If I rise on the wings of the dawn,
if I settle on the far side of the sea,
even there your hand will guide me,
your right hand will hold me fast.

Psalm 139:9-10

Our Julie is heading to South Africa for nine months to help with the “Good News of the Kingdom of God” 2010 Project.

We’ll miss her, but we know, as the verses above say, that, wherever she is, God is with her.

Cute!!

Kevin’s an uncle again!

Just saw this in Kevin’s photos on Facebook and thought I’d share it. Wow!

Here’s your chance to hear our own member Kevin Rawlings’ talk “Seeing through the credit crunch”. He talks about how our economy works (or doesn’t work at the moment) and how this contrasts with the principles God wants us to live by. Download the MP3 here: http://is.gd/eJlO or listen using the player above.

Two of of our members, Luke and Kevin, recently visited Kosovo on a short preaching trip. Here, Luke shares his experiences of his time there.

It was going to be cold, we were told. But soon after landing we were shedding layers and basking in the sunlight!

Over half-term a bunch of 5 friends and I took a trip to the Balkans to hold a series of Bible talks in the Kosovan capital, Prishtina. We were there on behalf of the Christadelphian Bible Mission, which supports preaching work all around the world.

It was my second visit to Kosovo, so it was a great treat to have a chance meeting on the very first night with some familiar faces I’d met last Feb.

The plan for the week was to hold three talks, on three consecutive evenings, about Bible topics; we advertised the talks during the day by fly-billing around the streets of the city. There seems to be a desire to discuss religion in Kosovo, which we found exciting - all three talks were well attended, with the attendance increasing each night. The three talks were: The Miracle of the Bible; The Miracle of Prophecy; The Miracle of Jesus.

Kosovo is a very young country with the majority of the population being under 30; it is also mainly a Muslim country (over 90% of the population). We had the opportunity to discuss lots of religious topics with various people throughout the week, learning lots and, hopefully, helping other people to learn about God, too.

There’s a family in Kosovo who we have grown to know over the years, so it was tops to see them again and visit their cafe for some of ‘the best coffee outside of Italy’ (as the Bradt travel guide to Kosovo puts it). If you’re ever in the area (it’s right next to the airport), way not stop by!

Friday was a day for a trip, so we got up rediculously early and set of for Macedonia to visit a member of our church from there. He’d also got up early to meet us but, dispite the lack of sleep, we had a fantastic few hours in Skopie (the person we met there was possibly the nicest person in all of the country, so I think that was infectious!) before rushing off for our flight to the UK, which we nearly didn’t make on a number of occasions because of poor time keeping, slow taxi drivers, bus loads of school children walking slowly, wrong directions, different bus routes, busy traffic, roadworks and a peeling passport!

All in all, it was a great week.

I think my very favourite part was working as a team with the 5 other people from the UK. It was so wonderful to see Romans 12:4-6 in action:

Just as each of us has one body with many members, and these members do not all have the same function, so in Christ we who are many form one body, and each member belongs to all the others. We have different gifts, according to the grace given us.

A photo from our recent ecclesial weekend away in Uckinghall, a charming peaceful village in Gloucestershire.