Cheltenham says YES!

Yesterday went really well and we had a good discussion with the church after the evening service.

They had a meeting for church members and non-members and very nearly all of them said Yes!

We have still to say yes to them - we want to pray a little more first - so we have omitted their name for the time being.

We are off on holiday now, to taps that work and fresh, drinkable water. :)

It's not drinking water that's the problem!

A week on and we have had to be really inventive this week. On Thursday when it began raining we rushed outside with every container that we could think of and collected rainwater. Very useful for washing, toilets, etc. It is amazing just how much we managed to get in the space of a couple of hours. It has also made us realise just how important it is to have a water butt to conserve water.

With the next bought of rain due tonight, the buckets, plastic boxes and paddling pool will be out on duty again! But as the rain is due overnight, they will be unmanned this time.

We are grateful to Jon's family for providing water and washing facilities - both for us and our clothes. And we can't wait for the water to be turned on again - we have never wanted to flush the toilet properly so much!

Still connected!

Thankfully the power station was not flooded last night so we still have electricity. Apparently the floodwaters stopped short by a mere 2 inches!

Still trying to prepare for this coming Sunday, but current events are distracting us a little.

And the rain came down...and the floods came up...

Today we are letting everyone know that we are ok - we have not been flooded out. We have , however, been affected by the loss of drinking water because of the flooding of the pumping station at Tewkesbury (which got flooded out on Saturday.) We have enough drinking water as we were able to get some from one of the local distribution points yesterday.

We are waiting to find out if we will lose electricity later on tonight if the Walham power station becomes flooded. If this happens we will be moving (temporarily!) to Wiltshire to stay with Jon's family. We did visit them today and experienced the delights of washing machines, toilets we can flush, showers and generally water that comes out of taps rather than bottles or large blue tanks in the street. It is amazing how big an effect one day without water can have. (We trained the children well - they keep flushing the toilet!)

This coming Sunday we are due to lead services at the church in Cheltenham. We are currently preparing for this and all being well this will go ahead as planned.

We apologise for the delay to your service...

We have heard from the church in Cheltenham, and they have said...

... can you come back and speak again, at the morning and evening services, and meet with people in between to give each other a chance to ask questions.

It is only a small church, and some of them (ie. a fair percentage of the membership,) were away, but it is still frustrating to not yet know where we will be in September. It is particularly difficult for the girls not to know where they are going to be living next year.

Couple seeks church for ...

In our last post we mentioned the possibility of us working with a small church during our time at college. We led a family service there this morning and we felt it went really well. The church will be discussing us(!) tomorrow night and will be letting us know their decision asap. Please pray that God's will is clear to everyone, whether that is going forward with us or not.