Dan Alcantara: The Longest January Ever - Notes from Scotland #5
Dear Redemption,
The longest January ever seems to have also become a really busy one!
Ministry Updates
January at SEC was all about prayer. As a church, we have been meditating on Psalm 62:5-6:
For God alone, O my soul, wait in silence, for my hope is from him. He only is my rock and my salvation, my fortress; I shall not be shaken. (ESV)
One of the ways we worked to encourage the church to be praying more was to hold a Sunday evening discussion & prayer meeting. This began in person but had to transition to Zoom after that. What was encouraging, however, was the fact that each week we had an average of 15 people attending. It was really good to spend that time looking again at the sermon and the Psalms to answer questions that helped focus our time in prayer. I got to preach again, as well, this time on “the prayer that leads to contentment”. You can watch the sermon in the video above, it begins about 20 minutes into the stream.
Continue to pray with us as we work to do ministry while we cannot meet with people in person. I’m also praying for wisdom in how to do evangelism locally while we’re in lockdown. Pray that we would find an opportunity to share the gospel with our neighbours; our kids and their kids became friends soon after we moved here.
Lockdown learning and cabin fever
January began in lockdown, finished in lockdown and February is looking much the same. In spite of that, it seems like we are busier than ever.
Each day, Tracy does the work of trying to manage all of the kids’ schoolwork and three different Google Classroom accounts that have to be accessed through a single-sign-on system that the local council is way too invested in for the headaches it causes. In spite of the headaches, she and the kids are doing an amazing job of getting through the work and the teachers are doing a really good job of creating lessons that work at home. The school provided a Chromebook and a couple of iPads so that the kids are all able to do their work at the same time!
On Mondays and Tuesdays, my days are spent on Zoom for my training course. Last week I preached for the first time while wearing a blanket and slippers! I don’t recommend it. We’ve been grateful for the fact that our internet connection has mostly held up under the weight of hours-long Zoom calls. We were very fortunate to spend a couple of weeks exploring the Psalms with David Jackman, the former president of the Proclamation Trust and founder of the Cornhill Training Course. The Psalms are an incredibly rich book and it was good to spend the time doing a full, concentrated overview of them to see how the whole book fits together and how to go about preaching them.
Besides all of that, we celebrated Owen turning 4! We can’t believe that he’s already 4 or that he has officially lived in the UK and Europe for the majority of his life now. He is so full of personality and energy and loves everything that has to do with Batman.
Tracy has been doing a lot to make our home more cozy since we haven’t been able to go anywhere. She’s doing a great job and it helps out a lot with the cabin fever.
February Birthdays
Prayer requests
As always there is much to prayer about but we hope that you will join us in prayer for these specific things:
We continue to pray for a job for Tracy. An exciting opportunity has come up for her to apply for at SU Gowanbank, the house we stayed at when we first moved up to Scotland. Pray for wisdom and favour as she applies for it, as it would be a boost to us financially but also an opportunity for Tracy to work in ministry as well.
The next couple of weeks are the half-term break from school for all of us. Pray that it would be a restful couple of weeks and for me to recover a bit of the brain power that gets used up by spending hours on Zoom. Cornhill Scotland have assigned students the book Gentle & Lowly and I’m really excited to take the time to read it during the break.
One of the reasons we are here at SEC is to start new kids’ work for kids the same age as Sophie and Chloe. We’ve not been able to start anything yet, though as we are waiting for our PVG checks to come back (an enhanced background check). Pray that the office would be able to process them soon so that we can begin to set up a program for discipling young people here.
Here’s a short video of us enjoying the snow on Sophie’s birthday. It was so nice to actually have a family outing.
