Praying for us: the August Edition

Thank you to the lovely people who've asked how we were going and said that they have prayed for us. We greatly appreciate your concern and interest.

Here are some things to give thanks for and to pray for us as we head into September, if you are so inclined.
August has been a tricky month. Mark is trying to write a dissertation for submission in 14 days time. He has been hard at work for nearly two months, but has been battling illness for most of August. This has made the process really frustrating for him and far more intense than we had expected. Thankfully he is a lot better now, but even quite simple things continue to exhaust him and he will have to work very hard to get it done on time.
Please pray that God will enable Mark to finish the dissertation on time and without further difficulty, and thank God for answering our prayers and restoring Mark to health.

We tried to have a holiday in August, going up to St Andrews to see a potential supervisor for Mark and staying a week in Stirling. As Mark got sick and couldn't do much work it didn't quite work out the way we had planned, but we had a great few days before then in St Andrews, Edinburgh and we went for a great drive one day around one of the Lochs north of Stirling at the foot of the Highlands. Scotland is absolutely gorgeous, so just driving through the country was a marvellous thing.
Thank God for his care of us in providing a holiday for us and in keeping us safe as we travelled around the place.

Unexpectedly we received an offer of a place at Edinburgh University. Mark now has two places as well as the possibility of study at Oxford for the next academic year. As far as we can tell, we can make a decision as to which one to take up after the results come in early in October.
Thank God for his kindness in providing good places for Mark to complete his PhD and ask him for wisdom as we go about making a decision about where to go if we can't stay in Oxford.

Finally, we have arranged for Jonathan to be baptised on 21st September. It's been a long road to come to the point that we think that this is a good and right way to declare that he too lives in the sphere that the cross of Christ has carved out, because he is the child of disciples of Jesus. But we're here now, and so Jonathan's status as someone who will have every privilege to grow up into faith in Christ and the confidence that God will be faithful to those opportunities will be declared through baptism. We are glad that this can be organised before we might need to move. We are grateful that our son is growing and developing so well: he is cruising around furniture now and seems to enjoy life a great deal. He has been a blessing to us in this rather difficult year.
Thank God for Jonathan's life and pray for his salvation. Pray also that we will be faithful to the promises we make in September.