April (snow) showers bring May flowers...

Hey folks, time for another post! Well, I woke up Easter Sunday to see snow out of my bedroom window...

Just a few flakes, as you can see! Kinda weird at the end of March, but no big deal, right? Well, this past Sunday (the first weekend of April, mind you), I woke up to this...

And this is out the living room window...

So yeah, I now understand why Londoners say the weather is so unpredictable here! I must say that I actually LOVED having this surprise snowfall, even if I was the only one who enjoyed it!

Anyways, back to Easter Sunday...as I mentioned in my last post, we had to have our Easter service on Saturday this year because the IDEA Store where we meet was closed on Sunday. It went well, but to make up for missing the actual Easter day, on Sunday we had a dinner at our house! Over 20 people showed up and it went really well!

Here's Tola and Mawuse with a couple of Mawuse's friends who came to dinner (by the way, the baby is Joseph, Tola's son--he's a cutie!).

Moving on...for some reason, it seems like everyone is having a birthday this spring! Here we are celebrating Evan and Carl's birthdays...

...and here we are at another birthday lunch the following week!

We've also had several visitors passing through lately...like Emilio and Patty Carbajal (for you Bible College folks, these are Becca Brown's parents)! They were in London on holiday, so I got a chance to spend a couple days with them, it was such a blessing to see them!

Here's Emilio feeding the birds at St. Paul's Cathedral. Why is this significant? Well, for you Disney lovers out there, St. Paul's is the setting for the song "Feed the Birds" in Mary Poppins...so I thought I should take a picture! :)

We also recently had family friends Scott and Bev King visiting from back home in Washington!! So wonderful having them here!! This is a shot on the Thames River with Tower Bridge in the background!

And here we are with Big Ben and Parliament in the background!

Just this week, Cristina Malais also came over for a few days on her way back from Germany...had a good time touring her around the city as well. By the way, that's the Tower of London in the background!

We also met up with the Foxes and Dan Arnold for a meal!

One last thing which is kinda a prayer request...a few of us are starting to go to the train stations in the area to pass out Gospel tracts. This past Saturday we went to the station at Greenwich (pictured here) and it went really well! We expected to see our little tracts littered all over the ground when we were finished, but when we walked around a bit, we didn't see a single one! I saw many people reading the Gospel message, and a few even came up to ask for them! Even if it's just an opportunity to "plant seeds" in people's lives, what a blessing that is! As the Apostle Paul wrote, "One plants, one waters, but it is GOD who gives the increase!" Please pray that the Lord would continue to give a great increase of changed lives here in this city...

...because London needs JESUS!!!! :)

Spring has (almost) sprung!!

Greetings friends and family!! Yes, spring is nearly upon us...so while you're trying to adjust to the time change, take a moment to enjoy a few photos of the latest happenings here in London!

I thought I would start off with a bit of scenery...believe it or not, I actually took this picture at the start of February!! It was so bizarre, one day all of these flowers just bloomed out of nowhere! My mom kept telling them to go back into the ground because it was still cold! I guess it was a pretty "warm" winter for London this year, but this is ridiculous!

Also in February, we were blessed to witness Lee's baptism (you may recognize him, he and Tayo dedicated their son Malachi to the Lord in January). Because he wanted all of his family and friends to be there, a bigger facility was needed, so it was held at a Baptist Church. The Lord has done an awesome work in Lee's life, and he even read his testimony to everyone...I think most of us were a bit teary-eyed!! :)

After he finished sharing with everyone, my dad prayed for him and baptized him!

After the baptism some folks had prepared a meal, which was really sweet...as you can see, there were quite a few people there!! We're praying that the evidence of what Jesus has done in Lee's life will really have an impact on his friends and family!!

The following weekend, there was a one-day youth conference at a church in South London held by a Calvary Chapel ministry here called "Next Generation UK." I was able to bring Lauren with me, and we had a good time...even though the conference started late due to a shooting down the street from us...sadly, that's life in the big city.

One of the main speakers was Laurie Brown, a scientist and pastor in Devon. He gave a great talk about the evidence of "divine design" in nature and science, a very pertinent message for these young people who are constantly indoctrinated with evolutionary theory in the schools.

The worship team from CC Cardiff came to do the music for the conference, and I guess you could say my friend Amber "recruited" me to sing with her, so that was fun! :)

Here's another shot so you can kinda see the rest of the group, Steve on drums and Taevyan on keyboard (I have no idea how to spell his name because it's Welsh!).

Moving along, this past weekend we had a group of students and staff from the Bible College campus in Mallorca come through for a visit (some of you may see a few familiar faces here)! It was such a blessing to have them come! We showed them around the city and my dad also did a bit of a history tour for them, which included John Wesley's house and chapel, pictured here.

Here's Paul getting into his preaching groove in John Wesley's pulpit.

The group was able to attend our Friday night Bible study at the Wharf...

...and the next day we all did the Bible tour of the British Museum! It was neat because some folks from our Wednesday night Bible study group also joined us!



So that's the latest from London!! Stay tuned for my next post...Easter Sunday on a Saturday (don't worry, I will explain later)!!

IT'S A GIRL!!!

That's right, folks, I'm an auntie again!! My sister Mattie gave birth to little Lauren Elisabeth Tatton on Monday the 11th at 4:40am. She weighed 6 lbs. 9 oz. and is doing great!! We've all taken turns traveling up to Scotland to see the new addition to the family, so if you don't mind, I'm just going to take time out from my normal blog subjects to do a little family post!!

Here she is!!

Here she is with her amazing momma (who I might add looks pretty darn good for just having a baby a week ago!!).

Here she is with her big brother, Luke, and her loving poppa, Martin.

This was the first time that Luke got to hold Lauren (with help of course!).

Sorry, I have to throw in one more of Luke 'cuz he's so cute with his baby sister! He talks to her in a soft little voice, he's going to be a good big brother!!

Here's Auntie Jasmine teaching Lauren how to sing.

My mom is a VERY proud grandma...

...and my dad is quite happy as well!! :)

That's all for now, folks...my next post will be back to "business as usual" with everything going on at CC Docklands. There have been a couple neat things happening this month so stay tuned!!

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!! :)