And here we are in England…

After a hectic few weeks of packing day and night we are delighted to have finally arrived in England. However, it is with much sadness that in preparing to leave Bill’s mom became critically ill from the flu, from which she never recovered. She passed away on January 23rd, with Bill and all his siblings at her side.  It still doesn’t seem real that she has gone, but over 20 years ago the Lord miraculously visited her, called her by name and replaced her shattered elbow bones with new bones. It was so amazing that even her doctor, who was an atheist, called her on his deathbed and said that hers was the only miracle he ever saw and wanted her to tell him about it… so it is with peace that we continued our journey knowing that mom, with certainty, is seeing the face of the One who healed her so many years ago. A celebration service has been scheduled for June 2019 in her hometown of Owego, NY.

God has been gracious to us and has kept us steady throughout this transition! We are definitely still in the transition as we don’t yet have a house to live in, but we know God called us here and we know He is going to provide for us. We are thankful for all the friends who helped us so much in the last few weeks in Orlando…helping with packing, bringing meals, loving on us and making it possible for us to actually be ready to fly when we did! A week before we flew our shipping crate began it’s journey to England and it began to become more real that we were leaving.

We saw God’s favor in many ways on our actual journey here – our bags were not even weighed (we’d been fretting about the weight of them as they were overweight) and it seemed like we could have brought as many bags as we’d wanted and they’d just have waved them through!  The flight wasn’t full so we were able to move seats and spread out such that the girls were able to sleep…even Audrey, who has had a hard time sleeping on planes in the past!  We were ushered past the long immigration line & Bill had minimal questioning before being allowed in – all praise and glory to God!

We still didn’t know where we were going to be staying when we arrived at the airport, but were greeted by Pr Jonathan, Rick & sweet Grace (to the delight of the girls) and prayed together to seek direction as to where we should be going with all our stuff!! Pr Jonathan was prompted to call a guest house run by Operation Mobilization and a family room had opened up that morning… so we’re here for a few days whilst we wait to see where the Lord will take us next!

The day we arrived it was very chilly but the skies were blue and there had been a light sprinkling of snow, so everywhere looked especially lovely. It has remained bitterly cold and we’re adjusting to having to put on many layers to go outdoors, and we were disappointed that the forecast snow last night was barely there this morning and had melted in the rain by the time we left the house at 10:30. We’re continuing to pray and seek the Lord – tomorrow morning we’ll go to our first Saturday morning church prayer time together as a family and we’re looking forward to being at service on Sunday! So much ‘new’, but at the same time we are at peace and gratefully trusting that God is with us and will lead us on.

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