Grace Notes

In London, we ran a family conference at a Chinese church. We felt “right at home” as most of our previous overseas conferences have been with Chinese people in Singapore and Malaysia. [smile]

Mr. Martin speaking

Dinner with the pastor (standing behind my dad) and church staff. We were encouraged by their heart for discipleship and their desire for the 5 branches of their Chinese church in London to have families that are strong in the Lord!

Teaching fathers and sons

Sarah talking to girls and moms

Mirren and Taryn Martin teaching girls and moms

Book table

I’ll admit, I wasn’t so sure it was a great idea to fly over with this much extra stuff (10 duffle bags filled with books), but we were sure glad we did!

Singming (right) is the one who invited us and coordinated the conference. We are so grateful to her for all of her work and coordination! Linda Lim (left) was a huge help in the whole process.

Susannah, her mom, and Isabella have started going through the Bright Lights material with some other friends who were also at the conference. We really enjoyed meeting them are excited to see how the Lord will use them as godly examples and role models in their communities!

A delicious dessert of fruit, meringue crumbles, and cream (called eton mess)

Please pray that the Lord would give grace and strength to these families to walk in a manner worthy of Him!

Our first conference was held in Derbyshire. The great fellowship during this conference was a huge blessing!

During a break, several of us sat around and heard a powerful testimony from Barry, who recently trusted Christ to save him (after months of resistance).

Our family and the Martins with the Living Water’s representative, John and Danielle Harris (front right) and Ben Scotten from AiG UK (standing behind them).

Meeting them was definitely a highlight on the trip! The Harris’ described with enthusiasm how they see people often “repenting on the streets” as they go out and engage them with the gospel. Check out this short You Tube Clip of them interviewing people on the streets. You’ll enjoy seeing what they do! (Note: the talking on the video starts at minute 1:00).

They also shared how they see the Lord raising up laborers for the harvest – they are currently training 60 people in evangelism (3 classes of 20 people each every week). Wish I lived closer, I’d love to join them! They also have a lot of neat ideas and vision for the future. If you live anywhere near the Nottingham area, I would highly recommend you join one of their training classes! You can find their email address on the contact page of their webpage to get more information.

It was also encouraging to hear from Ben about how the Lord is growing the AiG presence in the UK. They are currently gearing up for the UK Creation Mega Conference!

A question / answer time at the end of Mr. Martin’s last session on negative influences in our society, and how to keep our lives clean and set apart for Christ.

Rani (next to Sarah) with her younger sister and two cousins. After meeting Rani, we felt she’d be a wonderful Bright Lights leader, and we were encouraged when we received an e-mail from her yesterday reviewing some of what the Lord has done in her life and stating, “I felt like all the things I was shown in my spiritual walk was preparing me to this call to be a a Bright Light Leader …” We are so excited to see how the Lord will continue to use Rani!

I took a picture of this plant as an inspiration to our staff here in the Bright Lights office, haha! We have a rubber plant just like that but unfortunately we haven’t done quite as good of a job caring for it!

Reports about London conference and sightseeing coming soon! =)

We have been home from England for a few days now. We are filled with gratefulness to the Lord for allowing us to be a small part of what He is doing in that country. Thank you for all who were praying. We truly saw His hand at work in each place.

Since we were basically with people the entire time, we made many new friends. Well, rather, we met many of our brothers and sisters on that part of the world for the first time. [smile]. It looks like we will have continued contact with many of them. At least three new Bright Lights groups are starting, which is a big answer to prayer. One of them is having their second meeting tomorrow evening!

To share some of the highlights from the trip, I think I will categorize reports by city. So we’ll start with Birmingham, where we spent a day before going on to our first conference in Derbyshire.

The Davies family, upon hearing that we were considering coming to England, emailed us back in February, inviting us to stay with them. They also offered to organize a family gathering where we could speak to more families in their area.

My dad sharing with the parents

Sarah sharing with the girls

I really enjoyed meeting the Hughes sisters who live near Wales and drove quite a distance to come that evening. They are now planning to start a Bright Lights group. We praise the Lord for their lives and for what He is going to continue to do through them.

At the Davies home, we had a lot of fun, enjoying their wonderful hospitality, and learning about English ways and … vocabulary!

For snacks in the break at our meeting at the church, they had “tea and cakes.” It was delicious – though it wasn’t actually cake, but brownies, cookies, etc. This produced some fun conversation afterward, defining terms. [smile]
“Well, what would you call what we ate during the break?” they asked me.
“Well, we’d probably say ‘snacks or treats’ or just call it ‘brownies and cookies’ … so for you, you just put it all under the category of ‘cakes,’ right?”
“Yes,” they agreed. We continued from there to defining cookies and biscuits. (As many of you probably already know, a biscuit to them is what we would call a cookie.)
“Oh, so your biscuits are like dinner rolls?” they asked me.
“Yes,” I said, going on to describe what “biscuits” are to us.
“Well, that sounds like our scones,” Mrs. Davies said.
“Oh, what are your scones like? Are they sweet?”
“No, not really,” she said, continuing to describe them.
“Well we have scones too, but ours are sweet, and they are triangle,” I said.
“Now I’m really confused,” she replied.
We laughed. This conversation was taking place while I was drying dishes.
“The cutlery can go in here,” she told me.
Now I’m thinking, And what would that mean?” and then realized she was referring to silverware.
All the differences in our vocabulary is just too fun.

English home school room!

The Davies introduced us to a card game that helps you learn the Kings and Queens of England.

Another 3rd born baby of the family! [smile] I learned a lot about hedges and mince meat from Jemimah!

Off to the next place!