|
Dear Friends and Family,
I believe that most of you have received some sort of message from me stating that we're trying to get our e-mail list handled through "egroups". This is a service that handles large e-mail lists efficiently. As I mentioned, the people who provide our Internet access have made the use of large mail lists unwieldy. So, anyway, this is my first test of this process and there may be another test yet to come.
Just so this isn't a total waste...some news...
Our school has just begun what we're calling a "mid-term outreach". This is where we suspend normal lecture schedule and begin to put into practice what it means to be families ministering to others. This mid-term outreach will last two weeks and the first week is close to home and the second week will involve traveling in Scotland a bit. Today, we helped a neighbor of one of the staff members by doing some yard work and landscaping in her yard. She's older and can't quite do some of this herself. We also spent some time "prayer-walking" (taking walks, but praying for the area while you're doing it) in the neighborhood. We're spending Monday and Tuesday at this staff member's neighborhood, taking Wednesday off to do personal chores and Thursday and Friday we'll be in our neighborhood.
Some of the things we're learning is how to be a bit more mobile as families (some of us are good at that and some not so good), and getting ourselves and our kids used to these changes a bit more. We also had a local pastor who is quite well versed in the Scottish History of Christianity come in and speak to us about that...VERY fascinating. We're also trying to learn a bit more about how to discern the spiritual activities of a place. Our team unity is also being built and tested as we cram ourselves into our small houses and we learn how to "make do" in different circumstances. We're trying to take each day and ask God how we should best spend it. All of this is quite practical for our outreach in France and in general for life as missionary families.
Next week we travel to several islands in northwest Scotland (Iona, Eigg, Skye) where we will be doing more praying for Scotland and learning about what God is doing now in Scotland and how it relates to the past and how we can be praying into that. This trip will involve more packing up and such and will give us even more travel experience for our larger outreach.
We'll let you know how it goes and will get some more pictures up on the website to share the experience.
Until the next e-group test or REAL update! David
|