We went up to Canada from New York on the Greyhound bus service. An unforgettably mucked up night - but with a beautiful sunset and dawn. A lady beside Michael had a largish carry on bag. Which proved to house a tiny dog!

We arrived in Toronto absolutely tired out. And didn't think that was a good way to meet my cousins there for the first time - say Hi and fall asleep in their armchairs. So we prayed a lot to find a reasonable place to stay for one night to catch up on rest. Leaving the bus station the first place we checked out claimed to have a cheap room.

images_Canada/400x300/Toronto_07_Excellant_Transit_Trains_IMG_0484.jpg Unbelievably it had no window in the top part of the window frame!

So we decided to just set up in a tea room / cafe and search from there. Canada was great for us, being more like Australia or New Zealand in many of its ways - being British Commonwealth helps a lot. I believed to go to an information kiosk that Michael had spotted while he was changing some money. And there a very helpful person located a reasonably priced room for us and rang ahead and arranged a discount for us too - praise God!

As I came back to the tea rooms, I noticed a taxi rank down the side of a building nearby, and believed to pick one of the cabs up. The driver turned out to be a Christian from Lebanon. This was really great as Lebanon has a very long Christian tradition (some say stemming from the Woman by the Well), and the believers there have suffered greatly for their faith over many centuries.

Their national church is nominally a "congregation" of the Roman Catholic, but their priests marry and there are many facets of things that many would recognise as being quite biblical. Many other more modern groups often overlook the validity of aspects of the faith that many of the ancient Christian groups that we do not hear much about, have.

It was great sharing with our brother the taxi driver, he had a real heart relationship with the Lord Jesus, and this was very refreshing for us. He politely shared his concern that he was finding that many Western churches had lost sight of the holiness and moral standards of God. This also was refreshing to our souls as we had found the immoral American "dating culture" alive and kicking even amongst many American Christian groups, and were finding it quite sickening.

After a great time of sharing in the taxi, we eventually checked in to the hotel the info centre had arranged.

The next day, after a long sleep, we hooked up with my cousin Russell and went to stay up country with him to meet his father and the rest of the family. This was a pretty big thing for me as no members of my father's family had been with any of his brother's family for about 50 years. Caused partly by the consequences of the fragmentation and issues for families due to the Second World War.

My cousin Russell turned out to be a big hearted man really concerned for the welfare of any one who came into his orbit of life. He treated us royally as well.

It was great to meet my aunty Sylvia and uncle John. He had served during WW II, and had been inturned as a prisoner of war by the Germans and put illegally to work in coal mines. For a long time no one outside the Wermacht even knew he was alive. He is still owed compensation.

It was good to be with them during summer as their houses were normally surrounded by walls of snow!.

We were able to have a look in Toronto and use the trains to get back to the area where Paul's relatives stay.

When we left Canada Russell dropped us off at the airport and we flew directly to New York again.