Christmas 2012

 

Dear friends

 

The past 12 months have been a time of small but significant changes.  There is much to thank God for and lots of blessings from Him to report.

 

For the first time, Christmas last year was spent at home in Reading; my mum and aunt came and we had Christmas together with my Nepali housemates, Bharat and Goma, and their son, Manoj.  They took part in proper English Christmas celebrations for the first time, which was fun! 

 

February was a month of travelling (when not working).  I was able to use up some spare annual leave and visit my University friend, Mike, and his wife Sandie and their family in Lincoln – the first time in well over 5 years – and it was a great time.  The journey back was an epic, though, taking 5 or 6 hours in the heavily falling snow! 

 

In February I also went to see my friends in Scotland, John and Jean.  We went to see the Royal Yacht Britannia in Edinburgh and had our lunch in the rather good on deck restaurant!  I would thoroughly recommend the tour round the Yacht.

 

The middle of the year brought a number of different things.  I went away on holiday to Anglesey for a week with my friends, Ben and Yan-Ling and their family.  We were blessed by the one week of glorious sunshine at the end of May in an otherwise wet summer.

 

At the start of July, my co-workers in the Newtown work amongst Nepalis, Stephen and Alice, went (with their son Joel) to live in Nepal for 2 years to learn the language and culture more and to link up with some of our friends who have returned to Nepal over recent years.  The preparation for that took quite a while as they had to completely move out of their own house and many of us from the church family were involved in helping with that.

 

I had a chance to try out my newly built barbecue on my newly built patio (the patio was my own work!) with a leaving party for Stephen, Alice and Joel in June.  There must have been over 60 people from the local community who came to say goodbye to them.

 

During July I was once again away on holiday, this time for a week in Nice with church friends.  There was no issue with bad weather there and we had the added interest of travelling there by train – inadvertently having booked First Class tickets for the outward journey, which was good fun.

 

During June and July the situation at work went through a period of change and I was faced with redundancy.  The process turned out to the good and I was actually promoted to partner with effect from the start of August.  At that point I was asked to increase my hours from 80% (over 5 days) which had been working for the previous 2 years, and was able to agree a compromise at 90% (which was an answer to prayer), which gives me the freedom to have half a day off a week.

 

Since then, work has become a lot busier as a few team members have left and been replaced.  Work is challenging, which is good, and it is exciting to see opportunities for growth.

 

As a family, the Jubilee and Olympic events gave opportunities to do some different things. My brother and sister-in-law and their two children, as well as my mum, came down for both events For the Jubilee, we went up to London and watched the flotilla on the south bank of the Thames, just outside the QE2 Hall, before narrowly avoiding getting very wet indeed towards the end of the proceedings.

 

We also had Olympic tickets for what turned out to be ‘super Saturday’, so we were in the park (albeit not in the Olympic stadium itself), which was a great occasion. The atmosphere was very special. Our attention during the hockey game we were watching, however, kept being drawn away to the events taking place on the big screen which we could see over the top of the hockey stadium!!

  

This year I was asked to speak at the New Life Conference which takes place annually in Devon at the start of August.  I was given the topic of “Pew Warming” – how non-leaders can be actively involved in the local church.  The format was a seminar (which I gave twice) with time for questions and comments from the floor afterwards.  The topic was well-received and the conference overall was a great blessing – despite the heavy rain!

 

The work in the Nepali community continues, with our Thursday Bible studies and community contact.  We were saddened in September by the sudden death (due to a stroke) of one of our Nepali friends who had begun to make moves towards the Lord.  We had the privilege to pray for him in hospital during his last hours as well as having the chance to talk to and pray with him in the weeks leading up to his death.

 

In late October/early November I was away again, this time for 9 days in Romania.  I was visiting church friends who live out there for the first weekend and then teaching in a small Bible school for gypsy believers during the week.  I taught the module “Foundations of Faith” and in preparing the material had a real opportunity to think things through afresh for myself.

 

Things carry on in the church, where I am involved leading the music and PA team on Sunday mornings.  We now have a well-established core of musicians and singers who are able to play well together and cover a good range of styles of music. 

 

I wish all of you reading this a very blessed Christmas and New Year.  I should like very much to hear your news and maybe even get round to seeing some of you soon!

 

With love,

 

Richard