‘What about Liana??’ #1: Building Community

I’ve been asked by many to post about what I’ve been keeping busy with these last few months. I don’t think blogging is something that comes naturally to me and I may have been procrastinating just a little from doing any posts thus far. However, I’ve finally worked myself up to it. Here we go.

There are four main things I’ve spent my time doing (aside from the things Jesse has already written about). In the interest of keeping these posts short I’m going to write about them one at a time.

When we arrived in St Andrews we were immediately drawn in to the community of people here. We had a wonderful stay with the amazing Watts family (Steve, Elissa, and Issac) our first week here and there were also many events held in September that allowed us to meet large numbers of people in a very short amount of time. The main one for me was a Saturday morning where I was able to meet many of the other wives who are here and learn about what goes on during the week in the community. I also began going to a Tuesday night small group of fellow St Mary’s women. This group quickly became a highlight of my week. Together we worked our way through the book ‘Resident Aliens: Life in the Christian Colony’. This book provided us with much to discuss but my favorite part of Tuesdays was always sharing about our weeks. It has been so life giving to hear from and share with other women here – partly because many of our struggles and praises are similar, but also because everyone genuinely cares about one another.

Christmas Day walk to the East Sands with the Watts! Steve, Elissa and Isaac

I haven’t really been working since we arrived (more on that to come) so I’ve had the opportunity to visit with others during the day while Jesse is at the office. Going for walks through the town, grabbing a coffee or just going over to someone’s house to visit has been so great. I’ve never had this kind of free time during the week and I’ve so enjoyed spending it one on one with a number of wonderful women.

Lovely Ladies. Rachel Brewer and Andrea Allen.

The other main way we’ve gotten to know people is having meals together. I was so excited to meet some people who share my interest in and love of all things food and cooking. Seeing as how I’m usually thinking about either cooking or eating, it was wonderful for me to meet others who understand and share this passion. Also, having people to commiserate with when I couldn’t find Kosher salt (and a good many other ingredients) has been a great comfort.

As the new year approaches and I look back on these first four months I find it hard to believe that I met many of the people we now consider close friends such a short time ago. I am grateful.

Christmas Away

You can't buy eggnog in the grocery store.*

Just one of the parts about Christmas in St Andrews that is making this year feel quite a bit different than those that have come before. This is the first Christmas that Liana and I have ever been away from home. Ever. For twenty-nine Christmases – and, more particularly, the eight we have had as a married couple – things have been much the same. We've attended the Christmas Eve service at Peace and followed (for the most part) the same rituals with our families over the course of December 24th, 25th, and 26th; driving between Richmond, Vancouver, Ladner, Langley, Abbotsford, White Rock, and occasionally even North Vancouver and Deep Cove to celebrate, exchange gifts, and eat with as many of our friends and family members as possible. We've always counted ourselves blessed to have had the majority of the important people in our lives living within an hour's drive of our front door.

Well, this year is certainly going to be a change.

We plan on attending a Christmas Eve carol service at Holy Trinity Church at 11:20 pm. We will spend Christmas morning together at our flat – just us and a batch of monkey bread – before heading over to spend the rest of the day eating, drinking, and making merry with the Watts family... who live a 10-minute walk away.

That's it. That's all the 'running around' necessary.

I'm sure there will be parts of this Christmas that we will find wonderful. It will certainly be more relaxed, and probably not nearly as tiring. It will be fun to spend this very joyous time of year with new friends, who are quickly becoming very special people to us. But right now... well, right now I feel much more aware of what I will be missing, for example:

• Singing Silent Night by candlelight in the Peace sanctuary
• Eggs Benedict with tomato and avocado at mom & dad's on Christmas morning
• The epic appetizer meal Christmas celebration with the Sportacks
• Whatever wines Gerry chooses to accompany the aforementioned meal
• Seeing what page-a-day calendar mom got me
• Seeing what awesome toy or trinket Laura snuck into my stocking
• Hanging out with the cousins... all of them
• Oma's zweiback
• Oma Pankratz's yams and cabbage rolls
• The orange in my stocking from Grama

