peace

The pastoral atmosphere of the area we're staying in is so peaceful on the outside, but we can sense the chaos and the brokenness of people whose hearts need a greater peace.

Over the past few weeks, our interns have been doing a lot of door to door work in some beautiful but broken parts of the area. This has been very difficult for them in a lot of ways because it is so outside all of our comfort zones. Reading through Philippians 2 we've been reminded that God has called us to be lights in a broken and twisted world, and we're encouraged that ultimately Jesus has won the victory. However, walking up to someone's door, not knowing the response you'll get can be daunting. Pray that God will use conversations that the girls have had to advance his kingdom, and pray that they will not become discouraged.

Here are some highlights from the past few weeks:

Caleb crawled into Abby's bed one night when we stayed late at the Matheson's house, and they slept this way for a few hours. I'm so thankful for the peace that God is bringing to their relationship. They're so much closer now than when we arrived.

Here they are playing together at the house. Caleb is giving his impression of playing the bagpipes.
Usually our mornings include a walk into town for groceries. On the way we must always stop to view the construction work on the corner.
This is the view that Caleb is so entranced with in the picture above. Abby's just plain excited as you can tell :)
Here's the scenery as we walk to the co-op.
The play park they love to visit is currently being remodeled, but here's it's location. Beautiful, no?
Our walk through the center of Kyle...
Last weekend we got to join the congregation (mostly kids on this particular day) on an outing to Inverness. The morning was spent at an indoor water park and the afternoon at a bowling alley! Here's a group at the bowling alley. It was a great, laid back day to get to know a lot of the youth in the church.
On the way home we stopped to snap some pictures of Loch Ness. No monster spotted on this trip...maybe next time.
The following Monday was our day off...so we packed it full with a trip to Talisker Distillery, Dunvegan Castle, and the town of Portree. Since kids were not allowed on the distillery tour, Abby, Caleb and I headed down the road to a play park where I got to talk with a sweet local mom for about an hour.




Everywhere we turn there's a beautiful spot to photograph, so here's another stopping point on our way to Dunvegan!



So glad we got to see Dunvegan. So much history in this place, and the gardens were beautiful.




This tree on the right in the picture below is called a Monkey Puzzle tree...it's the most unique tree I've ever seen.

These next few pictures are from the town of Portree. I'm sure we'll visit again. There are several people I want to meet who live in this town. More on that later, hopefully.


One morning the girls were having a meeting with Roddie at the house, so to keep things quiet, I took Caleb and Abby on a walk of the Skye bridge. It's a pretty phenomenal view. The bridge is on the left side of the picture below.
This is one of the views from the bridge.

It's so hard to capture in one blogpost all that has happened over the last few weeks, but I hope you've enjoyed the highlights.

Praise God for the beauty of His creation, the perseverance of His church, and the peace that He gives.