mark + ange guinn

Sorry we’ve been pretty MIA on the blog recently.  It’s certainly not because nothing has been happening.  This has probably been one of the most intense few weeks in a long time.  Make that most intense few months, I guess.

As many of you know, last week we found out that my boss, Tom Russell, died very unexpectedly.  It was such a huge shock because Tom was a friend and had a great family, and because it puts my job in no small degree of uncertainty.  So since then, we’ve been trying to cope with running the technical side of a two-man business by myself and also contemplating the possible loss of half our income.  It’s been very stressful and, honestly, we’ve struggled a lot but we also fully believe that God will take care of us.  This is what it means to say that we trust God: sometimes we have to be unsure of the next step or the next paycheck and be willing to keep moving forward.  There’s no way around that.

At the very same time, I feel more and more excited about God and the reasons He called us here.  The last two Friday nights I’ve gone out with a group here called Night Light, which serves free coffee and tea to people coming out of one of the major dance clubs in Newcastle.  It totally wrecks your weekend (we got to bed at 3:30am), but I love it.  Those kids (mostly 15-25 with emphasis on the 17-19 year olds – and yes, the drinking age is supposed to be 18…) are a lot of fun and I’ve really enjoyed just hanging out, talking with, and laughing at them.  More than that, I feel a stirring in my heart for them.  Everyone looks at those kids and sees a public nuisance, but God sees a congregation.  Please begin to pray with us that God would raise up a church among the kids at Donard Park – maybe even meeting in the club itself.

The Donard Park Congregation

We’ve also been having deepening relationships and some great times of worship and prayer with our different pockets of new friends.  There is so much value in seeking Him, His thoughts, His presence, His Kingdom.  It’s like when you do that (along with engaging in His mission), everything else just gets added to you or something…  No really, we’ve been blown away.  On Thursday, we even got to see God heal three people!  We and a few of our friends were sitting around singing and we decided to pray about physical conditions.  One guy had a pulled muscle in his arm that had been hurting for weeks and preventing him from lifting things and when we prayed the pain just went away.  His wife had pain in both elbows and it also went way.  Another guy had pain in both wrists – maybe Carpal Tunnel – and as we prayed it improved to the point he could support his body weight on his hands but didn’t go away entirely.  That’s not at all a common occurrence for us, but it is something we’ve been asking for more of.  We were actually surprised, but also just really thankful.  God is really good to us and we feel more fulfilled and happy than maybe ever in our lives.

So that’s where we’re at.  Life is good and bad, without much in the middle.  As Dickens said “It was the best of times. It was the worst of times.”  And we’re pretty ok with that.  Peace.

Mark

It’s been a while since we last posted, so I thought I’d throw out a few interesting nuggets:

Most Interesting Person: Yesterday I met an older gentleman named Neil who is world renowned for training rescue and caedavor dogs.  He lives right outside Newcastle in the mountains.

God Is Too Good To Us Yet Again: We continue to have these moments where stuff we didn’t even think to pray about drops in our laps.  Like when I went to get a mobile phone and they were all out of the model we wanted, but it just so happened that when the kid went back to the stock room they “must have got a new shipment or something” and there was the one we wanted.  Or when we were given a piano, delivered to our door for free by a man we’d never met (friend of a friend).   What’s up with that?  We didn’t even pray for a piano because it seemed to far out there.

Best Food Surprise: Last time we were here we were really dissappointed at the pizza, so we were all geared up for years of sub-par sauce and cardboard crust.  But it turns out the little pizza parlor in Newcastle has pretty good Italian-style pizza for only a few pounds.  Yes!

Forgotten Pet Peave: People in Europe generally don’t use sheets!  They tend to have a fitted sheet under you and just a duvet (thick blanket) over you.  For some reason, this bothers me to no end.  I can’t quite sleep right – like I just feel naked and can’t get comfortable.  Guess that’s my OCD side coming out…  (To be fair, we did have a sheet at Campbell and Kristi’s, but not at the new place, which was a simple remedy after the first night)

Tonight we’ll hopefully get to go to the pub and hear some good traditional music.  Looking forward to that, for sure.

Mark

This is a strange thing to be thinking about when it’s been such a week of celebrating God’s goodness (did you hear we got our visa!?!), but I’ve been thinking about pain today. One of the most alarming things about Jesus and his teaching is that He never guarantees that we won’t be hurt – rather the opposite.

There’s so much to say about that subject: how the defining characteristic of God’s love is that it chose his own pain over our separation and he calls us to live that way; how so much energy is spent avoiding pain – from karma (in the broad sense – there’s a pseudo-christian version too…) to health insurance to “if I just had more faith”, on and on; how nothing in God’s kingdom moves forward without pain; how all relationship has pain in it.

Here’s what I’ve come to:

1. God’s goodness is bigger than whatever I’m afraid of (this sounds trite but it’s a huge issue)
2. God is worth going through pain – both so that I am more intimate with him and just because he is who he is
3. We can handle a lot more than we think we can. I don’t have all the empowerment now that I would have in the situations I imagine.

Just some thoughts.
Mark

We submitted our visa applications today. Next Tuesday we have to go and get our biometric data taken and then we just wait. If we are granted a visa, we’ll leave around the 1st of September. If not, we have a couple other options to try. Please pray with us, though. It would certainly be easiest if this one just goes through.

We’re really tired of waiting. I’m no longer that excited about possibilities and dreams – I just want to be able to invest. I want to be where we are instead of looking to the next thing. I want to take stock of where there is death and captivity and say: “we are here until things change.” Funny how “we are here…until our visa goes through” doesn’t have the same power to it…

God is good to us though. He’s even better than we think He is.

Mark

I don’t have any funny stories or anything today.  I just want to tell you how wonderful my God is.  He has been waking my heart up in such a new way.  There aren’t words that are big enough to tell you how much I love him or even approach how much he loves me (and you).  His gentleness and kindness have just been so apparent to me these last weeks.  I’m not living perfectly in response, or anything, but he is growing my faith and hope in leaps and bounds.  Pray that I would continue to walk with him.  This little bit was in a bible study I was doing this morning: “We tend to run to God for temporary relief.  God is looking for people who will walk with Him in steadfast belief.”  That was so striking to me, as I’ve been the former for so many years. But I desire so deeply to walk with him in steadfast belief.  Pray that I could continue to walk there.

I’ll write more newsy stuff soon.  I just had to tell you…