July 28, 2008

What ever happened to July 23rd?! I was going to write a short blog about how we've been here for an entire year now! Last year at this very time we were living in the Xen Source flat, trying to find a place to rent, scheduling to pick Nelly up from Heathrow, and all manner of other crazyness.... missing our family and friends but excited about this new adventure Gd had brought us on. Wondering why the ch was basically shut down for the summer. Wondering why it was so cold here in the summer. Wondering why our flat washer sounded like the space shuttle. :) I can't believe it's been that long!

A year later and here we still are! When we came here we didn't have a 100% view of what we'd be doing here, what we'd be learning, or how we'd be preparing to be tentmakers somewhere else in the world. (BTW tentmakers are people who use their career as a way of reaching people in hard to get into countries. It comes from Paul, who made tents and spent his weekends telling folks about JC wherever he went.) I just had to do a summary of some of the events of this past year- it's been very crazy. :)

-Moved to the UK
-Learned to drive on the other side
-Repainted our entire cottage and redid the entire garden
-K co-lead the international ladies study
-Nelly learned to like cat milk
-Learned to like Marmite
-Our car died
-Got a new car
-Went to the Peak District
-Took the 10 month TEAM training course
-Lead the internationals table at the Arena outreach
-Got involved with a Home group
-Bought something from an auction
-Sold something at an auction
-Learned about hand made rugs
-Caught at least 30 Giant House Spiders
-Learned to dry our clothes on the heat radiators
-Learned to identify the gender of house spiders by their size and the season
-Got internet at our cottage after 6 weeks of G on the phone with the company
-G's company Xen Source got bought by Citrix
-G got to know his coworkers
-Nelly learned to chase Giant House Spiders
-Helen and Robin came in September
-G's mom came in October
-Marc came in October
-We enjoyed fireworks on Guy Fawkes Day in November
-Nelly feuded with Cat Fiend
-Made new friends and became part of STAG's community
-Explored Swavesey and surrounding areas
-The ladies group had many outreach events
-Visited MI for Christmas
-Went to Australia for 3 weeks
-Saw the Great Barrier Reef and the Whitsunday Islands
-Visited friends in Melbourne
-Nelly stayed with our friends for 3 weeks
-Went to the Scottish Dancing ball on Groundhog Day
-G went to Seattle for a conference in March
-Hope and Jen came to visit in March
-Went to Wales
-Went on an international weekend away
-Lead iBASE, our group for 18-20s internationals here at STAG
-Went to 2 dear friends' wedding in April
-In May we trained students for their summer trips overseas
-Helped plant K's parents' vegetable garden
-Came home to a leaking toilet
-Went to Norfolk
-Ate blood pudding
-Learned to shop at the local store instead of Tesco
-K lead a group for internationals who wanted to learn about JC
-Took up mountain biking
-Took the tests for the UK driving license
-iBASE friends went back to their home countries, and many other friends left for new jobs or school.
-In July K came back to MI for my parents' birthdays.


That list certainly isn't exhaustive- if you want exhaustive details you'll have to go back over the past year's blog. :) It definitely hasn't all been easy, but we feel more prepared to be tentmakers now than when we got here a year ago. We're also aware that we're still in process, and we might be here another year yet. Now that TEAM has done, we're ready to more fully put into practice what we learned there. We've been asked to lead iBASE again this year, which is a great opportunity for G to be in charge of a group himself. (Think like a campus ministry). I'll be continuing with the ladies' group and joining in with a new female staff person, and we'll be getting involved with the moms of preschoolers group in order to meet international ladies. We don't know if we'll be here a full year again or not, but for sure 6 months, pretty likely through next April. We don't know all that Gd has in store for us, but we are enjoying life in the process and feel very blessed to be a part of the international work here! Who knows what that list will look like next year at this time, but I'm sure it will be full of ups and downs and adventures of all sorts. :)