HR Week is upon
Posted on | May 20, 2010 | No Comments
Yep, that’s all there is to say . . . HR week is upon us. On Monday we will have 13 guests arrive to get a ‘best window’ peek into the organization. It’s shaping up to be great, looking forward to meeting all these people I’ve been in contact with. Pray that they’ll hear the call to join the team!
Aaron S.
Posted on | May 6, 2010 | No Comments
I just spent the morning with Aaron. He is heading off with the team to spend the next few days in Czech at the church planter training conference. As a pastor who spent twelve years planting a church Aaron has much to offer these church planters in shared experiences.
Our meeting was about Slovakia though. Aaron made the commitment to join our team last year as our Slovakia country leader. He has been walking through the faith journey of raising his personal support team over the last eight months and still has much need to meet there. Please pray for Aaron this weekend as he works with the church planters but please continue to pray for Aaron and his family as they implement a six month fundraising plan and ultimately join the NLI team full time after thatt!!
2010 STM Season
Posted on | April 28, 2010 | No Comments
The 2010 STM season has started for us and this is the encouraging report from one of the first teams, 28 Canadians which is the largest team for this year:
- Everyone is happy and healthy. The fruit of the work here in Crimea is wonderful to see. We have had great reception in schools, churches and orphanages. This Sunday we were at 6 different churches and are seeing not only very healthy sending churches, but also the effectiveness of the brand new churches in villages. I am prepping right now for a crusade in a city square with a monument to Lenon in it. Most of the village and all of the students from the school will be coming. Natasha gave her testimony in a village yesterday where 70 youth showed up after being invited from the school. After giving her testimony she gave an altar call and 25 youth made decisions for Jesus. This church had no youth in it yesterday and today they have 25…praise the Lord. — Justin —
Since that report another 50+ people responded to the altar call during the crusade in the city square!
Mar ’10 Newsletter
Posted on | March 30, 2010 | No Comments
Hot and ready for download . . . the March Newsletter:
March '10 News
Travelling up the M6
Posted on | March 26, 2010 | No Comments
Our friends, the Westfields have recently moved up to a city called Southport, which is right on the coast and near to Liverpool. Today begins two weeks off nursery school for Lauren, so we are all in the car as I write driving up to see them.
Anyone who knows us, knows that we always search for historical places to go. We have just made a stop to see Beeston Castle. It’s built on an enormous hill, and one side is sheer sandstone cliff. At the top you can see for miles (yes, that’s right they use miles for distance here, even though everything else is metric). You can see the welsh mountains and even another castle on another nearby hill.
We are pleased to report that Lauren(at just three years old) has joined Doug and I in being castle crazy. It’s all she can talk about and she was so excited when we told her this morning. Will post some pictures of the views when I’m at a proper computer!
On a ministry note we have been busy with the marriage course lately and are pleased that one gentleman who was not a Christian, but was coming as his wife asked him to. Well last Sunday, he came to church and accepted Christ – Awesome eh?
Last Friday a neat thing happened to. I was having a home party for a friend who sells Children’s books. One lady from down my street came. She didn’t buy any books, but she started asking questions and we ended up telling her all about Jesus and why He died and how it brings life. The book lady got to share her testimony too.
Doug has some work news to share as well and he has promised to write about that soon, so stay tuned!
Posted on | March 14, 2010 | No Comments
Today is Mother’s Day here in the U.K. - it seems a little strange to celebrate it on a different day than you are used to, but if we don’t then we forget when the Canadian one is! It was mostly a usual Sunday, but we did go for lunch (McDonalds) and then to our favorite castle (Kenilworth) for a bit of a walk.
This has actually been a very long week with far too much going on. Last Monday, I was admitted to hospital as the doctors were concerned about a possible ectopic pregnancy. There are a lot of details that led up to this, but basically, they felt they needed to keep a close eye on me. So I spent three days there. I was on a ward with mostly elderly ladies who liked to talk in their sleep and when they were awake didn’t really know where they were. It was often very humourous, but also kept me awake! On the last morning I was there, I was quarantined in my bay for 6 hours as there was a stomach bug going around. But alas, no matter the amount of bleach, I still caught it and spent a good 24 hours with stomach pain. I came home Wednesday and am doing just fine.
Being in hospital meant I had to cancel filming of our drama, leading the marriage course and we had to find friends to look after Lauren while Doug worked. It was quite stressful to not be at home caring for Doug and Lauren and we learned once again how hard it can be to not have any family near by to lean on.
Saturday I was still recovering, but did a birthday party of 9 eight year olds, it was crazy.
Here is a photo of me and Lauren from today.
Prayer for the Week
Posted on | January 31, 2010 | No Comments
In house week is upon us again. It’s that week where everyone from NLI is banned from travel and we all share good times with each other, remind ourselves why we do what we do and get geared up for the coming year. Pray for the staff this week that it would be an encouraging and inspiring week leading into a wonderful year.
Please continue to pray for Lauren’s health, she has an eye appointment tomorrow. They have to put her to sleep to check her eyes cause she won’t sit still.
Financial & Prayer Update – 2010
Posted on | January 9, 2010 | No Comments
Happy New Year!
