Witchalls

New year news 2012

It has been a while since we last posted any news from our clan. With a new family member, a new home and a new job, the last 18 months have flown by.

In our last news update, we were pleased to announce the birth of Leoni Grace and we mentioned our move to Essex where I (Alan) was taking up a new position in a church as Youth and Children's Minister. Leoni is now approaching 18 months old, and the job is going really well. So, as you can imagine there has been much going on in between now and our last post, and so I'll just cover the highlights...

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Summer 2010 Prayer Letter

We recently put our latest prayer letter online, which included details of our move to a church in Ongar where Alan is going to be serving as their Youth & Children's Minister.

However, the house that the church was all set to rent for us fell through very last minute (literally, the day before!). This means that our new contact details in the prayer letter were no longer correct.

Although as yet we have not got a move date, at least we do have a house to move to, so do give thanks to God for that! Details of our new address are on the back page of the prayer letter. We will post our moves dates online when we have them.

To view the prayer letter, simply click the link below (you will need to have the Adobe Acrobat Reader installed). If you would rather have a printed version, then contact us and let us know where to send it to.

Alan & Kirsten's Summer 2010 prayer letter (onscreen version)
Alan & Kirsten's Summer 2010 prayer letter (printable version)

PS: The last prayer letter was huge to download! I've tweaked the PDF settings and it is now only 600Kb instead of 6Mb!

Leoni Grace

Well, our family seems to be multiplying nicely!

On Sunday 8 August 2010, Leoni Grace Witchalls was born at 5.25pm after a lot of pushing (without gas and air, by the way) and came out weighing 8lb 5oz.

We decided to name her Leoni (pronouned Lee-oh-nee) about 4 hours before she was born, while Kirsten was in the delivery suite. Her name means 'God is a Lion' and is also a female variation of Leonard, in honour of my Dad who died mid-July this year.

Leoni is settling in nicely at home, Joshua is loving being a big brother, and we are sleep training her at the moment, which is sometimes tough but generally going well.

By the way, as I write this, the midwife has just visited us to weigh Leoni, and at 10 days old she has put on 11oz and now weighs 9lb!

Redundancy and looking for pastures new

Well, what an eventful start to the year!

In January, the PCC (church eldership) made a decision which puts us in a really difficult and quite stressful situation (for people who are members of Christ Church, the details of the decision were in a PCC paper that was made available to the church family at the PrayerWorks meeting in February).

Recently, the Children's Worker at Christ Church made the decision to leave her position in order to spend time working as a teacher. The culture of youth and children’s ministry in the UK at the present time means that for many there is a bit of a ‘glass ceiling’ which means that it is often wise to have a secondary career to fall back on. In order for her to be able to fall back on teaching, it was right that she spent some time maintaining her experience in that particular field. Hence, her decision to leave. Please pray for her, both for her work and witness in teaching but also that she might be able to return to vocational children’s ministry soon (good people in children’s work are often hard to find!).

As part of a wider vision of Christ Church, the PCC made the decision at the January meeting to make my post of Youth Pastor and the post of Children’s Worker redundant with effect from the end of August this year, and to create a new position of Associate Minister for Children, Youth and Families. The new position will be advertised shortly in various Christian publications, etc. As the current Youth Pastor, I was free to apply for this new position and to have my application considered with other applicants. After much prayer and consideration, I have decided to not apply for the new position and am therefore currently looking for work as a youth pastor or associate pastor in another church.

As I'm sure you can imagine, a decision like this is a massive one. I'm also sure that the PCC of Christ Church would value your prayers, particularly that God would help them to continue to seek his will and wisdom as they work out this decision. For us, the impact of this decision on our future means that last few months have been a very difficult time for us, especially as we are expecting our second child to be born in mid August. Although we are both really happy that we will soon add another blessing to the family, the prospect of having a baby and then moving two weeks later is not that much of an attractive proposition at the moment!

Therefore, we would really appreciate people praying for the following:

• Pray that we would seek God's will and be fully dependent on him in this situation.
• Pray for wisdom in how to finish well at Christ Church.
• Pray that God would provide a place to live, safety and security for my family, and a new position in which I can serve him from September.
• Pray for wisdom as we think through the various possibilities that God brings before us.