All of a sudden I've become very aware that this might be coming across as a bit of a downer of a blog post. Not at all my intention! It's just odd, is all – knowing that none of this will be happening over the next few days. On the other hand, there is so much to look forward to and be thankful for:

• I'm pretty sure Liana and Elissa have been making plans for Christmas dinner for over a month, so chances are it's going to be pretty memorable. There's been a leg of lamb sitting in our freezer for a few weeks, waiting to play the starring role. Mmmmmmm...
• I've been eating more delicious Christmas cookies over the past while than I can count. (Liana. You need to not bake any more of them. They're too good.)
• Laura and Gerry get here in 6 days!!! It will be SO GOOD to have family here. We can't wait!
• We were sent our Sportack and Knickerbocker stockings in the mail, complete with gift-wrapped items to stuff them with. They've been hung (with care, of course... but not by a chimney), and we can't wait to open them!

• God is GOOD and his faithful and steadfast love has been shown to us in so many ways over the past few months. Reaching our first Christmas really does feel like a bit of a milestone. I think I'll save the reflective schmaltz about these first few months for a post in the New Year, but we have really begun to settle in here. God has provided us with a community we are enjoying being a part of, and we are thankful.
• God came to us in Jesus Christ! Emmanuel, God with us! 'The Word became flesh and blood, and moved into the neighbourhood. We saw the glory with our own eyes, the one-of-a-kind glory, like Father, like Son, generous inside and out, true from start to finish' (John 1:14). Alleluia!

We miss you all, friends and family, and wish you the merriest of Christmases. May the JOY of the heavenly hosts at Jesus' birth resound in your hearts this Christmas, and may you go into this new year filled with HOPE and much PEACE: for God is good, and his LOVE endures forever!

*The (very) positive side of the lack of grocery store eggnog is that it resulted in Liana making it here at home. I don't know if you have ever searched for eggnog recipes online, but you can either go the easy (and it seems to me kinda gross) route of mixing together raw eggs with milk, or the more complex and time-consuming route of making what is essentially a creme anglaise (a cooked custard-like sauce) with cream and egg yolks and spices and all kinds of deliciousness (including -- full disclosure -- rum and brandy). One guess which direction she took. YUM.

Our Third Expedition! Hadrian's Wall, York, and Manchester

In late September I heard that Liana's official favourite band (they are in my top 5, too), Mumford & Sons, was going on a UK tour this fall. Unfortunately, even though I was well prepared by being online 10 minutes before the tickets went on sale, hitting 'refresh' every 30 seconds, I was unable to get tickets to the Dundee (a 20 minute drive away) or Glasgow (an hour's drive or an easy train ride away) shows. The best I could do was Manchester – about a 5.5 hour drive from St Andrews. A bit of a long way to go just for a concert, we thought... so why not rent a car and make it into a holiday roadtrip? There's a long list of places we want to visit all over the UK, so we decided to make the drive worth it.

Rather than bore you with endless detail, let me just give you a brief outline of where we went and what we did. We decided that we would take three days and make two stops before Manchester. So we got up early last Saturday morning and drove south through Scotland, crossed over the border into England a few hours later, and spent the afternoon exploring Hadrian's Wall. This was something I really wanted to do, as I've had a keen interest in Roman history for a while now. We stayed at a B&B in the town of Hexham for the night. On Sunday morning we took off for the city of York. We spent a wonderful day there, primarily in and around the incredible York Minster, but also exploring what is a beautiful and charming town centre, with plentiful historic evidence of both its Roman heritage and medieval period. In fact, we enjoyed York so much that we didn't leave the next day until close to lunch. Then we made the drive west cross-country to Manchester where, after finding our hotel, we spent the afternoon wandering the city streets, exploring the John Rylands library, and stuffing ourselves at the Manchester Christmas market. That night was the concert, and it was fantastic. Tuesday morning we were on the road heading back north to Scotland. It was a wonderful trip!

