, except that school's out for a second day.
We passed the day yesterday sitting around, the kids watched some videos and (grudgingly) did some homework. I tried to keep in touch with the world during the storm, and did so until our power went out at about 10am. From then on it was walking around, looking out the little window in the study room door, watching the storm slowly change direction, trying not to catch cabin fever.

That big bin with water came in handy, as the water pump was off (Bermudian houses have big water tanks underneath, where rain water is collected. The water is then pumped into a pressure tank to feed the house.) But now it's all back to normal.

In the afternoon some friends came to visit--crazy Bermudians, I thought. They stayed for a while and then we (yes, WE) walked back to their place, in the now slightly less strong winds. Still we got soaked by rain and the spray from the ocean.
The kids had a ball jumping in the puddles. And with the water quite warm (compared to English rain) nobody was too concerned about getting wet.
We visited some church folk, and ended up staying with our friends and their neighbours (all church members) till mid evening. Seems that a storm brings out the community spirit in this place even more.

So that then was our first taste of a hurricane. (This website has some more pictures etc. [not ours])

To think that the strong winds I had seen and felt were "only" a category 1, and it can go up to 5... there're some awesome forces in nature. I'm just glad that God is always larger than His creation.

We're here now

We're here now... since Aug 16. But that is another story
Right now we're waiting. Again LOL....

Hurricane Florence is on the way to pass by Bermuda in the next 24 hours.

At the moment it's just grey and breezy. There's a bit of rain, but not as much as earlier on.
And we're waiting.

Never been in a Hurricane... But I can't say I'm excited. well maybe a little.
We got our supplies, as the electricity might go off later in the night...

Hey, it's our fourth week in Bermuda. What a welcome!
BTW, that's our patio door, boarded up...





And here's our "water reservoir"--it's a big trash bin (40 odd gallons)...



all that's left is just sit around, blog or watch videos... and wait.

waiting...

So we've been given a transfer-offer, to relocate to Bermuda.
And we accepted.

It's a bit longer a story than that actually, and maybe I'll write it down some time.
At the moment though, it's the waiting period.

There seem to be phases: the initial adrenaline rush, oh goodie, we're going to move from England to Bermuda. Then the doubts: eh... are you SURE this is a good idea?
then the cooling-off and planning phase: So, what are we going to do with the house.
And mixed in with all this: WAITING.

I'd like for the children to start their next school year in Bermuda: 21 Aug... waiting.

Funny thing is, I have the sneaky suspicion (yea right) that it'll all be a bit like the final exams in College again. You know when they are on, you wait forever, and then cram the night before.
So now I'm waiting, only to panick in the second week of August (LOL).

But then again, my boss wouldn't ask us to move only to pull a fast one.
I'm a pastor.

Waiting is something my Boss recommends ("wait on the Lord").