God is good

After church yesterday, I went house hunting in a place called Tooting Bec. I liked the area alright, and the prices seemed reasonable, so I'm going to write to many letting agents there, but I'm getting ahead of myself.

After house hunting, I zipped back up to St. John's Wood to try and get a copy of the contract that I had signed, but wanted to get out of. The timing couldn't have been better. I got there a few minutes after closing time for the office, but a woman was still there who let me in and helped me. Just as she started to call my agent, I saw him out of the window and he saw me. He wasn't even in the office that day. He had been hosting an open house all day and had just stopped in to drop off the keys. He spent an extra half hour copying my contract and chatting with me about the real estate business in England. I felt so happy to actually have a copy of my contract, that I decided to go do some sightseeing, even though it was evening time. I went down to Westminster and saw the Thames River, the Westminster Bridge, Parliment, Big Ben, the County Hall (where they're having a Star Wars exhibition), the London Eye, and a whole bunch of other stuff. I didn't actually go into any of these places since they were closed for the evening, but I got a renewed sense of excitement about bringing my family over and having them see this great city.

So, if you're in the Imperial Capital of the World (London) and you see Stormtroopers guarding a big impressive building, it's quite dramatic. I don't think this picture really captures the moment, but it was the best one of the Stormtroopers.









This one has Parliment (the dark spire on the right), Big Ben, and the London Eye all in one shot!















When I first came out of the tube station, I looked over my shoulder and saw Big Ben through the trees. I really like this shot.



Dave

Calvary Chapel Westminster

I went to CCW again this morning. Today I didn't have any appointments right after church, and I got there early, so I was able to hang around and talk today.

Kelly had been emailing with a woman named Esther, so I decided that I would ask for her. The first guy I talked to said,"There's lots of Esthers here." When I explained that my wife had emailed someone at the church about us coming over, he said,"Oh that's probably the pastor's daughter." That sounded about right, so then I went into the main hall where the band was warming up and doing a sound check. Alwyn Wall was sitting at the mixing board eq'ing the guitars and so I went and sat down next to him and waited for a break in the sound to ask him about Esther. We had a nice chat and talked about church and the sermon I had heard two weeks earlier (see my earlier post). He knew about me from Esther and indeed it was his daughter that Kelly had been emailing. He said, "She should be here somewhere..." but then it was time to start, so he went up on stage to play.

A nice woman, named Agnes, sat down to record the music while the band played and we worshipped. After the music, she moved over to the other side of me and one of the guitarists came and sat down to record the sermon.

Alwyn started 2 Peter today, and only got about 6 words into it. That's my kind of teaching! "Simon Peter, a bondservant and apostle" was as far as he got. There's a lot there in the introduction. "Simon" means "shifting sand" and "Peter" means "Rock". So he's starting out saying where he's come from and where he's been brought to. "Bondservant" is one who is a slave by choice. If you couldn't pay your debt, you could become a slave or servant of the person you owe the debt to for 6 years. Then after that, if you so chose, you could become a bondservant and be that master's slave for the rest of your life. The master would then pierce your ear to a doorpost and put a gold ring in it to signify your status as bondservant. In the same way, we owe a debt of sin to God, and once we become His servants, we realize we love Him and want to be His servants forever, and so become bondservants. "Apostle" is an authoritative representative for Jesus. So in these few words, Peter tells us where he's come from, who he has become, who he belongs to, and by what authority he writes to us. Amazing.

Afterwards, I asked the guy sitting at the sound board next to me if he knows Esther. "Yeah, I know her well. She's my sister." He pointed her out to me and I went over and met Tom, her husband, and the Famous Esther. We had a good chat about where to live and how to find a place. Everyone recommends FindAProperty.com, yet no one has ever actually got a place directly from there. It's more of a way to get an idea about the price of an area, and to find an Agent. It should be called "FindAnAgent.com", but it is what it is. Then Alwyn came over and they all prayed for me, which was wonderful.

I then came back to my room, called my agent and left a message to ask if he could have a copy of my contract printed today so I could pick it up this afternoon. We'll see.

Oh yeah, and there is a connection to Holy Trinity Brompton and CCW. Alwyn went to HTB first and came from there to start CCW. Interesting, no?

Dave

Blog notes

I just noticed that the time displayed on my posts is Pacific Time. I'm going to change my preferences to London time, since the British insist that they invented time and are quite proud of it. All the times on all the posts will change to my time. I know this doesn't matter to anyone but me, but as my son says, "No one cares about your blog."

Dave

Laundry Day

So I just went and did my first loads of laundry in London. I'm happy to report that the whole process is remarkable like it is in America. Finally, something that's the same!

£3 for a small wash, £3.19 for a box of soap (960g/~2lbs), £1 for 20 minutes in the dryer (I ended up using £1.70).

