These past 1,5 weeks have been a madhouse. Work wise, that is. Our conference invited a church planting expert from the NAD to come and coach us and teach us how the church planting ought to be done. And he finally came. Pastor J. P. is a church planting coordinator in one of the Canadian conferences and he's been trying to give us all his wisdom with one visit. It has been an intense time - endless AdCom meetings with us trying to fit the Canadian church planting policy to our Estonian context. (Yesterday, as we were having yet another long meeting with our AdCom and departmental leaders and J. P., the fire alarm went suddenly off and it turned out the sensor in our meeting room had sent the signal so we joked about our brains smoking. It wasn't very funny a joke. Our brains were smoking.) It has meant a pastors meeting, worship services in Tallinn's Estonian and Russian speaking churches, a meeting with interested people from local churches, a late night meeting with Tallinn's church planting core group (I got home at 11pm that night), and a weekend seminar on church planting in Pärnu. For me personally it has meant a lot of translating, both orally as well as on the paper - slides and documents. Just yesterday evening I finished translating all the necessary documents we have taken over from the Canadians and have adopted as our own now. Now I need I. to read all the documents and make his final comments so that we could discuss and vote about the policy at our conference's winter meeting in the beginning of December. Then our policy will be set. So it really has been intense. But it's all for the good cause - we want to see, no, we need to see new churches planted in Estonia. We need bigger, more traditional churches with contemporary worship and operating style, but we also need tiny small house churches where people could just come together and learn to know each other and God. The existing churches are not enough, far from that. So we're trying to learn from the Canadian church and go forward in faith. None of us has ever done anything like this before so at times it's rather scary. But you know, if God is with us, who could be against us...

With Tallinn group in Pärnu. J. P is standing next to me.

There have been only a few good and relaxing moments during these weeks. I'm appreciating more and more my Thursday night yoga class - last week especially. And last Friday - I took a bus to Pärnu two hours earlier than I needed to, just so that I could have enough time for a lunch in a really nice restaurant. It was much needed. As Dr A. N. said to me in one of her latest emails, "We must take every sanity protecting measure we can." We must indeed.

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I would like to take a solemn moment and express my gratitude. Last week I realised again that I have people in my life who are far better than I could ever deserve or ask for. It is a very humbling thing to come to this conclusion again. Over these past emotionally intense days I have realised again that I wouldn't know what to do without J. and Dr A. N. I think J. is the only person who, after hearing my endless list of misfortunes and lamentations, would quote Dallas Willard to me. And it's Dr A. N. who can comfort me with her wisdom and wit the way no-one else can. Both have given me priceless advice and both have lifted my spirit again. A humble thank you.

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Norah Jones, Carry On.