December 2015
Merry Christmas

With less than a week to go until Christmas Day, we take this opportunity to wish all our family and friends around the world a blessed, peaceful Christmas and a prosperous New Year!
Thank you to all those who have taken time to support and encourage us over the past 12 months.
2015 has been a year of transition for us in many ways and as it draws to a close we are all set to take on all that 2016 has in store for us.
We are planning on being home in Wales with family on Christmas Day, which will be the first time in 13 years!
Wherever you will be spending Christmas, we pray that you will know the love & blessing of God at this special time of year!

Family Reunions are always fun!

We were eagerly greeted with lots of cuddles as we got to spend time with our children and grandchildren after arriving back in Wales in early December. Being away from family is the biggest challenge of traveling, but we had lots of fun skyping with them from the States, much to the grandkids amusement!

Our youngest Grandson, Oliver, had just come home from a superhero birthday party when we saw him first and was dressed up as Captain America, which was funny with us having spent the past 3 months in the States! He insisted on staying in character the entire evening and battling with us to see who was the strongest!!!

We celebrated Julie’s Mum’s 79th Birthday ‘quietly’ on 11th December as she was recovering from a chest infection.

We have been staying in a guest room in her sheltered housing complex. We wondered if this was training for later years!  Thankfully Mum is now almost recovered and looking forward to spending Christmas with us, the children and grandchildren. It has been a bizarre build up with Christmas, with no home in the UK to store and wrap Christmas presents.

We enjoyed visiting King’s Church, Wellington in December and meeting up with our friends there. It was a little strange as this was the first time we have been in the church during a service since left as leaders in July. We had a lovely lunch with Courtney Gill and Andy & Shirley Lane before leaving for Wales.

We have had a few challenges during our time home that we can hopefully tell you about in our next newsletter when we are the other side of them.

Stepping into Our Next Assignment 

We entered the final quarter of 2015 with no set plans and looked on it as an ‘Adventure with God’ waiting to unfold before us.

When we handed over our leadership roles at King’s Church Wellington in July, we had no idea of how the end of this year would pan out and feel so privileged to have had so many great opportunities open up to us.

November and December had a few obstacles to overcome as we set about applying for Religious Worker Visas with the United States Immigration Department. After filling out the mountain of paperwork necessary our petitions were approved in the US just 6 & 10 days from sending them off and our R1 visas were instantly approved at the US Embassy in London when we got back to the UK in early December.

So now we are all set to fly back to Dallas to take up our new roles teaching and helping train next generation missionaries in the 3rd Year School of Missions Major at Christ For The Nations Bible College in Dallas Texas, where initially we will be paid part-time 20 hours per week.

Having volunteered our time to teach and train students at CFNI for 3 months, a few highlights of our time in the US included celebrating the end of the semester with the 3rd Year Missions Major students and watching them receive their diplomas as they graduated, knowing we had played a significant part in getting them to this point and launching them on to the Mission Field.

Another highlight was watching Alex Lane, from our church in Wellington, Graduate after 2 years at CFNI, having invested in encouraging and mentoring him during our 10 years as Pastors at King’s Church.

We were recently invited to be guest speakers at our first Missions Conference in Southlake,
Texas and enjoyed the opportunity to encourage the church family by sharing a little of our personal journey over the past 12 years. It reminded us of the great adventure we have been on since graduating CFNI Missions Major in 2004 and now as we take on the challenge of training and equipping students to follow in our footsteps, we are excited to be able to invest in the next generation of World Changers!

Please email us with your news! We would love to hear from you and know what is going on in your life!

You can support us by praying for us! Please pray for our transition to the States, setting up an apartment on Bible College Campus, purchasing a car and taking on this new opportunity. Pray for our family back home too!