Friday, June 19, 2009

Dedication ... & Envelope Stuffing!!

On Sunday we had a dedication service for Abigail at our church in Yeovil (Yeovil Community Church). We felt it was right to dedicate her to God, promise to bring her up in a Christian home and for her to make her own decision later on whether she wants to be come a Christian and be baptised as an adult. We were also prayed for as a family before heading off with MAF as it was one of our last Sundays down here.
It was a really lovely day with close family and friends coming down to spend it with us. A big thank you to Jack & Meta for letting us use their lovely home and garden to have a big lunch altogether after the service! Here is a photo of four generations of ladies from that afternoon!!
The rest of this week has been administration, administration, administration!! Every spare minute we have been writing messages and stuffing envelopes!! Usually this is done down at the MAF UK office for us, but we had the opportunity to do our own mailing which meant we've been able to add a little bit to each of our letters! Many of you should be receiving post from us this week or early next week (that looks something like the picture below!!) with more information about us and MAF ... if you don't get anything and would like to ... please get in touch!
We hope to be able to catch up with as many of you as possible before we head off in the Autumn ... so if you know us and live in the UK ... don't be surprised if we call you in the next couple of weeks to come and visit! We can't wait!

Wednesday, June 10, 2009

At Work & Play!!

This week we're doing our MAF support raising course ... so although we said our studying days were over when we left All Nations, we're effectively 'back in the classroom' again!! We're getting to know the MAF way of doing things and thankfully for us it's just reiterating all we covered at college! At the end of this week we will be equipped with the tools to make our support raising time as easy as possible ... and fulfill our 100% target! (A big thank you to Auntie Betty for letting us use her front room to get down to business in!) Abigail on the other hand has been enjoying lots of time at 'play' with both her grandmothers! Between them they have been looking after her this week ... and getting some quality time in with their grandaughter before we whisk her away later on in the year!!
(Does Abigail look like she has some reservations about being left with the crazy grannies??!!!!)

Monday, June 01, 2009

Our Newest Adventure Begins Here!!!

Today has been a big day in the Beckwith household ... as it marks the beginning of our time working with Mission Aviation Fellowship (MAF). Many of you know we have been going through the application process for MAF since early 2008 ... and now it all begins!!
MAF are a technical mission who fly light aircraft in over 30 countries worldwide enabling other missions and NGO's to carry out their work effectively in remote locations.With Mark's experience as an aircraft design engineer for the last 16 years, we felt that this would be a great way for him to use his skills and learn more too. (If you read our earlier post 'MMS in March' you'll see where our first step will be taking us!!)
These next few months will be spent support raising ... this week we're just preparing for the MAF support raising course which we will be doing next week ... some precourse reading and other administrative tasks. We are then looking to establish a dedicated network of friends who will commit to supporting and encouraging us while we work with MAF and MMS Aviation. We will be looking for people to support us both prayerfully and financially ... and who want to embark on the adventure with us ... and it will be an adventure that could take us anywhere in the world!! Please take some time to consider if you could fulfill one of these roles!
We aim to update our blog on a weekly basis from now on, to keep you updated with how things are going for us. We hope to meet up with as many people as possible before we head out to MMS in the Autumn to catch up properly and to let you know a bit more about what we're doing ... we're really looking forward to this adventure even though it's a huge leap of faith for us as a family!!