Girls And Me, Without Mom

Nice day, nice girls.

Joanie had a women’s retreat in Siegen, Germany, May 6-9. And that meant I was Parental Unit for the weekend. Which I did not mind in the least. I love my girlies.

We had fun just sitting out in our therapeutic backyard, soaking in something so uncharacteristic for England: sun. You can see my right shoe at the bottom of the pic. We also did errands, walked around Ashford together. I had to bribe them with some ice cream. Money well spent.

The girls helped me when we did church. I had to play guitar alone for the worship. Holly sang the worship songs with me. She’s been doing that lately with Joanie. Katie helped set up chairs and talked to people afterwards.

We also had fun putting meals together (some really good sausage and pasta) and reading our bedtime story (the ‘Heinlein juvenile’ Farmer In The Sky), and ice skating with the home school group. 

It’s hard to have Mom gone. So we hung in there and had fun until she got back. That’s the best fun.

Dave Visits Again

Holly and Dave wait for dinner in the backyard.

My older brother Dave got to visit us for the second time this year. 

He works for an engineering firm that makes hardware to function with its intended software. He had meetings in Dublin, so he thought he would first fly to us and get over jetlag. So for five days, April 27-May 1, he visited and basically relaxed around the house. I think it was one of the few times in about three years that he has just done nothing. I was worried that he wasn’t getting enough action out of his visit. He told me, “I don’t ever do this. I’m happy just sitting and reading, believe me.”

A couple of times he went with me to my morning hangout, the cafe in the Tesco supermarket. The store is 24-hour, but the cafe opens at 8. I like to sit there before opening hours and read and pray undisturbed. Dave and I had great conversations and even breakfast. He would go out to the store and come back with a load of bagels, yogurt, milk, cream cheese, and lay out a spread. He would fortify that with coffee when the cafe opened.

He took us out to dinner Saturday night, at a great Indian restaurant we had just discovered. The food was rocking. We had a great time.

Dave helped me out quite a bit on Sunday, when we were short of help setting up. He does the same thing for his own church in Seattle. So it was nothing new to him. It was great to be working together for the Lord.

He took off to Dublin after church. And some days later I got a call from him: he was changing his plans and wouldn’t be coming back through London. So that was the end of his trip as far as we were concerned. 

I was tempted to be disappointed, but I was so thankful to have time with him. It was way more than we usually get when we see each other. I am so thankful for how the Lord set this up. I’m trusting we get to do this again.

New Guitar

My office: effect pedals, amplifier, guitar, yes, and some books.

All my guitars are a miracle. God found them for me. 

Look at that left-handed guitar there in the picture. It was given to me by Luis Toro, guitarist for Universal Royalty. Somebody gave it to him. He said wow, thanks, and then noticed that it was left-handed. He couldn’t play it. He said, this guitar should go to Rob Dingman. That’s because I’m the only left-handed guitarist Luis knows. When they played for the church in March he gave me the guitar. 

When I saw the guitar I was a little disappointed. It’s an Epiphone, an Indonesian copy of a Gibson SG, a more expensive and better guitar. If I were buying for myself, I wouldn’t even consider this guitar. 

But I said thanks for thinking of me, and went about changing it to right-handed stringing so I could play it. I play left-handed on guitars strung right-handed. It’s the only way I know. That’s how I started playing, and by the time someone told me I was holding the guitar wrong it was too late. I wasn’t about to start over again learning from scratch.

The value of that is I can play any right-handed guitar laying around. If I was true left-handed I couldn’t do that because there are no left-handed instruments lying around. They are too rare.

I switched the strings and tried re-tuning the bridge so it would play in tune. When I got done, I was amazed. I really like how it sounds. Plays great. Sounds just like some of my favorite guitar players, like Duane Allman and Jerry Garcia. I mean, I would never buy one of these, but now I have one. I plan to use this on street outreach. It will look pretty uncool (think Black Sabbath or AC/DC), but when I play it, it will sound cool.

So once again, a little miracle. God found this guitar for me. Thank You so much, Lord. And thank you, too, Luis, for being my friend.