8

It's a great joy to note that sarita and I just hit our 8th anniversary. What can I say... I'm privileged to have married a girl like her and grateful for each year.

Love you, Sarita.

peace

The history of the city of Kotka - that we now reside - includes an interesting phase of being the border town of Swedish and Russian empires before the independent state of Finland, in the midst of 18th century's battles over the control of the baltic seas.

Sweden had lost the area to the russian empire in 1743 but attacked russian twice during the century, and the latest battle grew to be the largest naval battle in the Baltic sea ever with nearly 500 ships and 30 000 men. Finally in 1790 the empires settled for peace.

These events brought about the Russian empire fortify the area as part of the defensive line of the capital St. Petersburg, and they built up a vast chain of fortresses around the today's Kotka. The area lost it's strategic importance as the Russian conquered the entire finland in 1809; but then, decades later in Crimean war in 1855, the British-French army destroyed the majority of the buildings.

Today some of the ruins are being renovated and open for tourists to witness. We took a boat this week and head to one of those, fort elisabeth located off the Kotka downtown. Here's some pics.

Notice the facinating resemblance between the cannon in the picture from wikipedia, and the ones the boys play around.

physically challenged

Joonatan tickled out some smiling faces around him on a crowded beach yesterday. He shouted to us from the water "mom and dad... Jesus can walk on the water - I have to walk on the bottom."

Well, I too, find it painful to see my restrictions.

Fishermen

We went fishing to the near-by river and got some good catch.

Joonatan got a big fish...

Benjamin got even bigger...


...and another smaller one. But face tells, he enjoyed the idea of fishing much more than facing the results.

Summertime

Heat of the summer finally reached Finland. For a couple of days it's been very beautiful. Today, we head to swim. Well, the boys did, sarita and I just accompanied because the water warms up a little slower than the air. It appeared not to bother the boys. Here's some pics.

In the snack pic you can see for yourselves that sarita's preparing herself for explosion. i love that belly... but it's going to be gone within the next four weeks. We are looking forward to receive he/she/he/she/he/s... Actually we know the sex, but you'll just have to wait...

where's God?

I haven't been blogging a lot lately because I've been running out of time in my days and weeks, but I'm hoping it'll ease up soon.

Just now I'm sitting down writing a sermon on a topic "where's God when the world suffers" which is quite a huge topic having puzzled folks for centuries, and I certainly have no exhaustive answer, but while preparing I ran into quite interesting specs.

One of them is the news concerning the New York Stock Exchange NYSE bought a european stock exchance company and together they'll form a new NYSE Euronext that will DAILY buy and sell stocks for 100 000 000 000. (hundred billion US$, not sure whether I put the zeros right)

I'm not really good at economics, but just for the sake of the sermon I searched around www and found that 2004 Tsunami recovery costs (which appear yet being on their way) are estimated to be 11,5billion US$ in total, which is 1/10 of one single day's money in NYSE Euronext. I don't wont to discourage anybody but the money will never reach the poor in Indian ocean area - they'll have to re-build the home from the garbage.

Right now Indonesia is suffering an another catastrophic earthquake in Java with 6000 kills, 50 000 injuries and 70 000 homes destroyed. I bet they'd do a lot with a 1/100 of one day's stock exchanges.

At the same time 250 000 000 kids die for diarrhea, while the needed medication is piled up in storages 6hours flight away.

I don't want to simplify the issue, but I really think the question would be "where are people when the world suffers." where am I? Where have you been?

Money is not he cure for all the worlds problems, and it won't bring happiness... but why then are we so attached to it? It would certainly ease the pain for the grandmom in the picture above, who lost the family and home in Java last Saturday.

Where 's God...? The book a Job 38-42 paints out that the question is off the track. Job faced the misfortune of life, but concluded that it would be insanity to take God to court over it. The almighty is not held accountable by us, but he grants us stuff in his wisdom, and will rightly be worshipped.

God is where he has always been, but are you and i where he wants us to be?