Easter

This picture has nothing to do with my post, but when I saw this bag while hanging with some friends in Gloucester recently, I immediately thought of my mother and had to take a picture of it. If you knew how much she loves doughnuts you would have done the same thing!

Easter here is a whole different game than at home. The schools here do their spring break around Easter, and actually call their two-week break “Easter break”. There’s a bank holiday on Good Friday and then another on Easter Monday, which makes for a four-day weekend generally spent gorging on chocolate and watching lots of TV. That’s pretty much what we did. We also went to a new mall in London called Westfield Centre which was all shiny and slick. It even had a Mexican restaurant that was as close to Mexican as I think you are likely to get over here. It was good, but mine’s better.

I spent Easter weekend with the Steeles and the Johnstons, my Portland friends in North London. I’ve known the Steeles since I was 8, when we first moved to Portland, and the former-Portlander Jonstons since 1991, when I first visited the UK (they've been here as missionaries from my old church since a few months before my family moved to Portland in 1983). It’s so great to have a second family all to myself when I’m so far from home. Their love and hospitality is truly a comfort and strength.

The weather has been so nice pretty much since I arrived the first week of March. I can count on one hand how many rainy days we've had! The past few days it's been nearly 60º here! I was fortunate yesterday to have a meeting with someone a few blocks from the South Kensington tube station, which meant a bit of being outside just when the day was the warmest and sunniest. It was so lovely! I’ve been in London seven times in the past six years, and once before when I was 16, but I still think it is one amazing city. Yesterday was one of those days that it really hit me. As I clicked down the road in my shiny red shoes, dodging double-decker busses, tourists, suited professionals and black cabs, I felt how incredibly blessed I am to be given the opportunity to spend a season of my life in and around this historic and cultural gem of a city. There’s no other place quite like it, and I can’t believe God really brought me here.