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A fair amount of posts over this two year blog journey has been about my past. It has been a way to tell my story. Recalling the past creates a variety of emotions. Positive ones like excitement at the memory of ‘good times’. Thankfulness for people and family. Those that have brought leadership, joy and …
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Several of my blogs concern a role I once had which was commonly known as ‘line up’. Briefly the job involved making all manner of preparations (‘line up’) required for the floating bookship MV Logos to visit ports. The vessel was crewed by a diverse group of 140 volunteers from 25 nations. It was owned …
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One sign of a habit is doing the same thing over and over again. That seems to be the case for me when it comes to the Marcothon. Last year I shared about my adapted version of it ( Modified Marcothon Madness ). My idea of ‘modified’ was to run every day in November instead …
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After 2 years in Japan my wife and I felt our time there was coming to an end. Our task had been to represent Operation Mobilisation (OM) in the country. OM was the Christian organisation we worked for. The work engaged us with people, churches and other groups throughout the land. We also spent time …
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2022 for me is proving a bit of an experiment in outdoor living in Scotland. The first was a wild camping experience in a one man tent in May (see Big Day (and Night) In the Mountains ). This was followed in August by a night in a bivouac (‘bivvy bag’) on another mountainside. My …
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It was a good friend who got me in. He was a bit older than me. For some time he had had a job after school hours. I was 13, or maybe had turned 14. My pal’s reference gave me the opportunity to inherit a milk round. Some other lad had moved on leaving a …
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Recently I have been reading the book ‘Ljudet av Tystnad’ (‘The Sound of Silence’). It is written by Tomas Sjödin, a Swedish pastor and author. Sadly only available in Swedish. Sjödin explores the many ways in which our lives need and are enriched by what he calls ‘good’ silence. Not always, possibly rarely, is such …
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For 6 months when I first joined the MV Logos my work was in the deck department as an AB (‘able-bodied’) seaman. Then for almost a year I was a member of two consecutive training programmes each lasting 5-6 months. Long before the widespread use of computers the programme was known as IT (‘intensive training’). The …
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For some weeks in 1979 I visited what was then Western Samoa in the South Pacific. An independent state it became known in 1997 simply as Samoa. Not to be confused with the American territory of American Samoa which lay to the south east! W. Samoa consists mainly of two inhabited islands in the midst …