Stand With Us!

It has been a while since the last post. Things have been extraordinarily busy here with getting ready for the off. We leave our home in the UK for Helsinki this coming Wednesday [17th]. So this Sunday will be our final Sunday with our friends at The City Church Canterbury.

Last night our wonderful small group gave us a super send off by arriving on our doorstep dressed as The Moomins [a Finnish national treasure!]. I opened the front door to nine Moomins characters clutching trays of food, cakes etc. for us to share together. They even had the theme music playing as I opened the door! What a great bunch and what a special evening!

I never want to hear anyone say that a Moomin doesn't make a great lasagne! Never!   

We were also thrilled to once again be contacted by a friend Susan Mack, from the church at Hedge End in the UK, who along with her husband Iain have supported us in prayer since the small beginnings of our journey to move to Helsinki to help plant a church. Before hearing about us they had been praying with a Finnish friend of theirs for many years for breakthrough in Finland.

Susan wrote to me as she has the opportunity to share prayer requests on our behalf with the international prayer group she attends. They have asked her to feed back about our latest situation to help focus the group to intercede for us. Hearing about this sort of thing [that people we have not met will be gathering to pray for the nations and that we will be part of their prayer agenda] is humbling and is such an encouragement to us! God shares his heart for the nations with us his people in so many ways. Some are called to go while others are stirred to an ongoing commitment to pray. 

As I wrote back to Susan with some thoughts on what she might be able to encourage the group to pray for us for, I also felt stirred to put these out there as an encouragement to friends and readers of this blog who we may not have met, to partner in what God is doing and going to do in Helsinki, by standing with us in prayer.

Many of the things you can pray for at this time will be stuff you may already be familiar with if you have followed our journey.  

A few key areas though include:

• Finding a place to live. Due to various pieces of red tape, we have not been able to rent a property from the UK to move in to when we arrive. We do have a week of house-sitting, so we have somewhere to go when we first arrive, but after that nothing yet. This is scary stuff, but we have peace that God will provide for us in a hilarious way.   
• Travel. Lydia will be flying to Helsinki with the three children and her mum on the 18th. I will be driving our car in convoy with Barry [Lydia's dad] who will be driving a van with our furniture etc. to Stockholm, where we will catch an overnight ferry to Helsinki. This journey will take four days. Pray for safety, good connections and lots of fun and a great sense of God's love and presence going with us.
• Finances. As a young family, we don't have huge financial means but, God has provided every step of the way for our various essential trips, and having accepted the job and fully committed to go [without the money to cover the relocation costs] we have seen the money come in  in order for us to be able to go! Praise God! This has come through support from Relational Mission and the the local church, but also from much anonymous giving. It has been amazing! Looking ahead we need God to continue to provide – not just to get us there, but to resource planting a vibrant Spirit filled church. A couple of families have committed to give on a monthly basis, this is so helpful as we move to an expensive part of the world and will be vital in sustaining the work we hope to do.
• Settling in. Lydia's new job [a heroic effort after five years as a stay at home mum, to put herself out there and secure a job meaning we can move and become residents in Finland], family transition etc. general stuff about adjusting, finding our feet, the children feeling secure, speedy processing to become residents and receive Finnish social security numbers etc. 
• Doors to open for the church plant itself. A lot of our prayer requests are to do with the immediate practicalities, but please pray for immediate breakthrough and for God to open doors for the church plant at its early stages. As we have been rather swamped by working through the inevitable practicalities, please pray for a fresh sense of how God wants to shape things and particular areas he wants to use us in. For the right relationships to be knitted together, and for clarity and insight on how to move forward with the group of friends we have been connecting with. Pray for a particular culture or distinctive flavor of church to begin to form which will be authentic, but also relevant to the people in the Helsinki area.

I hope this is of some use and that you can feel stirred to remember us and battle through in prayer for us at this time. Feel free to drop me a quick email or post a comment below if you like as we would be super encouraged to hear of folk praying for us.

Once again, a huge thank you for your ongoing interest and commitment to us and your perseverance in prayer. We really do need people like you backing us particularly in prayer, so we really do thank God that he has given you all to support us in this way!

Follow on twitter @Kevin_J_Jones

Email: finlandvision@gmail.com