Jasmine's Post-Christmas Blog!!

Greetings everyone!! Well, I meant to do this before Christmas, and obviously that didn't happen...but hey, what's a few days, right?? After all, I'm still in time for New Years so that's a point in my favor! :) Just wanted to do a little recap of the oh-so-busy month of December for you, so let's get going...

Of course, what would a Christmas blog be without Christmas lights?? I have to say, I LOVE going downtown this time of year!! This is on Oxford Street, which is where all the "high street shopping" takes place, it gets pretty crazy!

"City sidewalks, busy sidewalks, dressed in holiday style...." OK so this is the middle of the street, not the sidewalk, but it reminds me of that song!! :)

Naturally, I can't show you pictures of the city lights downtown without a picture of Harrod's!! I admit I never have actually gone inside (it probably costs money just to go into a store like that!)...but they had some pretty killer window displays!! :)

OK so moving along...at the beginning of the month, Denae and I made a little trip to Cardiff to visit the folks at the Bible College there since she hadn't had a chance to go yet! We had a great time visiting with our friends (who I'm sure you recognize from my October Wales blog!)...

...and of course when you have a couple worship leaders like Denae and Amber together, music is going to be involved somehow!

During the first part of the month, we also did a few special things for fun...like a Christmas concert at the Royal Albert Hall in London!! This picture hopefully captures how amazing this place was!!

I threw this shot in as well so you can see the HUGE organ on the right hand side of the picture. Let me tell you, I don't think I've ever heard a more powerful instrument--and the concert as a whole was just as great! I was reminded that the gift of music is one of the most beautiful things God has given to mankind!!

We also took a little jaunt to the British Museum! A few years ago, my dad put together a little tour of "The British Museum in Bible Light" which he takes groups on from time to time...so we decided to go do it!

OK so here's my plug for the British Museum--because if any of you come to London, you HAVE to check it out! For one thing, it holds some of the most important archaeological finds in history...like the Rosetta Stone pictured here! It was because of this "document" that scholars were able to first decipher Egyptian hieroglyphics, so it's considered by many to be the most significant discovery of all time! And you can see it right here in London, how about that?!? :)

OK so there are loads of pictures I could have included, but believe it or not, this is one of my favorite things in the museum--an Egyptian brick probably made by Hebrew slaves during the time of the Exodus!! As a Christian, probably one of the neatest things about the British Museum is to see how much archaeological evidence and support there is for Biblical people and places as described in Scripture. It's definitely an encouragement to our faith to see how these things validate God's Word!!

It's a good thing I was paying attention when my dad gave us the tour, because a couple weeks later I took Lauren, Maxine, and Rachel (Maxine's friend)!!

Moving on to church activities...we had a women's Christmas party at the beginning of December, which went really well!

Here are some of the ladies who came!!

We also had a chance to host another girls' sleepover!

Here's a little group photo of our last Wednesday night Bible study before we took a "break" for Christmas! What a blessing this study has been!! I also had an opportunity to teach at a women's Bible study for Calvary Chapel South London around this time, but I forgot to take pictures of that!! :(

A week before Christmas, we sadly had to say good-bye to Denae...she definitely was a huge blessing here in many ways!! This is a shot of her farewell party we had after church.




Here's a picture of everyone who came to church the last Sunday before Christmas...we were actually surprised that this many people were still around, as several folks go away for the holidays, so that was encouraging!




That's all for now folks...until next time, buh-bye!!
Oh, and HAPPY NEW YEAR!! May you grow more and more in your relationship with Jesus Christ and experience all that He wants to do in your life in 2008!!!

When Worlds Collide--An American Thanksgiving in London!!

Greetings everyone!! I meant to do this post last week but got a bit busy!! Nevertheless, it's still closer to Thanksgiving than Christmas, so that has to count for something!! :) Anyways, we were able to rent out a room and host a dinner for everyone in the church...plus some folks brought guests, so it turned into a bit of an outreach as well!

