Well, I (Janet) just arrived home from an incredible week in sunny So Cal 😎❤️ I went over to visit my sister and family with one of our amazing friends, and we had the absolute best time 🥳 (I want to say how thankful I am to Neil and Caleb for being amazing at seeing the importance of trips like this and encouraging me to take them ❤️). It was so wonderful to take time, especially after the last few weeks of the summer, to spend time with great girlie friends, rest, eat great food, take lots of walks, laugh a lot, and drink A LOT of cups of tea and coffee in the sunshine ☕️❤️😂👍

Life giving friendships truly are a gift from the Lord – and these girls truly are life giving friends 🥳

Every morning we grabbed a wee cuppa and headed for a walk in the sunshine 😎❤️ As we walked, we would talk together about what the Lord is doing with each of us and about how He’s walking us through different things in our lives. I’m sure I’ve said on here before that I’m not brilliant at learning by reading, and so these moments of talking with friends who really love Jesus are the times when I feel closest to Jesus! I felt like I learned something more about God each time we talked, prayed for, and encouraged each other ❤️

On Sunday morning, Kathryn (my sis) was preaching at church, ❤️ and it was so much fun to be there for that! She was teaching about thankfulness 😃, and because she truly does approach every situation filled with thankfulness, she did it with such authority. As she taught, the Lord was doing wonderful things in me; it was so good for my soul. 😃 One of the things that stood out to me was that ‘thankfulness is the antidote to entitlement!’ I LOVE that!! How often can we get sucked into thinking that it’s our right to have a comfortable and easy life, and when things go a bit wonky, we can so easily become entitled and annoyed? But the Bible clearly teaches us that we are to do EVERYTHING without complaining!!!! (Phil 2:14) We are meant to turn complaints into thankfulness 😃. Kathryn reminded us on Sunday that there is always something to be thankful for, and as we practice living without complaint, we learn to lean into thankfulness; it is in thankfulness that we can learn to be free and joyful, no matter what our circumstances are. 🙌 As part of the service, we watched a clip from an ‘Iris’ church in Mozambique. The church there has been through so much persecution and heartache, and on top of all of that, a massive storm recently destroyed their church building. They could have chosen to give up, get angry, or stomp their feet in a huff, but their response was to gather all the tarps and ropes they could find and build a replacement shelter so that they could continue to meet together and worship God. 🙌 We watched the clip of them pouring out their worship and thankfulness to the Lord in the service – it was STUNNING to see in action what Paul describes in the Bible about being content in any circumstance! You can check out the clip below.

How incredible is that? You can truly sense the presence of the Lord as you listen, and it made me think a lot about how blessed I am to have places and spaces to freely worship God.

After the service on Sunday, some of our dear friends who lived a couple of hours north stayed for lunch, and we had a sweet afternoon together. I’m so thankful that God gave me the opportunity to spend this time here. The whole week really was such a special one! I might need to have a wee think about getting Neil to the sun soon now though—not that he is jealous, of course!!! 😎😂👍 Anyway, here are a few wee pics from last week ❤️🥳