Daily Life

I'd like to take this post to share with you what our daily life Monday through Friday looks like.  You were told we were coming here to do missions work and many of your financially supported us, yet all we have been writing about on this blog is the touristy things we've been doing.

The main reason we haven't posted much about our weekdays is because they're less exciting for our reading audience and there's rather less to say about them.  Yet, it's vitally important that we share them with you as they are the reason we are here.  The touring around is a huge bonus, but it's not why we came.

Our daily schedule looks something like the following:

7:10am - alarm goes off

7:15am - we get up; I shower while Andrew does devotions, then we trade places

7:45am - we head downstairs to make lunches and eat breakfast

8:00am - we're out the door to work

8:30am - we begin work

12:30pm - lunch breaks

Sometime in the afternoon (between 1 and 4pm) - I arrive home from work

5:00pm - Andrew arrives home

6:00pm - dinner

10:30pm - bedtime

While at work, Andrew continues to work on the OpenPetra project at Operation Mobilisation.  This is an internal project that OM needs IT folks working on - currently the team has 8 members working full time on this project.  This program help organize the finances of this large missionary organization headquartered here in Carlisle.

I am working part-time with Langham Partnership.  In a nutshell, I'm doing data entry for them.  I have a large list of critiques of books on Christianity and theology in Africa.  I'm researching each book to find title, author, ISBN, whether its still in print, price, publisher, etc and entering all the information into Langham's database.  This will eventually be used to publish a fairly comprehensive resource detailing the works available for missionaries in Africa.  

Outside of work, we are participating members in the household where we're living.  Brian and Vivian Doub have been kind enough to open their home to us for two months.  We are renting a bedroom in their home and splitting cooking/cleaning responsibilities with them.  I typically cook a couple times per week.  We eat together on weeknights and each couple does their own thing for weekends.  Thursday nights, we are participating in a young adults Bible Study, Other evenings can be filled with a variety of other activities (dinner with other OM families, young adult get-togethers, etc).  

In our spare time, Andrew is keeping meticulous track of our financials (for those of you who financially supported us - again, thank you.  Your financial assistance is helping us pay for our daily life - rent, food, transportation, etc as well as home expenses that have continued - mortgage, insurance, utilities, etc.  We are using our own funds that we've saved up to do our weekend travels).

I have spent a good bit of time working through pictures we have taken and keeping this blog updated.  I have also done most of the planning required in order for us to take weekend trips (researching where to go, what to do, where to stay, etc).  I touched on this in an earlier blog, but I also have been making multiple trips to the grocery store each week.  Our closest grocery store is 1/2 mile from here, but I need to carry home whatever I purchase, so typically I only buy what I need to get through a couple days as that is all I can carry on one trip.

Below, are a few pictures from our daily life.  If you want to imagine what work looks like for us, just picture us working on a computer at a desk.  It's simply not as exciting to take photos of work as it is to take photos of Snowdonia, Llandudno, Hadrian's Wall, etc.

33 Currock Road - home for these two months (the tan painted windows on the right):

The row of houses where we live:

Although I will be happy to have a car to take grocery shopping when we return home, I do quite enjoy the walk (especially when it's not raining).  Here's a few photos I took on my way to the store:

(in the third picture, you can see part of a sign for Poundland, which is next to the grocery store.  The first time I went grocery shopping, I accidentally walked into Poundland first.  It's not a pet store, as you may think - it's the British version of the Dollar Store, and a pretty close comparison.  I was very glad to realize that this wasn't the grocery store!)

Here are two pictures of the room we are renting:

We hope this gives you a better idea of what our lives look like Monday through Friday!