A few things to think about

Wow, first post in quite a while for me!

To begin: the tree of life installation.

Wendy (among several others) was a major help getting the tree done.  Here you see her playing with ribbons that were attached to the tree and then radiated out into the room.  The idea was good, but I thought the execution was not O-so-good.  Mark (our pastor) didn’t think so either, the ribbons looked tooooo much like toilet paper, and this near halloween we decided to take them down.  So here are some shots of the finished product, taken this morning:

The first and last pictures are taken only a few minutes apart, you can see that daylight was fast upon me while I was taking these!  The second picture nicely shows the hand-painted banners we commissioned for the installation, and the third is just to give you a sense of scale.  The ceiling the tree is under is twenty-eight feet, six inches tall, so the tree is right around twenty nine feet tall (you’ll notice it is brushing the ceiling).

Having said that, it went in with remarkable ease.  I had lots of help!  Though you can’t see it, the tree is actually through the small trap door in the back of the platform and there are chains about fifteen feet up holding the tree to the wall.  Nice and secure is good, but it would be an exciting service if a tree fell over, wouldn’t it?

Our house is also coming along.  I have the walls largely roughed in, I have just a little bit of electrical work to do, and I have to move only one gas line (for the dryer, can’t do it until the new floor is ready to go), and then I can insulate and close in the walls!  It is very rewarding to work on this – this is by far the  most complicated plumbing design I’ve ever done.  In this around 150 square foot space there is:  toilet, bathroom sink, utility sink, washing machine, bar sink, all supply and drain for the second story.  That’s a lot of plumbing!  Now winter is coming and I need to get that back space insulated.

The largest thing on my mind presently is my father, who is very sick with cancer.  He is suffering, and at this point they are only trying to manage the pain and make him as comfortable as possible.  A week ago he was taken by ambulance to the hospital in Trenton, and then transferred to Kingston, because of his pain.  I just talked to him and to mom, they both sound encouraged, as dad is more comfortable, but things are still rough.  This is, from my own selfish perspective, even more painful to hear about as I simply can’t get there right now.

I want to be with my family.

Please pray for us all.