Some of the highlights:

• Hadrian's Wall: As far as the experience goes, this was my favourite part of the trip, I think. I was especially pleased with the weather... which is odd, since it was freezing cold, windy, and wet. Visiting Hadrian's Wall on a clear sunny day would have had some charm, I'm sure, but the miserable, grey, wet mist seemed very appropriate for a defensive wall marking the northern boundary of the empire. After all, for the Romans this was practically the end of the world! The wall itself was pretty impressive, even though it only stands 3-4 feet tall now (as compared to its original 15-20 feet). To think about the labour it took to build this wall 73 miles from one side of the island to the other – stone by stone, foot by foot... it's quite something. Even though my feet were soaked, I really enjoyed walking up and down hills, on ancient stone paths, with Liana and no one else around (for most of the time). It was very memorable.

• The Sycamore Gap: OK, so for those who don't know, this is the site of a particular scene from the 1991 movie Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves. This was the hands-down favourite movie of me and Chris growing up, and I'm pretty certain I've seen more times than a select few people in the world. That said, I was SO excited to come upon this spot in the wall! I quoted extensively from the movie, and with Liana's encouragement/help tried to climb the tree to get a picture like Wolf (son of Little John, for those of you who don't know, who gets trapped up the tree by Sir Guy of Gisbourne, the Sheriff's cousin). Unfortunately it was too wet and slippery and there were no good hand/footholds anywhere. Still... so cool!!!

• York Minster: Undoubtedly my favourite part of York. I don't know how to do justice to this building with words. Pictures do the job a bit better, but they still fail to capture the impact of its size, beauty, and intricacy. If you've ever seen one of the famous cathedrals (I'm thinking of St Paul's in London, Chartres, Amiens, Notre Dame in Paris, Milan, etc.) you will know what I'm talking about. In my mind, no other man-made object in the world better exemplifies the adjective 'breath-taking'. It's almost overwhelming in its beauty and majesty, when you even begin to consider the work that went into it.

• Two highlights in particular from the minster:
• The Evensong: we attended the Evensong service, for which we were seated in the choir of the minster. It was a wonderful, worshipful, beautiful second advent service. The sound of the choir (the people singing, not the section of the church where we were seated!) echoing in the stone building was entrancing, and the experience of participating in holy worship in this place of such history was very special.

• The stained glass: Although the Great East Window, a stained glass masterpiece as large as a tennis court (!), was covered by scaffolding (it's undergoing restoration until 2018), there were several restored panes from it on special display. Being able to view these scenes up close was a special privilege, because it allowed the incredible detail in these works of art to be seen. Keep in mind that these were installed twenty, thirty, forty or more feet above the floor of the church, where the detail was completely unobservable by anyone. Why put such work in? This helped me begin to understand the intricate, detailed craftsmanship put into every square inch of this building. It is easy for me to look back on the wealth, opulence, and grandeur of the church throughout much of western history with scorn, disdain, and condemnation. And in part, I still think this critique is deserved. Yet those who dedicated their lives to such efforts, producing works of art the detail of which, for all they knew, would never be seen by another human, did so (at least in part) to the glory of God. This art was for them an act of worship!

• The Rylands Library Papyrus, aka P52, aka the St. John's Fragment: We had no plans to visit the Rylands Library - we just happened to pass it on our wanderings in Manchester, and since I'd read a blurb about it online we decided to take a look inside. What a great decision! Besides being a beautiful building, the Rylands Library has one of the largest special collections in the UK, including the Rylands Library Papyrus. Also known as P52, this is a small piece of papyrus which is the oldest known written fragment of the New Testament! Dating to ca. 125 AD, it has several lines from John 18:31-33 and 37-38 written on each side. I was very excited to get the chance to see this, since this little piece of papyrus has been influential in New Testament studies as an important piece of evidence in dating the Gospel of John and, for that matter, all the NT writings. Very neat stuff.