There were nice friendly people in the laundromat. One older bald headed man told me how much money to use for the dryer. He also helped a young student get his washing going. Before I was done, a guy who sounded somewhat American offered me his box of soap, saying that he was traveling and didn't want to carry it. Since I already had a box, he just left it on the washer and I gave it to the next girl who walked in.

All in all a very pleasant experience. And now my clothes are clean.

Dave

Sin Causes Stress

Not all stress is caused by sin. At least I don't think so. Maybe it is. But in any case, I know that sin does cause stress.

This week, I signed a contract to let a house (which means renting a house). After I signed it, I decided that it was too much money and didn't fit into my budget well. So I called the letting agent and asked if I could get out of the contract, that I didn't want to do it. So far, so good. But then, and this is where I went wrong, I decided to be stubborn about it and tell them that I wasn't going to honor the contract. I had lots of reasons and excuses, none of them valid as far as the contract was concerned, but in the end I just wasn't letting my "yes" be "yes" and my "no" be "no". I wasn't honoring my signature, and my word.

At this point, I've decided to honor the contract. I don't know if they will still want me to be their tenant, but I've offered to honor it. The letting agent said that they've already cancelled the furniture, so I'm sure that will be a problem, but we'll see what happens from here.

While I was being stubborn and not honoring the contract, I was very stressed out. It was hard to concentrate at work, and I couldn't get to sleep last night. But in the middle of the night, God changed my heart and showed me my sin. As soon as I repented, I could feel the stress starting to leave. But, of course, it's not enough just to change your attitude. You have to take action. So I got on the internet, worked out some financial details so that I would be able to pay the deposit, first month's rent, and the processing fee for the letting agent as soon as I could get in touch with them in the morning. Amazingly, as soon as I got that taken care of, I fell right to sleep and slept for a good 7 hours.

God is good and if we would just do what He says, we'd be much better off.

Dave

Mistaken Identities

My colleague next to me is named Daniella. He's nice guy with an interesting accent. I thought that he was French.

Earlier this week, I went to lunch at an Italian restaurant with two other guys. James is from Texas and Jean-Claude is Italian (which is why we went to this place, he knows all the people that work there). I saw Daniella and some of his friends at the next table and said that must be the French table. To which Jean-Claude asked why and I told him that I thought Daniella was French. He said, "No he's Italian like me." I apologized and then Jean-Claude said,"I don't know why, but lots of people think I'm French. Even in Italy, when I went to vote, the guy at the polls asked if I was French." I personally think that Jean-Claude sounds like a French name, but he does speak Italian, soo...?

To which James said to me, "Well, you're Canandian aren't you?" I explained that, no, I'm American. He thought I was Canandian because he said I have Peter Bowmar hair. (For those of you who don't know Peter, he has curly hair like me).

At least no one mistook the Texan for anything else. The saying I've heard is that you should never ask a man if he's from Texas. If he is, he'll tell you soon enough, and if he's not, there's no sense in embarrassing him.

Dave

Still looking for a place

I haven't written in a while because I have been very busy trying to work a job and half and find a place to live.

I thought I had found a place last weekend. It was beautiful, brand new, three bedroom townhouse. The only problem was that it was pretty expensive. I had figured my budget poorly while I was back in the States, thinking that the exchange rate meant something about the cost of goods and services over here. WRONG. The exchange rate is simple how many pounds they'll give you for a dollar (or actually, how many dollars it will take to get a pound). The actual price of buying things here is only slightly less than it is in America, which means stuff is almost twice as expensive here.

For instance, in America, a 20 oz bottle of Diet Pepsi is about $1.20 in a vending machine. Here, a .5 liter bottle (which is a bit smaller than 20 oz) is .95p (pence). Which means for a slightly smaller bottle actually costs $1.90. You get the idea.

Well it's only worse with real estate. Rent is through the roof here. But I made a bad mistake. I signed the lease paper before I was 100% sure I could afford it. After sleeping on it and talking more to Kelly, we decided that it was too much. I called the agent as soon as I could and talked to him about it. Unfortunately, the landlord had already bought furniture to put in the place and it was being delivered today. When the agent's boss heard that I was backing out, she called me directly and chewed me out (very politely, of course. This is Britain, after all). She got all snippy about it, pointing out that I should have decided all this before I signed the contract, and that the only way to deal with this was to go through with it.

Fortunately, I hadn't actually given them any money yet. One of my colleagues at work who lives here, said that he was pretty sure that in Britain you have up to 14 days to change your mind on any contract. I'm going to check with a lawyer tomorrow and see if that's true and that will put me at peace on this issue.

I have another appointment to see a flat on Saturday, hopefully that will work out well.

That's all for now,
Dave