This Summer So Far…

 

I hope your summer has been good so far!

Mine has- I’ve finally discovered what this summer thing that I’ve heard so much about really is! 🙂

It’s a running joke in Scotland that if we get about three warm and sunny days in a row, that is our summer, but so far we’ve had almost a month and it is still going strong!

I’ve become used to going without a jacket (usually a rare occurrence here) and putting on factor 50 sun cream before venturing outdoors to make the most of the sunshine while it lasts.

The main reason I’ve been so quiet here over the last few weeks though is because I’ve been busy working.  I’ve been away two weeks out of the last three, but it isn’t so bad when you get to spend time in beautiful places like this!

I have also been busy with a different kind of writing project: producing a resource for Christian groups in primary schools.  (These are groups at lunch time or after school which pupils can opt into with parental permission.)

It is a two year project aiming to provide children with an overview of the story of the Bible, and the first term’s material is due to be released in August!

It is something that I have wanted to do for years (and I actually began work on it even before I started blogging or got into writing properly) and the whole process of getting it together has been so interesting- sharing my vision and trying to get others on board, writing the resource, sharing it with others for feedback, meeting with them to get them to contribute some additional ideas, self-editing, then working with an editor, communicating with someone who has helped with the design and provided a template to make it look pretty, realising that I need to take the initiative in promoting it and figuring out how to do that… I have learned so much, and gained experience that I’m sure will be extremely helpful for the future.

(I’m also conscious that all the work so far has only been a sixth of the project and that a huge amount of work still lies ahead!)

Another exciting writing opportunity has also come up- the chance to write occasional blog posts for Journey to Heal Ministries, which aims to support women who have experienced sexual trauma, and point them to hope in Christ.  I am looking forward to getting started with this soon but in the meantime do check out their website if this is something that has affected you or someone close to you.  There are lots of fantastic resources available.

It has certainly been a busy summer so far and, after an incredibly full-on two and a half months I am looking forward to a much-needed break this week and the chance to catch up on some of your blogs.  Hopefully I will be back to posting more regularly here soon.

I’ll leave you with one of my highlights from the last few weeks, a situation where I saw God at work in a totally unexpected way:

One of the work events I was involved in was a training week for senior pupils who are going to be involved in leading at camps and events for children during the summer and, in the group I was working with, there was a Hungarian boy who had come over to Scotland for the summer to take part in this.

At the start of the week he struggled a bit with the language, mainly because of our accents and because we speak so fast, and he was finding the whole thing pretty hard.

Later in the week, a man came to visit the event, to find out more about it in order to recommend it to young people he knows who might be interested next year, and in the course of the day, it came out that our visitor spoke Hungarian!

I have never seen anyone look as happy as the Hungarian boy did when he discovered there was someone he could speak with in his own language.  It was a beautiful moment, and very significant for him.  He spent the next few days telling anyone who would listen, “Jesus sent him to me,” and I had to agree.  I literally don’t know of even one other person in Scotland who speaks Hungarian so for these two to connect at just the right time is far too strange to have been a coincidence!

What about you?  How has your summer been so far?

.Inspire Me Monday