So here we are getting set up for the big dinner! We had around 30 people come so there was quite a bit of cooking and prep work!!

Here's my mom and Denae getting the pumpkin pies and cornbread ready...these are both pretty unusual things for the Brits to eat, so we were proud of them for being "adventurous!" Some of them actually had cornbread last year so they requested that we make it again!

My dad gave a brief Thanksgiving "devotional" before we got started with the meal.

So here we are beginning our feast!

Here's Justin, Tom, and Penny (whose name you might recognize from my newsletters!). I'm not sure if Justin was signalling for me not to take the picture or if he was just full from eating too much!

Here's another group photo...

...and here's me and Maxine and Denae after dinner.

Probably the highlight of our Thanksgiving dinner was a recording we made of "The 12 Days of Christmas" with everyone there! Denae and I recorded the music beforehand and then she put together groups of people to sing for the different "days." We thought it would be like pulling teeth to get everyone involved, but they all jumped in and had fun with it...and I have to say, it turned out pretty amazing! Plus it really seemed to bring everyone together, even those who came as guests!! :)

Justin, Carl, and Lee did some pretty crazy renditions of the "partridge in a pear tree."

The "12 drummers drumming" were sung by Analynn and her two boys (Jack and James--they were in a previous blog post). SO cute!! :)

Gwen, Penny, Lyn, Jackie, and Simone were our "nine ladies dancing."

Alistair and Dan did the "3 french hens."

Kevin and his friends were "4 calling birds" (and there were 4 of them singing, how about that!).

And of course, we had to have someone do "five golden rings," so Evan belted that one out! :)



So that's our Thanksgiving in London! We had a blast and the Lord really blessed our evening together! Even as I'm speaking of Thanksgiving, I have to say that I am SO thankful to be a part of such a sweet fellowship here in London...there's alot of love and unity in our body here, God has been very good to us!!

London in the Fall!!

Greetings my friends!! Well, it's about time for some more blog posts! Since I got back from Wales at the end of October, we've been enjoying the change of seasons (yes, it is possible to enjoy cold weather!) along with various activities, so I thought I would do a quick run through!

Hey, why not start with a bit of scenery? Here's a familiar shot from Greenwich Park looking out over the city and Canary Wharf (on the right). As you can see, the leaves were just starting to change color here!

Here's a little shot of the falling leaves from our side of the river...if this huge ship wasn't in the way, you could see Greenwich from here! :)

As you can see, walking through Greenwich Park has some nice scenery this time of year (although you can't stand around out there for too long or you'll get frostbite)!

...which is why we've started bundling up a bit! :)

As many of you know, this month we had a girls' sleepover with a few of the young gals in our church. One of the neatest things lately has been spending time with them--Maxine and Lauren (pictured here) also have a Bible study with me and Denae on Friday evenings.

Speaking of Denae, I realized I hadn't posted any pictures of her leading worship...so here she is at the Friday night Bible study!!

Along with our regular Bible studies and prayer meeting at CC Docklands, another neat thing this fall has been our monthly women's meetings! I actually had the opportunity to share at our most recent one last week, and it was such a blessing! Here's a group photo from October's meeting. All you Santa Barbara friends will probably recognize a couple familiar faces--Karen and Malia Amling! It was so nice having them visit recently! :)

Here are a few more friends at the women's get-together...including Claire and two of her daughters (who might be familiar from previous posts!).

And here's a little shot of Julia, Mitchie, and Philomena!!

Last but not least, here's a "bonus photo" of something very familiar to us all...the beloved Krispy Kreme donut! This truck was randomly driving through King's Cross train station so I figured it was worth a picture. Of course, one little donut costs almost $2 here so this photo is about as close to Krispy Kreme as I'm going to get!! :)


So there's a very brief look at autumn in London...coming later this week will be a post of our Thanksgiving extravaganza!!

