14th January 2020
I had an invitation from the family’s pastor for a coffee at a local cafe in the Main Street in Holland. I had met him during the time when both Kelli’s parents were in bad health.
He had turned up at our front door and introduced himself to me. As it was close to my birthday he gave me a book he had written as a present.
Normally I run away from men of the cloth fearing they will try to drag me into their church and brainwash me with their extreme doctoring.
He seemed interested in getting to know me better, he understood what my beliefs were, and wasn’t put off by them, I guess he saw me as a challenge.
Promptly at Eleven, Mark walked into the cafe, I had arrived a few minutes earlier and already had my beverage. I joined him at the counter where he ordered his drink of choice.
Mark is a well groomed, sixty-one year old man who looks good for his age. He has travelled to the UK on numerous occasions, probably to help educate the locals. We spent a lot of time talking about England and it’s history. The conversation darted about between my story, his story, laughing at the parts that matched. He asked me specifically about my transition from work into retirement.
He was surprised when I told him how easy it was for me. He was struggling with his own decision, not certain if he will carry on with the responsibility of the church. I never consider that to be a choice, you either like talking about God to people and getting paid for doing it, or you don’t, the choice should be easy.
Maybe he was thinking about career potential, and does it lead anywhere, there’s no way he could be Pope, he’s much too young, and not Roman Catholic, so that is out.
Could he be a bishop? Does the Baptist have a Bishop? these will have to be questions for our next meeting.
We had a good time, he was fluent in God speak at times, but mainly putting what I had just said into his language.
The time went quickly, I had arranged with Kelli for her to walk in after an hour and a half as a “get out” opportunity, but the timing was spot-on.
We agreed to meet again, and went on our separate ways.
The other thing on our list for the day was to take the truck to the garage to get the fuel filler pipe replaced.
This has been progressively getting worse to the point, when I discovered what was happening, needed to get it fixed.
First stop was Larry, our usual mechanic who lives across the road. He lay his cigarette down, and went underneath to locate the leak.
His verdict was the filler tube had rusted badly. He declined to do the job saying it needed to be on a hoist to get proper access.
Although we suspected it would mean he would have to go without a ciggi for several hours, and that would be difficult.
We were a little relieved as we didn’t want to see bits of our truck scattered over a wide area.
We settled on taking it to Angel at A&J motors. He smiles a lot and flirts with Kelli at every opportunity, but he does a good job, and doesn’t smoke.
Another Lifetime to go 