Been awhile since my last post. Things are great here. Charisa and I have somewhat busy looking for jobs, meeting people and goofing off.
This past Sunday we visited a Vineyard church. We really enjoyed it. It was nice to be with a group of crazy Christians. We chatted with the pastor and told him what we are up to as far as helping with the new church when it happens. He was very supportive and wanted us to keep in touch and let him know what he could do to help.
Also this past weekend we house/cat sat for our friend from Vashon Island, Scott and Ann. I have to admit, even though I was sneezing like crazy, it was nice to have a cat around again. He was a very friendly fellow. It was also nice to have the toilet and shower in the same building as our bedroom.
On the subject of living arrangements, our friend Bruce has offered to let us stay with him until we get our own place purchased. So we can move out of the sleepout on June 2 as we had hoped. It's been fun and a blessing, but it is time to say goodbye the little place. Bruce has been a huge blessing in so many ways. Not only is he letting us stay there, he has just been a good friend all around. We went to a home group that he has at his place on Wednesday night. They were over 30 people there! Thankfully he has a big house. Not only can it hold all those people, but we know he has room for us for the short term. And he has surround sound and a video projector. He likes movies a whole bunch.
Last night and all today it has been raining and extremely windy. Charisa and I had a a fitful night of sleep. The rain is very loud on the metal roof in the sleepout. I was waiting for the roof to peel back. It held though.
Tonight we will be attending our first rugby game. Hopefully we can understand well enough. The at he ticket place gave me a basic rundown and it is a pretty simple game. It will just take some time to learn some of the "finer" points of a rather scruffy, manly game. It should be fun, we got seats that are under cover thankfully.
Continuing progress is happening on the job front. I have spoken with three agencies so far. Two want to hire me but are waiting for a jobs to come online, the other just doesn't use people like me. I have many more to call and set up meetings with and I'll keep in touch with the other two.
Super amazing wife of mine blew away some folks on Thursday at the University of Otago's school of medicine. First of all, she has a great contact just like the photographer I know. Charlie is an American that works as a sales rep for big biosciences supply company, similar to Charisa's last job in the States. Charlie lives in Dunedin, a few hours South of Christchurch, and covers the South Island. So he knows everybody and everything that is going on in the research field in Christchurch. So he gave Charisa loads of info and names to start with. So, Charisa had two meetings yesterday. The first meeting was with a gal and she took Charisa and copies of her resume and they toured all the labs. Charisa met one guy that she really liked and he was doing some cool protein research with cardiovascular disease, right up Charisa's alley. He was completely dumbfounded that someone with her experience and skills just walked in off the street. He just kept saying "This just doesn't happen," over and over. He wants to hire here as soon as possible. He needs to some shifting of resources to make it happen though. If it does happen it will take a couple weeks. So that was just the first meeting. The second one went really well too. No job unofficial job offers though. The guy she met with pulled out all his contacts within the school and all over Christchurch and they went over who was doing what and who she should talk to first. I know some of you out there may thing this is just coincidental, but God would not have us come all the way here and hang us out to dry. What a ride so far! So be praying we both end up in the right places.
The photos are of my day on a photo shoot with Diederik for a wool clothing company. We went to Mt. Hutt, which is about an hour West of Christchurch. It was quite a little adventure actually. They wanted snow and is still early to find snow. So we drove all the way up to the ski area and then we had drive part way up one of the runs to get high enough for the snow. The weather was cooperative until about 1:00, then the clouds came in and completely socked us in. We had walked about 100 metres from the vehicles and it took a bit to find our way back. Then it was very interesting creeping down the mountain in the cars when we could only see about 5 metres ahead of us and there were very long steep dropoffs at the edge of the road. Once we got down we headed to Rakaia Gorge to get a few more shots. What a beautiful area! The fall leaves are nice and bright and the river and the cliffs, etc. Just wonderful! Diederik has been great for letting me hang out and learn more about pro photography and his contacts for work, but we really get along well and think we might become good friends in time. It's always good to have a big Viking alongside you. He's the guy on the phone and on the ground with the camera. It was fun driving out on the rivershore in the 4WD vehicles. Diederik believes that it is smoother to drive in the river than on the rocks along the shore. I think he just wanted to play in the water.
All in all a fun, productive and good week.
mark
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