• The Spaetzle: We ate and drank a lot of good stuff at the Manchester Christmas Market: mulled wine, bratwurst, potatoes cooked with onions and covered in cheese sauce, spaetzle, and strudel. I think Liana would say the strudel was her favourite (it was apple – classic – and covered in vanilla custard... um, yeah, it was good) – but for me, it was the spaetzle: nicely sauteed (in butter, I assume), they then added in some cheese that got all melty and delicious, then topped it with fried onions and bacon. Yep. Cheese? Onions? Bacon? Carbs cooked in butter? Is it possible to go wrong with that combination?

• The Mumford & Sons Concert: Obviously! They put on a fantastic show, and Liana and I had a ton of fun. Favourite songs of the night? For Liana it was 'Lover of the Light', for me it was 'Roll Away Your Stone'... though that's a hard decision to make. They are an incredibly talented group of individuals, that's for sure.

• The A-7: On our drive home, we decided to take the A-7, the historic route to Edinburgh, through the area of southern Scotland known as the 'Scottish Borders'. Though it probably added close to an hour to our drive, it was worth it. It was some of the most beautiful scenery I've ever driven through, with sheep-covered hills, dark wooded forests, rivers, and small towns full of stone buildings dotting the route. If ever you have the chance to take this road, I highly recommend it!

We had a great time. It was wonderful to explore the isle of Britain a bit more thoroughly (we covered a lot of ground!), see some incredible sights, and have some great experiences. It is a blessing to be here in Scotland and have all this within several hours of our front door! I'll leave you with a few more of my favourite photos.

Crossing the border into England amidst snow and freezing wind.

Liana sits in the Nave, with the Great West Window behind her.
Note the 'Heart of Yorkshire' in the window.

The west front of York Minster in the setting sun.

Again, the Minster's western front, this time seen on approach –
I think this photo gives a better sense of the scale.

The Manchester Christmas Market, in front of Manchester City Hall, in Albert Square

Interior of the John Rylands Library

Happy Saint Andrew's Day!

Yesterday, November 30th, was the feast day of Saint Andrew. Seeing as how Saint Andrew is the patron saint of Scotland, it is also Scotland's official national day. What better place to be for the celebration than in St Andrews, Scotland*?

There were various celebratory events happening around town, but the big draw is the huge torch-lit procession, beginning at the West Port and winding its way through the streets of town down to the Old Course hotel. Liana and I joined a few friends and marched with the crowds of torch-bearing and Saltire (St Andrew's cross)-waving people, led by a large group of pipers dressed in full regalia.

Once we arrived in front of the historic hotel, the fireworks began! It was a pretty exciting show, and we were front and centre.

We tried to get a shot with fireworks going off in the background...
instead it just looks like our heads are exploding!

After the fireworks were finished, the crowd moved back into the town centre, dispersing to various locations and celebrations around St Andrews. A large group (including us and our friends) headed up to South Street, where the largest outdoor Ceilidh in the world was taking place! (If you don't know what a Ceilidh is, they're a big deal around here. Think a big group-dance event, analogous to square dancing, except Scottish dancing to Scottish music: take away the American twang and add a Highland brogue, and you'll get the general feel of things.) Now you know Liana and me - dancing? We were right in there! Just try to stop us! OK, not quite... but it was a lot of fun to watch, listen to, and experience.

After we'd taken in enough of the festivities (including strange groups of young people dressed in weird costumes with their faces painted, who wandered around the crowds shouting or singing, and then stopping and staring at random people...), we went off for pizza night at the Brewer household, which was great. They're good people!

We had a fun night. It was a marvellous experience to be able to take part in this Scottish celebration. And - one last note - if all goes according to plan (God willing), I will be walking across a stage and getting hooded in (as of today) exactly two years and three-hundred and sixty-four days. That's right - Saint Andrew's day is also the day for graduation ceremonies at the University. Soooo... I'd better get back to work!

*Well, OK. Little known fact: the feast day of Saint Andrew is also celebrated as the national day of independence in Barbados. So I guess it would have been pretty cool to be in Barbados yesterday too. You know... if you're into that kind of thing. Sun. Beaches. Tropical beverages.