We wish you a very wonderful, joyous, Happy Christmas in the name of our Saviour! We pray you have a fun time celebrating Jesus' birthday and remembering the Word of God being made flesh to hang out with us.
We've already had our GFA Christmas party and we had a great time. Calvary Chapel York very kindly let us use one of their rooms:
We also showed them the brand new Forgotten Christmas video:
It's our way of encouraging people to remember Christmas this Christ-mas, and the fact that some have never celebrated it before because they have never heard of Jesus. I heard a story about a Christian in Asia who was driving somewhere on Christmas day when he saw a man working in a field. He stopped his car, got out, walked over to the man, and said to him; "sir, don't you know it's Christmas?" To which the man replied; "What's a Christmas?"
2013 will be bringing some big things for us; firstly in January our office will be moving to Manchester! We have sensed the Lord moving us on from our place here in York and leading us to share the new offices belonging to The Message Trust. We will be sharing their nice new Enterprise Centre:
We have already found our new housing (more on that in a moment!), and so have most of the team, but Brian and Mindy are still waiting for their house to sell and our current office still needs a new tenant to take over our lease.
2013 will also see the previously postponed Renew Your Passion Conference! As you may already know, KP Yohannan, GFA's president and founder, was unable to be in the UK for the previous date that was set...
...but we have re-scheduled it for Saturday 23rd March 2013. It looks like it'll be better than we thought as the timing will now allow us to have other mission field leaders there as well! We are aiming to have 300 people there and we have 98 confirmed registrations so far.
We joyously anticipated the Kiriks' return at the beginning of November:
We gave them back their house and their dog, and as a thank you for looking after their helpless estate they whisked us away to a faraway cottage to spend a quiet, restful weekend.
They spoiled us rotten; they cooked for us, looked after us, required nothing of us, and took us to some nice places like Bakewell (home of the famous Bakewell pudding) and Chatsworth House (where Pride & Prejudice was filmed).
JP also saw his first real live reindeer:
It was all in all a very welcome, much enjoyed break.
We also very much enjoyed a welcome visit from JP's brother, Jonathan.
Being always pressed for time we decided to combine Jonathan's visit with our house-hunting trip to Manchester - so Jonathan took the 2 hour train from London to York and then we dragged him on a 2 hour drive to Manchester to stare at houses!
We had a great time and Jonathan was able to join in on our house-choosing deliberations and prayers.
We settled on a 3 bed house-to-rent about 3 miles away:
We chose something bigger than we currently need because we want to have room to grow our family in the future, and we also want to be able to host a School of Discipleship student. That's when a young person spends a gap year at GFA, serving at the office, being discipled, drawing closer to the Lord, attending prayer meetings for the unreached, and growing in passion for the lost. The year culminates in a visit to the mission field (the student having to raised their own support for everything). It's currently only available in the US but we want to start doing it here in the UK. Our hope is to inspire our next generation; to bring them the reality of 2 billion people who have never before heard the name of Jesus, and how much our heavenly Father's heart breaks for them. It's a little intimidating because we don't feel particularly up to scratch for the job, but we trust that the Lord can, and will, use even us!
We've just started filling out Angie's 42-page Marriage Visa application form:
Angie's current visa expires in March and will need a new one in order to stay in the country. It costs £561 and JP is wondering if it might be made of gold! It's not due for a few months so we have some time to save up the pennies for it.
We will be back to Norwich only very briefly over the holiday as we plan to spend Christmas in York. We'll be at Servants Church in Norwich this Sunday (23rd December), if you're around we'll see you there!
We're intending to cook our first Christmas meal as a married couple at home and have some of the GFA team over.
Angie has been using her chill time to make various creative Christmas decorations and make our flat look festive!
We know it's easy to forget but our desire is to remember Jesus in our Christmas, and to make it about Him. We're very grateful for Brian and Mindy's tradition of getting Jesus a birthday and singing Him Happy Birthday each Christmas! After all, that's what you do on someone's birthday :-)
So Merry Christmas and Happy Birthday Jesus! Just think, thousands of people in Asia will be celebrating Christmas for the first time this year, and you've had a part in that through your prayers, love and support.
Thank you for your partnership in the Gospel. Thank you for helping to reach the lost in Asia with the love of Jesus Christ.
Your partners in reaching the unreached,
JP & Angie
"I have felt the impact of your prayer in these past weeks. I am certain now that nothing has had a more powerful influence on this life of mine than your prayers."
- Jim Elliot
