what’s on watson . . .

Yes we are off to Germany and France for a holiday.  A couple of days at a wedding in Germany for a friend of Doug’s and then into the Loire Valley for 6 days of camping.  This will be our first family holiday on the continent and we are really looking forward to the break.  Be sure to watch facebook for updates and pictures!

It’s been another in house week for NLI, right on the back end of returning.  This week was a very positive time for the staff.  While some of the staff travel a lot and some of the staff don’t live in England these weeks become very important for connecting with each other and getting updates on what’s going on elsewhere.  We were able to use the week to spend time discussing some new thoughts that people are working on.  Things like a new leadership course dubbed ‘the DNA course’ and what it would look like if we saw church planting as more of a process than a project.

Since NLI has been built on pushing forward with new and fresh ideas it came as a welcome treat for the staff to work together on developing these thoughts.  I believe we set the tone for future in house weeks and how to best capitalize on that time together.

Well I am ‘tripping’ over myself.  It has been a long time away but good.  This past week I had the chance to spend some time with Thomas S. NLI’s Canadian Director.  We attended a conference in Ontario where I was able to meet up with a great woman, Wendy, who led a team last year of over 20 people to Ukraine.  In fact they went to serve Pastor Igor who CitH partnered with to help plant a church in Kyiv.  It was great to hear firsthand the impact that the trip had on Wendy and some of the other team (just can’t get the full sense from a trip report sometimes).

I’m in Calgary right now and will be heading home in a few days.  Looking forward to it!

It is the ninth day away from the family.  In case you missed the newsletter, I’m away on an extended trip.  Right now I’m sitting in Hamilton, this is my first time wandering around ‘down east’.  The week past was spent working through National Office maturity and strategy in South Bend, Indiana.  It was a great chance to not only get on the same page but also establish what the following pages will look like for any national office.

Following that I drove the 9 hours through Michigan and over to Sudbury where I met up with Ian Green.  Ian was going to be ministering in a church there, New Sudbury Pentecostal, and I joined him.  It was a fantastic weekend starting with a city wide youth meeting on Friday where we saw many young people respond to the call to be significant for Jesus.  Leaving the meeting we knew of at least one girl, who had been coming to the church for the last three weeks, that had given her life to Christ. 

Getting up early morning Saturday we came back over to the church where the church had invited other churches in the area to send over their leaders for a morning with Ian.  Ian spoke about Developing an Abundance Mindset.  John 10:10 says that Christ came that we might have life to the full, not just enough, not scraping by in life but a full life.  Ian spoke about how God wants this full life developed in all areas of our life not just spiritually.  It was a challenging message for many and well received by all.

Sunday morning was a great service where Pastor Blake said more people responded to the message than he had seen in his 18 months there.  Following the service we spent the afternoon with Blake and his family.  They are a tight knit family with a great spirit about them, one of openness and inclusion.  We felt so welcome.

Today was a morning off for me so I took a quick little drive down to Niagra Falls.  I’ve never been there and it was awesome to see.  Although it was raining I spent a half hour watching water.  It was great!

So the next few days will be spent in various meetings with Ian followed by Sunday ministry in Toronto.  Will keep you posted . . .

Sunday April 12

Happy Easter!

Get ready for church!  Get Lauren dolled up, rush out the door, get to church late….poor Doug, he hates being late.  Music is good as usual, Doug takes Lauren out to the parents room for the sermon.

After church, we go for lunch to a local carvery.  There are lots of places that do this: it’s a cheap buffet where you can get roast turkey, ham or beef, with yorkshire pudding, gravy and an array of veg.  You only get one pass at the meat, but eat as much veg as you like.

On the way, stop and buy Lauren her chocolate egg - nothing like leaving it to the last minute…. and we bought it at a petrol station! Gasp!

Take a few pics of her in the garden before her nap…..

Monday April 13

It’s a Bank Holiday - a  day off - a long weekend.. whatever YOU want to call it!

So what better thing is there to do but wander off to find a bit of history in England.  Not hard to find… but we are running out of things that are close to us!  This castle turned out to be amazing, so many little spots to look through and wander about.. including the narrowest of narrow spiral staircase.

Goodrich Castle

Tuesday April 14

Gym and Swim day!  Since Lauren is off school today, I take her to play in the nursery at the local leisure center while I work out for an hour… then we go have a dip in the pool.  Lauren is brilliant at swimming as she’s been taking lessons…and it helps that she all hooked up with floatation devices.. watch for photo’s at the end of the week as we go swimming again.

Wednesday April 15

Lauren and I go off in the morning to visit my friend Ronel.  Ronel and her husband pastor the South African church that one of Doug’s colleagues attends.  We’ve got to know one another through my stampin’ up! business.  Lauren has a great time on the trampoline… but then has a tumble off of it.   

