Skip to main content

The old man and his grapes.

As we were walking along the cobblestoned road with beautiful bushes and plants along the side in the village of Omodus, we spotted a little old man coming towards us. He was definitely a local and was carrying a blue bucket on one hand. As he spotted us, he reached into his bucket and took out a cluster of small, green grapes. When our paths crossed, he handed us the grapes. I thought he might be selling them, but he insisted it was simply a gift from him to us. Gratefully we received his generosity, and I think he was even more excited we had received his gift then the joy we had in getting it. After thanking him as best we could we all continued on our way. Us to our awaiting tour bus, him probably to his home in the village.

As I savoured the lovey sweetness of the grapes later that evening, I was thinking what a privilege it was to interact with one of the locals here. And to get to receive what this man wanted me to taste as part of the goodness of the country. As a tourist you get a glimpse into what the people want to show you. That afternoon grapes was the little glimpse I got into the life of a little old man in a village in Cyprus.

Popular posts from this blog

Packing...again.

I just folded the last load of laundry and I’m almost packed. Off to the airport at 5am tomorrow morning, heading off to Amsterdam. I’m excited, a bit nervous, and wondering what it’ll be like. It’s been a good week at home with lots of quality time with family, especially the little nieces and nephew. I’m glad I’ll see them in April again. Well, not much to write and packing to be done and a bit of sleep would probably be a good idea too. Next time I write it’ll be from Amsterdam....
Read more

Single-tasking September: The art of single-tasking.

To change habits and ways of life, the motivation for change has to be strong, and the benefits outweigh the effort it takes to make the change.  For so long it’s seemed like the ability to multitask has been regarded as a great skill, but is it really a good thing? Recovering from burn-out, one of the effects I noticed was that it was harder to concentrate, and especially tricky trying to focus on many things at once. I’d try to multitask, only to realise that all tasks suffered from lack of capacity to complete any one of them. The challenge is that the habit of always doing many things at once goes deep, and when I tried to focus on just one thing, I found that it was actually really difficult.  As I did a little google search on the matter, I found it seems like multitasking isn’t as healthy as once thought, and that it doesn’t help productivity. Some even referred to it as “switch tasking”, in the sense that the brain isn’t doing many things at once, but shifting rapidly...
Read more

Reality starting to hit...

Today has been quite a sad day as it is slowly dawning on my that I'm not going to be here for much longer. It's now less than a month till I leave, and I feel sad. Sad to leave what has been a life for me. Sad to leave so many wonderful people. Sad to not be able to continue to fight for and invest in all the streetkids, families, prisonkids, and other random people I've been fighting for all these years. I doesn't feel like I'm giving up, but it does feel like I'm going to be left with a kind of void where all these people were in my life. I guess not knowing the BIG "what next..." doesn't help, but I do have peace. Peace that the God who called me here, and has kept me here, is still the same. Peace that He will guide me and walk with me. Even so...today I felt sad.
Read more