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Published: February 11th 2005
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Betty
Keeps the book/gift shop open each day and makes good coffee for the ten-thirty break each workday. Betty is another of the really nice people we have met since our arrival at IBTS. In addition to running the IBTS book-gift shop she is the one who sets up the Visitors Lounge every weekday morning, makes the coffee, sets out the snacks, cups, sugar ... all the items needed for the ten-thirty coffee/tea break that is so popular with everyone here. It is a time of casual social mixing, a nice break each morning.
I have come to realize that my concept of the size of Europe is in error. Europe is not nearly as large as I have thought up to now. Let me give a few examples. We are in Prague, in the very geographic heart of Europe and yet we are only ninety minutes flight time away from London or Estonia. We are less than one hour away from Frankfurt. We are only four hours flight time away from Jerusalem and a five hour drive from Budapest. Perhaps it is not surprising that my concept of Europe has been wrong. Many Europeans have the opposite concept of America or Canada and do not realize how large the two countries are. One of the Library Conference attendees told me he has a friend who grew up in England, but who lives in Vancouver, British Columbia. His brother was making arrangements for his mother to visit Vancouver. The brother called him saying, “I’ve found a really inexpensive ticket to Halifax. Why don’t you drive there and pick her up?”
The brother in Vancouver responded, “Why don’t you drive to Halifax and pick her up. In London you are closer to Halifax than I am.”
Today we worked in the library from morning to night taking a break only for lunch and supper. We were not scheduled to be in the library this evening. However when we walked into the library this morning Mirka came up to us and said, “Katarina is scheduled to be at the circulation desk from four until nine this evening. However she is not well. Can you cover some of the time for us?”
“Of course,” we replied ... and we did. We probably would not have worked until that late processing books. But as we had the responsibility for the circulation desk we did stay and kept working on processing the books. Today we did not find any books that were published in the 1700’s, but did find one published in 1844. We set that one aside so it can be moved to a more secure area. The library is literally a treasure house of theological literature both old and new. It is good that they have such excellent facilities to shelve and preserve even the most precious and oldest of their books.
We hope Katarina will recover quickly. Her family has been passing some virus around and they are scheduled to go on vacation very soon. Mirka said she thinks they have reservations in the Canary Islands. That seems a very inviting location to me at this time of year. They are a very nice family and have been working day and night on the recent library conference and missions conference and the intensive program for students. If anyone needs some R and R, they certainly do and they deserve it.
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