Interesting Stage of Life

I was thinking at our "Devotion Time" today what an interesting stage of life, most of us volunteers here, are at.

Most of us, although not all, are retired. We do have three younger volunteers, two young ladies, an American and a Canadian; and a young fellow from Australia. They are all taking a three month break from their careers to volunteer here. Of the remainder, we have three widowed ladies who are retired, and the rest are couples.

One of the hymns we sang included the words "how sweet to hold a new-born baby, and feel the pride and joy he gives". Since Marlene and I have experienced this in our family twice in the past year and a half, and look forward to doing so again next March, the words were meaningful.

My other thought was that most of us don't have jobs to worry about going back to. Some of us do some part-time work, but for most it is volunteer jobs, similar to what brought us here. And while we do work hard here, and take pride in our tasks, we also keep reminding each other not to get too serious.

So it is a wonderful stage of life - good health (I'm doing my 4 mile jog four days a week), very proud of my family, and as we say here at Haggai, the opportunity to "suffer for Jesus" in Maui.

On a negative note, we have had the "flu bug" going around for the past 7/10 days. Several volunteers and staff have been off work, but so far Marlene and I have escaped the sickness. It seems to be past but with sharing buffet serving cutlery, elevator buttons, etc, it is rather difficult to avoid catching whatever is going around.

The pictures are a couple more from the County Fair exhibits. Blogger won't upload anymore for me.