Thank you again for taking the time to look over what's happening in our lives as we serve the Lord with GFA in York, striving to be a window to Asia for UK believers, and a voice for the unreached world in the church.
As you probably already know, we recently had a very special occasion... our wedding! The Lord blessed us with a great day, lots of different people worked very hard to make it special, and it went better than we could have hoped.
WEDDING PREP
Angie and Catherine stayed up late to make the 3 tier wedding cheesecake:
...our friend Hannah was here from Washington, so she was put to work too, on decorations:
...Amanda from Calvary Chapel was a huge blessing and sorted out lots of things at the church for us, and also agreed to see to the clearing up afterwards:
...Sandra, Gilly and Ruth successfully handled the job of making the venue look beautiful:
...and James, Brian and John took charge of the details for the big day:
The rehearsal the night before went late into the evening:
...and helped us work up an appetite for a great rehearsal dinner at Nando's:
...there was even room for a spicy sauce eating contest:
THE BIG DAY
I (JP) had waited over 2 months to see Angie's dress, and it was well worth the wait:
...John led the ceremony beautifully and we had lots of laughs too:
...the cheesecake really was tasty!
...it was a huge blessing to be surrounded by friends and family:
...there were tears:
...some violence:
...and ultimately a happy ending!
If you would like to see photos please see our wedding blog.
HONEYMOON
We flew out to Washington the next day. Angie drove us to some cool places in Washington, went shopping, ate lots of nice food, and did lots of touristy things. We stayed in several nice hotels and I had my first experience with jacuzzi tubs:
...Angie also managed to learn to play chinese cards!
...and on our shopping travels we even found a church within a shopping mall:
...but I was particularly pleased at finding so many Vietnamese restaurants in Washington, serving great beef noodle soup!
US RECEPTION
We were blessed to be able to have a second reception in Washington, for Angie's friends and family. Angie's mother got a cake topper for the cake, but because the bride and groom were blondes Angie set about darkening their hair with a ball point pen!
...we did the cake feeding thing again:
...and Angie served people coffee:
THE OFFICE
We have recently restructured ourselves into teams, and we are making our volunteers more integrated in the work they do by assigning them to said teams. It's intended to help them take greater ownership of the tasks they do, and help foster the realisation that they are just as important as each of us staff members is.
Just before the wedding my old friend Barry came to visit from Madrid. Barry was a good friend at university whom I knew before coming to know Jesus, and the Lord greatly used him as a witness of His love and grace:
Thanks again for reading, and thank you for praying. Please continue to pray for us as we serve the Lord side by side, striving as one man for the faith of the Gospel.
God bless you all,
JP & Angie
