Sorry for our absence here, friends. We’ll be back soon with updates. Don’t give up on us yet! In the meantime, here’s what we’ve been up to, and it might explain a little why we haven’t been blogging!

Dear Family and Friends,

I’m sitting in a church in Stockwell, a neighborhood in southern London. The church was opened by Charles Spurgeon, and is now a church of about 240 Londoners led by a great pastor who is teaching the light of the Word of God in the midst of a dark city. Many of the church members are originally from Nigeria or Ghana, a number from Jamaica, and a few from right here in England. Eighty percent of the women in the church are single mothers. Some of the people are young, yet some are very old. The dynamic is quite different than what I’m used to seeing in North America. Among other things, the greatest thing we have in common is our identity in Christ. They have a great love and fervor for the Lord Jesus. Some of them drive over an hour each time they come to the church, and in England, that’s an expensive trip (the lowest price I’ve seen for gasoline is 1.10/liter, which calculates to $11.43/gallon!). And these aren’t rich people. But, it’s clear that they are indeed rich in grace and in their walks with the Lord.

Teaching in London
Our time here has been rich, and we have been truly blessed by the graciousness of the people and the friendships we’ve made. Our three-day seminar, which is now complete, has gone very well. Twenty-one of our attendees are from the local church here, while another 21 are missionaries with OM (Operation Mobilization). There are various others (approximately five) from other places in England and two from Germany. Among our students are believers from Asia, Africa, Australia, Europe, South America, and North America. It has been a joy to walk through the Scriptures with them over the last three days. What an amazing God we have through the Person of Christ our Savior!

Ireland, Europe, and Texas
Please pray that my voice will hold up, as I have another three days of teaching next week in Ireland. Then, after a few days in Luxembourg and Germany, I’ll be traveling to Texas to meet back up with Suzanne, Evan, and Maren to visit a few churches, family, and friends. Suzanne and the kids are currently in Fort Worth with family, and I miss them dearly.

If you’d like to get together with us while we’re in the area, please email us and we’ll try to work something out. Here is our Texas schudule (driving days marked in red):

May 21-May 27: Austin/Fredericksburg, TX
May 28-June 3: Paris, TX
June 4-June 10: Lubbock, TX
June 11-June 14: Fort Worth, TX

Please Pray
Please pray for us in the following ways:

• Safety for Travel. Pray that the Lord would protect me and our team as we travel in and around England, Ireland, and Continental Europe over the next two weeks.
• Wisdom and Words. Pray that I would rely on God’s Word to speak to our students as I teach over the coming two weeks. Please pray that I would communicate the message of the Bible clearly. Our students are Christians (there may be some exceptions, though), so we are training them how to teach others (esp. unbelievers) the message of the Bible from Creation to Christ’s ascension.
• Hearts to Hear. Pray that our students would be ready and willing to let God’s Word speak into their lives and, in so doing, would respond to the Lord by seeking to know and serve Him.
• Patience while Apart. Pray that the Lord’s goodness would satisfy Suzanne and me while we are apart for these weeks (As they say, “Absence makes the heart grow fonder,” and I’m sensing that!). Also, pray that Evan and Maren would be especially obedient while Daddy is away.

Thank you for your prayers. We look forward to seeing some of you in the coming weeks!

Long time no post! It’s not that nothing has been happening…it’s mostly that I have been feeling pretty sick with this pregnancy, and a nap for me in the afternoons while Evan is sleeping seems much more productive (or irresistible at least)!

I have several things to update you on, so here it goes:

1) Thank you to those of you who prayed for Matt and Wendy (see previous post). Wendy passed away, and even though she is dearly missed here on earth, it is comforting to know she’s with her Saviour, our Lord Jesus Christ. It has been such a blessing to see fellow believers come together to serve, love, support, and pray for Matt and his family.

2) My first official doctor’s appointment is July 4th. We should find out when our first sonogram will be. We hope to find out if we’re having a boy or a girl at that first sonogram. We’ll let you know!

3) We’re moving! After nearly 11 months in Canada, we have finally found a place of our own. We will be renting for the next year at least, but this is certainly an answer to prayer as we hope to further settle into life in Canada! Thank you for all of your prayers concerning housing for us. God has answered according to His perfect timing. We’ll be in touch soon with our new contact information.

