Autumn 2023 Update

Dear friends and family,

Thank you for your continued thoughts and prayers for us and our work since our last update. Thinking back on your last few months, what are you thankful for? There’s been lots of things for us, here’s a few:

• Levi started secondary school at the beginning of September and is really enjoying himself so far. While it involves getting up much earlier and taking a bus across town, he’s enjoying the freedom and getting involved in the jazz band including a couple of performances already!

• Anya, although missing her brother initially, has made the most of her first term in year 4. She’s been enjoying practising for Young Voices, something she’s been looking forward to since her brother’s first time, getting ready for a performance in Birmingham in January.

• Liz has been settling into a new school year, class and teachers! Since she started her role in February, this is her first experience of having a class from September and so there’s been lots to get her head around but she’s enjoying the challenge. 

• Matt’s teaching at Moorlands is also going well. This year they have 11 students for the ‘Healthy Community Engagement’ module, with a couple needing to join part of it online and one extra person joining for the final week. With two new staff teaching for the first time and some staff taking over new responsibilities it’s been another year of firsts and changes, but we’re thankful that the students seem happy and everything has gone smoothly so far.

Over the next few months, much of Matt’s time will be taken up preparing for the next LEAD Community of Practice event in Thailand. As we mentioned in our last newsletter  this event will be focused on the topic of faith and farming, and we’re expecting 40 or so farmers and community development workers from across the region to join us for the week-long workshop. The training event is based on a Scripture Engagement programme developed in Nigeria by some Wycliffe colleagues, and is designed to connect the Bible with everyday farmers' experiences. It has two primary goals, to help those who work on the land to:

1) engage with all of the Bible in the language that they use as they work on their farms or with their animals, and

2) make a connection between their faith in God and their day to day work, so that their whole life is impacted and reflects God’s greatness in everything they do and say.

Given that farming is a part of the daily lives of most of the marginalised language communities with which Wycliffe works around the world, this programme provides a fantastic opportunity to impact people’s everyday lived experiences. The event also presents a great chance to further grow our relationship with another organisation in Thailand, ECHO Asia - an agriculture NGO and network. We’ve worked with ECHO on a few projects over the years, and so it’s great that on this occasion they will be hosting the training at their demonstration farm and conference centre, providing hands-on experiences for participants to apply their learning! If you’re interested in reading more about the event, take a look at the event website here: https://www.leadimpact.org/event-details/february-2024-faith-and-farming-training

This will be the first in-person Community of Practice event we’ve run since 2019, so there's lots of preparation needed, especially while working with another organisation. In late November Matt will be visiting and working on plans for this event with his colleague in Florida. Please be praying for that trip, as well as all the other hard work that others are doing to make the training as relevant and helpful for people as possible.