Lockdown #2 – Day 4: Youth Convention

Lockdown #2 – Day 4: Youth Convention

It’s always a toss-up. For the French, it’s considered the National Youth Convention. Because it meets a need on a broader European level and typically attracts young people from our churches all around western Europe, it’s also known as, informally, as the European Youth Convention.

It too was impacted by the national lockdown, but thanks to technology… it was also a highlight of our weekend.

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GoodThings & Covid-19: #22

GoodThings & Covid-19: #22

So I’m a “day late and a dollar short” as the old expression goes.

I haven’t posted for the last few days and I don’t have it in me to try to catch up right now.

Internet has only been ‘hit n miss’ for the past week and today it’s completely ‘miss’. We’ve have zero internet all day (meaning I was unable to teach 3 classes by videoconference) and the service provider says that, in normal times, it can take 1-7 days to resolve the problem (and these are NOT normal times).

Umm… lockdown without internet could take things to a whole new level of crazy. Add to that that I’m composing this post on my phone, (hence why I’m not catching up… blogging by phone is not my cup of tea… my thumbs can’t take it!) 🙂

So… in the meantime, enjoy pictures of three good things… (1) a strawberry growing in the greenhouse (2) a pear tree in blossom in the yard and (3) home-made crocheted coasters to set coffee on… small comforts!



While your other activities are limited, read about the antics of teenagers on/around the Moncton-Buctouche Railway in the early 1920s.

Mckees Mills Railway

GoodThings & Covid-19: #21

GoodThings & Covid-19: #21

Today we got dressed for church, had music practice and worshipped… in our living room.

That’s been the pattern for the last several weeks. Strange but yet very new testament. On one hand it’s a privilege to go through this with the kids…. it gives them an example of what it’s like to live out faith when gathering AT church is not possible… and we can only gather AS the church. Oh the difference a preposition makes.

If there was ever a time when moms & dads needed to be mature enough to lead their kids… it’s now. No more relegating the task to Sunday School.

Before I start a sermon… I’d better get on to…

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GoodThings & Covid-19: #19

GoodThings & Covid-19: #19

While Coronavirus headlines have been grim in various parts of the world for weeks, there’s still been a feeling that it’s “elsewhere”. We’re not particularly hard hit in our part of France, for example (although we remain on strict lockdown like the rest of the country).

As news headlines back home in North America begin to offer up daily tallies of infections and deaths, where there may have been a sense of it being an “elsewhere” issue… it feels like that sense is fading.

All that makes it important for me to remember…

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GoodThings & Covid-19: #18

GoodThings & Covid-19: #18

French news is reporting that a shipment of facial masks, ordered by and destined for France, was redirected to the USA after US representatives on the ground paid 3-4x the previously agreed upon price, in cash, for the shipment.

As this crisis goes forward, what we’ve seen already in the form of panic buying (“Whatever I can get, great… for the next guy, too bad”) we’ll likely see more and more: “Every man for himself” … or in this case… every country.

There will be exceptions, for sure (I hope and I’m confident), but it’s all one more reason to focus on…

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GoodThings & Covid-19: #17

GoodThings & Covid-19: #17

OK, Corona got cancelled, you can return to your previously scheduled programming!

April Fools”

Is it considered poor taste to joke about that? I hope not. It is, after all, what everyone is waiting for and it IS better than putting an OXO cube or cool-aid in the shower-head nozzle after all (Now THERE’s an April fool’s prank, with credit going to Newfie friend Crystal (Huxter) Knowles – a very joke-y family).

Go ahead… try it… it could be one of someone else’s…

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