4) Summer is here! It was a long winter and a fairly cool and wet spring, so it’s nice to see some blue skies and warmer temperatures. We love these long summer days! Evan begs to go outside throughout the day by knocking on the door and saying “ah-ta-ta, ah-ta-ta!” Look how happy he is when we get outside:

He just loves to run around, and he even passes up playing at the park sometimes to run around the block instead. He is quite the source of entertainment around here. Some of his favorite words are: hi!, bye-bye, tractor, happy, please, no-no (that one is not our favorite), money(not sure why - he hasn’t seen much of it!), honey, owie, bubble, baby and Addie (Jim and Leslie’s precious little girl).

5) We’re already working on our calendar for 2008. We will be letting you know about some exciting opportunities we have with GoodSeed in the next year or so.

6) Let us know how YOU are doing. We would love to hear from you!

I am finally getting around to looking through some of the photos that Joe took on his trip to the UK. I don’t know much about his trip, yet, but I do know that his time there was very beneficial.

Here’s a picture Joe took that looks just like I imagined:

It’s so green that I might even try to eat that grass. Okay, maybe not, but I wouldn’t mind breathing that air for awhile!

Scotland. That word looks so weird that I keep second-guessing my spelleeng skillz. Ha!

The folks around here at GoodSeed just wrapped up the annual Alberta TERM seminar. Joe really enjoyed being there as a student AND as a teacher. That’s right, Joe was given the opportunity to help teach at this seminar, which was a great warm-up for the UK TERM seminar coming up this week! That is where Scotland fits in to all of this…Joe and some of the other GoodSeed staff are in Scotland as we speak…or as I type…getting ready to teach the seminar there. Please pray for their travels, stamina, and for the people that they will be teaching.

I hope to have some amazing pictures from their trip to share with you when Joe gets back in less than 2 weeks. Until then, use your imagination

Texas, that is. It is a very long word and a fun place to visit! And it just so happens that some of our family lives there and it is where we spent our fourth week in TX.

It was one of the first times that Evan was able to play, I mean really play with 3 of his cousins. (A set of twin boys that are 6 months younger and a 3 year old girl). And play they did…in the bathtub:

and in the makeshift tub outside:

We also had another fun birthday celebration for Evan:

And we went to SeaWorld!

I had never been before, and it was AMAZING! We loved it. Evan giggled throughout the dolphin show as there were people and sea creatures flying through the air. This was his face most of the time (until it got close to lunch and naptime, if you know what I mean):

My sister-in-law has a triple, yes TRIPLE, stroller that we pushed the kids around in at SeaWorld. Evan sat with the twin boys in the stroller most of the time, and we kept hearing people say, “OH, LOOK at the triplets!” One of the twin boys also has red hair and blue eyes, so you can see why people thought that.

Joe was also able to give an update at Fredericksburg Bible Church, where Joe’s brother is the pastor.

While there, we were able to display a set of GoodSeed’s new Tabernacle Furniture. It was so exciting to see people as excited about it as we are!

Thanks, J&R for a fantastic week!

Check our Flickr (link on the left) soon for more fun pictures from the week!

I mentioned recently that we drove to Vancouver, British Columbia for MissionsFest. The drive through the mountains was beautiful…

and LONG, but Evan found ways to get some sleep…

We thought this “outhouse” on the side of the road was useful…

And we only had one unplanned stop for about 45 minutes because of an avalanche up ahead…

God kept us safe the entire trip, and we found out the first day of our drive that we just missed an avalanche that would have held us back at least 4-6 hours (or longer if we had been in it). Yikes!

Once we arrived in Vancouver, we spent 3 days working at our GoodSeed booth. Over 200 missions organizations were represented there, and we had a great time meeting people from all over Canada and the U.S. We were able to answer questions, and we had many beneficial conversations about The Bible, GoodSeed’s resources, and how much we long to see people understand WHO God is. Here’s Joe talking to one of the many people who stopped at our booth:

It was so fun to see people as excited about GoodSeed’s resources as we are!

Stay tuned…we’ll be bringing our 2007 calendar to you soon so that you can hear about some exciting opportunities we have in the months ahead.