Weekends, rain - and edits!

Now it is Tasmania's turn. Rain plus rain equals floods.
This has to be a brief post today - even though it is raining still and cosy inside! Just wanted to share how blessed Ray and I are - well we are always blessed but some days it is just more obvious than others. Ever feel like that too?
Last weekend Ray and I had a busy but relaxing weekend.

We had an early start on Saturday because we went to the Launceston's library book sale. Last year over $10,000 was raised by this annual event by the Friends of the Library. As soon as the doors were opened at 9am the crowd of people swarmed in and the piles of books rapidly disappeared from the many tables in the large hall.

Local published authors are invited to display and hopefully sell their books also. This certainly makes many readers realise we do exist!
My fellow members and friends of the Socity Women Writers Tasmania had the table next to myself and another friend - whose photo I do not have - sorry Margaret Muir, whose beautiful books are multi-published by Robert Hale!


After the book sale Ray and I drove over to the east coast of Tasmania to St Helens where we have not until now been able to visit. The churches where Ray had been invited to speak do not currently have a minister so we stayed in their comfortable manse for two nights. This was a very relaxing, cosy time for us as it has been really busy in recent weeks. I am so sorry I don't have photos to share with you this time of the awesome forests, the beautiful coast line, but we do highly recommend a visit tp this beautiful area.
Ray preached at a church at St Helens and at Fingal on the Sunday morning and when we were leaving St Helens late on Monday morning it was just starting to rain. And it is still raining and raining and raining!

It was a slow drive along the winding, mountainous road from St Helens to Scottsdale. We had one special "blessed" few moments when a vehicle coming towards us did not manage a bend and slid on the slippery road across into our lane, tilted over so the front and back wheels were off the bitumen. Even as Ray hit our brakes and we both said, "it's going over," the front drivers side anchored into a soft mound of dirt only inches from the forest and they jolted to a stop on all four wheels. Another foot or so and they would have slammed into some of those huge tree trunks we had been admiring! No one was hurt and they managed to back off the mound and went on their way. "If" they had been going faster, "if" we had been going faster, "if" we had left St Helens a few minutes earlier it could have been a very nasty accident for both of us. Good is God!
On the news this morning we are hearing of several towns like Fingal we drove through being cut off yesterday by flooded roads. This morning we are very grateful to be home safely - even if it is still raining and the visitors from Sydney we are expecting will need to take extra care on the roads. A fellow published author, Jo-Anne Berthelsen, and her husband arrived on the Bass Strait ferry yesterday morning and we haven't heard yet if it was a very rough crossing. Jo-Anne is the main speaker at the Baptist Women's Ministry conference Friday evening and Saturday. I am also involved at the conference so another busy weekend - but not as relaxing for me this time

And what about those edits? Late last Friday evening the edits I have been waiting and waiting for my Justice at Baragula arrived back from the publisher so now I am hard at work on them. This morning was a frustrating one because our landline phone is not working. Telstra, our phone company, says there is a fault on the line. They have diverted all calls to our mobile phone and no serviceman can come until next Monday!

And just as I typed that the mobile phone rang and Jo-Anne and her husband have car problems and had to return to Launceston with the help of the RACT!
My, what a few days! Hoping your day is not the same!