{"id":387,"date":"2006-02-17T16:15:04","date_gmt":"2006-02-17T23:15:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cottrillcompass.com\/blog\/2006\/what-were-up-to-in-a-few-words.html"},"modified":"2007-02-11T07:42:23","modified_gmt":"2007-02-11T13:42:23","slug":"what-were-up-to-in-a-few-words","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cottrillcompass.com\/blog\/2006\/what-were-up-to-in-a-few-words.html","title":{"rendered":"What we&#8217;re up to (in a few words)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><b>It seems like half our lives are spent trying to say the most in the fewest words possible.<\/b> &nbsp;That&#8217;s the efficiency our modern culture so often demands. &nbsp;I was recently reminded of this when reading the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ama.ab.ca\">Alberta Motor Association<\/a>&#8216;s latest newsletter. &nbsp;After an vehicle accident, when you fill out the insurance form you&#8217;re supposed to summarize the details of the accident in the fewest possible words. &nbsp;Some of the results are startling:<br \/><i><\/p>\n<li>An invisible car came out of nowhere, struck my car and vanished<\/li>\n<li>I had been driving for forty years when I fell asleep at the wheel and had an accident<\/li>\n<li>My car was legally parked as it backed into another vehicle<\/li>\n<li>I was on the way to the doctor with rear end trouble when my universal joint gave way causing me to have an accident<\/li>\n<li>In an attempt to kill a fly I drove into a telephone pole<\/li>\n<p><\/i><\/p>\n<p>How do I describe the many things we&#8217;ve been up to in a post short enough that you might actually read it?<\/p>\n<table width=\"258\" align=\"right\">\n<tr>\n<td><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/images\/hannah-sheahans.jpg\" width=\"250\" height=\"225\" hspace=\"4\" vspace=\"4\" border=\"0\" alt=\"Hannah and friends\" title=\"Hannah (right) playing with some friends who came to visit\" \/><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n<p> &nbsp;This week we&#8217;ve been sending out our quarterly newsletter, which most of you should see in the next week or so. &nbsp;I&#8217;ve been working on the last couple of lessons of my course, gearing up for my last paper (which will probably be about baptism).<\/p>\n<p>We&#8217;ve been continually organizing things and getting rid of what we won&#8217;t need in Mexico. &nbsp;We&#8217;ve been in touch with our co-workers in Mexico, and trying to help out from afar. &nbsp;We&#8217;ve been visiting with friends, attending church meetings, celebrating <b>Valentine&#8217;s Day<\/b>, babysitting, and catching up on errands. &nbsp;We set up a new phone system, which Lord willing we will be able to transport to Mexico (allowing us to keep our Calgary phone number &#8211; how cool is that?). &nbsp;We&#8217;ve also been trying to get some church ministry opportunities (not much success so far &#8211; kind of reminds us why we&#8217;re moving to Mexico!).<\/p>\n<p>Now in the next few days I&#8217;m needing to plough through some financial paperwork for the mission, get a good chunk if not all of my course complete (<i>there will be great celebration when that&#8217;s done!<\/i>), and finish sending out our newsletter. &nbsp;I also need to catch up on emails &#8211; I&#8217;m generally about a week behind &#8211; yikes! &nbsp;Sorry &#8217;bout that.<\/p>\n<p>Next week here in Alberta we have a holiday &#8211; <b><a href=\"http:\/\/www.canlii.org\/ab\/laws\/sta\/f-4\/20060115\/whole.html\">Family Day<\/a><\/b>. &nbsp;We try to celebrate by &#8211; of course &#8211; spending some extra time together as a family. &nbsp;Since our schedule is flexible we don&#8217;t always celebrate on the actual day. &nbsp;If we want to go somewhere like the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.calgaryzoo.org\/\">zoo<\/a>, it&#8217;s much nicer to go when we&#8217;re not hacking our way through the <b>Family Day<\/b> crowds! &nbsp;So that will be on the schedule sometime in the next few days.<\/p>\n<p>So there&#8217;s a general summary for you!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It seems like half our lives are spent trying to say the most in the fewest words possible. &nbsp;That&#8217;s the efficiency our modern culture so often demands. &nbsp;I was recently reminded of this when reading the Alberta Motor Association&#8216;s latest newsletter. &nbsp;After an vehicle accident, when you fill out the insurance form you&#8217;re supposed to [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-387","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-family","category-ministry-glimpses","has-post-title","has-post-date","has-post-category","has-post-tag","has-post-comment","has-post-author",""],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.4 - 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