A challenge for the new year...

With the new year just around the corner, some people are turning their thoughts to new year resolutions. Perhaps they plan to lose weight or give up smoking, or get out of debt. Others don't bother making promises to themselves, as previous experience has shown them that they'll probably have failed before the end of January.

Talking with some young people in my church in Spain, I discovered that there were a number of teens who really wanted to make new year resolutions about reading the Bible more.... but they weren't really very sure about how to spend personal time with God. I was astonished to discover that some of the young people only ever read in the psalms or proverbs, leaving the rest of the Bible totally undiscovered.

I contacted Scripture Union and similar organisations in Spain to find out about what kind of Bible reading notes are available for children and teenagers... and I was amazed to discover that no such resource seems to exist in Spain. That's when I decided that I would need to write something myself. I spoke with some of the young teens and we have launched Challenge 2013 (or Reto 2013 in Spanish) for the new year that lies ahead.

The concept behind Challenge Twenty Thirteen is very simple and very do-able: young people who sign up for the challenge will commit to reading their Bible at least 13 times a month... and by the end of the year, they will have read from 20 different books in the Bible.

As for me, my challenge is that I have committed to writing and printing twelve Bible reading journals - one for each month of the year. Each little booklet explains how to spend personal time with God, and includes 13 short Bible readings, with a question to think and pray about, and a challenge to apply the Bible's teaching to your everyday life. So far, I'm aware of young people in five different nations who are taking on the challenge of reading the Bible thirteen times a month during 2013.

I'm producing the booklets both in Spanish (Reto 2013) and English (Challenge 2013) and the January booklet is already available in PDF format for downloading and printing. If you or a young person you know would like to take on the challenge, you can get your copy of the January booklet by clicking on the link below. (Print it double sided on A4 paper, landscape orientation, and then fold it in half to form an A5 booklet.)

Challenge 2013 booklet for January (in English)

Reto 2013 para enero (libro en español)

Just another "ordinary" miracle!

In many ways, our Christmas day was rather "uneventful." We ate a goose for Christmas dinner, we watched a movie on TV, we gave and received gifts.....  From anyone's perspective, it probably seemed very ordinary.

But deep in my heart, I knew that the very "ordinariness" of this day was in itself a miracle, and evidence of God's faithfulness to our family over the past twelve or fourteen months.

We spent Christmas Day 2011 in hospital. We seemed to have moved beyond the stage where doctors were telling us that my Dad would never come out of hospital alive, but he was still in critical condition and Christmas day was full of pain for him. He was unable to eat any Christmas dinner, and a pervasive sense of nausea caused him to throw up several times that day. Ten rather traumatic weeks lay behind us, and we didn't know that six more difficult months of hospitalisation lay ahead.

What a contrast this year! Although Dad still faces some challenges as he continues to recover from his near-death experiences, it is nothing short of amazing to see how well he is doing: to see him able to walk with a stick, to see him eating his Christmas dinner and opening his presents..... to see him doing all the "ordinary" things that doctors told us he would never do again. In the words of a song you might have heard: it's just another ordinary miracle today!

If you were one of the people who stood with us in prayer this time last year, you too have played a part in this miracle; you were part of seeing the faithful and miraculous power of God at work in my Dad's life. Thank you for that.

On Sunday, we went out as a family to a Christmas service at church. That too may seem a very ordinary thing to do.... but it was the first time in fourteen months that my parents had been able to go out to church together .... and it was all thanks to the healing power of God.

Perhaps your Christmas also seemed "ordinary." Perhaps 2012 was not particularly dramatic for you and your family. And yet I know that the faithfulness of God has been there for you too. Perhaps you have experienced His power and His answers to prayer in all sorts of "ordinary" ways this year - whether you were aware of it or not.

I pray that 2013 will be a year when God's ordinary miracles become more noticeable to all of us... a year when our hearts are filled with thankfulness for His goodness to us. I hope you had a happy Christmas this year.... and I wish you many blessings in the new year that lies just around the corner.

Christmas Concert

All that hard work and prayer paid off, and our church's Christmas concert last night was a great success. Around 200 people turned up and everyone seemed to enjoy the programme - a mix of songs, dance, music and puppets. The children did a great job with their Christmas songs, and the girls' group presented the two Christmas worship dances they've been preparing over the past few weeks. Perhaps the most enthusiastic part of the service was when the children (and the puppets) were all singing the Christmas classic, Feliz Navidad. If you don't know it, you can listen to it here and sing along. The words are very simple: "Feliz Navidad, feliz navidad, feliz navidad y prospero año de felicidad. I want to wish you a merry Christmas (x3) from the bottom of my heart."

Quite a number of the guests stayed after the concert for drinks and snacks, and we're hoping that some of them will come back again next Sunday evening for our Christmas carol service. In the meantime, though, I'll be heading to Scotland, where I'll be spending Christmas and New Year with my family. I wish you and your family Feliz Navidad y Prospero Año de Felicidad. (Merry Christmas and a New Year with much happiness.)

Dog sitting, Chinese cooking and orange picking...

My friends have gone to Portugal for a few days, and so I'm staying at Villa Rehoboth with Brandy the dog. It's a good place to work on the computer and make progress on some of the curriculum writing that I'm aiming to finish by the end of the year... and I'm also doing several loads of laundry every day: washing the bedding left by a group of more than twenty retreat participants who left only yesterday.

I'll be making a trip home every day to check on my own animals, but today was a public holiday and so my housemates and a friend came to visit and have lunch at "my house." Chicken chow mein was on the menu, and I discovered that a paella pan is ideal for stir frying all those vegetables and noodles. Then we enjoyed taking the dog for a walk down a nearby country lane and picking the ripe oranges that were growing wild there. And, finally, gathering up as many pine cones as possible, as they're great for getting the fire started in the fireplace when the evening chill sets in. That's Spain in winter!

To England.... for Africa!

I just arrived back in Spain, after making a flying visit to England. I was there for just two days to meet with some people who are involved (or interested in getting involved) in working with our "Planting Together" outreach vision in Senegal and Tanzania next year. As our time together was so short (I had to leave at 4 am this morning) we had to squeeze in meetings from morning to evening in order to have sufficient time to pray, to prepare and to divide up the different tasks that need to be done over the coming year in order to make the "Gather and Go" camp and the ensuing outreaches a reality. Finding housing in Dakar for 100 - 200 people, planning transportation to multiple outreach locations, working on the website (see www.plantingtogether.com), making a presentation at a gathering of missionaries and Christian leaders, talking through what should be included in the camp programme, planning how to link visiting teams with host ministries.....  There were so many things to be discussed and prayed over.

However short, it was worth taking the trip and making the effort to spend time together, because we did have a sense of God's favour and were able to make good process on some of the decisions that needed to be made and things that needed to be planned. The work has only just begun, though, for Tanzania Harvest (Easter in East Africa) and Gather and Go (summer in West Africa) and so we'd value your prayers as we work to prepare these initiatives over the coming months. Personally, I'm working on writing a team leader's preparation manual before the end of this year, and a young person's preparation manual before the middle of March.