Zambia Mission Fund Canada

THE CALDER CLAN

                            Report from the Calders

            Dear friends and family, greetings to you all!  We are readily approaching the end of the year.  We are already talking of our lives and planning the next five months.  When we arrived back in May we, or mainly Sue, decided that it was too late to prepare for the children’s annual Student Convention, and so we would give it a miss this year.  The boys accepted that decision, but Miss Emily, who had been practicing her dance for a year, was disappointed.  Some of our home school families were also disappointed.  So together we decided to participate.  Then it was panic stations for the boys.  They independently came up with a metal work project each.  Josh also chose to make soap.  Sue told all three kids that they had do something of an academic nature, which was not pleasing to their ears.  Emily and Daniel choose Bible Bowl.  They were asked questions from several books in the Old and New Testament.  Josh chose to compete in spelling.  They were given a list 16 pages of words that we do not ordinarily use.

Newsletter

February 5/08

We determined a number of trips ago that a crucial element when travelling is a sense of humour.    Today it was especially necessary.

Plan “A”, our well-thought out departure, was to catch an afternoon ferry to Vancouver for our evening flight to London.    We didn’t even consider that there might be a problem with this plan, until we heard the evening news the night before predicting strong afternoon winds.    When living on an island, strong winds often mean ‘cancelled ferries’.   Plan “B” was quickly hatched – we would take an earlier ferry and slip across the water before the wind arrived.    Jordan and Cherie were our chauffeurs and helped us load luggage into the vehicle and away we drove to the ferry terminal.    The time for loading came and went and we sat in the car waiting and wondering – never suspecting that the strong winds we planned to slip ahead of – slipped ahead of us!    Oh dear.    Cell phones out….quick thinking…..we still have not left Vancouver Island and we are onto “Plan C”.   The airport.    Suitcases swing out of the back of the vehicle and onto two trolleys and we discover that our six suitcases are, in fact, five!   “Did you get the one by the piano?”   “There was one by the piano??”