Hello again to all our overseas friends,
Yet another six weeks has shot by and I am sure you all know
we are actually having summer this year which is very exciting. In fact it doesn't take much for the great
British public to start complaining about the heat! It was amazing how quickly everything went
from green and fresh to yellow and parched looking.
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| Fiona and Isabel at the water park |
We have spent some nice times with the family and little
ones. Our town has a marvelous water park mainly for small people which is
very well maintained and used. There is
shallow water flowing and all sorts of fountains and bubbles. Fiona came over one day and we went with
Sarah’s family down there. We see a lot of Sarah and the little ones which is
one of the pleasures of being in UK.
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| Keira now aged 6 months |
We helped David with the final clear out and clean of his
Birmingham flat. I never usually do that
much cleaning in one day and we were both exhausted at the end of it. The
result was a beautiful flat given a clean bill of health and his deposit
returned. He and his girlfriend Jess
have now moved into their new flat in a very nice area in Bristol.
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| Food in the sunshine |
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| Isabel |
We are now firmly in the birthday season (4 birthdays in 10 days) and the whole family gathered to celebrate Isabel's second birthday.
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| Blowing out the candles |
Our church has been doing a series on True Religion – loving
God by loving people. The first week our
daughter Sarah brought a lovely fresh perspective on the parable of the Good
Samaritan. For the whole series, a couple of township houses had been constructed
on the stage to illustrate the poverty that many people in the world live
in. The second week someone who works
for Compassion was speaking about world poverty and our responsibility in
this. He used a website called the
Global Rich List (which anyone can access) to illustrate that even people on modest
UK incomes are in the top 2% of the world’s richest people.
Our church sponsors children through Compassion, focusing on
one area in Uganda. The people of the
church now sponsor about 250 children in that area, making a huge difference to
their lives. On the third week we had
someone who had been sponsored through Compassion visit the church and tell the
great benefit it was to her and her family’s lives. We also heard about the work of Hope for
Justice which helps rescue people, mainly girls, from human trafficking. It is shocking how many people are trafficked
into UK each year.
After this talk, everyone in the church was given the
opportunity to sign up either to the Extra Smile project which once a month
goes and helps families in Letchworth where we live or to sponsor a child with
Compassion or to sign up for Hope for Justice.
Prayer meetings continue to be very good and I also helped
out at Freedom Day which is an opportunity for a spiritual check up with prayer
if required.
We have had few days with my brother down on the south coast
and continue to broaden our horizons with a visit to the Hampton Court Flower
Show and a visit to another stately home.
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| Ickworth - stately home |
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| Hampton Court Flower Show Everything made of plant material |
I am trying hard to carve out time in our busy schedule to
write more and in particular re-draft and edit my first children’s book. I have had some very helpful input on this
but applying the advice is quite time consuming!
Thank you for all your e mails, Skype messages and calls. We
love getting your news.
