Celebrating with new friends

We are definitely missing our family and friends in the US, but we are excited about the opportunity we have to celebrate Christmas as a family of three in this new, exciting place.

As I mentioned in one of my earlier posts, we love our church community here, and we are grateful for the speedy way God helped us find it! The "short version" of how we found Centrepoint is that Kirk was invited to have lunch with a prospective student before we moved away from Gordon Conwell. This student's family knows our pastor and told us about the church. We sent an email, and Nathan (the cool pastor/friend that he is) invited us to have coffee and helped us navigate some of the ins and outs of being newbies in Edinburgh. He was also once a newbie, as he is an American who moved here 8 years ago :). I'm continually amazed at God's faithfulness and provision! It's encouraging to think back over the past couple of years at the countless times God has directed us into situations like this recent one!

We are now plugging in and getting involved with the worship ministry and offered to host our community group at our place (because of the babyness). We love this church's heart for the people of Edinburgh! I feel like there is such a genuineness amongst the group that challenges me to check my "Christianese" at the door and just love people. There are a lot of students from the university who attend the church, as well as young adults and families. We feel honored to be part of this group, and we hope we can be an encouragement to them in the way they have been to us! 

It's hard to be taken out of the familiar and the comfortable, because we often have to feel pain of letting go/missing home, but the lessons we are learning and the people we are meeting here are worth it all! We are learning to value and appreciate so many aspects of the culture here- I can't even name them all (I'll save that for a future post)! 

Speaking of the people we are meeting, we had a great time celebrating Jesus with them today! We had a Christmas service that led into a festive (and quite funny) celebration. It was a wonderful way to get me out of my homesick "funk", to say the least. All it takes is tacky sweaters, carols, and turning people into Christmas trees- I mean, come on! Does it get any better?!? 👍

Here are a few pics from the day: 

Tacky Jumpers (sweaters)

Our sweet friend Lois- she is HILARIOUS and sings like an ANGEL!

These are two of our friends', the Daleys, kids (Eisley and Maevelynn). We met them through some mutual friends- that's a cool story, too!

Monkey shot! Like Micah's "stink eye"?

I'm so proud to be married to the winner of the tacky contest! It's dreamy :).

Everyday gets better here! Learning to let go and embrace this adventure! Sometimes I have a what the heck moment and realize we are in Scotland! I know we would regret it if we didn't take advantage of this opportunity. Life takes us crazy places, but going along for the ride is much easier than fighting the Driver!