Cymru Am Byth!!!

Greetings folks!! In case you're wondering, that was a Welsh phrase meaning "Wales forever" (I think!). I just spent two weeks there so believe it or not, I did learn something! I learned how to say "oatmeal" ("uwd") and "disgusting" ("uch a fi")...so you know that's gotta come in handy someday! :) Anyways, as most of you know, I was asked to come teach Church History at the Calvary Chapel Bible College extension campus in Cardiff, Wales. We did a two-week "block class," which included 3 hour lectures each morning (and homework of course!); this made it a more intensive class, but the students did quite well and I was really proud of them! So with that, let's get into some photos...

This is Church Street, so called because (obviously) there's a church at the end of the street! Just to give you an idea, this is right across from where the Calvary Chapel Cardiff church office/Bible college classrooms are located.

This is the High Street, where the church office is located (on the left hand side). As you can see in the background, Cardiff Castle also just happens to be right downtown, so we got to walk by it every day on the way to class--kinda neat!!

Here are my wonderful Church History students--Stacy, Melanie, Shannon, and Kelly!! These gals are the full-time students who came over from the Bible College in Murrieta; it's neat because there are also several part-time students from the church/community who attend evening classes (a couple people actually sat in on our class occasionally, so that was fun)!

Here's another shot of the girls in one of the rare moments when they weren't doing homework! :) This particular afternoon they took me down to Cardiff Bay and we walked around down there and enjoyed a surprisingly sunny day, it was fun!!

But of course, we did have to get some class time in as well!!

This shot is for those of you who have taken classes with me before and know how much I love to talk with my hands! :)

A nice bonus to being in Cardiff was getting to know folks from the church there and being involved in their weekly activities, such as the Thursday night Bible study at the Vickery's! Pastor John Vickery has been going through the Book of Revelation, so one night we watched a video on the situation in Israel as it related to our study.

This is my friend Amber Rios, a former Bible College gal who is now a missionary serving at CC Cardiff and the Bible College. I was so blessed to be able to spend time with her (I actually stayed at her flat!), and to see all that the Lord is doing through her as she serves at the school, leads worship for church, etc. I actually had the opportunity to play piano with her for worship, which was fun!!

This is Melanie (one of the students) with Eleri, Amber's "flat mate." She and Amber were great hostesses during my two weeks there! By the way, Eleri is the resident Welsh speaker, so she taught me everything I know! :)

As a little bonus before heading back to London, we spontaneously decided to go to a professional rugby match! This particular match was between the Cardiff Blues and the Sale Sharks (a London team). Cardiff won, which was probably a good thing so we didn't have to avoid any angry fans afterwards!

Rugby is kinda sorta similar to American Football, but I have to tell ya, it seems alot more brutal when they're tackling and jumping on each other without padding and helmets! As you can see, it's not a sport for wimps!

Here's Steve Vickery and Amber watching someone get clobbered during the match. By the way, Steve is also a former Bible College student (and John Vickery's son) who is now a teacher and the director of the Bible College in Wales. He also teaches the young adults' Bible study for the church on Tuesday nights. We've been good friends for several years so it was nice to spend time with him as well (plus he taught me the basics of rugby so I wouldn't be totally dazed and confused)!

While I was in Wales, there was a leaders' conference at Oxford for the Calvary Chapels in southern England and Wales. It ended up being a fun little reunion for those of us from the Bible College back in California! So I thought I would throw in a random "bonus" photo of Steve, me, Amber, Denae, and Dan!

So there you have it--a little taste of my time in Wales!! I really was blessed to be able to teach there and also to be a bit involved in what the Lord is doing in Cardiff!! Please keep Wales in your prayers, that the Lord would continue to open doors and hearts to the Gospel, as well as bless and grow His church there! "Pray also for us, that God would open to us a door for the word, to speak the mystery of Christ" (Colossians 4:3).