Today is Pentecost Sunday. We celebrate the birth of the church. The disciples experienced the Holy Spirit like wind and fire coming into their lives. The spirit is aways hard to pin down and I am reminded to the old saying, "We can not control the wind but we can adjust the sails." My first week of ministry in Deloraine, Tasmania has been one of making many sail adjustments. We have moved to our home for the next six weeks. It is a lovely older home and it is heated by wood. Bruce has to get up every night and put another log on the fire and of course have wood and kindling ready to go in the morning. Electricity is very expensive so driers are not very common and we hang our wash to dry. The clothes need to go out very early in the morning when it is quite nippy out and I can see the steam rise from the clothes as I hang them up.
Another way we have had to adjust is with the language. In the Pentecost story the disciples are able to prophesy in the different languages of those present at the Pentecost festival. Here in Tasmania we are all speaking in English but sometimes I don't feel that we are all quite on the same page. I thought I would offer some of the language differences. If you are driving you don't yield but give way, there are no passing lanes on the highway they are overtaking lanes, a traffic circle is a roundabout, your car does not have a wind shield but a wind screen, here there is not a season called fall only autumn, students do not skip class they wag class, at the grocery store you don't push a grocery cart but a grocery trolley and when you go camping it is in a caravan not a trailer.
Life here is not all work and we took a day trip down to a small community called Penguin. From November to March the penguins are in the area as this is where they have their babies. Right now they have made the long trip to the Antarctic for the winter. We also stopped in another community called Latrope and here their was a very quirky store that sells almost everything and most of the wears were on mannequins dressed like court jesters!! On a pond on the edge of Deloraine we have discovered a flock of Back Swans. These are very beautiful birds just like their white cousins. There is a beautiful trail in town that follows the Meander river and is great place for a quiet walk.
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