An Imperial Fish

This Imperial Angelfish is Col's calendar shot for April, taking us back to our expat years and our trips to the Maldives, with the Aramco Shoal.  Which is always a good excuse for me to mention my book "Waiting for Gordo", a lot of which I wrote under the shade of a palm tree, looking out over the Indian Ocean being inspired by the beauty around me.  And of course I was also inspired by that feeling of paradise lost, of "the original serpent " still being in the garden.

This kind gentleman at Divernet gave me a lovely review:

https://divernet.com/scuba-diving/waiting-for-gordo-by-sue-knight/

Captain B took me out for a drive on Tuesday.  We had planned to get some Nemesia for our balcony. It thrives there and fills the whole balcony with its vanilla scent.  But we found that our favourite garden centre is closed till mid April.  It wasn't a wasted half hour though as I got to see loads of Spring blossom, and the roundabouts full of daffodils and tulips - each flower a miracle.

April has started out very cold - and just at the time everybody's heating bills are rising dramatically.  I think the hot water bottle will be making a big comeback.  Assuming that is you can afford to heat up the water.

The first meeting back at the Kingdom Hall with the brothers juggling cameras and Zoom (about a third of us are still Zooming) went well, no glitches. And even the tiny brothers and sisters, born during the pandemic, and whose first unvirtual meeting it was, were as good as gold.

We had our Special Talk - WHERE CAN YOU FIND REAL HOPE? - in which the Speaker posed these three questions:

1. Why is there so much suffering?  (A question I always asked myself.)

2. What hope does the Bible give?

3. Why can we trust what the Bible says?

And he gave us the Biblical answers to all those questions - wonderful answers too.  You can find information about how to join a video presentation of this talk on our website:

https://www.jw.org/en/jehovahs-witnesses/memorial/

It is our Circuit Overseer visit this week, so we will be getting a lot of extra support, in the spiritual sense.

And how much we need it, in the face of the horrendous news coming out of the Ukraine.  But the Memorial will remind us of the rescue that is so close now.  And, when the earth is being restored to the paradise of peace it was always meant to be, the dead will not be forgotten.  Those who died in circumstances of such horror have such a joyful awakening ahead of them.

Jehovah will not awake them from the dreamless sleep of death until the whole earth is at peace under the loving rule of the Kingdom of God.