One of the things I started off doing on this blog many moons ago was sharing personal news and information. For reasons I can’t quite put my finger on over the last few years I seem to have moved away from doing that. But this blog is my blog and I think it would be good to recover a bit more of the personal contact and use it not just for thoughts. So this is the view from the end of 2021 and the start of 2022.

2021 has been a strange year. The first half of the year for us as a family was dominated by COVID. Both Emma and myself had it in the autumn of 2020 but for Emma the after-effects lasted a lot longer. It kept her off work until around February and the last lingering side effects didn’t fully go until the summer. Although never particularly serious they were tiring and frustrating. We’re grateful for her return to full health, but we also took the opportunity to readjust her working hours to be a little less tiring and give her more energy for all the other many activities in life. As a result she was able to start a new women’s group and has turn her creative gifts towards pottery!

For Noah (13) and Anna (11) life continued much as before. Schools remained open as did their sporting activities. So much time has been spent on the football pitch (Anna) or in the swimming pool (Noah) with some climbing, scouts, and joining me on Saturday mornings at the nearest Park Run 5k. They are healthy, happy, with friends, fun and faith. Stories are listened to in the car and at home, books are read in the morning and evening and in between there is always something to do – mostly baking, crafts, board games and watching Masterchef (the current favourite show). The blessings are too many to count. 

Travel has been harder to do, so we remained in Sweden over the summer but had a wonderful time exploring some of Sweden’s west coast. We also managed a brief foray across the border to Norway to visit Oslo for the first time as a family during the autumn break. We hope to visit the UK for the first time in 2 years in 2022. 

During the first half of the year restrictions remained in place and church life was mainly digital which most of the church became increasingly fed-up with. Those restrictions were lifted over the summer and it was like a dam had burst. Numbers of new people (especially from South Africa, India and the US) joined the church and we now count around 90 or so men, women & children as part of Grace Church.

In addition to this we have our Swahili language branch of Grace Church (Kanisa la Neema) which is almost entirely refugees from DR Congo and this has grown to around 200 now. It’s a real joy to worship with them and a real privilege to walk with them as they make a huge transition to life in Sweden. We’re working on developing a project that would help them integrate into Swedish society.

As if a church in two languages wasn’t complex enough, we’re actively praying and working towards adding a third – Swedish. We moved to Sweden to contribute towards the Gospel being shared in Swedish and the time seems right to make another attempt at establishing a church that operates in Swedish for Swedish speakers. We’re likely to begin monthly services in the first half of the year & then Lord-willing increase that to weekly after the summer next year. 

The growth in the church on so many fronts meant I needed to give my full attention to it and after many years of doing more than one thing, I began working full-time for Grace Church this autumn. There are still a few projects left to finish from my editing but hopefully they will all be finished by the end of the year. I’ve managed to keep up my regular running which keeps me healthy and sane as well as fit enough to keep up with the kids.

So here we are coming towards the end of another year and we are healthier than we were at the start but just as grateful, thankful, blessed.