It was nice to catch up with a friend, but it’s very very stressful taking Lauren to other people’s homes, as she just doesn’t know to not touch things.  I always come away from other people’s homes wondering if I’ll ever be invited again.

Lauren does have a bit of playtime outside in the afternoon.

Thursday April 16

This was supposed to be another Gym and Swim day, but we had an important new item to pick up.  I had bid £4.99 for a kids trampoline and won!  It was a massive struggle to get it out the door of the house I bought it from and then another struggle to get it into our honda civic….I was definitely wishing Doug was there… men always know how to make things fit into a car.  It must be a God given talent.

Later that day we hosted a social night for our life group… we actually had some new people and there were 23 people in out house at one time!  We had take away Chinese food and play some great games.  All the kids there loved the trampoline.

Sorry - the pictures are bit blurry..

Friday April 17

As Doug was set to leave for his big trip in a couple days, he took an extra day off to hang with us.  Together with the Santostefano family we went to another, YES ANOTHER, castle.  We just love to see the history and castles are just so interesting… to see how people lived so long ago.  To see stones set in place hundreds of years ago and are still standing….

Just love the Magnolia trees!

Saturday April 18

A busy day as Doug had a last minute meeting and he needed to prepare for his trip.  But at the end of the day we all took time to go to a birthday party for a playmate of Lauren’s - Caleb.  Swimming has to be one of Lauren’s favourite things to do, so this was a great day for her.  With the arm bands and a float device around her waist, she is able to swim all over wherever she likes in the pool.  She loves the independence!

So that is a look at a week in our lives… not a normal week, but an interesting one!

We have the beginnings of spring here in England, and it’s so nice to get flowers in March.  The weather has been very up and down, some warm days some cold… Today for example was cold, when Lauren and I went out for a walk, I tried to get her to wear her toque.   

Lauren has been attending her Nursery school now for more than a month.  We are so please with how well she is getting on there.  We have already seen many improvements in her behaviour and her attention span. She is able to play more independently and will sit and do one activity for a longer amount of time.  

The school is such a blessing, Lauren being so active, it gives her an outlet and ’something’ to do every morning, she finds being at home boring sometimes.  They have a fantastic outdoor area directly connected to the classroom and she gets to play outside every day.  They also have a swimming pool at the school and she gets to go swimming every Monday - in addition to her swimming lessons that I take her to on Thursdays.  She’ll be swimming like a fish in no time!

We recently sent in our applications to get new passports…and I’m wondering can anyone tell me why all my ID photo’s always look like mugshots?  I literally look like I’ve just done some shoplifting and am not to happy I got caught…

Things are going full swing at NLI - nothing too big and crazy going on, but Doug is busier than ever in his new role.  Although he is the HR Director, because it’s a small organization, he gets called upon to do a lot more.  It’s all very good experience and presents some good challenges.  Doug loves to solve problems!

Doug is planning a trip back to Canada soon, he has to been in the states for some meetings and is tagging along with Ian Green for some other meetings in Toronto shortly after.  Then he’ll be in Calgary for about six days, this will be at the end of April, beginning of May.  If you’d like to have him around for a meal, I’m sure he’d love to come!

As promised a bit more on Romania.  Nelu is one of the church planters we visited while in the country doing training.  He is a great story for NLI.  Over ten years ago he travelled from the southeast part of the country up to the north west to be a part of the leadership training conferences that NLI was hosting.  That’s a 15 hour drive every three-four months.  He was still a young Christian but quite involved in his church. 

Since that time he has planted a church in the city of Galati and grown it to the largest in the region (over 400).  When NLI showed up and began talking about running a church planting project Nelu knew that the time had come to step down from his church and begin a new church.  There are only 7 evangelical churches in the city of Galati which has over 400,000 people so you can imagine that anyone with a burden for this city would have their work cut out for them.

Nelu shared with us the type of church he is building.  A more contemporary one than is normally found in Romania, particularly this region.  He introduced us to some of the young fellows that are working in the church to help Nelu see the vision become a reality.  They showed us some clips from the drama team that they are using to support the pastor’s messages.  They showed us pictures of the outreaches where many people are coming into the church.

Nelu talked about how they had just finished a three month evangelistic push into the community.  They feel that because they are small still (only 40+ members) that they don’t have the ability to continue with a year long push so until that time they are going to set aside 3 months a year for strict outreach with a view to increase that as they grow.  During this time all activity in the church suspends except that which is geared toward reaching out into the community, bringing unbelievers into the church and delivering the Gospel message.  He was excited to tell us that in three months they had seen 437 different unbelievers attend a Sunday morning service as a result of the outreaches!  They are excited to spend the next 9 months following up with these 437 to see the work that the Holy Spirit has begun in them continue.

FYI they used their short term mission team to launch this 3 month outreach.  What a great use of a team that allows their ten days to have maximum impact!