This letter comes with our love and greetings. For a change, we are starting with family news. We had a wonderful joy-filled day on 10th November, when our youngest son, Peter, married Miriam at Cornerstone Church in Nottingham.
Bethany and Michael will be going to Liberia at the end of January to serve at the ELWA hospital run by Serving in Mission (SIM). This hospital just outside Monrovia hosted two of the largest Ebola Treatment Units during the epidemic that swept through Liberia in 2014-2016.
We have just enjoyed a lovely Christmas spending time with all of the family over the holiday period.
David lives locally and continues with his gardening business. He still has plenty of winter work as the weather is so mild at the moment.
Gill turned 60 in August and to celebrate we had a special holiday in September, staying in a cottage on the Norfolk coast. One of the highlights was seeing seals playing in the sea along a beautiful deserted golden beach.
This photo was taken in front of a seventeen arch bridge near the home of some friends that we visited on our way back from Norfolk. We like this picture because of the ideas represented by the bridge. More of this below….
We joined WEC in 1989 and went to serve at Bourofaye Christian School (BCS) in Senegal, to help provide education and support for the children of missionaries. The parents’ goal is to use all possible means of sharing the Good News of Jesus, the One who is the bridge to God. Since returning to the UK in 2001 we have served as WEC’s International Missionary Kids (MK) Consultants, seeking to help our MKs and their families as they cross the many bridges of transition in their lives, caused by living in more than one culture, changing schools frequently and facing lots of goodbyes. In October Steve helped to organise a day conference on family debriefing, a training day designed to help missions to support their families as they go through changes. Some transitions are planned or gradual, whereas others are traumatic and sudden, perhaps involving deportation or evacuation. Our goal in WEC is to support our families as much as we can, conveying Christ’s love to all of our workers and helping them towards maximum effectiveness. A summary of the training from the conference will be published in the January edition of our Educare magazine, which Gill has been working on.
MK Staff Training
In our last letter we asked for prayer for our summer training course for new MK workers. Thank you to those who prayed! We had 12 adults and one little girl on the course this year, heading for BCS and two other locations. Once again our church, Corsham Baptist, did a wonderful job in hosting our participants, catering and providing all kinds of support from child care to transport to tea and cakes. We are so grateful for the efforts of our wonderful church members and leaders, without whom it would be really difficult to run the course at an affordable cost. For 2019, it is scheduled once more to take place at Corsham Baptist Church from 21st July to 1st August, so we would appreciate your prayers again.
Travel in 2019
There are several overseas visits scheduled for 2019. Steve is still finalising a major trip, and it is likely that he will travel to East Asia for a couple of weeks in March. In May Steve will be attending the Child Safety and Protection Network conference and refresher training in the US, to upgrade his own safeguarding knowledge in the international context. This is essential for him in his role as WEC’s International Safeguarding Officer. Both of us will go to Eurotck in Germany in May – an excellent opportunity for networking and mutual learning for agencies based in Europe. Steve has been invited to give some safeguarding training at two WEC conferences later in the year, Eurocon in Spain in September (regional conference for European team leaders), and the WEC France conference in October.
Once again we want to thank you for your support, prayers and interest in our work. We look forward to hearing your news too, especially at this time of the year when so many of us enjoy catching up.
Love and blessings from Steve and Gill