We have a saying in Estonia which goes something like this - when the cat is away, the mice party. It basically means that when the boss or the person in charge has left, the others (inferiors) take it easy and have a good time. I don't think I've ever put it into practice as directly as I did this week.

My senior pastor took a week's vacation and left the country with his family.

Mwahahahaha! [evil laughter]

I didn't quite leave the country but I did leave the city for almost three days (and I didn't even feel guilty about it). I went back to Saaremaa island, the place which pretty much saved my life and sanity a month ago. P. and K. were kind enough to welcome me again and once again I got to work on the construction site and have generally good time with them. K. and P. are just about the nicest and warmest young people I know, they most certainly have the gift of hospitality (which I totally lack) and spending time with them does good to my soul. M. was also supposed to join us but he got sick so it was only me this time who went over to the island. They were good and slow and quiet days, working in the church's apartment with P. during the day, having long conversations and playing with their little daughter in the evenings. No emails, no sermon writing. No rush, no noise, no stress. Days almost as good as they can get on this side of Jordan.

Having said all this, I certainly don't want anyone to think that I'm tired of my job or that I've lost the joy in it. I haven't. Just last week, after a long church board meeting, I walked back to my apartment late in the evening and I thought to myself - to wake up every morning and to know that I work for the church and for the people and for God on a daily basis, it's just about the best thing I can imagine. It has become increasingly difficult for me to imagine I could ever do anything else than to work for the church (all theological academic institutions included). It is a real privilege. Also a responsibility but first and foremost, a privilege. I had the same feeling last Sabbath when teaching homiletics. I very much had the feeling the whole day yesterday when back in the office again, writing a sermon and translating a church planting manual and having a long dinner with one of our conference's students I'm currently mentoring. The feeling is slightly weaker today - the office printer has stopped working and I can't print out tomorrow's sermon duh! But despite broken printers, the feeling is still there. :)

--

I've accepted the proposal to write my essay into an article. It needs to be done by the end of May. Looking at May's schedule, I'll probably regret the decision.

--

Tickets to UK have been purchased again. I need to breathe some Newbold air and hit the National Gallery with Dr A. N. again. There are things in life you can live without, and then there are things you cannot possibly live without...

--

And to the best older brother in the world - palju õnne sünnipäevaks! Ma ei jaksa Jumalale kunagi piisavalt tänulik olla selle eest, et sa olemas oled.

It's work-work-work that fills my days but as I'm not very keen on talking about my work, I'll fill some blog space with other, rather random stuff today. I happened to go through my photos on my phone last night and I thought I'd share some of them with you today. They're just little snippets of the humdrum of ordinary life. Nothing special.

It was last Wednesday when my cousin invited me out for a family dinner. I was rather surprised to receive the invite as we've never been particularly close. He was always one of the "little ones" who used to bug us, the older cousins, during our family reunions. But then, well, he grew up all of a sudden. Now he's a young aspiring jazz pianist and as he's flying back to Berlin where he's studying, he decided to invite his family out for a nice dinner in the Old Town before leaving. This is a photo taken from the cafe where we met - it's situated in one of the towers of the old town wall. I'd never been there before. It was a nice place with an exceptional, magnificent view. It made me glad to call Tallinn my home town.

It was the Sunday morning three weeks ago when I just couldn't get up. I had spent a whole day in the church the previous day: Sabbath School's teachers class, then the Sabbath School, preaching in the divine service as well as having the Revelation seminar in the evening. I was dead when I got home that night. So I stopped trying to get up the next morning after a couple of miserable attempts and decided to stay in bed for the whole day with this wonderful book by Tim Mackintosh-Smith that had just arrived in post. I absolutely love his wit and writing style. So I read his Yemen for ten hours that day. It was a day well spent. :)

Meet my new preaching shoes. Whoop!

We have this little Whatsapp group with a couple of good ole Newbold friends. We talk about most random stuff, which I like. And now for a couple of times we've exchanged 'Sabbath selfies' with each other (even U. managed to take a photo of himself yesterday). These have been my Sabbath selfies. The first one's taken at my auntie's place one Sabbath a few weeks back. As you can see from my (auntie's) massive cardigan, it was freezing - we still had considerable amount of snow here. The other one's taken yesterday morning in the Eastern Estonia, ready for the day's work - preaching and an afternoon seminar on Homiletics.

That's it really.

Okay, there's something I need to discuss with you. You must remember my lamentation about my Hermeneutics paper last October - after submitting it I declared on Facebook that it might have been the worst Hermeneutics paper in the history of mankind. As soon as I had submitted it, I forced myself to forget all about it. And it mattered even less once I had decided to pull the breaks and not go back to Amsterdam any time soon. I was so done with this essay shame.

But this is what has happened. I have been contacted by both of these people who marked my paper, one of them is my colleague (both as a pastor and as a lecturer) from Tartu, the man who got me into this Amsterdam trouble in the first place. The second marker was the principal and he wrote me an email two days ago and sent the feedback to my essay. They both said the same thing and came up with the same offer. "Would you be willing to turn your essay into an article for the Journal of European Baptist Studies?" The principal continues, "This Journal is intended for good work produced by aspiring and developing scholars and we think your essay could be developed into a suitable article." WHAT!? I ask. WHAT!?

