Dear Friend,

Growing up I (Leon) never imagined that I would have dual nationality. Or that my children would too! Last week Friday I was sworn in as a British citizen with full rights and responsibilities. The experience reminded me that my citizenship is not entirely earthly, but that I have sworn allegiance to the King of Kings. That is something everyone can do. We're celebrating Leon's citizenship with a cream tea next week, and have invited some church friends, non-Christian friends and neighbours.

Leon's Work
I have played a role this past year in keeping OM’s websites up and running. I am occasionally reminded by those that I help that they would not be able to do their ministry without people like me. Those working in IT don’t get a lot of publicity and can quite often be forgotten. But without people working behind the scenes there would not be as many people reached with the gospel?
 
Being in the international office we hear some stories which don’t actually get always get written down. Our International Director returned last week from a 1 week Love Africa conference in Zambia where 500 OM Workers were expected. Except 800 people turned up! (I would not have wanted to sort out the accommodation and food for the extra 300 people at the last minute.) Reports were given at the conference of supernatural, miraculous occurrences. The ministry in Africa is exploding.
 
My part in the ministry in Africa is through assisting with the setup of their new office in South Africa. They are consolidating 4 offices in South Africa into one new purpose built office. I am helping remotely with the setup of their server and network. A colleague from Carlisle is doing much of the work onsite, but I am able to assist with some of the more technical issues. The work in South Africa is a new venture in extending our Active Directory into a field office.
 
Our online learning solution based upon Moodle has needed quite a bit of maintenance work by me lately. I am finishing up my work with our extranet web team (Caleb). Their productivity is much greater than before I looked at what they do. I don’t have time to talk about my work with setting up a new helpdesk website and working with OM USA. I will leave those projects for another update.
 
Next month I will be in Belgium to teach new recruits how OM’s IT systems work.

Life in the OM World

This summer there have been a few OM outreaches occurring. OM had 300 people participate in a short term mission outreach called Transform. This outreach focused on Europe and the countries around the Mediterranean Sea. There were many reports of God doing some pretty exciting things at the outreach. Those reports are on a new website found here news.om.org. This site has all our public ministry reports. The site is a fantastic resource if you want get a taste of what God is doing around the world through OM.
 
OM has a prayer initiative that launched at the beginning of August. Check out their new website (pray.om.org) and start praying for ministries all over the world. If you are ever looking for resources for a prayer meeting you can even download ready-made PowerPoint presentations.

Life in the UK

I (Leon) have always been an avid fan of the Olympics since I was really little. Even fancying that one day I would go there as a swimmer. I realise now that I will never be an Olympian, but for my 30th birthday Chrysti got us tickets to see ladies indoor volleyball.  We used our trip to London for a dual purpose and also registered Asher as an American citizen at the US Embassy. For my golden birthday Chrysti planned a surprise party. We found the party to be a really lovely time with friends.
 
I (Chrysti) am taking my driving test for the third time next Thursday (30 August). I'm really hoping I pass this time. Maybe third time's the charm? It is a really difficult test to pass!
 
Asher is growing by leaps and bounds! He can stand when we assist him, and before long he'll be eating solids! We are very proud of our son—he is very happy and contented. We're probably biased, but we get so many comments from people who say he is one of the most contented babies they have seen.
 
In Europe most everyone gets 5 weeks or more of vacation and school children get 6 weeks of school holidays. This has a huge cultural impact on churches in the summer months when half the congregation will be away on vacation for those 6 weeks. Church services and small groups all change their pace and are run a bit differently than normal during this time. Things will kick off again in 2 weeks as school starts again then. Chrysti and I have for some time desired to become small group leaders. We hope that things work out for that to occur this autumn when things get busy again.