Everyday life

Some things I've been up to of late.......

With the excuse of taking the new car on a celebratory road trip, Katelynn and I drove to Niagara Falls. The falls were beautiful, ferocious and awesome. The tourist area around the falls was very expensive, tacky and busy. Niagara on the lake was nice though. I also went to Toronto to visit my friend Paul and we went to a Korean BBQ restaurant, which was a table with a small hot plate in the middle and an unlimited supply of meat and fish to grill. Amazing.

My work is going well, as with a lot of tech jobs, it will take a while to get on top of everything, and I'm sure in 2 years time I will still be asking questions to my colleagues. Nonetheless it's going good and they're starting to hand over to me clients to manage. I'm hopefully doing some travel soon within Canada which will be fun.

I'm now getting to know Kitchener, and figuring out where everything is. Kitchener/Waterloo is the size of Bournemouth. Driving on the other side of the road is more or less second nature now.

Katelynn and I are heading to England for a visit this Christmas. It's going to amazing to see friends and family again, but will also strange. It's strange because I'm noticing Kitchener is beginning to feel like home...

3 months later

Firstly, below is my new car. A 2006 Nissan Altima. 2.5 litre, 175bhp. It's a lot of fun!

Now that things are settling a bit (for the moment) I've had some time to look back on this whole experience so far. There have been things which were expected, a number of things not. I certainly underestimated how much I would miss my family and friends, that certainly has been the hardest part, and still is every time I skype my family.

There were some lessons in patience. It took 2 months to get a job, which looking back on it is not much and is fairly normal when people emigrate, but it was a lesson in patience and waiting on God. And he provided and exactly what was needed and in his timing. I had 2 months off which in hindsight was a great time of getting used to my new surroundings and allowed Katelynn and I to adjust to being in the same country together and build our relationship further. It took longer than expected to get a car figured out as being an immigrant makes things more complex, but once again God provided in the form of lifts to work and then the generosity of a couple from church lending me their Jetta as they went to South Africa on a missions trip for 2 weeks.

If as I mention the term "God's provision" you are wondering this is just luck or a set of advantageous coincidences, then know that there are many more incidents of advantageous coincidence and "luck" over the past couple of years that convince me that this isn't random. And if it's not random, then I certainly am not special and super spiritual in some way. No, I honestly believe that if God can do this, then he can do far more than in and through you.