Unbelievable Days - proving the faithfulness of our God

Many people have been saying to me, "you must be very busy because you haven't updated your blog for a long time". Well, I have just returned from a very busy trip to Germany. I can honestly say that with all of the experiences of the past two weeks, I have experienced the power and presence of God in a way like I have never done before. Thank you for your prayers!
What a privilege it was to spend 5 days at a special conference organized for all the country and area leaders of CEF in Europe. The theme was "Member Care". We considered how to build good teams and how to care for those who are on our teams. The speakers spoke to us in English and it was translated into Russian (with other translations going on in the room). It is truly amazing how the work has flourished in recent years, especially in Central and Eastern Europe.
During this course I received a very upsetting phone call from Claudia. She had just learned that the people who were going to buy our house in Ireland had just pulled out of the sale. This happened only a matter of days before we were due to sign the contract for our house in Germany. This was an important link in the chain which was now broken. It looked like our dream of buying this house in Germany had just collapsed. It looked like we were going to have to start all over again looking for somewhere to live. Would our move to Germany now be delayed and if so, for how many months? Naturally, Claudia was devestated and so was I. A lot of tears were shed and it was so difficult to be 1000 miles apart at this time but we simply poured out our burden to the Lord. We reminded ourselves that God is faithful and of how His guidance had been so clear up until this point. We trusted God that He knew the answer to this problem and that He would provide! Amazingly another buyer was found so that we were able to continue with our plan to sign for our new house! We praise God for His great love, provision and care for us. He is truly an awesome God!

Straight after the Leadership Conference I had the three day Instructors' Forum. Again the country leaders were present and we were joined by others who are instructors of teachers across Europe and teachers at the Leadership Training Institute in Kilchzimmer. I had the privilege of sharing from God's Word in the morning devotionals. The Lord greatly helped and blessed in this also.

We missed the first day of the European Conference because it was the best time for us to go down to the south of Germany to visit the solicitor. I collected the boys, Claudia and her sister from Frankfurt airport and we drove down to stay overnight at a youth hostel in Kandern. Unfortunately we got held up with traffic jams on the autobahn and by the time we got to our accomadation, we couldn't find any staff to show us where to sleep. So we got back into our vehicle and drove the 45 minutes to Kilchzimmer (Switzerland) were Gerhard and Valerie kindly looked after us.

Thankfully we had all the necessary papers so that everything went somothly at the solicitors and the contracts could be drawn up without any problems. Again we praise God for those He gave us to guide us through this complicated process.

It took us almost 7 hours to drive back to the European Conference (more traffic jams) but before we left we got some lunch in the lovely town of Kandern (see photo).

Before our appointment we were given another viewing of the house. The boys were so excited to see it and their bedrooms for the very first time. We were just floating on air, mindful that it could have been so different but that God was really in control. When we were there, some of the neighbors came out to say hello. One elderly couple were so warm and welcoming. They even took the boys down to see the rabbits they keep.
We are now looking forward to receiving the keys and moving in on July 2nd.