We had a relaxing time over the holidays although it’s great to see Lauren getting back into her routine with school in the morning again. We are really looking forward to 2010. Did you know that it was Jan 10th three years ago that we crawled out of one of those fancy metal tubes called airplanes and found ourselves walking through the Birmingham airport just 20 minutes from our new home? Yeah still feels crazy and probably is.
We’ve continued to give you a financial update every six months and here we are again. We are asking that you would specifically pray with us for two areas of our finance. First we are praying for 4-5 more partners investing approximately $50/month to join us this year. With this we will be able to fill out our current budget. Second we would like to be able to move to a larger house, one with three bedrooms. This means we are praying for $250 per month over and above our current budget.
Why would you want to leave a wonderful two bedroom house you’ve been in for three years you ask? Well great question and leads to our next prayer request for 2010. We are hoping for an addition to the family this year. I know people don’t usually announce that they are trying to get pregnant and neither are we. Many of you will remember that it took us three years to get pregnant with Lauren and that didn’t happen until we asked a few people to join us in prayer. Also we would like you to pray that this child would be totally healthy and our family would not be faced with additional health challenges. So you can see that pray and a larger place would be a real blessing to us.
Of course the third prayer request is for the ministry. The past year has been a season of internal change for the organization that we’ve had the opportunity to be directly involved in, repositioning staff and moving locations. We meet in February as a group where we will be looking to find a strong outward focus again. Looking at the myriad of opportunities that face this exceptional group of people there is much to do. Particularly there are a number of ministries in France, Netherlands, Italy, Russia and Albania that we are exploring partnership with, these are new areas for us. And of course we need more staff in addition to the three that are currently going through the fundraising preparation to join the team.
Thank you again for all the prayers and support you’ve given us in 2009, we really appreciate it and definitely feel covered in prayer by you. We pray that 2010 is a year of blessing for you as you have flipped that page of the calendar. While we flip the page every month there is something about this one that allows many of us to refocus and for some to establish new beginnings. We pray this is true for you as well.
Blessings,
Doug, Kara and of course Lauren
Was your Christmas Merry?
Posted on | December 28, 2009 | No Comments
Ours was lovely. Christmas eve we had no plans, and it made me a little sad to have no family around, but then I got busy making butter tarts and cinnamon buns and the evening passed quietly. It was actually very relaxing.
Here is Lauren helping me knead the dough. I must add that this was my first attempt and they turned out fantastic (well they could have been a bit more moist).
Christmas morning (as with every morning) Lauren came into our room for a cuddle and I gave her her stocking, and she was so pleased. “Wow” is one of her favourite words at the moment, so we heard a lot of that. She got loads of books and a little handbag set with glasses, play lipstick and compact, mobile phone and keys. She barely let go of it!
After breakfast – she had the usual rice crispies and banana, and we had the cinnamon buns….. we let her get on with the other gifts, first of which was a whole bunch of clothing from her grandma, all of which she absolutely loved. So much so that she insisted on putting every item on, pants, skirt, dress, sweater and a jacket. She looked pretty funny!
Then the fun began as she opened her play toaster, used it once and it broke…..guess I should have spent more than £3.99…. hopefully i can return it. Then she opened more books, a couple of learning games and then finally her little people house. I am surprised at how much she loves that little house, she loves putting the people on the potty and to bed and she especially likes to make them go into the fridge to get eggs.
Here’s a few more pictures of present opening and aftermath.
We enjoyed a very nice Christmas meal with our friends Ron and Janelle Zerr, they are another NLI family also from Canada. Janelle made the most delicious turkey and stuffing…..and there was lots of leftovers, some of which we got to keep! Unfortunately I forgot to take pictures of all of us sitting around the table, and it really was picture worthy cause I used a tablecloth! Janelle also made a pumpkin pie, and it was from real pumpkin, not just from a tin (you can’t get tinned pumpkin here), it’s been a couple years since I’ve last had pumpkin pie! Why is that when you get discussing Christmas, all the food you eat becomes some of the most important stuff? Do you have any food or treats that you have to have, or else it doesn’t feel like Christmas? I think for me it’s butter tarts and toffeefe……and of course a turkey dinner!
Boxing day we were invited round to another Canadian family’s home to celebrate their 25th anniversary and just have some fun with a £3 gift exchange. Doug was lucky enough to come home with some ladies padded hangers. Lauren was a little doll going around collecting all the wrapping paper.
Here she is with her friend caleb playing cars.
Thank you for all your prayers and and support in 2009. Blessings to you and yours in 2010.
Of The Many . . .
Posted on | December 10, 2009 | No Comments
Of the many things I do throughout the year, one of them is to inspire young leaders. Here is a quote we recieved following the Youth Leadership Training Conference in Bulgaria a couple of weeks ago:
“I do believe this small group of leaders will do a major difference for the nation of Bulgaria. Thank you for investing in us and may God take us all to a new level of relationship with Him and reveal and use us for the big picture He has for Bulgaria!!!”
It’s great to hear that kind of enthusiam come from the people we work with. We know that these young leaders will eventually transform his community, plant a church relevant to the emerging generation and begin to reach out into other areas of Europe like Albania. We know this because it is already happening, the Bulgarians have a huge heart for the country of Albania and have asked for our help in reaching that country with the love of the Gospel.
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