Thank you everyone for your prayers these past few weeks! I knew others in addition to my family were praying.

After a great journey to Birmingham, Alabama last Tuesday, coming home yesterday was a different experience.

This week I was at a most valuable conference looking into and learning about the relationship between pastoral care and deeper aspects of spiritual warfare.

This is a hugely significant topic for Veterans (actually for everyone) suffering from such wounds of war as PTSD, soul and moral injury and other forms of combat trauma.

It was an excellent conference: interesting, good fellowship, highly qualified and gifted speakers, sound and balanced theory and filled with much practical information and hands on practice.

My flights home were quite badly affected by the bad weather up and down Eastern USA. I eventually got into my house at about 11:30 pm, last night having “been on the move” for 12 1/2 hours, of which about 4 1/2 was delay, sitting waiting at departure gates (3.5 hrs) for planes to get rescheduled or in the plane in the middle of the airfield at Philadelphia (PHL) for an hour waiting for bad weather to clear enough between NYC and Albany to enable a 42 minute, safe but bit bumpy flight at 7,000 feet instead of the usual 20,000′. The pilots did well and got us home which everyone on the plane was very happy about!

With the delays, I anticipated missing my connection at PHL, but our flight attendant was even more delayed so God worked all things together for the good of those who love him, allowing me and presumably others, to make their connection. Had she been on time, I would have been about 10 minutes late and would have had to spend the night and most of this morning at PHL airport before getting the first possible flight to Albany offering a seat at around noon today – in fact I would not be home by now!! Praise be to God!

As you pray, please also remember two other families we know.

My brother-in-law, Bill (85), died peacefully but unexpectedly at home in England at about 6:30 AM last Saturday (8/3). Pray for my sister, Joycelin, and her daughters, Amanda and Penny and the families. Bill, a good man, was in their and our family for over 50 years. Pray for his peaceful eternal presence with God.

And pray for a lady who is a longstanding parishioner of the church we attend. Pray for her family. We don’t know much detail but, apparently, she was involved in a serious car accident and was helicoptered to hospital with severe head injuries.

But I want to end this post with a blessing!

When I arrived at Albany airport after 10:00 PM last night I was expecting to see son Toby -thank you for driving me home as well as to the airport very early last Tuesday morning! In fact, he’d been waiting for well over an hour because of the delay I had at PHL. It thrilled my heart to find 2 granddaughters there too! They gave me a lovely, smiling, happy welcome and were so helpful retrieving my suitcase from the carousel and wheeling it to the car!