After graduation, our staff spent a few days meeting together to celebrate wins from the first half of the year, praising God for his faithfulness and to dive into the questions we are having and the space for growth and improvement we see on the horizon. It was an encouraging and productive time together before heading into a few slower weeks between residencies.

We celebrated what God was able to do in our programs and also in other areas of ministry our staff have been involved: getting involved in each of our home churches, connect groups, preaching and teaching opportunities, T4C, a great new partnership at Christ Church Strand with staff members preaching and residents volunteering at soup kitchens and evangelism outreaches, alumni support and networking, mentor relationships that will continue beyond residency and Trek, hospitality to various groups coming through, creating several new workshops which involved excellent participation from local partners and experts, strengthening the relationship with Hope Training school, designing our new house, beautifying our current property set-up, seeking God's wisdom in a lot of tough decisions, not to mention watching two babies grow into their personalities and toddle around our events.

We also considered what God has been teaching us and challenging us with: the difficulty of getting groups of people together at a certain time in this country, the challenges and joys of running a program when everyone has small children, the importance of a united house and house parents for the community life we are looking for, the creative ways staff can step up and step in to try to create that community atmosphere in our current set-up, the need for contextualising and adjusting our tools and material for different contexts, the differences in having a shorter residency and changes we may want to implement in order to optimise our time, learning about this new generation of young adults emerging - their particular needs, habits and gifts.We came away so thankful for God's faithfulness to continue to transform lives and do good work through our team as he also continues to lead us and teach us every year. We are also so thankful for you, our extended family, for the support you have shown financially, prayerfully, and practically in so many ways. We are happy to be able to include you in our celebrations and our questions. Please be praying with us for wisdom in moving forward through all of these things.