Saturday 5 July 2014

We are going to France!

No, MAF haven’t decided to change our destination again, we have decided that the best way to improve our French is to immerse ourselves in the language and live in Lyon for the whole of August. On 27th July we leave our house, friends and church and, having dropped off our belongings at my (Matt’s) parents, drive to the South East of France. We have flights booked to Madagascar (or “Mascar” if you ask Bethan) on the 9th September.

Getting Daddy's bike ready to sell
 What have we been doing this month? Our “job” at the moment is to become fluent in French so we’ve had French tuition in Plymouth twice a week, self-study at home and CD’s playing in the car to help us remember the language we studied at school but never thought we’d actually need! We had a lovely send-off from our home church on 8th June, which I’ll give more detail about later and slowly making progress with sorting, packing and selling the contents of our house.

Becki was given the opportunity to go on Cross-rhythms (Plymouth) radio a couple of weeks ago to talk about MAF and her own journey to becoming a MAF pilot in Madagascar. Hopefully this will raise awareness of MAF’s work around the world and encourage more people to support and pray for them. If you would like to hear the interview, it is online at www.crossrhythms.co.uk/radio/console/plymouth on the 6th July at noon and July 26th at 5pm (and other times in July).

Recording at Cross Rhythms
We’ve been part of St Andrews church in Buckland Monachorum since November 2009, around the same time as we submitted our formal application form to join MAF. They have been through every step with us and we recently had our commissioning service to send us overseas. We were blessed with touching sentiment, prayers for the work Becki will be doing as well as our own physical and spirtitual welfare and it finished with the choir singing us a song. It was a lovely service and we feel very privaliged to have such a supportive church family behind us. Harriet Yeo, from MAF came from Ashford (via Edinburgh!) for it and each of our “go-team” (close friends who helped us through support-raising and check up on us when we’re gone) also spoke about us. Each gave us a bible reading to encourage us and the song by the choir was a special way to end a memorable day for us. It wasn’t quite “au revior” as we’ve been back since but hopefully nobody minds about that!



Finally, if you would like more regular updates from us, we have a facebook page that anyone can access, with regular photos and short comments added: https://www.facebook.com/BeckiMattMAF