Dear friends,

Anida and my passports were finally requested by the Canadian High Embassy in Pretoria, SA for Visa insertion and were sent to them on Friday past. It is now a matter of waiting for them to courier the passports with the Visas (approved in September 2020) to us and we will be on our way back to YK. I will notify you all once our flights are booked, and we have reserved an isolation hotel in Calgary.

We watch COVID developments around the world, in Canada and specifically in YK with increasing concern and bewilderment at what lies ahead of all of us, but with the knowledge that God is in control of this situation and that hopefully there is now, at last, more pandemic ‘behind’ us than that which still lies ahead.

Thanks to God we are geared for online and small group connection if and as restrictions and lockdown measures change with the ebb and flow of the current concerning situation in Yellowknife.

I will be finishing the series from Isaiah (the Songs of the Servant) this Sunday with a message called, ‘A City and People no longer deserted.’

As many of you will testify to, the unusual circumstances have had some hidden benefits. One of them for me was that I have managed to complete my Doctorate through Fuller Seminary, probably mostly due to various times of isolation and lockdown since March 2020. I defended it orally via ZOOM on Monday 3 May 2021 and all that remains is a last 5-day trip to the Seminary late in 2021 to graduate.

Thanks to all for your ongoing prayers, support, and spiritual undergirding albeit from a distance.

Please guard your hearts during these strange and dark times. All of us bear frustrations, concerns, and uncertainties. It is the kind of context in which people are more prone to lash out, without thinking and showing constraint. Keep social media ‘light.’

Look up and seek God’s face at various times during the day and centre yourself in the One who is the only certainty we ultimately all have.

We look forward to being with you all shortly.

Grace & peace

Melt & Anida