Poured Out

70 people came to the preaching seminar today.  What a group!  Motivated, interested, and lots of them.  It is so encouraging to be around people motivated to learn and improve in this area of preaching.  After 8 hours (including breaks), it is now time to make sure I’m ready to preach tomorrow.  Thankfully I typically don’t get tired from teaching.  Tomorrow I have the morning at Sun Valley (a report and a message in two services), then in the afternoon some of the young guys from Fairhaven are coming over to pick me up and grab a couple of hours together before I go to Fairhaven and give the devotional, plus a report there.  Then to the airport for an evening flight to Portland, where I pick up the borrowed car (what a blessing that’s been this week), head to Melanie’s parents’, then sleep, finish packing and head back to the airport with Aliyah to head home.  I’m ready to be home!  Thanks for praying for today – what a privilege to be able to teach in this area of preaching.

Thanks to everyone who has been praying for Peter and for me back home in England.  I have had a great week with Mariah and Joel.  It has been nice to be able to spend some special time with them.  Praise the Lord I have gone over a week without a headache – good timing as Pete is away.  Hannah had a fantastic week with Peter’s parents in Bristol. They kept busy going to the zoo, planting flowers, going to a special horse farm and yes, doing some school too!  They brought her back today and it is great to have her home.  From what I hear, Peter and Aliyah are doing well.  Aliyah got to go with her Auntie Amy to her ultrasound today and found out that she is having a little girl!!  So, the kids will have a new little girl cousin in August, Lord willing.  We are all excited.  Thanks for your prayers.  I feel like the Lord has really helped me this week.  I feel I have been “carried along.”  Four more days til I get my hubby back.  Pray for a great preaching seminar for him this weekend in California.

Well the week here in the US is half over.  We flew in without hassle on Saturday (but with germs – I obviously breathed in every germ on the plane and have had a cold/cough/painful throat ever since).  Sunday went well at Westside.  Monday and Tuesday have gone well at Multnomah.  Just an hour of teaching left, then a couple of days to get everything ready for Saturday’s preaching seminar.  It’s very late as I write this, so I’ll keep it short.  Aliyah is having a great time with family here, but she obviously is missing her siblings too.  She’ll be very sad to leave and very excited to be home.  Pray for it not to be too overwhelming emotionally.  More soon.

Aliyah’s birthday kicks off the girl’s birthday month on February 5th and next comes Mariah’s on the 19th!

A few days before her birthday, Mariah was begging to do work like Aliyah was doing.  I thought the moment was right to bring out her very first “school” book.  She spent the rest of the morning poring over it and did many pages!

We took Mariah to a local children’s farm for her special birthday outing (just her and mom and dad).  Here she is holding a baby chick.  The discerning of our viewers will notice that the chick left a little deposit on her leg!  Thankfully, Mariah wasn’t fazed.

She was even brave enough to feed these sheep (all of whom were due to have lambs any day).  They sure were eager to be fed.  This one looks like its about to leap the fence!

Here’s the birthday girl with her cake (a strawberry castle cake by request!).

A little fun with one of her birthday gifts – squirting Dad in the face!  What is it with our family and water fights?

Hey are we back at the farm again?

Time to get cookin’!  She got a chef’s outfit from Auntie Amy.

Grandma and Grandpa Mead were here to join in the celebrations.

Storytime with Grandpa.

What a blessing this little girl is!

Hannah is next up in birthday season!  It looks like she’s practicing for her birthday outing when she will get to ride a horse.  Aliyah was an incredibly patient horse, holding her “bit” in her mouth.  Hannah made bit, bridle, reigns, lead rope, etc. all out of ribbon.

Tomorrow Peter and Aliyah are off to Oregon.  Hannah has gone back to Bristol with Grandma and Grandpa Mead for a few days.  Please pray for all of us as we are scattered around the world, especially for Peter’s ministry over the next 10 days.

This morning Hannah headed off to Bristol with Peter’s parents.  Tomorrow Peter and Aliyah head off to stay with Melanie’s parents.  That will leave Melanie with the younger two for a few days.  So here’s a brief preview of Peter’s next few days for your prayers.  Saturday flying via Atlanta to Portland.  Sunday morning preaching at Westside Bible Fellowship.  Monday through Friday involved in two things at Multnomah Biblical Seminary – he will be leading two workshops in the missions conference, and he will be teaching in the Biblical Theology of Missions masters course.  Friday he will fly down to the Bay Area, CA.  Saturday he leads a Biblical Preaching Seminar at Sun Valley Bible Chapel.  This will probably be the biggest attendance at a BPS yet!  Sunday he preaches at Sun Valley Bible Chapel in the morning, then at Fairhaven Bible Chapel in the evening, before flying back to Portland that evening.  Monday morning he and Aliyah head home via Atlanta.  Thanks for praying for us all, wherever we are!

