Home: News Archive: June 2009

Karen says:
One of my ESL classes has finished for the year (the Friday one) and I'm missing it. I continue to assist in an ESL classroom 2 afternoons a week (this will finish for the year in late July) as well as doing the private tutoring and teaching the ESL SS kids class. An interesting contact resulted in me learning some Urdu with the wife of one of the men who attended the men's ESL conversation class at our church. This class also just finished for the summer, so I'm not sure where this contact will lead, but this couple did express interest in attending our church services, even though they are Muslims. The wife was very appreciative of our prayers that her husband would get a job - and he did! And she was quite interested when she saw the church's prayer chain list.

We cannot say that we are seeing results from the DVD distribution, but we know that God knows about the seed that may have been planted in the minds and hearts of many as a result of viewing the Jesus DVD - so we just continue to pray and wait on Him. (George adds: We are systematically visiting people who agreed to have a followup visit after viewing the DVD. This will keep us with enough contacts to carry us through the summer.)

A young man (call him Ringo) who came in off the streets and ended up drumming for our worship team several times for church services then dropped off the scene, resurfaced recently - paying us a visit and asking for prayer for a problem in his life. Another man who heard George preach at the open air at Easter time has come several times for counselling.

Our church sponsored a day outing to a beautiful area of England called The Cotswolds. We had several extra visitors join us this day.

We don't see God working in big ways - but we do see Him working.

Incidentally, I don't know if I told you more about "Bea," but it came to light that she was lying about many, many things. She never did have cancer. This whole experience was rather disturbing and disheartening to me especially. She has discontinued contact with us now but we pray her mind and heart will be healed and she can learn to live in the freedom of God's light and the truth.

Our church family will be doing the Purpose Driven Life campaign for the first time in the fall. Also, we hope to implement a few more outreach programs. (George says: More details to follow.)

Next year we hope to host another team of students here in Birmingham. The lady at the flower shop across the road has an empty flat above her shop and she has agreed that we can use it when we have a team too big for us to house here in the manse. We are excited about that! (George says: If your church would like to send a team to engage in Muslim evangelism and/or help ministries, talk to us. The possibilities are endless!)

Anyhow, I plan to have a Canada Day party here on Wednesday. One of the games I have planned is on Canadian vocabulary. We have had to learn a lot of new British words for things, so now our British friends can have fun with some "Canadianeeze!"

God bless!

Karen (and George)
June 2009