July feels very different to June. Cor Deo has finished and so has the school year. Cor Deo wound up the week before last. That means I now have Tuesday-Thursday free, in theory. In reality the days fill quickly and I feel as busy as ever. It was a good end to the Cor Deo season. Always sad to see the men go. Now we start looking toward next year and wondering who God will bring to be part of the fifth group through the full-time course. I can’t believe we have gone through four years already!
July looks, technically, fairly quiet for me. I preach once at Trinity Chippenham. At the same time, Melanie and I are leading a summer parenting study for the church, and I will be carving out time to work on writing projects. My top priority in the next couple of days is to finish my final proofread of a book that is coming out in September. We will tell you more about that soon. Then I have a deadline at the end of the month for a little book project in Galatians.
Trinity Chippenham is going well and we are so thankful to be part of this church. During the summer we will be moving toward a transition where we start to proactively invite others to the church and reach out evangelistically. Please pray for us to remain united and keeping our eyes on Jesus as we go from this first season of “family time” as a church to functioning more fully as a church.
Meanwhile, at home, the school year has come to an end and the children are making the most of warm sunny days outside. Kaylah is growing all the time and is a source of a lot of fun and joy in the house. School may be officially over, but one of the blessings of homeschooling is that the children enjoy learning and so they will still be found with books or practicing Italian, or whatever they are motivated to do. One challenge is that the lack of structure in terms of schooling can lead to a lack of structure in other areas (like family contributions – i.e. “chores”), so hopefully we will have a successful summer as far as functioning as a family in the home is concerned!