The ideal way to be putting photos on our site would be to post them as we take them.  I haven’t quite got organized enough for that yet!  So, here’s a bunch from the past few weeks.

This was New Year’s Day . . . we went to a National Trust site for a walk.  It was cooooo-ld! Yes, those are feet in the tree above Aliyah and Joel.  Guess whose?

Yup, you’re right.  It’s Hannah, the family tree climber.  Which parent did she get the climbing genes from, anyway?

After our walk, which was quite short, because we were all freezing, we went to the restaurant for some nourishment.  We captured Joel imitating his sisters, who sometimes hold their noses when they drink vegetable juice. It was only water in the cup, so we’re not sure what inspired the nose-holding . . . or the napkin on the head!

Peter and the girls designed and constructed some beds for the girls’ playmobil.  They even stained them and made mattresses.

Yes, it has been a cold winter.  Mariah is practicing for when she is a missionary to Siberia! (just kidding)

Aliyah lost her first tooth!

Where’s the fire, Joel?

  Swimming in the living room (see post on January 30th – click here)

Ready to dive into all that water!

The water theme continued that night  . . . Daddy started squirting Joel in his highchair.  Hardly a fair water fight!

Joel didn’t seem to mind!

So, I guess the whole tropical paradise thing was all in our heads.  This is real winter!!!  We got at least a foot of snow – very unusual for our part of the country.  This is the view out our bedroom window.

Oh, the joy of the white, cold stuff!

Let it snow, let it snow . . . Peter was doing front flips into it when it was fresh.

The girls are eating snow-cream, mint flavored by request.

  Happy 6th Birthday, Aliyah!

The girls love to dress up together.  These are dresses that Hannah and Aliyah wore as flower girls 3 years ago.

Look whose sporting a new haircut.

He looks more like Daddy than ever now.

With the snow now gone, we finally got to take Aliyah to the Science Museum in London for her special birthday outing.  Here she is standing on an arch bridge she built herself.

Hope you enjoyed the photos.  I’ll try not to save up so many next time before I post them.  Thank you for praying for our family as we aim to grow in our love for the Lord together.

Last night I preached in High Wycombe.  That’s about an hour from home if the road is clear.  It was, then it wasn’t.  I had just driven past the first possible exit for home (M25 J8 if you know it – but I left it because the link road was closed last week).  Then traffic slowed to a stop.  About 500 yards ahead of me was an accident.  I sat for 90 minutes.  Actually I got out and walked around a bit too.  Four fire engines, three ambulances, one air ambulance, multiple police cars.  Finally we were able to squeeze past.  Three cars, the middle one obviously struck from behind at speed while sitting stuck against the front one.  You wouldn’t believe a solid German car could concertina so completely.  It’s easy to take safety for granted – a clear road, perfect weather . . . and some people now either in eternity or clinging to life in a local hospital.  Safely home, slowly home, thankful to be home.

At dinner tonight, Joel said, “I pray?”  He has said this before and when we say, “Sure, go ahead,” all we’ve gotten is a big grin and silence.  Tonight was different.  He scrunched his eyes shut and said, “De-ah Jesus, thankoo for food. Amen.”  We all burst into thunderous applause and of course, the praise made him ask, “Again?”  So, we indulged him and let him pray again.  How sweet can life get.

When I got him up from his nap this afternoon, I was changing his diaper and he said, “Birds.  Singing.”  I stopped and had a listen . . . he was right, they were!  Hooray for spring – it’s coming soon!  He then said, “Birds. Sing songs.”  There was a pause and he said, “Ocean . . . pase ye la load, Hallelujah.”  (Translation: Wide, Wide as the Ocean and Praise Ye the Lord, Hallelujah)  I thought that was about the cutest thing I have ever heard in my life.  Yup, you’re right, little boy.  All of God’s creation praises Him!  I will never listen to birds singing in quite the same way again.

I had great ambitions of getting pictures up on the website tonight but a more urgent project claimed my attention.  We’ll see what I can achieve, but if not, watch for them in the next day or two.  Just to whet your appetite . . . I will put some photos up of our recent big snowfall, Aliyah’s birthday AND Joel’s new big boy haircut (yes, I mourned as they cut off those curls!).  Watch this space.

The server did some regular process, but somehow put all our emails into a queue.  Anyway, we lost nothing, just had a sixteen hour delay on receiving them.  That’s a relief!

For some reason, it looks like both of our email accounts are down.  I’m trying to get hold of our webhost.  If you’ve emailed us today, please try again once you see on here that email is working again.  Frustrating.