Augustine once famously said that all humans have a God-shaped hole in them. I have recently developed a family-shaped hole. Tracy and Annabel are in Cape Town, they just made it before the volcano cloud. When I dropped them at the airport, all the flights north were already cancelled. So let's pray for some favourable winds in the next week or so, so that they can come back on schedule. Annabel was great on the flight, not really crying, and coping well with all six the takeoffs and landings. The grandparents and great-grandparents are very happy to have her there, and it sounds like they are having a roaring time with friends and family. The photo is one I took with skype, hence the poor quality.

I am stuck in Helsinki because of the volcano, I was meant to travel to a conference this morning, but no planes took off. So instead of one week at a conference and one week at home alone, I now have two weeks at home alone. So far it has been ok, considering the circumstances, but it might get long. The plan is now to work as much as I can, and I have been trying - there is not much else to do...

Spring is sort of arriving, there is not a lot of snow left, only in places where it was heaped to get it out of the way. Nothing much is growing yet and although little buds are starting to form on the smaller plants, everything is still very brown. The temperature has also not been much above 10 yet, and I was thinking of going camping with some of my free time, but when I was walking to my office in the cold I realised that it might not be such a good idea. I'll wait a month or two.

I have recently signed up to Spotify, and it has been worth every cent. There is so much good music on there, and since I no longer have my CD's with me, it has been a real blessing. If you are also a member - search for the Bluegrass Worship Band, I really enjoy them at the moment. They re-imagine current worship hits in a Bluegrass style, it is quite fun.

We had a great weekend away with Willem, Hanna-Leena and her extended family in Paltamo, like we did last year. It was quite a bit warmer this year, and the skiing was not nearly as good as last year. In fact, we had much better skiing in Helsinki than up there. But we had some great conversations, and some amazing meals. It was a real blessing to have a bit of a rest, and we came back tired from the long journey but refreshed from the good company.

Flying home and reading books

So the big news is that Annabel has got her birth certificate, yay! We went on Wednesday to pick it up, and also got her a temporary passport. So Tracy will be travelling to South Africa between 15 and 29 April, to spend time with her parents, family and friends in Cape Town. She is very excited and we booked her tickets in this last week. After the disappointment of not being able to go in January, this will be a real blessing. I decided not to go, in order to save a bit of money, and then we are planning to do a proper holiday in December, where we will also go to KZN to see our friends there. As it turned out though, Paul and Shannon, and Sue, and Carol will all be in Cape Town during that time. Anyone else wanting to join...?

I will be attending a conference in Sweden at the same time, presenting my proposal at one of the sessions, and hopefully getting some good feedback. The town where I am going has a NewFrontiers church, so I'll try and hook up with those guys while I am there.

My supervisor from Oslo was here this last week, and he was very happy with the work I have been doing on my literature review, and was very encouraging. It was good to hear some positive feedback, and that I am still on the right track.

I ordered some books from the Rabbit Room (see link on the right) with money that Tracy's folks gave me for my birthday. So we have been furiously reading together, because they are really good. I can highly recommend 'The Fiddler's Gun' by A.S. Peterson and the Wingfeather Saga by Andrew Peterson. The first is a historical novel set during the American Civil War, and deals with some big issues, most importantly - redemption. The second is a series of fantasy books, related to the Narnia series in intention, and is really fun. When we get into it, not much else gets done, and we spent this last weekend reading to each other almost non-stop. (If you are in Helsinki and looking for a good book, let us know.)

Annabel has been learning to sing. I found that she enjoys when I slide up from low to my falsetto voice, and then she started imitating me. So we have little vocal warm-up sessions that are really cute. She has given her first full-bellied laugh, and is experimenting with moving around by kicking her feet against anything that provides traction. It will be interesting once she figures out how to crawl, and I am thinking we should not encourage this development at all.

We have been baking a lot of bread using the Sullivan Street Bakery recipe and a terracotta flowerpot. Here is a photo of one of the beauties. It is really simple, and so delicious to have fresh bread, although you have to plan a little bit because it needs to rise for 12-14 hours. We are now trying to find a similar recipe that will work for whole wheat flour, and will report our results later.

Ouma, ice hockey and jinglebells

We had a visit from my mom, henceforth known as ouma, for ten days at the end of January. It was really good to have her here. I went to work most days, since I had an examination to prepare for, and she and Tracy held the fort. It snowed for all except one day while she was here, and the world was a snowy wonderland. She was a very willing babysitter, and we were able to go skiing together, we went to bible study without Annabel, and even went to a restaurant. It was the first time I have ever seen Springbok meat sold for less than beef. The prices were really obscene, at least by SA standards, but we had a lovely time together. Even Annabel was sad when ouma had left. The whole day after she was gone, Annabel would make these little sighing noises and look sadly out the window. While ouma was here Annabel started learning to hit the little bells that are attached to her mobile. She has subsequently recorded the first track of her upcoming CD, entitled Atmosbellic. If you are interested I can send a small sample of her work...

My friend Lari invited me to go and play ice hockey with him and some friends, like you would get a touch rugby invite in SA. My skating is ok as long as I am going straight forward at a moderate speed. Anything other than that spells difficulty if not disaster. So when you play ice hockey you have to concentrate on what the puck or ball is doing and how the stick is controlling this, which left me with little brain power to control the skating part. Needless to say, I was constantly picking myself up off the ice, and near the end managed to whack my head on the ice. I have a newfound respect for ice hockey players, and can understand some of the anger they display towards their opponents - it must be a way of letting off steam from all those frustrating falls they had while they were learning the game.

