Starting off great in 2008 (cheezy, but it rhymes!)!!!

Greetings friends and family! Perhaps some of you feel like this year hasn't started on the right foot...maybe because your team isn't in the Super Bowl, or because your candidate dropped out of the presidential race...but more than likely it's because I haven't done any blog posts yet in the new year! :) So here I am, back in action to review the month of January!!

As most of you know, we spent Christmas/New Year's in Scotland this year with my sister and her family!!




Here's Luke and I enjoying the first Scottish snowfall of the year...of course, Auntie Jasmine had to take him outside to build a snowman (or a "mowma" as he calls it).

Here's a cute mother/son photo!





When I got back from Scotland, Angelena Chapman visited for a couple days on her way home from Israel...some of you CCBC folks might remember her!! We had a nice time seeing the sights and she was able to come to the Wednesday night Bible study as well!!




After Angelena left, my dad returned from the States and we headed off to Calvary Chapel Siegen, Germany, for a week. CC Siegen hosts many events throughout the year and has a Bible College extension campus as well!!





While my dad was attending a Pastor's Conference there, I had the opportunity to hang out with the Bible College interns there and help them serve meals, clean up, etc. We had a great time!





Here are Christy and Michelle preparing lunch. Most of the interns in Siegen were students when I was working at the Bible College in Murrieta, so seeing all of them was kinda like a little reunion! I was so blessed to spend time with them and see what the Lord is doing in their lives!!





Here's Annie making some German schnitzel (which is basically fried pork chops)...it looks kinda sketchy in this picture but it actually tastes pretty good!!





And here's one more shot of Annie, Michelle, and Chiara just for fun! Even though there are no pictures of me, I really was helping out and working--I promise!! :)





Back in London, we had a very eventful weekend, including our first church baby dedication!! Tayo and Lee (black shirt and tan jacket) dedicated their little son Malachi to the Lord on Sunday, which we were all really excited about!





Here's my dad praying for the Lord's blessing on his life.





Since those other two pictures were far away, I thought you should see a close-up of Malachi because he's pretty darn cute!!





We had a full house on Sunday, partly because several people came for Malachi's dedication...including some unsaved folks that had been invited! So we pray that the service had an impact on their hearts!!

Everyone definitely enjoyed themselves, as seen in the fact that they all stayed to chat for a long time! :)


So there's a brief update on the latest happenings here!! Plus in the past few weeks, the Lord has made some breakthroughs in the lives of various individuals...seeing Jesus change people from the inside out is such an encouragement and a powerful testimony of what only God can do in a person's life!!
Stay tuned for my next update...Jasmine becomes an auntie again!! :)

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!!