Hello from summery Durham!

It’s been another full week for us on this church planting journey.  We are still very much in a learning, planning, dreaming and praying mode when it comes to the church plant.  Honestly, we feel like we could stay in that mode for a long time – there is so much to study, think through and imagine.  The good news is that I’m loving all of it.  At the same time, we are getting more connected to the life of Summit Church and really starting to feel like we are part of this great family.  Add into that a feeling that we are starting to learn our way around The Triangle and we are feeling so grateful for all the Lord is doing in our lives.

One of the things that is very important to me is planting a church in a way that my family is blessed not punished.  I want this experience to be as exciting for Laura and Jack as it is for me.  And I want our family to be strong, healthy and unified.  With that in mind, I would love to have you praying specifically for our family this week.  Here are a couple of specific requests:

1.  Pray for sleep.  Specifically, pray for Jack to sleep through the night.  It seems like every time he’s on the verge of figuring that out, something comes up and knocks him off course.  Currently, that would be teething.  The poor little guy has cut three teeth in the last two weeks and has one more on the way.  You can tell it’s bothering him and keeping him up at night which in turn is keeping us up and bothering us.  It may seem small but, seriously, sleep would be amazing!

2.  Time with Laura’s Family This Weekend.  We are going to be spending Friday and Saturday in Richmond with Laura’s extended family.  A number of them are traveling to Richmond for the weekend and it will be great to see so many of them in one place.  But with so much going on, it can be hard to slow down and just spend time with people.  So, pray the Lord fills Laura and I with grace, joy and patience over the weekend.

3.  Rest.  We’ve been having a lot of conversations recently about what it looks like for us to stay rested and connected as a couple.  I’ll likely be blogging in upcoming weeks about some of what the Lord is showing us through this process.  But we are definitely aware of our need for more time when we are alone, rested and undistracted.  Please pray we can create those spaces in the midst of so much activity.

As always, thanks for praying.  I’m so grateful for you and your prayer partnership in the church the Lord is calling us to lead.

John