Arriving at Heathrow on Friday

We are so grateful to God for his help in the past few days.  Peter had a wonderful week in Poland at the European Leadership Forum (see below for more) and he arrived home last Thursday afternoon.  It was a busy 16 hours – packing and doing last minute prep for our trip – before we flew out of London on Friday for Chicago! After spending the night with my aunt Carol, we made the 5 hr. drive down to Noah’s town in Missouri (near St. Louis).

We drove past the famous St. Louis arch

It was super sweet to be reunited with Hannah and Noah and meet Noah’s parents and brothers and sister in law and have dinner with them. Yesterday we went to Noah’s church and met his grandparents and friends.  Peter will preach there on 11 June.

Happy reunion with Hannah!

And Noah!

Noah helping Kaylah shoot an airsoft gun.

Peter and Kaylah and Jessah and I are staying in an apartment in this building which is the youth centre at Noah’s church. Hannah and Noah will have their wedding photos taken near this beautiful lake.

Jet lag has given Peter and I some early morning walks on the church grounds in the cool of the day. It’s been good to reflect and pray together as the wedding of our firstborn draws very near!

It’s also been sweet to have the Meadlings back together.  Peter and I just picked Aliyah up from the train station in St. Louis and we’ve just had some celebratory (and some of our last!) meal together as 8 Meads. There was lots of laughter!

Last days together as 8 Meads. Celebrating the memories and years God has given us. And we can’t wait to watch Hannah become Mrs. Mozingo on Saturday and welcome Noah into the family.

Last night Noah was at his bachelor party and Hannah was explaining all the plans for the coming week and the wedding day (3 June) – so exciting to see it all coming together!  Peter and I can’t believe we have a daughter about to get married.  The tears are coming easily for me, but they are happy ones.  Sometimes in these seasons of celebration, there’s so much joy in my heart that it’s overwhelming and hard to process it all! But we are grateful.

Thank you so much to those of you that have been praying for my health  . . . I have had several days where I’ve felt a migraine threatening or had a mild version of one, but it’s all been very manageable.  I can’t quite believe how well I’ve been doing over the last weeks and the last few days especially.  Please keep praying with us for more migraine free days this week, especially for the wedding day itself and other important times like the rehearsal dinner.  Also pray for us to continue to adjust to the time zone and for Mariah to recover as she’s been down with a bad cold the past day or so.  It would be great if no one else gets it this week (especially Hannah and Noah!).  We are so thankful to God for his help so far on this trip!

Now for a little report from Peter from his trip to Poland:

It was great to be back in Poland for an in-person ELF for the first time in four years.  The Bible Teachers and Preachers networks both went really well.  I was blessed by numerous conversations, and was thankful that each of my sessions seemed to go very well.  I also enjoyed being part of a group from TC (there were five of us there from Chippenham!)  The morning Bible sessions were taken by Conrad Mbewe, who spoke from Malachi.  After a blessed and busy few days I got back home and packed up the bags ready for our flight to the USA the next day.

Here is our team for the Bible Teachers and Preachers Networks – Andy Hamilton from Rome, Italy, as well as Mike and Peter from Chippenham!

These two Italian students were excited to meet Peter, who has been their teacher on video in their Union learning community in Rome. It was fun to meet in person!

Thank you for reading this and praying with us.  Our next update will be after the wedding with pictures to share!

Jessah in our beautiful backyard tree.

When I last wrote, we were feeling so discouraged and unwell.  We were so touched by all your prayers and messages of encouragement.  Here’s a short update about the things we shared last time:

Praise the Lord, Peter improved enough to preach that Sunday and get ready in time for Albania.  He had a super encouraging trip! Peter was able to connect with pastor Berti – it’s his church that our short term team will connect with in August. The main purpose of the trip was for Peter to spend time teaching some Albanian pastors who have little or no access to ministry training.  He said it was a really fruitful and blessed time. I will let him write a longer report sometime!

Mariah did come down with the virus but praise the Lord it was early enough that she had time to recover and her version was much shorter than ours.  She and Joel (who never got it!) were able to fly to the USA together healthy and well.  What a mercy.

