Celebrations & Sadness!

The last week and a bit have been really busy for us. We have had two lovely commissioning services at both our home churches (a big thank you to you all for supporting & encouraging us through all our preparations!). Abigail turned 1 ... which has come round really quickly ... what happened to our little baby?!! We had fun making and decorating her a monkey birthday cake ... as we nicknamed her 'Monkey' when she was just a bump! We had a 1st Birthday/Farewell tea which was really fun ... thank you to all who came to celebrate with us ... it was lovely to be able to share a little bit of time with you ... we really appreciated the distances some of you travelled to be there with us!

We spent most of our final week with close friends and family ... those most difficult to say goodbye to ... it was great to have some time with them as a lot of the last few months has been spent travelling round seeing other people. We also tied up as many loose ends as we were able to, with paperwork and other mundane things that were necessary ... but not nearly as exciting!

Our final Saturday was spent celebrating the wedding of some good friends from All Nations (Gemma & Simeon Locke) ... it was a lovely day and gave us the opportunity to catch up and say goodbye face-to-face to many of our friends from our days at college! It was also a nice break from all the packing and organising we'd been doing!

Our final farewells on Sunday afternoon and very early Monday morning were probably the hardest ones we had to make ... to leave family in tears is not an easy thing to do when you're the ones going away to make them sad ... but we're really blessed to have their love and support knowing that what we're going to do is the right thing for us and part of God's plan for our lives! We had a fantastic day of travelling ... the long 8 hour flight was quite empty ... so not only did they allocate us the bulkhead with more legroom with no problems ... but Abigail got her own seat (no extra charge!) which made it a win win situation all round! The transfer at Toronto was hassle free ... no queue at immigration and lovely immigration officer who shared his birthday with Abigail!!! She travelled like a dream pretty much the whole day ... we really appreciated all your prayers ... they worked!!!

We arrived safely at the Dunkleys, 20 hours after our alarms had woken us up back in the UK! Abigail had slept for a total of about 2 hours over 3 naps the whole time and was still smiling ... although looking somewhat dazed!! All three of us had a good nights sleep and today have started to settle in ... a visit to Walmart to pick up some supplies and then having a quick look at some of the houses from the outside that we will be viewing properly tomorrow!! When we said we were staying in the basement flat of a friends log cabin while we found ourselves a house ... not sure if you pictured the lovely house where Mark & Abigail are pictured standing outside the front door to the flat?!

Thank you so much for all your cards/messages/emails/calls etc saying goodbyes and all your prayers and encouragement ... it has made this huge transition in our lives a lot easier! We will be in touch again soon ... hopefully with a house update!!