this year we decided to send out a christmas letter to let our friends and family know about the exciting stuff that has happened this year. sadly we couldn’t send this to everyone we know because we didn’t have everyone’s addresses and because of the printing and postage costs! so here it is for your delectation!
Hello beautiful friends!
We hope this letter finds you well and we hope that you are looking forward to the Christmas break.
As most of you know, Serena, Farrah’s sister was healed of cancer in June. She had been diagnosed with terminal cancer almost two years ago and was told that there were no more options to help her. She has had no treatment for the past year and a half and the cancer had spread throughout her body. We have been praying for her healing for a long time now and in June, she was called for a routine scan. To our complete joy and amazement, the doctors told Serena and Farrah’s mum that the cancer had just “disappeared.” There was no explanation for it… other than God! It has been such a joyful time for our family and a huge relief for us. We approach this Christmas with such a different heart and perspective to previous years. I really didn’t know whether Serena would be around this year, but we can celebrate Christmas this year knowing that God has rescued her. We want to thank everyone of you who has prayed for Serena or even just thought of her because God has heard those thoughts and prayers and has saved her. Wahoo! If you want to read more, Matt wrote a blog about it.
For years now, Matt and I have been wanting to go back to China and we finally had the chance in July. We were able to teach English to Chinese students. It was such a fun time – getting to know the students really well, eating duck brain (Matt!) and getting to know what it was like to live in China. The team we were working with were so much fun to be around and we seemed to click straight away – I don’t think Farrah has laughed so much in two weeks, and that’s saying a lot! We know that we are meant to be in China and it was an amazing opportunity to test the waters and see the various possibilities of working out there. Yay!
So continuing our East-themed year, Matt and I visited a church in Goa with eight other people from our church in Woking. We had the opportunity to help the church with training new leaders and spent lots of time encouraging the youth. God is doing some exciting things in Goa and they have had visions of their church planting new churches throughout India.
On our return from Goa, we spent a crazy 3 days back in the UK, working, catching up on what we’d missed and doing our laundry! We then went back east to visit Farrah’s family. We know it’s crazy – to cut a long story short we had already booked our non-refundable and non-changeable tickets to Malaysia and couldn’t fly straight from Goa without paying an arm and a leg. We also got a coach from Kuala Lumpur to Singapore for two nights, and stopped over in Hong Kong on the way home. The contrast between the three cities was really interesting, and all are brilliant in different ways!
We had such a fun time in Malaysi—it was Matt and his parents’ first visit to Malaysia, so they got to meet Farrah’s very loud family; Farrah’s cousin got married; and we got to travel around Malaysia and eat some amazing food! We were even more excited to find out that one of Farrah’s uncles and his family had become Christians about a month or two before our visit after hearing about Serena’s healing. So cool! A massive answer to prayer.
So yeah, we’ve unfortunately built up a huge carbon footprint, but it has been so amazing seeing God working in all the different countries we’ve visited. We’ve been really challenged by people’s hospitality towards us even when they didn’t know us well, or at all! So, we really want to extend our hospitality to all of you! We miss you and we’d love to see you in the new year. You are always welcome to visit and stay (as long as you don’t mind a cat being here, too!)
Apart from our Asian excursions and God’s miraculous healing of Serena, the year has been a good one! Matt is now starting the third and final year of his PhD, and had the opportunity to go to his first conference, PAC’09 (that’s the imaginatively titled Particle Accelerator Conference…) in Vancouver, which, as his first trip to the American continent, was very exciting. He also got some papers published at the conference, so is turning into a proper scientist! The next conference is IPAC’10 (that’s the International Particle Accelerator Conference…) in Kyoto next May, so if all goes to plan the Easton eastern tour continues…
Farrah is still working at Plan International in communications, and is getting involved in the youth work at church in Woking.
Please let us know how you’re doing and whether we can pray for anything specific you. Have an amazing Christmas and New Year.
God bless,
Matt and Farrah xxx
