We have safely arrived at one of our many homes, Boston, to start our 3 months of Home Assignment. Although no trip with two little people is easy, it wasnt all that bad either! We have about a week to rest, enjoy the New Year celebrationas and organize ourselves before our meetings begin. We are looking forward to meeting up with many of you in the coming weeks.

It occurred to me this morning that I have not been posting regular updates! Life is busy. Life is fun. Life leaves little time for updating our website! However, we know that it is important to let you all know what we are up to. You are the people who support us and encourage us in our work. WIthout you we would not be as productive or as safe! So, I take this opportunity whilst Sarah is happy and playing and Jonny is at preschool to update you on our fall activities.

September saw a myriad of guests pass through our house. The main reason was the 10-year anniversary of the group of believers here. What fun it was to celebrate with so many people who came before us here and worked with our foundation NCM Kosovo to rebuild houses after the war, teach English and other classes and make friendships and relationships. For the believers it was a special time to see old friends and dream new visions of what work we have for the future.

As soon as we had finished the celebrations and said goodbye to all the guests 12 of us jumped into cars and headed to Macedonia for a field conference. It was a wonderful time to connect with old friends from Romania, Bulgaira, Slovina, Albania and the UK.

November saw a trip to Albania for the district assembly. What a special time we had as our first Albanian was ordained during the meetings. It was also a chance for Doug to meet with the Education leaders to talk about his new responsibilities as the Learning center coordinator. We are now in the midst of a class, Introduction to College studies that five of our students are taking. Completing this class will enable them to take classes online from our European Nazarene College and from our Albania/Kosovo Learning Center.

Now we are in the midst of Christmas celebrations. Jen is baking cookies for the neighbourhood as an excuse to knock on doors during this season and further get to know our neighbours. We have celebrations with the believers here in Prishtina to look forward to and in Suhareka. Along with the international ministry community events that we participate in at this time of year. We are also preparing for our home assignment. We will be home for 3 months Jan – March. We are both looking forward to this time with friends and family sharing about work that we are excited about, and a little nervous and “exhausted in advance’ thinking about the travelling with kids and being away from our home routines. We definitely are looking forward to seeing some of you ☺

Just a quick post to say that we have arrived in Kosovo and we are busily trying to set up our cute house in central Prishtine (Photos to follow!). It was quite the monster move. We had a truck come to our house in Tirane on Friday to pack up our belongings. We left on Saturday for Suhareka (a town about 30 minutes across the Albania/Kosovo border) where we stayed the night at a motel. On Sunday we had a van & some friends pack the furniture from an apartment rented by volunteers and drove with it from Suhareka to our house in Prishtine. For the past two days we have been cleaning, moving furniture around and trying to get some order in the house before our shipment arrives, hopefully on Thursday. We are praying it is no later than Thursday as Jen’s parents are coming for the weekend to help us unpack! We will move into our house tomorrow. Up until now we have been staying with Imir and Janette as we have no bed at our place! We will sleep on an air mattress tomorrow night and let Jonathan spend his first night in his big boy bed. He has been able to nap in it over the past few days but he is very eager to test it out over night! The kids have done well over the move, and both seem to like their new room. Jonathan seems very comfortable here in Kosovo and is already making friends with the neighborhood kids! We are really blessed to have two great children.

We have been overwhelmed by the love and support we have felt from the believers here. From the moment we arrived in Kosovo we have been surrounded by people helping us, feeding us, helping us to move furniture, giving us a place to stay, looking after our kids so we can work on the house and even cleaning our 2nd hand refrigerator (thank you Adthe!). We have joined a great family here and we are so excited to work alongside a great group of believers.

May the work here be blessed, may friendships & relationships blossom and may the harvest be plentiful!