It was about a month ago when I told you about going to a book heaven and having a substantial theological library in my attic - 50 boxes full of books. The story has a sequence.

It's actually a sad story. Because this old man who long ago used to be a pastor is sick and it seems like his health is deteriorating rather fast. Which has resulted in his plan to give us even more books - there are about 75 boxes of them in the attic at the moment. In any case, it was a bit more than a week ago when I. and J. (church's president and secretary) appeared on my office door, telling me they needed help with forming a sentence to engrave on a nice plate they wanted to give this man on behalf of the conference for his massive donation. Sure, I said. So the three of us put our heads together and came up with the sentence and the conference ordered the plate and it arrived in the end of last week.

So on Friday we (I. and me and A. - my new colleague in Tallinn) bought a cake and took our thank you plate and headed to this old pastor's place. I've only been there for a couple of times and I've only talked to the guy a little bit but very quickly I've become fond of both. I like his place. And I really like him. He talks to me in a bit of a fatherly voice but I can tell he's taking me seriously so he always asks about my reading list and Greek teaching plans so we can endlessly discuss books we've read and church history and lecturing (I love-love-love doing such things). We did all that on Friday too. We sat in his living room, surrounded by thousands of books, drinking tea and eating cake and discussing theology. And then suddenly he started talking about music.

He said we all have different means and methods when it comes to keeping our spirituality and our prayer life alive. And listing names in a prayer just doesn't do any more so he has embraced a new way of praying for important people. He does that through songs. He picks songs from our SDA Hymnal and connects each song with a person and each time he plays the piano he thinks of someone and prays for them while playing. "I've had to add a couple of songs to my pray-list in recent months - you've got your own song now, Mervi"...

I just sat there and stared at him, feeling both very small and very important at the same time. For some inexplicable reason I had made it to his play-list!

So now I walk around, being a lot wealthier than I was last week. I have my own song in the hymnbook. Someone has written my name all over it and sings it while thinking of me.

You can guess whether I opened my Hymnal this morning and sang that song or not...