Dear Family and Friends
This past month I experienced something that I haven’t experienced in over 15 years.
Earlier this year in March, I was due to fly to Florida for my yearly visit, but as the day approached to fly, the UK went into it’s first lockdown due to the pandemic. A few days later, my flight to Florida was cancelled. I ended up doing as many “visits” with friends and family on video or phone calls for the time period that I was supposed to be in Florida as much as I could, so it didn’t feel like an overall missed trip.
I also had a flight planned for December to spend the first Christmas with my parents in 16 years. But as December approached, there was another announcement of a lockdown coming, and this time I was determined that my flight would not be cancelled! Because of Covid restrictions, 99% of everything I do at the moment is online calls and meetings, so I arranged to work remotely and changed my ticket to leave 2 days before lockdown started! I arrived in the state of Georgia (where my parents live) and arranged to quarantine in secret for two weeks before surprising my parents who still thought I was coming right before Christmas!
SO, you might ask what did I do that I haven’t done in over 15 years? I got to spend Thanksgiving with not only my parents and older sister but also my aunt and uncle and some of my cousins! There was soooooooooooooooooooooo much food and it was the most people I have been around since March and to be honest, it was a little overwhelming at times hahaha. What I also appreciated, coming from the UK and having much stricter rules regarding Covid, all of our family had taken extra precautions of quarantining or testing, etc, to be around each other because a few family members have health issues. It was a safe, joyful, blessed, overeating time!
I have continued to work as if I am in London and have tried to stay as much as I can on London time starting at 5am most mornings. As I mentioned a few months ago, I will be transitioning to another Congregation at the beginning of the new year so I am in the process of handing things over and making sure that the transition not only goes well for me but also for everything and everyone that I have a connection with.
I will finish work on 13 December and be on holiday until Mid-January where I will start working with the Slough Congregation.
My apologies to all of you who are stateside for not letting you know that I was here. I needed to keep it a secret to surprise my family. I will be in Georgia during my stay this time but will come back in March to Florida for a few weeks.
I’m praying for all of you and I so appreciate your prayers as well! Please continue to pray for God’s provision in every area of my job transition. I am really excited for this next season!
Praying God’s richest blessings over you!
Lots of love
Traci
Dear Family and Friends
It is the 5th of November and England has started their second full lockdown due to an increase of Covid-19 cases and the United States is still waiting to see who will become the next president. It’s interesting times!
London woke up to an eerie and quiet foggy day. It’s almost as if the day is peaking out slowly to see what is going to happen in this next lockdown. For me, my goal is to hold onto JOY. I feel there is a fight for our joy at the moment in the midst of so many dealing with unemployment, furlough, mental health, family health, loneliness, zoom exhaustion, disappointment of holidays, birthdays and weddings being cancelled – the list goes on!
I have recently been doing a few studies on Joy and it has helped me so much that I thought I would share a bit of one with you in this letter:
“The Lord your God is in your midst, a mighty one who will save; he will rejoice over you with gladness; he will quiet you by his love; he will exult over you with loud singing.” Zephaniah 3:17
Zephaniah 3:17 provides a constant source of joy by revealing insight into the heart of our loving, heavenly Father. It’s a joy that can only come from a fresh, tangible revelation of your heavenly Father’s overwhelming love for you.
“The Lord your God is in your midst.” You can have joy today because your God is totally and powerfully present right where you are. Scripture says that he will never leave you or forsake you. You can have joy because you are not alone in anything you do. God longs to make his presence known to you in every area of your life. He longs to do life with you—equipping you to live with total joy by filling you with his love every minute of every day.
“The Lord your God is . . . a mighty one who will save.” You can have joy because you have been totally redeemed from the destitution of the world that surrounds you. You have been offered to spend eternity with the God of love who laid down his own life for yours. Your God has done a mighty work. You are now his child, healed and set free through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus.
