Hello again. It’s been quite a while since our last update! Nearly a whole year, in fact. A year mostly made up of carrying on with all the same things: getting to know people better, doing our best to love and serve those around us, and doing all the normal, unremarkable school and home things. The children are growing fast and we have now managed to successfully produce our very own teenager! Noteworthy breaks from routine this year have been three wonderful UK-based holidays funded by three different cancer charities as we maximise the perks before they expire. A week with friends in a holiday home in Northumberland at Easter, a few days in the Ripple Retreat, a very swanky architectural creation next to a loch, in the summer, and a week in a luxury holiday home on the Isle of Bute in October. They were lovely breaks and we feel very lucky!

Matt’s Community Outreach work for our church continues, and his role this year has seen him become a regular presence in the local high school – to the particular chagrin of one of its pupils (that would be Beth) who insists that the connection between them must remain a state secret. Matt goes into PSE lessons and runs a leadership course with our team-mates Caleb and Elena, and also helps run the Scripture Union lunchtime club. It’s a real privilege for him to have such a welcome from the school, and it makes a change from his misspent youth to find himself in teachers’ good books! He also is kept busy with managing the refurbishing of the shop space that our church has finally acquired, while hopes and dreams abound for ways that we as a church can use it to show love to our community.

Matt also spends quite a lot of his working hours focussing on youth ministry, alongside me and the rest of our lovely team. Our gorgeous handful of young people in the church are getting more comfortable with each other bit by bit and are developing in their faith. There are lots of encouraging signs and we’re grateful for the happy buzz of noise that fills the room most Wednesday nights! Our hope is that when the shop space is operational we’ll be able to start being more outward looking and begin building on connections with local unchurched youth as well as continuing to invest in our homegrown tribe.

After nearly 5 months of doing other things, I have gone back to work this winter season at the Welcome Centre, joining a team that delivers emergency accommodation for homeless people as an alternative to rough sleeping. It’s wonderful work and a great opportunity to learn about loving vulnerable people. It’s also quite hard work, especially as this season I am doing dayshifts (part time), which come in 12 hour servings! It can be very busy during the day and a lot happens in each hour, so by the end of a 12 hour shift it can feel like I’ve lived through several days! It’s tiring but it’s good, and both ridiculous banter with my fabulous colleagues plus copious amounts of coffee help a lot (also known in the industry as ‘Christian crack’!).

The kids are doing well. Beth has grown taller, her elfin haircut has grown out and she is now obliged to wear chunky plastic retainers, but she isn’t much changed within and is still a joy to be around – brimming with imagination, ideas, random thoughts and long stories about anything and everything. Oh, so many stories! She’s doing very well at school and is enjoying having a solid little circle of local friends for the first time in a good while. These days she can usually be found in her bedroom listening to music whilst wearing her red ball gown, a tiara and a pirate hat – plus, naturally, brandishing a sword!

At 9 years old, Joe’s boundless energy endures undimmed, as his bedroom walls can testify. His passion for football grows daily, and he also loves eating, reading, a bit of crafting, listening to music on his new headphones, and annoying Ben. His feet are now bigger than his mother’s but despite his unreasonable size he remains a big softy within and is usually amenable to a cuddle. Reports of other people’s suffering trouble him considerably and he has prayed for the Ukraine faithfully most nights since the Russian invasion.

Ben is loving life in P2. He has lots of friends, is proudly learning to read, and has a deep love for his young, pretty class teacher. He loves going on his scooter, singing random songs, helping in the kitchen, splashing around in the bath and annoying Joe. He is sometimes rather highly strung and is often hilarious.

Ben’s energy levels have been improving slowly since his chemotherapy treatment finished in May 2022. He is mostly healthy now, if still a bit under the weather at times. As far as we know though, the cancer is all gone – praise God! Ben didn’t immediately feel better after stopping treatment, but in the weeks that followed we noticed an unexpected growth spurt, a slow increase in appetite, and one day in the bath he noticed a big freckle on the sole of his foot. On further inspection we realised he had a smattering of dark freckles/moles all over him. It would have looked quite natural if it wasn’t for the fact that they had literally appeared overnight. Having been warned to keep an eye out for anything unusual because of the risk of relapse, we took Ben to hospital in alarm, worried the spots were blood-related, but the doctors reassured us they definitely weren’t. Nothing untoward came of them, and the freckles remain as though they’ve always been there. The freckled genes are strong with our clan…they must have been waiting in the wings for their moment to burst forth!

