Belize and Me in Cyberspace

In case you haven’t noticed, I try to be sooo techi (using the computer all the time, blogging, carrying a Dell pocket computer). It’s great fun but I haven’t a clue what I’m doing. This week it took me about 3 days to get a simple program properly downloaded onto my Dell. Thank goodness for the “Help!” person at the other end of my emails.

And here with this blog…it’s become a part of me. I don’t want to kill it even though I haven’t had much to say since I returned from Belize. Fortunately, few people check it out now for that very reason.

Recently someone from Belize, who I want to keep in touch with, sent me a computer-generated email inviting me to be a “friend” on Hi5. So far I had succeeded in avoiding FaceBook and MySpace, but this time, well, why not? I filled in all the requisite and some non-requisite information, even added my Halifax junior high school to their list (why should Cornwallis Jr. H. be left out?) and then sat back and waited. Not really. I checked every few hours to see what was happening at my new cyber-home. Nothing. Not a thing. Where are you my friend? Now, I feel ignored. But at least I’m out there; my presence reaches in another direction out into computer space.

And then there are my umpiring friends. I went Googling the other day for a calendar just to print out for them all with a few special dates. Instead I found a site where I could set up a free account and share the calendar on-line as well as meeting minutes, pictures, etc. So I did, and this time it was my turn to send out the computer-generated invites. Now I’m making phone calls to see if they got those emails, succeeded in getting into the new site and then found what was posted. But now my presence reaches out in yet another direction in this amazing computer space.

On a rather less esoteric note, last Sunday I packed my computer and my church’s newly acquired projector and headed across the river to visit St. Mark’s Anglican Church here in Port Hope, Ontario. This was probably the last presentation of Stanley’s Mission, but one never knows! Most of the congregation stayed and gave me a hearty welcome and hearty lunch. Evidently the grandson of a former rector of St. Mark’s is now operating a tour guide service for Belize from offices in Whistler, B.C. It’s quite surprising the connection Canada has with Belize when so few Canadians know anything about it. I never tire of returning to Belize through my pictures and am really wondering how long it will have to be before I do so in person.

New Year's Greetings

I didn't send a Christmas letter this year. However, here's one for the new year:

Greetings, and thanks to all of you who sent Christmas and New Year’s greeting my way, and to those of you who didn’t but would have. I hope that the past year has been as kind to you as it has to me and may you be surprised by God’s blessings this coming year (2008).

One year ago I was still in Belize, just completing a 16-month assignment to St. Joseph’s Church, Punta Gorda. It was the experience of a lifetime in many ways, but it seemed right to return home when I did. I made some wonderful friends and learned a lot about the work going on in very different part of God’s vineyard. The word I get from those who call Punta Gorda home is that it’s a struggle to keep the church open, no one having yet been appointed there fulltime. P.G. is really the southern outpost of the country and doesn’t get the attention it needs.

It has been good to be back home with family, especially this Christmas, and to worship again at St. John’s, Port Hope where I’ve been placed back on to the Honourary Assistants’ list. My involvement is mostly with the Kids’ Club (otherwise know as the Sunday School) and with the monthly services at four Port Hope nursing homes.

The major event of the year for the Isherwoods, of course, was the wedding of Stephen and Jeanine in July, at which I officiated. It was a wonderful event at a beautiful location. It was great to have Stephen’s three godparents in attendance. The newlyweds have taken up residence with me so I’m rarely lonely and have many opportunities to cook for more then one. I’ve also renewed more than weekly visits with my Weller neighbours and with Bill and Kate Pearson, friends from way back in Whitby days.

Otherwise the year has been highlighted by short trips here and there.
· In March I joined the Pearsons for a very relaxing week (including a Blue Jay Spring Training game) at Orange Lake Resort in Florida.
· A short trip to Guelph, Ontario, in July included an overnight stop with Robert Lyon, who had hosted me over last New Year, during his time working with the Anglican Church in Belize.
· Barrie, Ontario, holds Colours of Music (classical) for ten days in September, so I stayed at a nearby resort for five days and got a really wonderful earful from some world-class musicians.
· November found me in St. Stephen, New Brunswick, with my ever-loving sister and brother-in-law, the Prestons.
· And then I spent the first week of December in Sedona, Arizona, a place I’d wanted to visit for a long time.

That last trip offered the opportunity to visit the amazing Grand Canyon and hike along the trails that had provided the backdrop for so many Westerns (Hopalong Cassidy was a great favourite of mine). Sedona is a lovely town but also a tourists’ town (trap), but that was OK because most of the things I would like to have brought home were much too expensive and much too big. Art galleries predominate and a number of artists of national stature have their own galleries there.

In addition to renewing my involvement with the local baseball umpires my pet project has been working with a small group restoring Cobourg’s oldest building (made of limestone about the time of the War of 1812). The plan is that it should be used as a centrepiece for a local heritage centre to be opened in 2012.

Crowning achievements of the year occurred in the kitchen where I succeeded in creating a delicious Stolen Christmas bread and then produced baked Alaska, something I wouldn’t have considered except for a cook book which appeared under the Christmas tree, 100 Top Recipes from the 42nd Annual Pillsbury Bake-Off. If baking Pillsbury crescent rolls is a culinary highlight for you, give this book a look!

I seem to spend an inordinate amount of time at my computer – but I do enjoy it! Feel free to write to stanley.isherwood@sympatico.ca or visit my Blog which has a very occasional update: http://stanleyvim.blogspot.com/

I close with the prayer used by Archbishop Hiltz in his New Year sermon:

God bless to us this new year.
In your mercy grant us time for the task,
Peace for the path,
Wisdom for the work,
And love to the last. Amen