Greece is The Word: It's good to be home

Birthday balloons! Esther was 1 whilst we were in England.

We've been back in Athens since Sunday night after 7 weeks of rather hectic Englanding. We thought we ought to blog a bit to catch you up. People were right to urge us not to travel around too much, and we intended to take that advice, but a combination of our natural instincts and some unforeseen circumstances meant we didn't. The other thing was that it was a long time to be away from home, and we reckon that next summer we'll have quite a different time of it.

Without going into reams of detail here's a quick summary of what we did:

The first week back (from 10 July) was Dawn and kids in Sussex with her family while I went to the IFES World Assembly near Toronto, Canada. This was a great privilege. The highlights were definitely seeing representatives of some of the newest movements, particularly those in the Middle East and North Africa, report on how things have started in their countries in recent years. What most struck me (not for the first time with IFES) was how God has worked through the faithful witness of normal people in tough places to save people and establish a witness for himself in many universities where there was previously nothing. This is a great encouragement for us in Greece! I think it's worth noting that Western Europe is still one of the most unfruitful places for the gospel on the globe, even compared to some Muslim countries. We ought to still be praying for workers to be sent into this most convenient (for UK believers at least!) of harvest fields.

Anyway, this is already looking less brief than intended. Mid-July to mid-August we were in Beeston with a week in the south east in the middle. People from Beeston Free ('home' church) provided us with homes and car and we had a great time catching up with the church family as a whole and many of our friends there. (The downside of a summer visit is that you miss some people away on their holidays of course, but such is life.) The week in the south east included three days in London (friends at Oak Hill one day, tourism the next, a funeral third) and time with Dawn's parents and sister and brother in law.

Hannah, Lucie (niece) and Joel, exploring at the Natural History Museum

We packed up from our final Beeston home mid August (oh - it was lovely to visit our friends the Pratts in our Thorndyke Close house: several people asked us about this and it was good. Reckon they've improved the place actually. There are even strawberries growing.) to go to Liverpool (my little bro and other friends) and Cheshire for a long weekend including a day trip to York before heading south west to see old uni friends and be in the right part of the country for IFES orientation at Monkton Coombe, Bath. Crazily, we managed to squeeze almost 24 hours at the UCCF Relay 1 conference at Quinta, Shropshire, into this. This 300 mile round trip was so worthwhile though: an opportunity to see the old place again, be part of Relay again, AND talk to the group about IFES in general, year-teams in Europe and our plans for Athens specifically. We hope to have a team here soon (i.e. next September) so we have sown the seeds in 60 potential minds! We also celebrated Esther's 1st (ever) birthday at the IFES conference (see pictures below below). The final act was a Clark family weekend in a youth hostel in Milton Keynes (as my parents are waiting to move into a new home) for dad's birthday.

Outside one of our favourite places: Café Concerto, York.

Those are the bare facts - what of our reflections this side of the scooting around? Well, seven weeks away from Athens was a bit long in some ways. It was lovely to be in England, and we enjoyed it from day one, despite the miserable summer at the start. However, from the off we were really encouraged that it felt as though we were away from home, and so it's good to be back. We were also encouraged by the people we saw - we are so glad for the friends, family and church we were blessed with before heading here in January. Finally, although there have been the occasional moment of melancholy this week (and despite having to put toilet paper in the bin again), we're glad to be back, looking forward to getting back into Greek, and anticipating spending more time with students this year.

We'll post again soon, with news on new school stuff for Joel and Hannah. We'll also try and get some more photos up. Our camera needs replacing so we hardly used it this summer and have to borrow other people's pictures.