Saved 2 Serve and Golf!

This Saturday was the Saved 2 Serve event at church. I have been part of the organising committee since the start two years ago. This is now our third conference. It is aimed at inspiring young Christians and giving them a chance to see the different ways they can serve the Lord. We want to be strong on the understanding of Christian motivation - because of the love God has poured onto us so we serve him because we love him back. It is too easy to get religous; try and earn his love, or think we are paying him back for his love - neither of which are possible. So it was great to have my friend Marcus Honeysett give us a bright glimpse of the extent of his love at the start. All in all it was a very encouraging day.

Meanwhile on the golf course! (Well some of time on the course, some of the time just along the edge!) One of the guys I was playing with said as we looked at the 17th fairway. Such a nice wide fairway. Shame it is so difficult to hit! Which I then proved by hitting my tee shot into a ditch! Still got round in 100 for the first time today and even hit my first ever real life birdie! I must be getting better - though my tee shots wouldn't suggest so. Hope you are all well. God bless,
Chris H

A bunch of news!

Our biggest news is the immanent departure of Chris's sister Jenny and her family to Peru. They are leaving a week today for 3 years initially. It is very exciting, but sad as well, to think that we aren't that likely to see them "in the flesh" for a long time now. We will see them briefly tomorrow, but not again until they come back, or we go out to see them!!!

Joshua is much more settled at school now. Tofic and Amon seem to be his most common playmates. Meanwhile he is starting to learn to read, which is very exciting. He's developed a temperature today though, so he may miss a day of school tomorrow.

Reuben hasn't been sleeping so well again. He goes through patches of sleeping well then not. Although the last sleeping well patch didn't last very long! Helen is understandably tired.

This week see's a lot of preparation before me. We are starting the Bible Class on Exodus this week, plus I am preaching once Saturday and twice Sunday!!! At least I have a bit of a head start on the Sunday PM sermon.

Our love and prayers to you all, and please do get in touch if you can and let us know how you are.
Chris

School and snow

Josh has started big school. It was hard to start with but is getting better daily. The first few days were very hard for us all. Josh has gone from a nursery of up to 10 children to a class of 30 in a year of 60 in a school of 400! And he doesn't know anyone. We were told that Helen would be able to stay with Josh for the first hour or two, but she wasn't. We had told Josh that she would, so obviously that was very upsetting for everyone. Dealing with the reality of break time for the first two days was har as well. It is very difficult to do anything when the dominant picture in your mind is your son standing in the school playground feeling sad and alone while everyone else is happily playing.
Still it doesn't last too long. Josh has fairly quickly been making friends and getting to know more names. He's done his first wee at school (hurrah!) and comes home with stories about what he's been up to.

Meanwhile yesterday morning he had snow to walk to school in. He and Reuben were both very excited. The pictures are of our house and our road. Hope you are well. Do get in touch and let us know how you are. God bless,
Chris

That'll be Christmas and New Year out the way then!

I must start with an apology. We didn't manage to get our Christmas news out in time - it will follow next week! Sorry. We hope you have had a very happy Christmas and New Year, and known the Lord's blessing on you and your family. I know some of you have, and others less so. Ours has been very busy and isn't quite over yet. We a little trickle of visitors on Christmas day! We started with perhaps 8 people and ended with 15 or so! We must have caught a few people out by starting 15 minutes early!
After that we charged off to my family who were gathered in Buckinghamshire. (We had to hire the village hall in my sisters village!) Still it was great for us all to get together.
We spent the night in a travel lodge and then (after a little chef breakfast) drove off to spend boxing day with Helen's family who were gathered in Bradford-Upon-Avon. Again we had a very jolly time.
The day after, we spent a little while shoppingin Bath, then drove up to Welshpool to spend a few days with Helen's oldest sister Ruth and her family, before landing back in London sometime towards the end of last week!
We only had a week of charging around, but the benefit of doing so much is that it feels like much longer. The down side is you come back very tired!
Both the boys have got rotten colds now though. Helen and I are trying to fight ours off. On into 2007...

A week of tears

We have had tears of joy and tears sadness this week! Erin, our Australian lodger went home to Aus for good on Thursday. And we were all vey sad. Erin arrived in January. We had our Aussy friends Cameron and Leah staying with us, and they got an emergency call from home. Erin had arrived in this country and landed in a difficult spot, so Leah went over to rescue her! We got home from a day out to find a note in the kitchen, "There's and extra Aussy on your sofa! Hope that's OK!" Of course it was fine. To cut a long story short Erin ended up staying with us and has been a great blessing. She had become a part of the family really, and so it was with tears that we waved bye-bye at Heathrow on Thursday night. Joshua was especially upset and cried half the way home.
However on Tuesday we had tears of joy. We had been doing a Bible Overview at home over the last few weeks, and Erin had joined in. Looking at the Bible from Genesis to Revelation and seeing how it all fits together is really wonderful. Anyway, again cutting a long story short, Tuesday was the last one and as I chatted with Erin it was clear that she had come to trust the Lord Jesus herself. We prayed together and shared tears of joy! A real week of tears!!!

We've been blessed by an evangelistic team staying at the church this week. They helped give out some invites to our carol service which was this morning. Friends from the church in Watford also helped with some more at the market on Saturday morning. We had a good group of people this morning and a little gaggle of children too. Church continues to be promising with possibilities. There may be some harder decisions to be taken in the future, perhaps even over the next year, but the Lord shows us his love again and again. Please keep praying for us, and get in touch so we can pray for you. God bless you,
Chris