Movin' On Up

After quite a busy weekend, I am taking the day off to catch my breath a bit. Friday afternoon, my colleague Laurent and I drove down to Marseille to move our offices finally up to Bordeaux. It’s a six hour drive, and without air conditioning in the truck, we drove at night to avoid the heat. We arrived in Marseille at 2:00 AM, where I managed five hours of sleep before we had to start the packing up and moving. A few men from a local church came to help us load up, so we were able to finish in a matter of hours. The majority of the load was our Arabic Bible inventory, so the boxes were quite heavy. I was so worn out by the time we finished, and we still had a six hour drive back to Bordeaux, arriving again at 2:00 AM.

Yesterday at our brand-new building, we unloaded everything, again with the help of a few guys from a church nearby. We just stocked everything in an empty room, since the electricity isn’t on in the building yet. It will probably be another month before we are ready to have a “grand opening.”

Our colleagues from Marseille, Charles and Weléli arrived also over the weekend, with their own moving truck to unload. I was thrilled to see them; they are some of my closest friends in France. I invited them to my apartment last night for dinner—they’d been eating sandwiches for three days. We had such a good time, just sitting on the couch chatting, since we were basically too tired to do much else!

Comments

Ben Rainey said…
Glad you made it in one peice. Sounds like fun! It's 100 degrees today in your native land. So I'm sure we'll all do our bit of sweating.

My computer is fixed, so I'll be posting soon.
8:58 AM
Dad said…
Yo Ho, Heave Ho. I hope the night driving did help with the temp. How was the "get out of town for vacation" traffic?

As your brother notes; 100 today with heat index at 110-111. 103 for tomorrow with corresponding high humidity influenced index near 115.

Did the friends find a place nearby? Hopefully more fellowship to come. I'm a firm believer in couch-sitting.
9:06 AM
Ariel Rainey said…
I think that's the fastest I ever got comments. I just posted like 20 minutes ago! The traffic wasn't too bad, a 30 minute back up on the way down, but that was it. Actually, my friends are living in the new building. It has an apartment in it on the side of the building that the French Mission Headquarters owns. Its kind of a "on site security" thing-- meets a need on both sides, really.
9:34 AM
Ariel Rainey said…
I took that on the way home from Ellis' wedding, with Corie sitting behind him giggling silently. Glad you got the pics.
3:01 AM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A lot of work for cheap bookshelves!

Continuing the “catch-up” on old posts . . . Feb. 25, 2006 I thought you would enjoy the (mis)adventures of my day today. I had the day off of work, so I decided to go to Ikea to get some bookshelves. Ah, the beauty of a plan! Are you also one of those people with a “to-do list,” evenly checked or crossed off, that keeps you on track? My whole life seems in order when I have that piece of scrap paper in hand, telling me what to do next! So this morning, I was up, ready and out the door by 9:00AM. Ikea is six or seven exits up the beltway, so it’s about 20 minutes. I was actually early. They opened at 10:00 AM, so I sat in the car and made a grocery list, because I have no food in the house (having been gone all last week). In fact, I had so little food, I had to eat French pastries for breakfast (the only store open yesterday was the corner bakery). Now, I know you are thinking, “French pastries? Poor Ariel!” But really, I don’t like to eat them for breakfast because they ...
Read more

Ethan Allen Faith in an Ikea World

Image
I had a conversation with my brother recently, while moving furniture, that Ethan Allen furniture is really great stuff. It's built to last forever, and it's worth the high price. Unfortunately, most people can't afford to decorate their entire home in one fell swoop from expensive furniture stores, so half of their furniture is hand-me-downs, a few pieces are high quality, and a few pieces are from places like Ikea. You can only afford to do so much at one time, and when you first move into a new home, you need things immediately--beds to sleep in, tables to eat on. You get what you need at the moment. The problem is that you get what you pay for; buying furniture from Ikea means you'll have to replace it in about three years. In the past few months, I've dealt with a few things spiritually that have been difficult for me. I was praying this weekend about it, and I questioned God about these particular trials. I was reminded of my furniture conversation. My faith ...
Read more

The Shadow Proves the Sunshine

Image
I have a commute to work every day. Until our office moves in a few weeks, I continue to drive thirty minutes to work and thirty minutes back. I spend that time either deep in thought—once I even missed my exit—or singing at the top of my lungs. I suppose it depends on my mood. I try to redeem the time by listening to French music, learning through musical osmosis, if you will. But sometimes I take a break and this week I am listening to Switchfoot ’s second album, Nothing is Sound . My brother and I are both fans of Switchfoot, and we spent some time over my vacation discussing the merits of our various favorite songs. Until this week, I wouldn’t have said much about the song, “The Shadow Proves the Sunshine.” It’s got a fairly singable melody, but it wasn’t one that jumped out at me. However, this past week, I was reading Psalm 22, which starts with “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” One of the most famous quotes of Jesus as he was dying on the cross, this reference stayed ...
Read more