Harvest time in Wormit

      All the fields around us are changing.  The skies are getting bigger as the land shrinks.  It is harvest time for wheat and barley and Ian knows all about the harvest thanks to his Nursery 4 teachers.  For two days the combine and tractor rumbled back and forth as Ian explained why the farmer was harvesting.  "Soil was broken up and flipped over, then seeds were planted, rain watered the broken earth and seed and small plants appeared.  Next, he says each time with his teacher voice, the plant grows and grows and grows, and when it is tall enough, the farmer knows it is time to harvest."  I sound amazed each time he recounts this information because I truly am.  Watching it all unfold in front of me while I do dishes and prepare dinner helps me soak in the miracle of it, how something can start so small and then grow into something so big and vast.
And I can't help to think about our small little burgh of Wormit.  Small enough to pass the same people on bike rides and walks.  Small enough to pass through the whole town on a ten minute bike ride.  Maybe a fifteen minute ride if your enjoying the scenery.
     But this small patch of earth has had many seeds planted.  While there may be a distinct absence of youth workers in Wormit and the surrounding burghs, there is not an absence of prayer.  When we arrived we had already gotten to know several people  through emails and phone calls.  People that had stood in the gap of hope and faith and prayed for the next generation to know life in the fullest.  They prepared the way for us to come and settle and call this place home.  I have been convinced over the past few years that God wastes nothing.  He is not a God of waste.  All the time spent with hands feeling tied and feet stilled we were also praying.  At time it felt the only thing moving was our mouths mustering up small prayers to a big God.  And the entire season of what felt a lot like waste was really a season of sowing seeds.
     We are starting to have weekly meetings now.  There are some pretty amazing people that came to camp and now to Monday nights.  They all go to Madras College (the catchment secondary school for the surrounding areas, think USA 7th grade-12th grade.)  and they show up to play games, eat large amounts of ice cream and talk about life.  It is a small group of ten or eleven.  But man is this time sweet.  It is hard not to think of the small shoots we saw growing in the field across from our house when we first arrived.  Remembering how they grew a little higher each day. And now we have watched a large harvest be cut and collected.  Truck load after truck load of grain that grew right before our eyes.
   
Please continue to pray for our family as we transition.  Jeff is playing tennis on Sundays and attending  lectures on Thursday nights at St. Andrews University.  I am hoping to start and art club and take some art classes near by at a newly opened community art center.   All these things are helping us to better know the community we are being planted in.  The boys are still loving school and are making friends.  Ian even dug up potatoes at school today and brought them home to cook for "tea" (what they call dinner here in Scotland).  Thanks for all the love and support we feel every bit of it an ocean away.

"Farmers who wait for perfect weather never plant.  If they watch every cloud, they never harvest."  Ecc. 11:4



 Had to add this last picture.  Here in Fife, we recycle everything!  The brown bin is for food waste and yard clippings, the green is plastics and tin, the small blue one is for trash that cannot be recycled and the black is for cardboard and paper.  In the USA we use to fill a bin larger than the black one in one week with all our trash.  Now it takes two weeks to fill the small blue one!  Luke is the recycle sorter and he is thrilled with that chore.