another little Fawcett...

Well, I suppose now that the announcement has been made on Facebook we can call it official. Liz and I are excited to announce that sometime near the end of November, Ivy will be a big sister. It will mean lots of changes and some exciting months ahead for all of us. For now we remain excited and eagerly anticipate little Fawcett's arrival!

mawio'mi: the gathering, ANBC Men's Retreat 2014

This past weekend we hosted our fourth annual men's retreat at ANBC. It was a bit of touch and go there for a bit; registration for the event was down quite significantly this year. In communicating with the executive we decided to go ahead with the event for this year. But with the low attendance we will be re-evaluating the event for next year.

I am pleased that we were able to move ahead with the retreat, I always find it a refreshing and encouraging time. Once again this year we were blessed to have a speaker who held high the Gospel and challenged us as men to strive to honour God in our very lives. pastor Bill Emberley from Grace Baptist Church in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia was with us for our four sessions in the Word - and what a blessing it was. We were further blessed to have several men join us from Chapel of the Living Water in Tracey, NB; along with their pastor, Josh Cameron - who led us in worship for the weekend.

The weekend is always a great time of fellowship and discussion.

And of course it wouldn't be a men's retreat without a little healthy competition.

This year the guys competed to build birdhouses; which we are auctioning off for a project at ANBC.

These fine gentlemen served faithfully in the dish room this year!

a few details

After the unfortunate incident with the moose, it was necessary for us to look for a new truck for ANBC. We now have this 2000 Sierra on the road; and as usual, Darren Goodfellow from River Signs in Miramichi, is keeping us sharp looking. Thanks so much for the details Darren!

First Volunteer Training of the Year

On Mothers Day weekend we had the immense privilege of being in Lisbon Falls with our friends at Lisbon Falls Baptist Church. They had asked us to come and offer the volunteer training program for anyone coming to ANBC as well as those in the church interested in looking a little more closely at cross cultural communication. We had more than a dozen folks out and it was great to be able to look at the material with them.

We will be having a couple of different groups from Lisbon Falls join us this summer throughout the summer and are very much looking forward to ministering alongside them this summer.

It was nice to be in Maine for the holiday and spend some time together as a family for Mother's Day. Some friends made their home available to us and we were very comfortable while we were there.

A touch of First Aid

This week Kevin and I went for our First Aid course in Sussex at the Saint John's Ambulance building. It was our year to re-take the program and we felt it additionally important with the Cape Breton Camp Out program. We will have an RN on our staff with us that week - but the more understanding in the group of First Aid the better. So, we spent two days practicing and addressing the basic techniques and injury scenarios. Let's hope we don't need to use any of them.

Getting ready for the CPR training.

Kevin getting into the AED training.