At this time of year our thoughts turn especially to our family and friends scattered throughout the world. Newsletters have been arriving at a steady trickle and we enjoy reading them so much! It's so good to hear what is happening to those we love.
Our year seems to have been
"more of the same thing"! We're very happy with our situation in
Reading: a pleasant and warm house, a stable environment for the boys and
ourselves, a good employment market, good friends and neighbours, a
slowly-expanding church scene, and warmer weather than many places in the UK!
Tim, now 17, is now in the
second year of his A-level course and will leave school in June next year. He
has applied for a place at University majoring in English, but deferring entry
until October 2001. We see him increasingly coming to terms with the need for
hard work as his exams draw closer. On Saturday mornings he plays football
enthusiastically and well with friends of long-standing from the church we used
to attend, and plays many other sports regularly at other times. Computer games
still feature in his interests and more recently he's begun to make use of the
internet at home as well as at school. Tim has recently signed up to work at
ASDA supermarket on the checkouts on Saturdays from 1 till 9pm. This will be
the fifth run of part-time employment he has undertaken and we're sure it will
be beneficial.
Ben, now 15, and at 5'10" as tall as Tim, has begun his GCSE course at school. His interest in sports is more 'observational' than Tim, and altogether he is much less 'physical' in his interests. He does a paper round every week, which meets his small financial needs. We know that if we told him that we intended to return to Africa, he would go like a shot, something Tim would not.
Janet continues to work as a nurse at the local Christian surgery for 12 hours a
week spread over 3 mornings. She is well-received and continues to enjoy the
stimulation and interest of the work. More recently she's tried her hand at
selling Avon cosmetic products to households locally. It's something she's
always wanted to try, and she feels that it will be interesting to do it for a
while.
Mike has completed over a year
within the Information Services section of Hogg Robinson who sell healthcare
and travel services to large corporations. His job involves sorting out
problems with big databases as well as writing enhancements. Although his
associates are friendly, as he gets older, he finds more difficulty in
remembering the enormous detail and therefore is considering the way ahead.
In April, in response to the
difficulty of finding holidays to suit the whole family, we decided to
experiment by buying a second-hand caravan, and made a couple of excursions,
one to the beautiful Thames Valley, quite close at hand, and one to the New
Forest. We also used it for a week at Summer Conference in Devon in August, a
great success. But, because it takes us away from the home at the weekend, and
Mike presently has only the Saturday to catch up with himself and do jobs
around the house, there is a conflict of interests, so we may not continue with
it next year. The neighbours were very encouraging when the caravan appeared, despite the desecration of our front garden by this enormous white apparition, which says something for the excellent relationship we appear to enjoy with
them.
In October, Mike went to
Zimbabwe for three weeks to teach at Ameva Bible School, which operates from a
farm run by dear friends of long standing near Chegutu on the Harare to Bulawayo
Road. He enjoyed the contact with the students greatly, and also the company of
his hosts and the others who were working there. But he returned immeasurably
saddened by the very high incidence of Aids among the Africans, which may wipe
out a generation. He was also affected deeply by the anti-white stance of
government at the present time, just one of the factors contributing to the
increasing economic chaos within the country.
So, for all its boring
uniformity and copious weather, the UK is not such a bad place in which to
live! To come down onto truth, it is where God would have us for the present,
and we have daily opportunity to live for Him, and to build the personality and
lifestyle that He desires to see. Wherever we live, we can do that.
We send you all our love, and whether you're going to spend Christmas "around the tree" or "on the beach", we hope you will enjoy the celebration of the coming of Christ.
