One of the reasons why we’re in Scotland at the moment is for me to be mentored by the pastor of the church we’re working with. Because of lockdowns, that’s mainly been happening on Zoom but we made the effort to meet in person at the church building (socially distanced, working at separate tables).

Being able to pray with someone who is sitting across from you does something for the soul that cannot be over-emphasised.

I’ve been spending time praying for the persecuted church and realised that I have many brothers and sisters for whom isolation in their faith is an ordinary, everyday reality. My heart goes out to them as I consider that the pandemic isn’t the thing that prevents them from experiencing the fellowship of the saints. The obstacle for them is the fact that they might be the only Christian for miles and miles in a country where they are not free to practice their faith.

What is there to say about baking?

I wrote on my newsletter about how running helps to keep me sane. Baking is something that soothes my heart. When I’m baking bread, it’s like I get to do magic. To take four or five ingredients and have the potential to turn them into so many different things is a kind of alchemy. Fight me, you won’t change my mind.

To get a little bit nerdy, I can confirm that adding a pre-ferment or poolish to the process means you can get really good flavour and texture while making the bread work around your schedule.

This was a bread that I made for our dinner today. I made it between finishing up my sermon for Sunday, going for a run and completing my weekly review. Normally, a poolish has to be done the night before. Except I forgot to make it last night. Thankfully, two hours will get the job done.

Yes, you sacrifice some of the sour notes that you’d get from an overnight fermentation but when it’s bread that’s going to be paired with something like a chorizo stew, you won’t miss the sour notes.

The other thing is that I did not knead this. I did some stretch-and-pulls after the first half hour of bulk fermentation and that was it. Then I got on with things.

The result? A bread that I feel like I could make just about every day. It’s just a matter of learning enough about how bread works to make it work with your schedule, to say nothing of what you can do if you add in the ability to use the fridge.

Obviously, life comes with regrets. I try not to dwell on them too much, but sometimes they are so clear and present that it becomes worth the practice of observing them and figuring out how to avoid them in the future.

At the moment, the big one for me is letting certain aspects of improving and maintaining my physical health fall by the wayside.

There are a variety of reasons why this happened and they run the gamut from:

• Moving out of our apartment into the unstable world of kind of being digital nomads for 6 weeks at the end of the summer
• Organising and executing an international move in the middle of a pandemic while simultaneously starting Bible college as a part of the continuing of my apprenticeship
• Moving again from England up to temporary accommodation in Scotland
• Moving from that temporary accommodation into the house where I am currently writing this and locked down with my family

Now, all of that isn’t to say that I’ve done nothing. In the bulk of that time, I continued my new hobby of running. And it was great. We live in the countryside and these country lanes are surrounded by sheep farms and wind farms. It’s a sweeping landscape where all of the trees lean toward the east. It also comes with a built in means of making running more challenging, and consequently more effective, because it’s ever so hilly here.

But I ended up spraining my ankle in early December and suddenly everything came to a grinding halt. Pain was present on every single day and it was intense.

And so I stopped.

The other day, I shared about how I started up doing the 100 pushups plan. And right now, the thing that I am wishing I had done while I was waiting for my ankle to heal is start the plan then. Or to have started anything at all. At least then I would be slightly more ahead than I am now. I would be stronger than I am now.

So if you’re wanting to start, just start with one thing that you can definitely do. If it’s trying to write, just write for 5 or 10 minutes. If it’s exercise, just go for a walk or try doing a few pushups everyday.

Now that I am in this stage of things and struggling under the weight of lifting my own body, literally, I can really see that anything is better than nothing.

James Clear was really on to something when he explained about trying to improve by 1%. 1% is infinitely more progress than 0%.

I took this a week or so ago while out on a run. The landscape here is beautifully bleak.

I really love living here.