MY JOURNEY SINCE LAST AUGUST (Part One)

I wonder how many times over the years I’ve said something like, ‘Where has all the time gone?’ The older I get the faster ‘time’ rushes by. I just checked back and to my horror realised it is nearly four months since I posted a blog here that was not a review of a fellow author’s book.

So much has happened since then I hardly know where to start. Last August here, I renewed some old memories of the wonderful American Christian Fiction Writers conference Ray and I were so privileged to share. Some of my Aussie writer friends were off to this year’s conference so I had to get out some of my old photos. Since then I have tried to keep my Facebook friends up to date on some of my journey. Today am sharing more, including photographs I hope tell more of our time with family, old friends and making new friendships. As always though, we did miss taking photos of some events.

It was a busy time over several months organising our six week trip on the mainland for September and October. Thankfully at the very beginning of our travels neither of us were sea-sick this time on the Spirit of Tasmania ferry to Melbourne. We drove up to Queensland from Melbourne through the inland, back home down the coast from Brisbane to Sydney and then inland again back to Melbourne. By the time we arrived home to our lovely Tasmania, we had travelled 5,124 kilometres and did take some time of course to recover!

First stop Melbourne and a much needed rest with our daughter who took us to the beautiful Rhododendron gardens in the Dandenong mountains:

 

 

 Then we drove through Victoria, stopping at Christian bookshops in towns on the way up to Central West New South Wales to Orange. We once lived in this beautiful city where two of our children were born and where we commenced a new church. Couldn't resist taking a photo of this house. This was the old church manse we lived in and where the first meetings of the church began way back in 1968.

 

 

During those years I was on the committee which commenced the first Christian bookshop in Orange. It was a wonderful privilege to do a book-signing in the shop now known as Pilgrim Christian bookshop.

We stayed with the current minister and his wife, lovely John and Patricia Shuttleworth. 
Ray preached at their Sunday service where we were delighted how many folk filled the chapel and how many bought our books too of course. It was a great time renewing friendship with some old friends still there as well as seeing how God has blessed and grown the ministry of the fellowship we helped commence. We had a lovely evening with the Abel family. My, how the numbers there have grown oven these many years.

 

 

 

Out next overnight stop was Tamworth where we renewed memories again with special friends we had known in Maitland in the Hunter Valley. Merrilyn and Glenn Rose.

 

 

 

Our friends organised a meeting for us. Again wonderful to meet old friends not seen for too many years. I roped Ray in at this meeting to share also about how he had at last given in to his wife's nagging - oops, encouragement of course! - to write devotional books. As well as his first self-published 'Neurotic Rooster', Ray now has four of his themed 31 Day Devotional Book series published by Wombat Books in their Even Before Publishing division. 'Dynamic Ageing' is scheduled for release this coming February and his 'Signpost To Happiness' in May. 


It was in Tamworth we became concerned about
a lesion on Ray's face that was getting worse instead of better from his Tasmanian doctor's treatment.

It is so wonderful to look back and see how God was in control of our scheduling on this trip. That lesion turned out to need urgent treatment....

But that will have to be told in my next blog post:-

                         MY JOURNEY SINCE LAST AUGUST - PART TWO  



THE JOURNEY THROUGH ANOTHER YEAR

 Well, this Thursday post is late once more and the last one for 2011.

Twelve months ago, this past year was about to begin.How have you journeyed this year? How many hills and valleys have you had to navigate?

Did your world seem bright, an adventure waiting out there?

                                                                                                                                                             
And then did the journey seem daunting?


Not so much colour and you so small?





Each year as we prepare our Christmas letter, it never ceases to amaze me as we list some of our own hills and valleys just how much has happened in the past months. We are thankful this last year did not contain too many valley experiences. However, as we get older so do our friends and families.

My Uncle Reg and my son's father-in-law died this past year. Even today is the funeral of a friend from our Maitland days. Sylvia McGregor-Skiner was a beautiful woman within and without. For several years she was the Director of Nursing at our local state church's Nursing Home where Ray was the chaplain.

One thing we did not write about in our annual letter is the valley of these last days from just before Christmas when our five grandchildren were diagnosed with whooping cough. They are still not all out of the woods with that horrible disease and have more days on another antibiotic which we trust will work better for them all.

And those hill-top experiences? Thankfully there have been more of those than the valleys. After years of trying to convince my dear husband that his devotional meditation writings need to be published so other besides myself can be blessed and challenged by them, his first two books have been released and the response to them has been very good. His book for adults about God's take on children was short-listed in the CALEB award and he presented his first writer's workshop at the Word Writers Fair in Brisbane this year.

