Once again, I have had a long break from the blog. I think the last time I wrote, I had come back from a big break and said I'd be blogging much more regularly. Hmmm... sorry about that. There has been a lot going on over the past 7 or so months but I really didn't think it would keep me away from here for so long.
It's been a bit of an unexpected journey...
About 7 or 8 months ago, my husband and I had been chatting and praying about where we felt God was leading for the coming year. Were we to stay where we were? Were we to move on and start a new church plant or move into ministry with an already-established church that wanted to see God do some new things? Were there some new schools and youth ministry areas to break into? How could we give the up and coming leaders where we were more opportunities to grow and serve?
Unexpectedly, friends emailed us a job description for a position at the church they attended. My husband and I took a look at it but quickly dismissed it. It was with a church that I had felt I never wanted to be a part of and my husband felt the job would be very limiting and the nature of the church would make ministry difficult to say the least.
God had other ideas... My husband investigated a few different options and as we chatted and prayed, he felt compelled to look again into the position at this other church. He called the Minister there and organised to meet and talk. One chat lead to more meetings which lead to us both going to a formal meeting with the rest of the church leaders where my husband was offered the position.
I had lots of reservations about leaving where we were and heading to this new town, church, ministry... I didn't want to leave my church family - the life and passion and moves of God that we were seeing. I felt that we were heading somewhere that lacked all of these things and did not want to go there (yes, judgemental of me, I know, but that's how I felt at the time...). And yet... In the conversations had with the church leaders, it appeared that they wanted these things; that they had glimpses but wanted more and thought we could have some part to play with God in bringing these things to this place.
My husband felt God definitely say 'go' and I didn't hear 'stay'. We said 'yes'.
God quickly provided a wonderful home to rent and we headed off to a new town, new church, new ministry.
I spent the first few weeks crying through each service at the new church, grieving the loss of my previous church family and all that we had known there. To be honest, there are days that I still do.
However, I have discovered that God has put some lovely, friendly, godly people in this place who have been kind and generous to us and want to see him move in new ways. We have seen people come to know Jesus over these past months and have seen God changing people's hearts, opening them up to Him in a way they haven't known before.
There's so much we want to see and there's a long road ahead but we're sure God has brought us here so we trust him and keep going.
Another unexpected turn that life has taken for us is that we have found out that we are expecting our second child at the end of the year. I still haven't quite wrapped my head around that but God has blessed us and we're excited and thankful (that journey is a story for another time).
So, life is different right now than I thought it was going to be 8 months ago but I do know that God's plans are better than mine and I'm grateful.
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