“He will rejoice over you with gladness.” You can have joy because your God rejoices over you. You are not a failure in his eyes. He loves who you are. He longs to fill you with the knowledge of his gladness today. He longs to give you a revelation of how deeply in love with you he is. He rejoices over you as his creation. You are not a mistake. You were made intentionally because your God longed to have relationship with you.
“He will quiet you by his love.” (this really touched me!) You can have joy because your God will shepherd you to the still waters. His love will guide you to quiet places where your heart can be at rest. He will calm the areas of your life that are burdened and stressed by freeing you with the depths of his affections. You can have peace today in the presence of your heavenly Father no matter what situation you find yourself in. Your God will “quiet you by his love” as you follow the leadership of his Spirit.
“He will exult over you with loud singing.” To exult is to be joyful or jubilant because of a triumph or success. You can have joy today because your God sees you as a triumph. You are transformed and a new creation. You are what God has most desired in the earth. God exults over you today just as you are. He wants to give you ears to hear his “loud singing” that you might have the same perspective for yourself as he has for you.
May you come to the awareness of how deeply you are loved by your God today. And may Zephaniah 3:17 be a foundation on which you experience the overwhelming joy that comes from God’s inexplicable love for you. You can find this full study on joy on YouVersion at https://www.bible.com/en/reading-plans/4843.
Thank you so much for all that you do!
Loads of Love
Traci
Dear Family and Friends
I hope that you had a wonderful September! Mid-September and the beginning of October are always a “new season” for us in every area of our church because schools and universities start a new academic year. This also means that many of our kids and youth also experience a change in groups at church because they move up in classes in kids church or graduate from kids to youth or even graduate from being in youth group to being a part of our university student ministry! It’s all change!
We also started up our Connect Groups again in September as well as our Courses such as the Follow Course and Engage Course. Even though we have still not been able to meet in person as a church, all of the above has continued to happen as our church is determined to remain community focused as much as possible.
I also have a “new season” that I would like to share with you this month!
For quite some time, I have been feeling like God is going to send me out from our Every Nation London congregation. It’s actually been stirring for a few years now so I have been communicating and praying with our pastors here about next steps and God’s perfect timing. It’s been a long and sometimes confusing process but God has been so gracious through it all and now I can look back and see that He was lining things up all this time. About 2 months ago my senior pastor here mentioned the couple who pastor our church in Slough. For those of you who don’t know, Slough is one of our churches that we planted that is just outside of London. It is a congregation now of about 150 people and is growing! Their staff members are the Senior Pastors Greg and Suzanne and Anna the children’s pastor.
When my pastor mentioned Greg and Suzanne something dropped in my heart to start praying about Slough. Slough had never crossed my mind until then. In August I joined the online Youth Camp and the Slough teens joined us for the first time on camp. As I chatted to some of them and heard some of their stories my heart was broken for them. I also got to work with Suzanne on the camp and I must say, this sealed the deal – I knew at that point God was going to move me to Slough! The words he spoke to me were Discipleship, Youth and Missions – The 3 words I later found out were what God had given Greg and Suzanne for the coming season.
I will be helping them to grow their discipleship in the church in all areas, working alongside Suzanne in Youth and Greg and I will be stirring up missions across Europe for all of our Every Nation Churches!
All that said, I will be transitioning to the Slough Congregation near the beginning of next year and I can’t tell you how excited I am about it!
It is a MASSIVE move for me because so much will change. I will not only be leaving my church family at Every Nation London (West Kensington) but I will eventually have to move physically to Slough which is about an hour away.
It also means that I will need to raise A LOT more support because Slough is not in a financial position, (at the moment) to partner with me like Every Nation London is.
Just to give you an idea of where it is:
I am so thankful for all of you and the love, prayer, encouragement and support you have given me for so many years! Thank you for believing in the call that God has on my life and thank you for being a part of everything that He does in and through me!
Will you please pray for me as our church seeks God on how to transition everything smoothly? Also, please pray for my support. That more people would partner with me financially over the next few months and join me on this new adventure in Slough.
Thank you so much for all that you do!
Loads of Love
Traci