We have thought of ourselves as being a "team" during these forty-seven years of marriage and ministry together. I am just so thrilled that now Ray is also sharing the delights - and challenges - of being a published author! I so enjoyed having the book launch of my own last book, Justice at Baragula, shared with the launch of Ray's two devotional mediatations.

We also share book-signings together which have proved to be great fun times.

Now we are looking towards anothe new year journeying together. Where will it take us?
Will the valleys become deep chasms?
Will those hill-tops also be mingled with mountain-top experiences?

So many times we do need that help along the journey.

I simply cannot express it any better than Ray has in the following:

THE JOURNEY'S END

The journey we travel in this life

Brings its happiness and strife

We leave our faint histories

Of failures and victories

And to all but our Maker

The journey is a mystery

For He alone knows

The joys, fears and blows

Felt, yet unexpressed

In the heart suppressed.

The journey we travel in this life

Can bless or cut as a knife

And many a wound or scar

Has our spirit marred

Seen only by the Creator!

He has heard our silent cries

Counted the constant sighs

Seen doubt and faith wrestle

For our soul’s mastery

In time and for eternity!

The journey we travel in this life

Where spiritual darkness is rife

Is challenged by Christ’s light

To walk by faith not sight.

Here our choices there abide

From which we cannot hide

Before the throne of God!

But do we stand alone

Rejected, out of favour

Or accepted, with our Saviour?

                                                                                        © Raymond N. Hawkins July 2011

Book signings and Hotel Rooms

I really was going to tell you about our book-signing in Hobart last Friday, but simply have to include Ray's take on sharing the accomodation with...well, me of course!
But first, the book-signing.

It is about a three hour drive south to Hobart, the capital city of Tasmania, but as always Ray and I enjoyed the drive despite the very cold day. We arrived there on Thursday evening and the next night after the book-signing, it even snowed on Mt Wellington which looms over this beautiful city on the shores of the wide Derwent River. We did not really enjoy the cold winds off that mountain though and were glad we had a cosy hotel room in the city centre - but more of that later!

Robyn, the manager of Koorong and her capable assistant, Amy, looked after us very well and I think they would have been happy enough with the number of folk who bought our books. The book trailers for my three Baragula books were playing on their TV in the shop and of course we had some goodies for customers to nibble on. Ray and I were delighted to have friends from the area call in and especially one couple, Harold and Jill, originally from Sydney we had not seen for many years.

But I think that might be enough about the book-signing but I do want to share Ray's rather cheeky thoughts on our accomodation  - and his wife - while away from home. He has called it:-

                                Motel and Hotel Rooms Test Relationships

Most motels Mary and I use only have one room with the necessary little room. They are usually neat, tidy and provide coffee or tea and if you are lucky, a couple of biscuits. However, there isn’t any escape for you, especially in the evenings and in unpleasant weather when you lose control of the channel changer.

What can you do when your wife wants to watch a soap opera or serial far beneath your acceptance level (especially when you want to watch the sport or cartoons). You can retire to a chair and read but how can you concentrate on the word puzzle with all the T.V. racket blaring out?

Night comes and bed calls but one of you reads before sleep and rises later than the other. How can you boil water without waking the sleeping hunk or cutie so as to cope with the sunrise?

All these traps to a healthy, happy relationship never seem to be mentioned in pre-marriage manuals or counselling sessions. If unresolved before the car starts up for the next leg of the journey it may well cause a chill in the car even on a blistering hot day.

The little room in the motel does offer some respite, but even there you can be disturbed. The answer may be ear plugs and eye patches. Better still mutual grace and compromise creates a warmth far better than any electric blanket. I’d like to adapt the words of Amos 3:3 to suit this blog. Can two endure a motel room unless they are kind to each other.

I have to admit, Mary and I have shared many a hotel room over the years and rarely has there been a chill in the car the next day. She’s nice! (And anyway there was the little room for me to do the word puzzle.)

Ray, writing from the little room.

Well, I did warn you he was being cheeky, but I hope it has given you a smile as it did me - I promise!

On the Sunday, Ray was the preacher at a church at a town called Sorell, east of Hobart. Most of you know that Tasmania was originally settled as a convict settlement and has many interesting historical places. The photos of our room in this town were taken in a cottage part of Sorell Barracks that go back to 1827. Couldn't resist the photos, but it was Ray's turn to utter those interesting but sleep depriving sounds during the night. Mmm...he was nice about it though!

You can see we do have a lot of fun together - including book-signings and hotel rooms!.