Monday, February 16, 2015

Have we lost everyone?

Greetings everyone (if in fact there is still anyone reading our blog); I know it has been far too long since we last posted an update. And believe me, MUCH has happened. It is my hope to be able to be more regular with updates now in the new year that we are having a bit more of a regular routine again in our lives.

Last fall, in October, we visited Lisbon Falls Baptist Church for a part of their missions conference. It was a wonderful refreshing time and we enjoyed the time with our Maine "family", as we always do.

We returned from the conference in Maine, and were immediately thrust into a major renovation project at the mission house we live in. With our ever expanding family we found it necessary to have more room in which to live here at the Center. So, by the grace of NCEM and the kindness of numerous donors, we have seen a 16' x 22' addition to the ANBC mission house. The process was far more challenging and fraught with unexpected (and expected) pitfalls. I won't belabor the details, but suffice it to say that challenges encountered with the foundation dramatically impacted the entire project. We are so very thankful for all of the many volunteers who came out, sometimes at the last minute, to help us see the project through - if it were not for them we would most certainly have been left with a serious mess. I would like very much to thank everyone by name, but I'm afraid that would be impossible at this point, so many folk gave of their time and energy to serve and see this project complete before winter!

The addition is 3 rooms, the biggest of which will serve as a "den", office and spare bedroom. We have very much been blessed by the woodstove this winter; and by the gift of firewood that we received from a neighbour.

Thanks to the resourcefulness of one of our volunteers, a very gifted carpenter, we have a lovely murphy bed that will allow us to have overnight guests.

The other large room in the addition is a utility room for us to store our cleaning supplies and deep freeze; it also gives a space for Liz to have for doing crafts and making soap.

Although I wasn't able to completely finish the addition before Willow arrived, I had much of the noisy work done and finished everything up the week prior to Christmas. 

On December 1st we were blessed to welcome Willow Grace Fawcett into the world. She was a most precious Christmas gift for our little family. 

It is amazing to see her grow and to see Ivy's love for her little sister. We feel so blessed.

We are now into a new year, and we have some exciting plans for ministry in the coming months.  Stay tuned in the coming week for our 2015 schedule and programs as well as applications and opportunities to serve. We will be holding our first advisory team meeting of 2015 this coming Saturday; I am very excited to touch base with the team and discuss some of our plans for the coming year!

Thanks so much for your continued support in prayer and finances - we are so blessed to be able to serve at Arrowhead, and we are further blessed by those of you who come along side of us every day in ministry!

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