The last few weeks have been busy with Cor Deo, Trinity, Union and ELF all at once.  Here’s a quick summary:

Cor Deo – We held another women’s intensive as we do every year at this time.  Again it was a special week for the women involved.  Peter taught in the mornings, but left at lunchtime as the afternoon was led by our friends Gretchen and Anniina.  Then after a week off, Peter and Mike led the first ever John Feast . all 21 chapters of John in four full days.  It was wonderful and everyone involved had a great time.  We are planning to repeat this programme before too long!

Trinity – We are preaching through Mark at the moment.  Last week we had a dedication service for one of the newest little members of the TC family and were joined by over 20 guests.  Every Sunday is busy with lots of setting up and packing away, but every Sunday is a special time.  The community during the week is really encouraging too.  We love being part of this church.

Union School of Theology – Peter has driven over to South Wales to teach on campus for three days so far this semester.  There is one more to go and then the school year will be over for him.

ELF – The European Leadership Forum is in May, but mid-March is the deadline for speakers to submit their teaching notes.  It was a big relief to get these sent in earlier this week.  The Advanced Bible Teachers network that Peter leads will be focusing on Galatians this year, and preparing the notes started to build my anticipation for that.

The family is generally doing well, although the last week has been really tough for Melanie with difficulty sleeping at night.  This happens periodically, but thankfully it doesn’t seem to go on forever.  We pray that this won’t last too long for her.  We have a family holiday planned in a few weeks and hopefully that can be a refreshing break for us all.

Hannah is now 18 and will soon be heading off to university.  Her plan is to go to Corban University in Oregon.  She has a place already and so we are now in the financial aid conversation with the university to see if we can reach a level where the cost is not too uncomfortable.  Please pray for this to be figured out soon so she can know what she is doing.

This is just a short post to say that we are home and will be posting a report from our USA trip in the next few days.

Seven weeks passed by in a flash, but we are so thankful for the time we had.  We got to visit with family and friends in Oregon, a quick weekend trip to California (first visit in 10 years!), and a couple of weeks in Chicago.  It was so good to see family and old friends, as well as making new friends along the way too.  We are so thankful for the time we had with each person and only wish we could have had longer.  The children had a wonderful adventure and coped really well with lots of living out of bags, lots of travel, etc.  We visited twelve churches, including three that we had never been to before.  We were blessed with wonderful kindness as people hosted us in their homes, fed us great meals, etc.  In a sense we would be delighted to do the whole trip again, but in another sense we are so happy to be home and not be living out of bags … it is great to be back with our church community at Trinity Chippenham, and so perhaps we would prefer to be here for a while before we do a huge and busy trip again!

Hopefully in the next few days we will be able to give a better report, with some pictures, etc.