Quests and Requests

Hello again,

Unfortunately this will be a short entry as I have a lot on my plate this week. However, I need to ask for some prayer on a couple urgent needs. As the title of the post indicates, these requests are primarily related to our quest to fulfill God's plan for our lives. So as we seek to follow His leading, we ask for your support in prayer for the following requests:

1. Accommodations payment- Thankfully, we finally received a federal education load check to cover tuition fees. However, because of the poor exchange rate, we still owe the entire cost for our University housing, which is roughly equal to $11,000. This must be paid ASAP, or at least a considerable portion of it, the rest of which can be paid in installments. Please pray for miraculous provision for these funds and that we can honor God by timely payment.

2. Denied health claims- My old insurer has denied nearly all of my claims from my treatments in Virginia, which add up to over $14,000. I am mailing an appeals letter today and believe that God will grant us the appeal. Please pray that they read it favorably and approve and pay all of the denied claims in a timely fashion, so that our credit rating and finances are not negatively affected.

3. PhD applications- This one is more exciting. After an immensely enjoyable 4 months in Scotland, Elizabeth and I have decided we would like to stay so that I can pursue my PhD and so that she and the boys can continue their lives here as well. I am applying to 3 different PhD programs here at St. Andrews and another at Oxford. Either way, we'd like to get into something that includes funding for tuition, housing, and expenses and there are several opportunites for this kind of package at the PhD level. If God allows us to stay here in the UK we'll have the added benefits of maintaining our health coverage, Gabriel and Noah can both attend nursery school for free next year, and Elizabeth can continue going to her mothers' groups and Bible studies. Please pray that God directs my studies and helps me to construct a PhD research proposal that will serve His kingdom, and that will attract the interest and funding of the departments to which I'm applying. Please also pray that he gives us wisdom as to where to live this summer and what path we should take this coming school year.

Thank you for all of your love and support!! We are so grateful to be blessed with such a multitude of faithful friends and family. I'll post again soon with some updates, pictures, and God-willing, some praise reports with answers to these requests.

God bless!

Jeremy

A Day Late, But No Short Dollars in Sight

Hello Everyone,

Here is the post I attempted to create on New Year's Eve, or Hogmanay as they call it here in Scotland, so that you could see some of our Christmas pictures as promised. Unfortunately, I closed the post and lost everything. For a description of what we did for Christmas and New Year's be sure to look at Elizabeth's blog, www.homeschoolblogger.com/Betsyfriend.

It's almost time for me to get back into study mode, so I thought I'd better get this post done as soon as possible. Yesterday for the New Year we had an awesome day out as a family, Virtually everything in St. Andrews was closed and will be until Tuesday, so we had to be creative. We packed a picnic in our new $20 picnic backpack, loaded the children into the double stroller, and headed for the West Sands, which is the local beach where Chariots of Fire was filmed. Here are some pictures we took of it yesterday:




And here are some of the long-awaited Christmas photos :-)







I'll post again soon with some of the cool photos we took around town yesterday.

God bless in 2006!!