Empty Cup International- Lunden Martineau

He Is Risen!
Hello everybody! This newsletter is coming a bit later than planned... I have been extremely busy the last couple of weeks, but you'll hear more about that in my next update so that this one doesn't end being too long... for now let's go back in time to Easter holidays! What a great time.

My first English Easter was quite busy. In England, the schools get almost the entire month of April off for Easter holidays. It's the three weeks between the Spring and Summer school terms so a lot of the staff with families were away for vacations. The office was a bit quieter but there were still plenty of odd jobs around the church to do leading up to Easter weekend. We had a Good Friday service and there was a great turn out for that. Good Friday is always such a good reminder of what Christ went through before He died for us.

We continued the weekend with an Easter Trail on Saturday. We had people dressed up as different characters in the Easter story (I was Mary Magdalene) and spread them around a local park. It was the kid's job to follow the trail and hear the characters tell the Easter story and at the end of the trail they got a chocolate egg! It was such a fun time and the kids were so into it. It was also amazing to see so many families who were not from the church come and bring their kids and they got to hear the Gospel preached to them. We even had a couple of families visit on Easter Sunday because of the Easter Trail!

Easter Sunday was busy but fun! During our second morning service we had a baptism! What a wonderful way to celebrate the resurrection of our Savior with the physical display of a new believer's sins being washed away, publicly claiming their commitment to Christ. Afterwards, I had Easter Sunday roast with some friends. For those who might not know what that is, an Easter roast usually consists of lamb, yorkshire pudding, steamed vegetables, and potatoes with a gravy sauce to pour over everything (I don't usually like lamb, but the way my friend cooked it was actually amazing - it was an Easter miracle!). We then spent the rest of the afternoon at our lead pastor's home where they had an open house with games and food. Me and one of the other women from church won the egg toss (yet another Easter miracle!). My friends and I ended the evening with bowling which isn't very Easter-y but it's something we do together quite often and it was so nice to get to spend a day with my new friends!

The day after Easter I left to go to All Nations Christian College. All Nations is a missions training college just outside London. My first or second Sunday in Norwich we had a guest speaker, Jim Memory, come and speak for Missions Sunday and he had mentioned to me that he was teaching a course at All Nations that would be looking at Europe as a missions context. He recommended I take it since I plan to be in England for the next year and it would give me some insight of what is going on in Europe. It was a week-long intensive course and i'm very glad that I did it! I gained so much valuable insight that I think will benefit me greatly, not just during this next year, but also how I approach missions going forward. I'm very thankful that I took advantage of the opportunity!

Prayer Requests:
1.) That prep for Summerfest continues to go well and that the team would not feel stressed, overwhelmed or burnt out. This is their biggest event of the year!

2.) We have two interns from the BSU coming in just a couple of weeks to help with Summerfest. Pray for safe travels and that they would be not only used but also spiritually fed during their time here with CityGates.

3.) University students are in their exams for the next couple of weeks. If you could just keep the students in your prayers that they would not feel overwhelmed or stressed and do well on their exams.

If you would like to financially support me and
my internship in England:

To send in a check, please make the check out to "Grace International World Outreach" and put my name, "Lunden Martineau", in the memo. You can send checks to this address:

Grace International World Outreach
P.O. Box 1952
Laurel, MS 39441

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