One month on...

Time has flown by since our last posting. Through the summer we were really busy with visiting family, attending two weddings (friends from college and Jon's brother Chris) and leading a service at our previous church in London. The girls have settled back into school really quickly and we have just begun our courses at Bristol Baptist College. We had induction week last week which involved a lot of early starts and a lot of driving. This week has been our first 'proper' week and has also involved some early starts and quite a lot of driving.

Last Sunday was our first Sunday with Gas Green Baptist Church, the church in Cheltenham that we will be working with. It was their Harvest weekend and we had a lovely lunch together and met lots of new people.

We are planning on catching up with friends at Redcliffe tomorrow which we are really looking forward to.

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. :)

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.

The end of Cheltenham as we know it!!!!

No - we have not anihilated Cheltenham Spa - it wasn't that bad, but our placement at Cambray Baptist finished on Friday. We have half term at home - busy writing the reports that are required by Redcliffe, then we are back to studying (!) on Monday 26th February. We have two more terms to complete before our graduation in June. So that's quite a few late nights ahead as we contend with the impending assignments/interviews/preaching as well as family life.

Impending Interviews...

We visited Bristol Baptist College yesterday to meet the new principal and to discuss our options regarding our course for next year. It was good to have some of our questions answered and to discover that there may be more ways to become accredited than we had previously thought. It is possible that we could attend an interview in March if we want to and the college gets the go ahead for this to happen before our interview for ministerial recognition. Apparently this interview is the hard(!) one.

Ali will be preaching and being assessed this coming Sunday evening (11th Feb) and Jon's turn is on 4th March - again in the evening service.

August 13th

This morning's service went really well despite a couple of logistical hiccups at the start. There were a couple of changes in the order of service which I found a little disconcerting but it didn't seem to matter in the end. Jon's preaching was well received - seems his accent wasn't as much of a problem as had been anticipated! Many thanks again to those who have been praying for us. It is a priviledge to be used by God in His service.

Jon stayed at church for a special church meeting about their building project while I took the girls back for lunch. Once the meeting was over Kerry and Nancy came with the Edmobile and drove us up to Toowoomba to a viewpoint called Picnic Point. (They said they hadn't been up there for a couple of years!) The journey took over an hour each way, so we had a great chance to catch up with Nancy. The views from Picnic Point were breathtaking. It is an amazing thing to be able to look out over such a great distance. The Great Dividing Range is awesome, and just goes on as far as you can see. God has made some wonderful things!

We got back just in time for bed (for the girls - not us!) and we have done some preparation for next weekends prayer event and watched a movie.