The first marker gave me 75 for that paper. I never once got 75 for an essay in Newbold.

So this raises a serious issue. Someone here is totally out of touch with reality. And as far as I can analyse this situation, there are only two options. It's either me who cannot evaluate my own work properly (and thus needs to reevaluate things on a bigger scale). Or. It's the IBTSC people who don't have a clue what a good essay looks like. I don't even know which option is scarier...

I told A. about this last night. A. said if I ever needed a sign about having to go back to academia, this would be the one.

What am I suppose to do now? Help me.

--

But as to things more practical, I have also had to reevaluate the whole moving apartments thing. I have moved it from the "annoying stuff that inevitably happens" box to "blessings and mercy" box. It's been only two weeks (and most of last week I wasn't even in Tallinn) but I already like this apartment and neighborhood a lot. The thing that surprises me the most about it is the peace and quiet that surrounds this area. It's so quiet there! I had lived in the middle of the city centre for 1,5 years and had forgotten what silence sounded like. But now I can just sit on my couch late in the evenings and do nothing and listen to the quiet. It is so nice! Or even today, just this morning I decided to work from home and to get my sermon for the coming weekend on paper (since it has been very crowded in the conference office this week and I have not been able to concentrate properly). And it took me only an hour to finish my sermon from home. The surrounding was just so inspiring.

I have also decided not to have Internet in my new home. I mean, I still have my phone so I can check Twitter and weather forecast but I can't write important emails after the office hours are over. So most evenings when I leave the office, I leave my laptop here, I don't even bother taking it home with me. It is a very nice feeling to be able to do that, very nice indeed. I intend to keep it this way. The only annoying thing is that my best blogging ideas hit me late at night and I have to wait until the next day to write them down. :)

Sometimes things work out well, like puzzle pieces falling into the right place. There were some pieces that fell exactly where they were suppose to last week for me. We have a church house on Saaremaa island which is being rebuilt and renovated these days. The guy who works there had sent couple of invites to pastors mailing list, saying that they'd be very grateful for anyone who could go and help them. I had had it on my heart for quite some time to go there but I always had too much to do, either in the office or in Tartu. But when I hit the bottom two weeks ago I knew I had to leave the city for a while, no matter what. I didn't care how much office work I had, I needed a break. So I let P. know that I'd come, and M., another friend a colleague was also there for the whole week so we ended up having a decent group there. Already when I got on a bus on Monday evening for a 4 hour bus ride, I had a feeling this was going to do me good. And I was right. I did me good. I got to spend three days away from my office table and laptop and emails and sermons. And I got to spend these days with great people. Jesus only knows how much I needed their company and how much I appreciated the homely feeling and fellowship. We worked upstairs for the better part of the day, then ate together at P's place and had the youth prayer week meetings in the evenings. Slept on the floor in the church hall. Such simple life! On my way back to the mainland on Thursday evening I welled up. Partly because I didn't want to come back to Tallinn, partly because I was so grateful for that precious time with my friends. I was like, Thank you, Jesus! Obviously, that time didn't mend my broken heart but it filled it with love the way I hadn't experienced for quite some time.

When it comes to P. and M., it's all a bit funny and complicated - they are my friends, they are my colleagues, and on top of that, they are my students. There's almost too many layers to these relationships so at times I feel slightly awkward as I'm not sure which layer is more important than the other. Like. We went out for some pizza on Thursday right before I had to leave and in the middle of laughing and other topics I had to ask them how they were coping with their homiletics practice they have this semester. They were, Oh no, Mervi has turned into a lecturer now! Lol. If I remember it correctly, it was the only time I asked about their studies. I prefer other layers taking precedence...

Insulating the ceiling with MM. "Capable young women" as we used to joke. :)

Pizza evening with MM, M. and P. Unfortunately, P's wife couldn't join us.

I have better people in my life than I deserve. Far better.

I moved out from my apartment on Thursday, dad came to Tallinn and helped me move. It was a sad and strange day, I felt like breaking down in tears the whole day. Then M. sent me a message on Thursday evening and invited me out to lunch the next day. And so it was that when I met her and we headed to the Old Town for lunch on Friday I hadn't eaten anything for 24 hours. I think she saved me from an eating disorder (it's probably not true but it sounds so wonderfully dramatic, lol!)

Then on Friday afternoon S. called me and he basically invited himself as well as H. and K. to my place. I wouldn't have thought of inviting them over because in my head I thought I would have to unpack and settle and get used to the new apartment before I can let anybody in. Fortunately they didn't think the same way so after I had sneaked out of Friday evening prayer meeting in the church (don't tell anyone) we all landed at my place. It was so good to have them there I could have hugged them the whole evening haha! And it was so funny. I realised that I had run out of moving energy on Thursday afternoon when I got to the kitchen so I had only grabbed a couple of plates and tea mugs and pretty much nothing else. So when they brought all that food we didn't have any place to put it. We had a bottle of some fancy fizzy drink on my table and next to it some bread (gladly I had the plates for salad), and as I didn't have a kitchen knife, we literally broke the bread as we ate. I was joking about us having our own communion service around my kitchen table. But as I walked to church this morning to preach I kept thinking about that bread. I think it really was a communion we had last night. I don't know what are the theological requirements for a communion service but it all looked a lot like the very first breaking of bread we read about in the Gospels. There was drink and bread and other food, there were the most important people around that table, there was the presence of the Almighty, and it all took place in the middle of life's inevitable pain and beauty. If this wasn't a communion, I don't know what is...

