Doodling while the kids play in the park.

As you may be aware, I work full-time as a missionary in the UK. My family left the States in 2018 and have had the opportunity to serve in Liverpool, Warsaw and now in rural Scotland.

We are now going into our final year with AT3 (2021-2022), our training scheme, and are trying to raise some additional support to cover my salary during our last year. Obviously, this past year has been difficult for many. If, however, you have not been hit as hard and would like to consider supporting our work, please visit our giving page at Converge. We only need an extra $3600 to cover the gap that’s been created through some of our ministry partners experiencing financial hardship this past year.

Vaccinated.

My ride home from the train included a chance to stop and say hello to a Highland cow.

First time brewing a natural coffee. Looking forward to giving this a go! Part of May’s Manumix pack from Manumit Coffee in Cardiff.

Found a new route home on my bike today that had the added bonus of this view.

A frustrating part of life at the moment is knowing that it is good to move slowly. It’s a struggle because even when forced into a position where moving slowly is the only option, it feels like I’m at war with myself.

This time last year, we were in a season of waiting. We were waiting out our first lockdown while living in a flat in Warsaw. We were waiting for the window to a new visa to open for me. We were waiting to see what would be coming up next. We were waiting to move to Scotland.

And now we are here. We’ve had two more lockdowns. Christmas came and went. Then the new year. Spring has been spent slowly emerging from the cocoons that we had made.

Everything has been fits and starts for what feels like such a long time. And in that time, it is like a rubber band is being pulled tighter and tighter. Things are starting to get busier. We are still trying to get to know people here and it’s happening. But it’s happening slowly.

But this slowness… it makes time move slowly and suddenly. I’m nearly at the end of the first year of my training course. Soon, I will be done for the summer. And then I will have to fight the temptation to fill in the gap with all the activities . Because what am I even doing if I am not filling every single moment with some kind of work, work, work?

Does it boil down to simply saying “no” to myself? Or do I work now on how to use the summer to plan for the next year? To put systems in place.

There are still so many unknowns coming up. Perhaps it’s simply another opportunity to practice actively waiting for the Lord to move. Perhaps, it’s time to get better at simply being amazed at how God works in ordinary things.

Anyway, we’ve got some time away booked this summer. I’m looking forward to being actively unplugged to simply enjoy family and the sea.

Finally got new glasses. Hoping the new prescription helps with the headaches I’ve been having.

It’s been a rough day, but I managed to get this loaf of sourdough done. Oven spring was a bit wonky but this is the most successful loaf I’ve made so far. Probably helps that it’s less than 60% hydration for a change.

It is one of those days where writing a sermon feels like trying to mine for gold using a toothbrush and a piece of cotton wool.

It’s been over a year but I’m finally knitting again. 🧶

As I write this now, my wife and I just got home from visiting a couple from our church here in Scotland. It’s the first time that we’ve been able to sit in someone else’s house and spend a bit of time looking at the Bible over a cuppa.

Besides family, were the first people they’ve had over properly since Scotland went into lockdown over a year ago.

I thought we would just be an hour or so but we suddenly looked at the clock and it was nearly 11pm! A really big prayer of mine is that we get to have this experience more and more. We moved to this area in October and this is the first time we’ve been to someone’s home. To a degree, it’s the least isolated we’ve felt since we had to leave Liverpool.

The thing I’ve missed so much from our time in Liverpool was just spending time with people. That never properly happened in Poland. I really hope this evening is a sign of what’s to come as we continue to do ministry here.

The seaside is my happy place.

The nostalgia has been pretty intense playing this on  Arcade. It’s also been a nice way to take a break from work in the evenings!

The lambs are getting big!

I’m mainly writing this right now because I wanted to try publishing to my blog from Ulysses. I used it for a long time but then moved to IA Writer for a while. The main reason was that I couldn’t justify the cost of the subscription at the time.

I’m incredibly grateful for the fact that my ministry training course qualified me for a student discount. As ever, there’s the expectation that using this will help me out of this bit of a writing dry spell.

I really cannot recommend drinking a big SodaStream bottle right before turning on a race (Tour of Algarve). The real question is whether they’ll make it to today’s finish before I have to run to the loo!

We’ve managed to book a holiday here in Scotland for July. Really looking forward to seeing a part of the U.K. that I’ve been curious about for years now.

With each sticker, this old MacBook Air becomes more and more valuable as a scrapbook of the last two years.

First drawing in a long time. Been wanting to do this one since we moved here.

My long run for the week complete! Didn’t expect sunglasses to be a useful purchase for life in Scotland but it’s so sunny today!

This week’s newsletter featured a brief video of a walk I took in place of the normal photo and words. I’m still quite pleased with it! You should definitely subscribe.

Earlier in the week was sermon prep for school. Now it’s time to start studying this to preach on the 25th!

It shouldn’t give me as much joy as it does to be able to make my kids roll their eyes by being a total dork.

Today I learned that 10 handwritten A4 pages is about 20 minutes of preaching time for me, at least with the line spacing in Europa Clairfontaine notebooks.