Three months & three weeks

On Tuesday, September 22, shortly after 10 a.m. there was a phone call to the First Lutheran from one of the major Vancouver radio stations. The caller said that they had just received the decision from the Federal Court to deny my application for Judicial Review and would like to talk to me. Five minutes later came in a request for an interview from another radio station. I immediately contacted office of our counsel--they had just received the decision, but our lawyer was out of country. Legal assistant I spoke to promised to scan and email the document as soon as possible, but it came only after one p.m. Within one hour between 10:30 and 11:30 the list of calls from the media included over fifteen TV companies, radio stations and newspapers. They needed to interview me right away, but there was not much I could tell them--I didn't have a chance to read the decision and the person who could provide the professional legal assessment of the decision and the situation was not available.

Around 4 p.m. came Dmitri from the college. On that day, Jordan, who had been filming my family, the church and the congregation for his documentary on sanctuary, had an appointment to take an interview from Russell, a church's council member, and after that take some shots of Irina, Dmitri and me having dinner together. He managed to interview Dmitri before Irina came from home, but after we had set up the table and invited Jordan to join us for dinner, it was more just talking rather than filming. Besides, as the father of one month old girl, he was very much needed at home and we decided to move the interview to the next day.

Closer to nine o'clock, Irina took Dmitri to Joice station and returned to the church. We didn't talk much about the decision. We both were very tired and needed rest and sleep.

Next morning, I prepared breakfast and we both enjoyed these little moments of being together. Quarter to eight Irina hurried to work. During the day, I was visited by Doug, an intern with CKNW, a nice young man with an honest and sincere look in his eyes, who came to the church to record a short interview; and early afternoon I had a lovely conversation with Nikki Renshaw on her show with TALK1410.

After 3 p.m. I had a little bit of time before an interview with Jordan and started reading of "A People's History of Christianity" for that night's Adult Studies. After going through several pages I heard a knock at the door and when opened it, I saw Jesse (I met her in June--she attended a rally at the First Lutheran--and later I spoke with her many times on the phone or in person in the church; it's hard to believe that Jesse, who is an epitome of energy and optimism is ninety-one-years old)--she was crying. She had just read about the decision in the newspaper and couldn't help coming to see me. I tried to comfort her, offered her tea and soon she felt better. We spoke until four and then I had to excuse me as Jordan had everything ready for the interview. We had to pause it several times as we were interrupted by visitors; besides, Dmitri stopped by to have a dinner before going to the college and Jordan wanted to film that as well. I was unable to finish my reading before the meeting, but it turned out that I was ahead of the rest of the group.

Thursday was not as eventful as the two previous days. Afternoon, Pastor Hergy and I met with Fred A from Prince Rupert. I spoke with this gentleman before on the phone for a couple of times. He happened to be in the Lower Mainland on business and wanted to see Hergy and me. It was a very nice meeting and by 3 p.m. both Hergy and Fred left. The remaining part of the afternoon I had to spend on deleting a nasty pp12.exe virus that infected the office computer. At 7:30 p.m. we had the church's choir practice, and before that, I enjoyed dinner with our very good friends Peter and June who are the choir members as well.