A New Era

New things are happening...

It's the first day of school for the three of the children. Josh is now a senior at High School - what he will be doing next year is a mystery to all of us. He'll probably end up doing engineering of some sort at some school somewhere.... We're not quite sure at the moment!

Esther really doesn't want to be back at school at all. It's a rather tortuous affair. The thought of three more years at High School is unbearable to her. However, she bravely went off this morning. I said many a prayer for her as I thought of her suffering at the hands of her educators.

Nathan is in his final year at Middle School and also would have been quite happy to never go back to school again. Not that there have been any terrible experiences there it's just that the getting out of bed in the morning is rather difficult...

For Matt, big changes are afoot: Next Thursday, he leaves the country (well, he can't take it with him!) for almost a year to do the School of Ministry at St Aldate's Church, Oxford, England. Check out www.staldates.org.uk, click on 'Courses' and then on 'School of Ministry' for more info. He is going to be focussing on Youth Work and will get to hang out with Oli who stayed with us for a few months one summer when he was a Youth Intern at our church. It's going to be a really busy year, but an amazing experience I am sure. We shall just miss him, a lot!

For me, a new era has started. I finished VLI in June, and am now starting 'work' (I don't actually get paid - so does it still count as 'work'? discuss) as a Pastoral Intern at Evanston Vineyard. I'm still checking out what I think is God's calling into ministry, possibly planting a church.

It was my first 'day' today and I cycled there, it only took 20 minutes which I don't think is that bad. With temps of 90+ degrees, that was a very pleasant (albeit sweaty) way to travel. So, like I said it was my first day today... well, it's part-time (20 hours) and since I am involved in a lot of stuff at church anyway: Alpha, SHAPE, prayer ministry team, audio team, woman's group, Cross-Current, housegroup... there's not a lot of time left over. Ha! Anyway, I was there today. I picked out my cubicle - hitherto known as my cell and I got a new email address: alisond@evanstonvineyard.org, so I'm totally official now!

Along with everything else, I'm going to be working on a proposal for implementing a Discipleship Year at Church, starting next Fall. Watch this space.

I'm writing this Blog instead of working on my talk for Alpha. I'm doing the talk at the celebration dinner on 14 September. It's rather scary. I'm feeling rather uninspired at the moment and think I need to spend some quality time in prayer asking God what he thinks people want to hear. Put the burden on God, I say!