The Drye Family
The Kiwi Kronicle - News from the Dryes in New Zealand
April 2008
It is that time again to send out our Kronicle and with it comes a detailed itinerary (below) of our trip to the UK! At last I hear some of you say!! It’s not been easy putting it together as you can imagine with a family of five kids, study to do, people to see etc, etc, etc…. That being the case we have tried to see as many as possible within the limited time that we have! Can I say first of all, how thankful we are for those who have helped in many ways to get us over to the UK. Peoples prayers and generosity have overwhelmed Naomi and myself and we are so thankful to God for this opportunity to rest, catch up with old friends and do a little study!
One quick question - we are looking into buying a car for the time we are over and before we go ahead we were just wondering if anyone knew of a 7-seater that they could lend us for the time we are over - we have money put aside but it would seem a waste if there were someone out there who could help but just didn’t realise they could!
DO give thanks to God for all that has gone on since we last wrote -
- YLC was phenomenal - I think we had over 100 people who were treated to a feast of training and talks - our best year yet as far as we can tell - really encouraging to see the conference catching on outside of a few core churches
- Holiday was just great - lots of sunshine - great friends - even one flying in from London for a few days! Kids and parents just enjoyed doing very little on the beach and in the water!
- Men’s conference also as good as we have seen yet - again encouraging seeing more churches turning up!
- Visit to Wellington to speak at a youth weekend - great time with youth (19 kids, most not from a church, seemed to be really gripped by gospel) but really depressing to see what the church scene is like there - sobering as we get excited with the growth in Christchurch!
- Exciting growth in youth and children’s work in our own church!
Something else for prayer - Al has been invited as one of a limited number of New Zealand representatives to the GAFCON conference in Israel (www.gafcon.org - for those who do not know what I am talking about!). This has got much to do with the future of the evangelical Anglican Church in NZ and St. John’s would seem to have a big part to play in it! He has to make a decision to go by the 10th of April and would need to find 1300 sterling altogether - please pray as we seek to make our decision.
In the midst of all this Naomi’s grandmother passed away and has gone to be with our Lord. She was a lovely godly lady who prayed everyday for her children, grandchildren and great grand children and we will miss her, her letters and her prayers very much. We are thankful she has gone to be with our Lord but we, Naomi especially, have found it particularly difficult being away from family at this time - we are thankful to God for the opportunity to be back with family very soon though! It has been a good chance for us to go through grief with our children and for them to think through all this. We have been very touched by their sensitivity at this time and also that of our friends over here.
We are so looking forward to seeing those we can see when we get over - we pray that you will all understand if we cannot get to see you and hope that you may be able to visit us at some of the locations we have indicated on the itinerary! Please do keep praying for the ministry here that all would run smoothly whilst we are away and the good news about Jesus would continue to go out (as if us not being here would prevent that!!).
Please do get back to us quickly with your thoughts on GAFCON and the car if you have any!
Your friends
Al, Naomi, Ella, Jonah, Rhianna, Malachi and Boaz