Tracy and Sini went pulka sliding again, today is officially Laskiaistiistai - sliding downhill tuesday. The idea is to go downhill on anything that will slide on snow, which is just about anything. Afterwards you are supposed to eat pea soup, sweet buns and hot chocolate. I think it is the Finnish version of festive carnival before the fasting of lent, slightly understated, as with most things Finnish.

Frozen trees and praying

There is a weather phenomenon called 'frozen fog' that we have experienced this last week. Basically I think that fog rolls in from the ocean, much like it does over the Natal midlands, but then gets surprised by a nasty -17 degrees mainland, and goes into shock. Before it has time to wet its proverbials, everything is frozen and it carries on as usual. But whatever it comes into contact with gets covered in a fine layer of ice crystals. When it snows, the trees get these heavy lumps of white on any part that has sufficient surface to hold a bit of weight, but this just coats everything. It is spectacularly beautiful. I sometimes saw white plastic christmas trees in shops in SA, and always wondered at how fake you could get - why not luminous pink or ultramarine, while you are at it. But now I understand that they were trying to copy this.

We have just finished a week of prayer and fasting with our bible study group, and had a great

time praying with our friends. Instead of normal bible study, we spent the evening praying for the group and each other, and then also had a night of prayer on Friday. We really hope that we can do this more regularly, there is no real culture of prayer here, and the church prayer meeting consists of three guys who meet every week.

My mom is coming to visit next week, which we are excited about, since we were not able to go home and see all the other family. We are hoping to make a plan about when we can go soon, but are still waiting on an ID number for Annabel before we can really start thinking about it.

We have been skiing as often as Annabel allows it. Tracy needs to feed her and then go, while I take care of the hour and a half she is away. It is really fun, and we have found some nice tracks around the area we live, through the forest. I was thinking of the scene in the Narnia book last time I went skiing, where the little girl first arrives in Narnia and she comes to a place in the forest where there is a lamppost. It felt like I was in the Narnian forests.

Christmas, New Year and Travels

We have had an amazingly frustrating 4 weeks with regards to our travel plans. Annabel needs a South African ID number and passport, and a Finnish visa/residence permit in order to travel. To get all these things properly would take about 9 months. Unfortunately we had planned to travel to SA, our plane left last week, in fact. But we had hoped that we could get a temporary passport and a quick issue re-entry visa, which, in theory, should take a little more than a week. Unfortunately the embassy sent our application for an ID number a little later than immediately, and then Home Affairs lost the application. This we discovered after Tracy's parents and their friends spent the best part of 3 days on the phone. We found a very helpful man, who discovered that the whole diplomatic bag was lost. So he said that we could re-send the application to him and he would take it down to the ID department personally. So we sent all the documents that the embassy told us to have. He then found that we also need our birth-certificates ??? Isn't Home Affairs the place I should go if I want a re-issued birth certificate? Surely they can check on the system? Anyway, mine is in a box somewhere in Hilton, but we managed to find a copy of Tracy's and sent that off. So now we are waiting to hear from him again if that is enough.

So the short of it is that our trip has been postponed. :(

Sorry if you had planned to see us, we will have to make another plan, there is always room in our flat here...

We spent Christmas eve with Simon and Sini, who cooked us a traditional Finnish Christmas meal, it was truly delicious, and we had a lovely time decorating their tree and chatting. We also went with Willem and Hanna-Leena to a little cottage about 3 hours from here for New Years eve.

We were invited long ago, but thought that we would be flying to SA, so then we re-invited ourselves and joined them on short notice. It was great to get our minds off the dissapointment. We spent lots of time playing board games, sledding and in the sauna. We went from the 90 degrees of the sauna to roll in the snow at -21. I think that is quite an impressive temperature differential. The other friends who we spent time with there grew up in the town. Her family have been farming the same farm since before 1630 - take that Jan van Riebeeck!

It has been truly freezing here since Christmas, with temperatures very rarely going above -10, and as low as -24. We have been cross-country skiing a lot, there are some tracks in the park just over the hill, and you can follow them for kilometers, if you had the fitness. I joined Thomas and some other friends this morning for a lovely ski in a big centre. There are lots of uphills and downhills, and we completed a circuit of about 7 km. Milla has promised to take Tracy soon.

A family pic

We caught Annabel in one of her very happy moments! She gives the biggest smiles when she's fed, got a clean nappy, is not tired and has no tummy troubles... that's at least once a day!

Getting out and about

Tracy's grandfather very generously offered to buy us a pram before Annabel was born, and what a blessing the 4x4 has been! We've pulled it through knee-deep snow, over icy paths, on the trains and busses, and around town. In all situations it seems to manage well, and Annabel sleeps like an angel all cuddled up inside. The lower 2 pics are in the park close to our flat, in which we go walking quite a bit. The last few days, however, there's been A LOT of snow, and the paths haven't been cleared so well. That makes for a very energetic walk for whoever is pushing.

Above is a Christmas market - the outing for that day. The Christmas atmosphere all over the city is quite warm, with loads of lights, and you don't have to go far to find a cup of warm Glogi (spiced fruit juice with raisins and almonds).

Also above, is Annabel parked on the side of a relatively big slope, waiting for mom and dad to have a slide on a Christmas sled :) Below is the evidence... what fun!