7 Years Ago

Today 7 years ago was when we arrived as a family on the island of Ibiza, 27th March 2005.

On one level time has flown by on another level I feel like we have been here a long time, I guess thats a general condition of life, the fast and the slow seem to blend!

If I was asked to describe the last 7 years in a blog post, I wouldn't be able to thats why we are writing a book. But if there was one word that I could use it would be this.

Gratitude

I was asked recently to talk about the sacrifice of moving to Ibiza and doing what we do, weirdly I started to cry! It wasn't because I was sad or wearied it was just that when I accessed my feelings I could only feel a deep sense of gratefulness that God had brought us on this journey. Yes at times it has been challenging and tough but we have learnt so much, been given so much, grown so much that in terms of sacrifice what we got back from coming here far outweighs anything we gave up.

I find myself grateful, grateful for the variety of people I have met here, grateful for what they have taught me. Grateful to all those who have supported us in prayers, visits, giving, living here, serving on teams, phone calls, blog comments, making curries, kind emails it's been phenomenal and we feel our appreciation of church, the body of Christ, has grown so much. If you are reading this right now you are one of those people, so thank you.

Grateful for what has happened with 24-7prayer in Ibiza, the way God has breathed on this work, the way it has grown and will continue to grow.

As a family we have grown, in togetherness, in joint experience and age!!!

Words can't describe fully my gratitude, I often find myself saying "Give thanks to the Lord for He is good and His love endures forever"


Yes there are challenges ahead, as we think of leaving here we just concentrate on the practical because if we go there with the emotional we would be wrecks. Ibiza has been our lives for 7 years. I love that line from a Mumford & Sons song Awake my Soul "where you invest your love, you invest your life" I feel we have done that which makes the emotional challenge of leaving tremendously hard.

So the Journey home begins, over the next 4 months until the 20th July, we have to work hard at keeping our heads in the game here and stay focussed as we hand over to Charlie and Abby, whats really important is finishing well.

There are significant financial challenges to getting home, if you would like to help with that please get in touch with me and I can send you a little document explaining the costs and challenges.

Primarily I just want to "give thanks to Lord for He is good" and say "His Love endures forever"