Dear Friends,

It has been great to catch up with so many of you this summer as we have had our home leave! We certainly brought the heat with us and we have loved being in the UK, drinking in the beautiful countryside wherever we have been, being able to speak English all the time, the lack of mosquitoes and the clean tap water. We were really thankful to be able to attend Leah’s graduation in May in America, where she graduated with a double degree in English and International Relations, before coming on to the UK. Natalie has been home in the UK with us this summer for her university holiday, before returning to college at the end of this month for her last two years. Leah has stayed in America, getting a job to fund herself through law college in the future. For Joel, now aged 9, it has been a summer of mixed emotions, as he loves the experience of being in the UK and being able to communicate in English, but has also missed Thailand as it is all he really knows. He has lived there since he was 10 months old and, as he says, ‘it is my normal culture’. This has brought about some interesting conversations about what it means to be a missionary child and not fully fit into either of the two cultures - one feels like home, but on the outside we belong to another. Thankfully he is an extrovert and has loved going around the churches and talking about the Place of Grace and especially helping on sound desks where he can!