Noosa: vacation and the clutch

Life moves on here in Australia.

Célia is getting stronger and has developed a knack for finding the nerve endings in her mother’s belly. Carolyn stays very busy with her studies, work and volunteering. Brian is beginning to feel the immense weight of the thesis and tutoring.

Despite, or perhaps because of, all the pressure, the past few days were spent on vacation up the coast a ways. We spent Thursday night with Rob and Lindi Orth at their family’s unit in Caloundra. We had a good time just hanging out and chatting and playing with their boy, Laughlin. Brian highly recommends him to Célia. He comes from a good family, is handsome and has a fun, easygoing personality. Plus he is only about one year older than her.

Friday morning we all had a big breakfast and then motored up to Noosa. A kind friend of ours, Ian Hanger, loaned us his apartment there. Before we checked in there we decided to have a look around town and go on a little hike. The Noosa National Park has lots of interesting trails and beaches. Because of Carolyn’s advanced stage of pregnancy we didn’t go too far, but the two kilometers we did cover were beautiful and fun. We’d love to go back sometime.

After the hike we were pleasantly blown away by the quality of Ian’s apartment. It sits right on Noosa Sound with a great view of the wild peninsula across the water. It has three bedrooms, a roomy kitchen and a long balcony and everything (and I mean everything) is of much higher quality than our homely little apartment here in Brisbane. The Orths stayed for the afternoon before heading back down to their place in Caloundra while we spent a quiet, romantic evening alone.

But the quiet times didn’t last long. Saturday morning Brian tore a contact lens putting it in and then found that he had left his glasses in Caloundra with the Orths. So on our leisurely way back to Brisbane we decided to swing by to pick them up. But just as we came to our first stoplight in Caloundra Carolyn found that she couldn’t get the car into gear. We pulled over to check things out and decided that the clutch was broken. Luckily the Orths were only a few minutes away and luckily Ben and Hope Hurt had just given us their old mobile phone, so we were able to call for help. After an afternoon of tinkering with Rob and his dad, Ralph, Brendan Orth towed me the 120 kms home.

Last night Brian was enormously frustrated about the situation with the car. It’s the second time this has happened to us in the past few months. We sold our van after the first time and bought this car thinking it would be more reliable, but here we are carless again. And with the crunch of end-of-semester assignments and grading he just didn’t know where to find the money or the time to fix it. So he went to bed, tired and very stressed out. But the dawning of a new day brought with it the realization that we were tremendously fortunate that the clutch went out when and where it did and that we have good friends around who are more than happy to help us out.

Yes. Even in our trials, the Lord watches out for us.