The first few months after May were a bit tense with the risk of relapse looming large in our minds. Balancing that with transitioning to a state of lower alert from all the caution and danger of the past few years has actually been quite difficult. While it was great that Ben wasn’t taking medicine any more and so wasn’t being checked all the time, it was also strangely unsettling just being left to a normal life and not being a high priority to doctors any longer. Keeping an eye out for danger signs is down to us! The new routine was strange for Ben too, especially when we had to take Joe to hospital one day to be monitored for a head bump, and Ben found himself sitting at the bedside looking on while Joe got the attention of a nice nurse. Ben wasn’t impressed at all – it seemed very clear to him that Joe was in HIS bed!

We’ve been told that the risk of relapse decreases with every passing day until around 18 months -2 years after the end of treatment, when it drops off steeply, leaving Ben then only fractionally more at risk than the general population of developing cancer again. To put that into perspective, the consultant said that if someone starts smoking as a teenager the smoking would present that person with a higher risk of developing cancer than Ben’s residual risk from having had leukaemia. So far so good!

So now at last it looks like it really is safe to believe that the season of cancer is coming to an end, and that Ben is finally all better. Woo hoo! In September we had an ‘end of treatment party’ to mark this moment, and it was a joyful, special, emotional occasion – a brilliant way to celebrate everything good that we got to keep from the last crazy 3 years…not least the excited 6 year old at the heart of it all. Thanks again to everyone who came or got in touch for that event. Once again we felt very loved and cared for by family and friends who helped us plan and celebrated with us.

Now then, we’re back to the freedom and luxury of considering what’s next for our family. Will it be a big move overseas or will it be something else? To help answer that question, next weekend Matt and I will be flying to Mexico for a 9 day trip. Our plan is to have another good look around, spend some decent time with our friends out there, see how different things are now to how they were when we went 4 years ago, and see what God says to us. Ultimately our hope and prayer is that this trip will lead us to a decision before the end of the year on whether or not we’re going for good.

There are mixed feelings among the kids about this. All three are enjoying feeling increasingly settled in Edinburgh and are looking forward to various things to come here, so when asked directly they regularly say they don’t want to move. However, like us, they’re impressed and inspired by what they hear from our friends in Mexico, excited by the idea of an adventure, of living a different life, of new challenges and learning opportunities – and can often be overheard talking to their friends about ‘when we live in Mexico’. We’re pretty proud of our three beauties for the way they have coped with the various challenges of the past few years, and although we don’t dismiss their feelings, we’re confident that their resilience and adaptability will go with them into any new situation and see them flourish in it.

At the back of our minds is always the urge to be preparing, just in case. We’re postpone buying new things in case we need to get rid of them again before too long. We try to take every opportunity to develop skills we think might prove useful later on. With this in mind, over the summer I completed a CELTA course for teaching English as a foreign language, so now I am properly qualified and even have a bit of teaching practice under my belt. I enjoyed the course and was encouraged to find I like teaching and could probably get fairly comfortable in front of a class with a bit more time at the wheel. My plan now is to find part time work as an English teacher alongside my Welcome Centre job, to get in some proper practice at being a real life teacher.

With an overseas trip on the horizon we feel a new urgency to work on our language skills. Matt has a translation app on standby on his phone. Last week I visited a church down the road that holds monthly meetings in Spanish. Who knew that there’s a surprisingly good-sized Latin community resident in this part of Edinburgh?! It was a fascinating cultural experience and great practice for the Spanish. I found it quite emotional singing worship songs in Spanish for the first time in about 20 years. Beth came with me and was very brave when chatting with the friendly folk there afterwards and even spoke a few words of Spanish herself.

Our coming trip is so unusual for us in our Edinburgh life that it feels like a ridiculous luxury and a massive challenge all at once. The last time Matt and I were planning an overseas trip together without kids was before we even had them, about 15 years ago. In some ways it still feels second nature now to be contemplating flights, baggage allowances, and The Right Shoes to take; and in other ways it’s all very unlikely and surreal. I’m very excited to set off on another adventure with my favourite travelling buddy, but that excitement is tempered with nervousness at leaving the kids behind for so long and at such a distance (massive thanks to Nana and Paul, the Giles family, and the Campbell family for taking over their care while we’re away!). There’s also a constant blaring awareness that an awful lot is riding on this trip. It’s one thing to dream, but when there is actually a chance of that dream coming to fruition and requiring some serious commitment from me there’s a kind of raw, heart-thumping terror that takes hold. It’s a terror not unfamiliar from 4 years ago, actually. ‘Oh my goodness, this could really happen!’/Take 2.

We are incredibly grateful though to be at this point once again, ready to go and see, to explore and ask and listen, to learn and grow. It feels like it has been a jolly long wait to get back to this stage after our four year hiatus. But at last, here we are. Yep, we’re excited to say, things are definitely looking up!