BNG - 12

My mum is with us at the moment, which is allowing us to do some site seeing (or revisiting the places we know already!). But that doesn't stop with the meeting of new people!

Having taken the bus to the airport on Saturday night to meet my mum, not ten minutes after meeting her and waiting for the return bus did I meet a lady, who'd been on the same flight, and started talking - she was from Tallinn but had lived in the UK for 6 years - and I was the one saying how sunny it had been here! Because, since writing here that we'd had 14 out of 15 blue sky days since arriving, we've now had 3 grey days and this morning it was full on snowing! I didn't speak for long with this lady, because as I pointed out to her at the time, I'd not really spoken to my mum by that point so had better sort that one out!

At church on Sunday, we were also asked for our details by an American/Estonian family - the wife is from here originally but they all live in the US now. He was asking me all about church planting and it was helpful for me to get things clear as I was explaining what it was - all he'd seen in the past was when one big church sends out hundreds to make two good sized churches, which is also another form of church planting, but different to what we are doing here!

And being Mothering Sunday in the UK yesterday, we went out for some food at one of our favorite places (can we say that after three weeks??) And just sitting down, our girls starting to play with the Lego there, we heard English being spoken and it was Rachel (who went out of her way to hang Anya's coat up on the pegs so that she would pass these people!) who made contact. He is Canadian (Rodney), and she is Estonian (Kia), though they've lived in Tallinn for many years, and have children a similar age to ours. They were very local to that restaurant, actually living in a house (not a flat!) nearby. Details were exchanged (we are starting to make sure we get emails so that we can be in contact) and they seemed really open to further contact.

During the snow this morning, I went to pick up my ID card (pictured above), which I did without any problems, so now am fully registered to live and work in Estonia! Praise God for His wonderful hand on us in this process! Rachel picked her's up later on today as well (I had intended on getting both, but you have to sign for them individually, so that meant I couldn't). We are still trying to work out all the ways we can use them, but I know I can travel in Europe just with this card (no need for my passport). And I think you can do banking with it and pay for travel around the city.....So the photo is to mark a significant day for us!

There are also two photos below taken from our front window - one showing the view into New Tallinn city centre (as opposed to the Old Town, where we went today) and the other a close up of the road sign, reminding us how close these other Capital cities are.

And on the tourist front, Tallinn really is a lovely city to look around - small enough to quite easily navigate and old enough to turn up plenty of surprises. We went to 'Olde Hansa' today, which is a medieval restaurant in the Old Town, dating from the 15th century, I think. It's all 15th century food and costume - on the menu are things like Bear, Wild Bear and Elk! We went for the slightly less wild Mushroom soup, which is very creamy and very good!

And that's the great thing of planting in a historic city like Tallinn - you get to do both worlds, and every time a visitor arrives, we get to show them around!