The night Peter got back from Albania, we heard the news that the US government will be lifting the last of the Covid vax requirements on 11 May – including the completely illogical and unjust ban on unvaccinated foreigners.  To give a little context, we had heard a few days before (possibly in error) that the ban had been extended and we were all devastated.  So, to say the least, we are incredibly relieved and grateful and the joy of the upcoming wedding seems so much more real to us now!  One month from today!

Another request that I shared was our need for a vehicle to borrow in the USA that we would all fit into.  Well, only a day or two after I shared that, a dear family contacted us and want to lend us their car for the whole time we are there. This is a such an answer to prayer!

All of this actually makes me want to weep with joy!! Our God hears and answers the cries of his children.  He is full of mercy and compassion.  Having said that, I am all too aware that sometimes his answers are no or not now.  From my own recent experience, I can say, it’s so much harder to accept these answers. . . . no to getting well for church or life group or the weekend away (multiple times), no to going away with Peter, no to getting to simply be a mum to my children day after day, no to special planned events or even seeing people, no to the ability to do basic things, no to relief from pain.  Sometimes small losses on a daily basis add up to create a deep grief.  There’s no denying that life in this fallen world and in our broken bodies can sometimes be pure anguish.  Our lives are so far away from God’s original good design.  However, God is teaching me, gently, slowly, to keep surrendering to his perfect will.  And in the darkness, to keep clinging to what is true – that He is good, He is wise and He loves me so much. And – this is huge – that there is hope beyond this life, when all the tears will be wiped away.

Actually, on Sunday I had some time journaling with the Lord about 2 Samuel 15:25-26.  It’s something David said when he was fleeing from his son Absalom who was trying to take the throne away from him.

“If the Lord sees fit,” David said, “he will bring me back to see the Ark and the Tabernacle^[f] again. ²⁶ But if he is through with me, then let him do what seems best to him.”

Wow.  That is some incredible humility and faith and a deeply surrendered heart.  I guess we could all fill in our blanks (and I did as I journaled!) . . . If the Lord sees fit, he will . . . . But if not, let him do what seems best to him.  We have a tender Saviour, a suffering Saviour, who understands our pain and is with us in it.  And because of his great wisdom and love, he sometimes says no to our cries.  And there is blessing in that.

To close, a little update about my own health . . . I did recover from the virus too, just not as fast as Peter.  I had a better couple of days, then a migraine and then when Peter was in Albania, frustratingly, I started feeling some of the virus symptoms again. I’m not doing too badly now but I’m not 100% yet.  I’ve also been struggling with sleep and have had some pretty emotional days.  I still feel pretty fragile.  However, I’m grateful to God for his love, shown to me especially through friends. And the girls I and made it through the weekend with lots of good moments.

It’s so wonderful to have Peter back and for all of us to share the joy of the news that he gets to go with us to the wedding!  We leave for the USA on the 26th of May . . . it’s coming very fast now!  Having been out of action for the better part of a month, there’s a lot to be done to get us all ready to go so we’d very much value your prayers for health, strength and peace of mind and heart. Peter has an upcoming trip to the European Leadership Forum in Poland (18-25 May) so I’d very much value prayer during that time as I will be at home with the girls, especially for health and strength and for us to be ready to leave the day after he comes back.  Please pray for God to use him powerfully in the lives of the European pastors he will be training to preach.  Many of these people would never have any kind of access to this training in their own countries.  Peter will also be preaching at Trinity the next 2 Sundays and we will continue with our other ongoing ministry involvements.  We feel our weakness and our need of Jesus and his grace as we press on!

God is good and we are so thankful for your prayers for us!

For you are my lamp, O Lord,
    and my God lightens my darkness.
³⁰ For by you I can run against a troop,
    and by my God I can leap over a wall.
³¹ This God—his way is perfect;
    the word of the Lord proves true;
    he is a shield for all those who take refuge in him.

2 Samuel 22:29-31

PS A little bonus photo of our children across the pond . . . we have quite an empty nest at the moment (still two Meadlings with us!).

Mariah and Joel have been reunited with Aliyah at Moody in Chicago. (Yes, Joel is that tall!) They are flying to Oregon, along with Hannah’s fiance Noah for her graduation from university on Saturday!