It has been a wet & windy start to the New Year. No different from the last 6 months though! We have had gale force winds blow off a clay chimney cover, knock down trees throughout the neighbourhood, move a tree in our garden/yard from a 30degree to a 45degree tilt, and move a house (well the neighbour’s kid’s play house). That hasn’t kept us inside too much as there is school, the shop, kids activities and much to do through our Mosaic community.
Our English class had a great start to the New Year. We were not sure what to expect as some members (two Spanish couples) went back to their home country and the New Year is a time for many of our student participants to recover from exams. I spoke with Saied, our Iranian brother in Christ, about meeting every two weeks until numbers increased. The first night we had 3 new participants and 8 of our regulars back – and we were missing many! We decided their wasn’t a need to start slow therefore. I had the privilege of leading the bible study portion the last two weeks and decided to take a step back and teach how to study the bible; even discussing basics of the history of the bible, the contents, reliability, and basic facts and figures. This week I taught on Philemon and how to be a detective – who wrote the book, why, main characters, purpose, application. It seems to be helping as many have never read the bible before. Now if the Holy Spirit can convince them to read it on their own and seek God’s truth for their lives – that is a prayer we can all start this New Year.
Carol and the kids have started back with the kids bi-weekly club at the Annexe. While I am at the English class, they are either at the Annexe community centre where Mosaic meets each Sunday, or in a discipleship group with a couple from our church. Please pray for this to grow outside of Mosaic as the kids invite their friends to come along. Being part of a small faith community has its benefits, but being part of a larger community, and the youth activities that this enables, is something our kids miss out on. Please pray for growth in our kids ministry. That our children would be witnesses for Christ and be bold in inviting their friends to experience the love of Christ (and the joy/fun) through the youth activities that Mosaic does offer.
This month we also welcomed my niece Emily to our home for the next 5 months. She is studying at Glasgow Uni and living with us; the kids love having a big sister to play with. Frodo also likes another person to seek affection from:) This adds a new but easy dimension to our lives as family is always fun to have with us. Today we visited the new riverside Transport museum – £74m in cost! It was certainly enjoyable but I am not sure worth this amount. The old museum was adequate and I think a simple refurbishment of some of it would have been fine; perhaps just more temporary exhibits would have sufficed. I think the money could have helped so many people during such a difficult time economically that it wasn’t well spent on this museum. As I think about our business and the pressures it faces with people being very measured in their purchasing, I can imagine this is the same for all businesses and households. It gives me pause when these sums are spent as ‘investment in the future’ when the present is so needy.
The next few months should be more of the same with the added twist of deciding schools for Lily – she starts high school next year! Hopefully as we move into Spring, our next update will be about flowers, birds and warm weather 
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