Keith's travels

Keith is travelling again next week, this time to visit some of the teams in Europe; Norway, Sweden, France and Germany. He hasn't been to Norway or Sweden before, so is very excited to be able to add to the list of countries he has visited!

Logos Hope

The Logos Hope, OM's new ship, has been launched, after a few years in a dockyard in Croatia. She is on her way to Kiel in Germany for the final refitting. The ship is hoping to visit England sometime next year. Visit http://www.omships.org/ and follow the links to the virtual voyage to view the webcam and the voyage tracker. We were able to watch last Thursday as the ship left the quayside.

Latest news from the frozen north

An update from the Mallons

I write this missive at 6.45am on the train from Carlisle to Birmingham, this is the start of a fairly busy patch and we’d like to keep friends and family up to date with what we’re up to!

We are now established in our own home which is a great blessing – the house is a big Victorian semi with loads of room to get lost in. The kids each have a fantastic room and we have a guest room too – so book in and come and see us. The Lake District is nearby – 20 mins to Scotland and Gretna Green, we’re en route to anywhere North and 3 hours from Sheffield.

The kids are settling in to life well now, many thanks for all your prayers, we have had our moments! School is getting sorted gradually although Tessa remains in the lowest set for IT which we all think is hilarious. Ruth has a good circle of friends and fits into the local youth group well, Tessa hasn’t found a youth group but is getting to know folk gradually. Izzy is fairly shy at the new school but has found a pal in the locality.

We’ve been going to the local church round the corner called St James it’s an evangelical Anglican church and well connected to the community – as yet we haven’t finally decided we’ll stay. Many of the neighbours are members and it is a real local community.

My (Keith’s) work is getting into gear with more travel, relationships and challenge. Principally I am working on how we can arrange financial systems of OM to satisfy a wide range of global regulation requirements. This means keeping the money flowing to missionaries in a bunch of high risk countries.

This takes a deal of international co-ordination and I have recently been back to the USA to meet sister organisations such as Wycliffe and Navigators to see how their structures are working.

The role is very challenging and I am having to draw upon lots of experience and a huge measure of faith. Trying to get people to think globally is difficult and occasionally my brain pops! Nevertheless it is very stimulating and I am enjoying working with some great folk. What I am doing is hugely appreciated which is a big encouragement.

Dawn is looking more relaxed than we envisaged, it turns out she was really ready for a change from teaching. No longer in constant danger of assault she has entered the field of communications and seems to be returning to her original love of digging for information.

We have been sort of detached from our former life for nearly a year now. A few statistics on the past 12 months

Keith has flown on 38 flights covering 77000 miles at least once round the world. We’ve been to 9 countries, met over 50 nationalities, lived in a ship 130m long and 16m wide and on some days seen 12,000 available to receive a gospel message.

We think that’s not a bad change in life so far!

Keith is in the USA this week, visiting Wycliffe and Navigators. It will be useful for him to see how other international organizations operate. It has been a punishing schedule: Denver, Colorado Springs, Dallas, Atlanta. By the time he returns he will have been on 9 plane journeys in a week, so his carbon footprint is massive! 33 plane journeys this year....!

summer activities

We are back online now in our new house and hopefully better able to communicate with the world! We love the house.

I will give a brief overview of our summer:

Dawn took Tessa and Izzy to New Wine, which was rather waterlogged, but a great time of meeting with God and catching up with friends.

Ruth and Tessa went to Mission Teens only, run by OM for its teenagers. It took place in Germany, and despite some homesickness the girls have made some good friends, and are now communicating internationally on MSN.

Ruth also attended a summer school for Luv Esther. It is a musical which is well worth seeing if you get the chance. She opted for dancing at the summer school, (what a surprise) and spent 3-4 hours dancing each day. The time including teaching and small group times, and she came back buzzing!

Ruth's cosmetics and clothes arrive...

What can I say - we have a home. This is the trailer that delivered our stuff. And what a lot of stuff - this underlines the need for a change in lifestyle.

Dawn went away and left Ruth and I to do it - very wise!

We found out last week 2 of the containers with our stuff were flood damaged - very sad but not very precious stuff . It should all be insured and frankly in comparison with all the folk flooded down south it seems minor.

It is great to have a home again - looking forward to welcoming you all!

Move day!

Dawn, Tessa and Isabel are clearly the clever ones, they've gone to New Wine - actually might not be so clever with all the flooding at present.

This leaves Ruth and I to work with the removals men on the house move. It was all going swimmingly well - exchange last friday - keys on wednesday - bit of cleaning and painting - stuff arrives monday - good timing perhaps?

All blown out of the water (almost quite literally) having paid removals in full on wednesday day (very polite lady at SBS) to be informed on thursday that 2 containers have been flood damaged!

So hopefully its the expensive things we dont like and not the precious cheap tat that adorned our house.

Hoping we can post exciting photos of sludgy unwanted items with high insurance value later this week.......

Ruth has had me paint her room already - deep purple colour on the chimney breast and light brown / velvety brown walls. This is important Daddy and daughter time. I managed to switch the quantities of light and dark paint at the diy shop and the plan was retrieved by an obliging Ruth who quite liked it anyway.

I do like our new home - lots of lovely folk from the OM office came and helped clean and cut back the garden on Saturday - we're looking forward to opening up the home to all and sundry.

New school

Izzy had her first visit to Trinity school, which is where Ruth and Tessa already go and where she will go next year. On the left is the impressive looking 6th form block, but the school is quite a sprawling site, comprising of what was 3 schools, so I will give you a view of another part of the site. Unfortunately Izzy has not been put with any of the girls from her primary school, so she will need to make new friends again when she starts. She will at least be able to arrange to meet the girls she knows at lunch times. We think the school is about 25 minutes walk from our new house; they have to be there at 8.25 so will have to be organised!