News
from England
Washington, England
Christmas 1998
Christmas Greetings
This year has been a year of new challenges and new opportunities The children continue to grow day by day. Little Jared started to nursery school this year. It is hard to believe that he is already 3 years old. Next year he will start to school full-time. Jared insures that we are continually entertained with his enormous repertoire of animal imitations, very loud animal imitations. Heather has gone from wanting everything in her world to be pink to now wanting to paint the walls in her room black. She wants all of her clothes to be black and even her finger nails. We are relying upon this being a new, but short phase. We had the pink phase and now we are in the black phase and soon we hope to be to a more neutral colour phase. The most exciting news concerning Heather was her baptism into the Lord while at Camp Blue Haven this summer.
Joshua recently got a job delivering newspapers in the mornings. He gets up early on a morning and goes around delivering his papers for about an hour before we leave for school by 8:20 A.M. We have seen a tremendous amount of growth in Joshua, especially since our return from the states. Jonathan is doing well, despite being attacked at school for no apparent reason by a kid who hit him and then ran away. Jonathan suffered a cut over his eye when his glasses were hit. He will have a small scar but thankfully seems not to be suffering emotionally. They are all doing well in their school work and we are confident that they are getting a fine education. Jonathan has only a year and a half left before he must consider what he is going to do about university. This is a decision that weighs heavily upon us.
In early January Rodney went to the hospital emergency room with severe pain in his left eye. This turned out to be a problem that would require daily treatment and provide continuous irritation though it is not serious in nature and will not affect his eyesight. He is still working on his Masters degree at the University of Durham and is set to finish in July of 1999. He has very much enjoyed the challenge of University in a different culture and he has learned a great deal.
Michele has learned to cope very well with her wrist. Though there has been some stiffness and loss of movement she compensates and even went bowling recently for the first time since the accident. She did great. She has been even more busy this year than ever before, taking on the chairmanship of a local women’s refuge board of trustees. She also has continued in her position on the school board for one of the Washington schools. Along with this are her many duties with the church as well as her own household tasks. In all of these she is doing a splendid job.
Church
January began with plans for a group from the church in Washington to visit the houses of Parliament. On the 20th of January a group of 15 people left for London to meet the Member of Parliament for the area that includes Washington. They had a great trip and at the conclusion of the trip had the added pleasure of meeting the Prime Minister Tony Blair.
During the year 3 more souls were added to the kingdom of God through the waters of baptism. Added to this growth was experienced through the addition of new members moving into our area. We were also blessed with many visitors during the year with more than 60 in attendance at one Sunday morning worship service.
We were blessed greatly by people from Lubbock coming to visit us here in England. In January Rodney met Stu Childre in London and was able to spend a great day with him. In April Richard and Pam Evans came to Washington and visited for several days on their way back from a visit to Africa.
The church here has continued to grow in maturity as well as numbers. They have recently been dealing with lessons on giving and are now in the process of setting the budget for 1999. Because of the increase and maturity and the increased awareness of God’s blessings in their own lives they look set to make an unprecedented increase in their giving. Perhaps increasing giving by as much as 80%. They still have much prayer and thought to give to such a change, but in all of this the spiritual concern seems to be the largest factor. God really seems to be blessing us here.
We hope and pray that God has blessed each and every one of you this year. You are all very dear to us. We thank you for your encouragement, support and prayers. We love you all very much and we wish you all the best in 1999.
The Thomas Family
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