Greetings to all! I do hope that this month’s blog finds you all well. It has been a bit of an eventful time for us both here in Wales and other areas, where we have ministry and partnerships, and I say “eventful” in the good sense of the word. We rejoice in new opportunities that the Lord is giving to us to build relationships and make Him known, as we continue to move out of lockdown and have more freedom to get out and about and interact with others. By and large, the weather continues to cooperate, and it is truly beautiful now that flowers and vegetation are in full leaf and bloom.
I feel confident that I can speak for the entire Linguæ Christi ministry, when I thank you for your interest in the mission that God has given to us for the indigenous minority language groups of Europe, for your support and encouragement, and especially for your prayers.
Let me bring you up to speed with a few items in order to catch you up on the various things that have been going on since our last blog.
Covid-19 update
As I have done during the course of the COVID pandemic, I’d like to give you an update as to the situation here, and how it affects our ministry here in Wales and other areas of Europe. In general, the UK continues to open up and allow more interaction and other activities. All of us are beginning to feel much more “normal” in our everyday lives. Because of the easing of restrictions related to how many people can meet together in the same place and at the same time, we’ve been able to have some interactions with friends and new connections. Outdoors, this easing of restrictions together with frequent, good weather has definitely afforded more of these opportunities for establishing new relationships and re-connecting with friends, after months of separation. We continue to pray and seek the Lord’s guidance in being involved in even more opportunities to connect. The situation is certainly not “back to normal” yet, especially with things like the number of people who can meet indoors together and even the rules related to worshipping together in Chapel (still limited in numbers, strict social distancing and use of masks, etc.), BUT it is definitely steadily improving and we are intent to take advantage of every opportunity. We are grateful to the Lord for the opening of these doors.
In spite of the fact that things have been steadily improving since my last newsletter, we definitely still ask you to pray for us and the situation. Over the past couple of weeks, the delta variant of COVID has made a dramatic increase in cases in the UK, admittedly more acutely in some places like England than others like here in Wales. As we’ve seen since the beginning of this pandemic, things can change and change quickly. Please, pray that we will be able to continue our local ministry as well as pursue ministry opportunities in other areas of Europe.
New personnel
I am very pleased to say that Andy Lewis arrived with no problems last month. He’s completed his time of required quarantine after arrival (10 days) and continues to settle into his service for the next four months. Please, pray for him as he continues to make new connections and share the Gospel with new friends.
Please, also be praying as Cameron Jones, who will be joining us in our work for a couple months before going to his next missionary project for six months in Hungary, starting in September.
Praise report from the Basque Country
Our personnel and ministry partners in the Basque Country are continuing to see Basque speakers come to faith in Jesus Christ—all while being under considerable restrictions due to the COVID pandemic and usually only able to meet online. Please, pray for our team and partners there as they continue to see new followers of Jesus among Basque speakers, and also for more opportunities for witness as restrictions slowly begin to loosen up. Pray for these new believers that they will continue in discipleship as followers of Jesus and in sharing their new-found faith with others.
Virtual student summer missions programme
For the past few months, we have been sharing a great deal about our programme for students this summer. Because circumstances and restrictions would not allow us to have an on-field programme for students this summer, we planned for a Virtual Summer Missions Programme (VSSMP) for them. We worked very hard both to prepare what we think is a very exciting and robust programme and to publicise the opportunity in order to recruit as many interested students as possible.
Our application deadline was 1 June. Unfortunately and in spite of our best efforts, we did not have enough students to meet the minimum number that we needed to move forward with the virtual projects as planned. Consequently, we will not be having our virtual programme according to our original plan.
However, we did have a few students to apply, and we want to honour their faithfulness and willingness to serve. Consequently, we will be having a “scaled-back” version of our original programme, which we’re calling VSSMP 2.0. Please, pray for the students and for us as we lead them through this virtual missions experience.
Looking forward to summer 2022 for our student projects, we are already praying for the Lord’s direction and making our plans accordingly. Next summer, Lord willing, we hope to have both on-field projects here in Europe as well as virtual missions opportunities for students. I’ll say a bit more related to the students projects for 2022 in a future post.