And five minutes ago I received a phone call from I., my senior pastor who just invited himself and his family to my place tonight.

So if God loves us through the love of other people, I've been soaked in love these past few days. Even in my misery, I am a very happy girl.

Breaking of bread.

Things have been going wrong lately.

There are some things over which you know you don't have any control - like long-awaited Newbold lecturer getting ill and not being able to visit Estonia. You may panic and may have to reschedule important things but in a sense you know you could not possibly do anything about it. But then there are things that go wrong and you know you could have done something about them or should have done. I found myself in the middle of a rather serious conflict a couple of weeks ago - there are some people who are certain I have neglected some of my responsibilities as a pastor. And they may be right. It's a terrible feeling, a nagging feeling. And then in the middle of it you realise your conflict solving skills are at the level of a five year old and you have no idea how to grow a skin a little thicker (I was in touch with Dr L. T. the other week as I'm trying to get him to come and lecture in Estonia next year, and when he asked how I feel I have benefited from Newbold education I told him the course of surviving conflicts and growing thicker skin is very unfortunately still missing from Newbold's curriculum).

I have managed to create yet another disaster in my personal life (it's actually the old disaster from last November but I have been so wonderfully smart to prolong it for another four months).

And I have to move out from my apartment. Tomorrow. Because the conference needs this space for other things now.

Bloody hell, I say.

But I find a lot of comfort in seeing other people do well. It's somehow so heartwarming and comforting - even more so now when I have hit the rock bottom myself - to see beautiful things happen and life moving on for good people. Like, I received a wedding invitation two days ago, U. and C. have invited me to celebrate their love and happiness with them (oh, I wish it was as simple as getting on a plane and flying to California!). My auntie told me on Saturday that my cousin got accepted for the PhD program... in Harvard. Some beautiful news from H. and S. And a good old friend seems to have bumped into the love of her life.

So good stuff still happens. Good things, good people.

But say a prayer for me.

I've had some very meaningful encounters these couple of last days. I've spoken to friends who are going through very different phases in their lives, and all of them have touched my heart in a way or another.

I just finished a phone call with a friend who lost her daughter to brain cancer last week. She was eleven years old and had battled the ****ing disease since she was five. I've sat on the bed side and have watched helplessly the most important person in my life losing the same battle. But it must be very different to lose one's child compared to a parent - it's even more unfair and unnatural. There weren't many things I could say to her (not many words are needed, that I also know from my experience). I said what I could. And my heart goes out to her and her family for now they need to build up a life very different to the one they've known so far. It is a hard hard work, this building up thing. Heavens, do I hate death!

Earlier today I had a long conversation with another friend who is also going through a massive change in his life. He's a guy who has been sort of married to singleness for a long time. And it was a life, a reality he had gotten used to. I think there was some resignation from his part because frankly, he isn't that young any more. And now, totally unexpectedly, this amazing young woman has appeared out of nowhere and he's so in love and she's in love and the funniest part is that he's totally confused... About his future and work and possible marriage and his future studies (we'd been talking about PhD studies for quite some years now, encouraging each other to get started). We have never been close friends but for some reason he felt he wanted to talk to me about it, so we talked today. I'm so happy for him. And the best advice I could come up with came straight from the garden of Eden lol! - it is not good for a man to be alone. (I should know)

Yet another friend called me last week and appeared on my doorstep. She has tried to get going with her PhD studies twice and it just doesn't seem to work out for her. The uncertainty and anxiety has lasted for so long that she seems to be battling depression now. She's the kind of girl who never complains so I was very surprised when she landed on my sofa and pretty much broke down. I think her work and her studies have become the basis of her identity and now that things are shifting and shaking and crumbling, she's not quite sure who she is any longer. I prayed with her, it wasn't much but it seemed to be all I could do to her at that moment.  

Last week on a bus on my way back home from a small group gathering I happened to sit next to a shy teenage girl from that group as we were going to the same direction. I had seen her in the church for a couple of times but we had never properly talked. And now she was like, Oh, I'm so glad we get to sit on the bus together for a half an hour because there's something I want to talk to you about - I really want to get baptised. I looked in her eyes and saw the thing, the joy and excitement and longing that can only come from discovering Jesus. It was so clear she had been surprised - or maybe hit - by this joy and peace unknown to this world. A high school kid, wanting nothing more and nothing less than a life with Jesus... It must have been the happiest bus ride in my life. Or maybe in both of our lives.

And carrying all these experiences and encounters with me, all I can think of is Frederick Buechner's quote, Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don't be afraid.