Dear partners in prayer,

Spring has arrived! Its officially spring here now and we have had some lovely weather recently. It has been so nice to be able to spend time outside in the sunshine. Our children even pulled out their shorts and t-shirts last weekend - although we received a number of very horrified looks from passing Slovenes when we went out for a walk!

We are enjoying the new house and are feeling quite settled now. Our children enjoy playing outside and their toys are hardly getting a look-in anymore. Kingsley has had a number of jobs to work on in our house to fix up various things that weren’t working properly - this is a reasonably old house and hasn’t been lived in for a while. Still a few things on the to-do list (including unpacking all his books that he has been working around until now).

As we wrote in our prayer point, we had Peter and Janet Payne with us last week for five nights. We enjoyed having them here and it was good to have some events with Peter to get the ball rolling with students. Five students came to the pizza night, and none of them were students who had been to the Bible study before. Please pray that God will keep them thinking about things that were said and that they might be interested in finding out more. Peter gave a talk at the Baptist church on Sunday and quite a few friends or acquaintances came along. Peter was able to explain the gospel in the question time - please pray that God will continue to change people and that they might come under the Lordship of Christ. On Monday Peter gave a lecture at the philosophy faculty on the big bang theory. There were quite a few students there and some lecturers. Please pray for ongoing contacts and that God will give Kingsley opportunities to meet new students and to talk with students about the gospel. Kingsley is hoping to start another Bible study group next week. Pray that God will bring students along and that he might work in their hearts as they look at God’s word. I have attached a photo of Peter and Janet with most of our family (with Maribor in the background).

We are planning to start a kids club next Friday. Please pray that God will bring children along to it and that they will hear the gospel clearly taught. At this stage we think it will be just Kingsley and I working on the project - pray that God will prompt some Slovenes to get involved as well and that some families from church will come.

Jovan is continuing to slowly improve. He is finding it hard and depressing to be so limited and his wife struggles to cope at times as well. We are thankful to God that their church is really looking after them - the ladies have rostered themselves so that someone goes each day to look after Jovan for a while and to let Marta take a break. They continue to enjoy Kingsley’s Bible studies once a fortnight - pray God will work in them as they read and learn from God’s word.

Please pray for God to give me wisdom as I think about what I can be involved with in church. I could start up a women’s Bible study group in the evenings, I could run a Bible study for the retired ladies in our church or I could try to meet up with someone 1:1. Studying the Bible 1:1 is a fairly foreign concept, so I’m not sure if anyone would be interested. Pray that I will be bold and that God will prepare women to be willing to commit to something extra in their week or fortnight.

We currently have boxes and furniture stacked around our apartment, in preparation for a move this weekend. God has provided a 3 bedroom duplex house that we can rent, 15 minutes’ walk from our current apartment. We are very thankful to God for providing this house, which we are hoping will prove to be helpful for ministry and for our family. Kingsley will be able to host his Bible study group again (the older ladies found the 50 steps leading to our current apartment a little too much). We are also hoping to use the house and yard for a kids club.

For prayer:

- thank God for the provision of this house

- pray for the logistics of the move and thank God for the many friends who have offered to help us in various ways

- pray that God will oversee negotiations with our current landlord, who is demanding extra money for ‘damage’ we have done to his apartment

- pray for our family, who are feeling very unsettled (plans and dates for this move have changed many times) and three of us have fallen sick with a virus this week

- pray God will open doors for opportunities with new neighbours, provide opportunities to keep up with old neighbours and that he will enable us to use this house for his kingdom

We thank God for your prayers and support,

Kingsley and Veronica Box

PS This is a photo of the house a couple of weeks ago. Thankfully temperatures are predicted to reach above 10oC this weekend, so most of the snow should have melted by the time we move although it will probably still be slushy!

We are very thankful to God for your prayers and support,

Veronica, Kingsley, Zac, Sam, Tim and Sophie

Yours in Christ,

Roni (and Kingsley and the gang)

Dear partners in prayer,

Please pray for our brothers and sisters in Šmartno ob Paki. Our family visited their church service last Sunday and Kingsley preached. Their pastor is Jovan who badly injured his head in a fall last year. Thank you for your prayers for him. Please keep praying. He is slowly recovering. He can now walk, eat and talk and is now in a rehabilitation centre in Ljubljana for a number of months to improve his physical dexterity. This small church was heavily dependant on Jovan for leadership and Bible teaching and has been reliant on guest preachers for the last few months since Jovan’s accident.

We learnt that they have not been meeting for Bible study since Jovan’s accident and on Sunday Kingsley offered to lead a Bible study there once a fortnight for a season. They were keen to meet for Bible study and so Kingsley will be starting this week (Thursday night). He will start a series on 1 Peter.

Yours in Christ,

Kingsley and Veronica Box

Dear praying friends,

After a month of being back home in Maribor, we are slowly settling back into our life and routine here. Some of the groups we were involved in with our church and with students have waned or were in recess over the time we were away. There are also other opportunities and areas of need that we can see around us (starting a kids club for evangelising our children’s friends, helping the church in Smartno ob Paki). We are currently thinking and praying about which things would be best for us to channel our energies into.

Please pray with us:

- that God will give us wisdom as we make decisions as to which activities to spend time on.

- that God will give us opportunities to teach his Word and to train Slovenes in how to more faithfully teach his word.

- pray that God will lead us to students willing to look at his Word.

- for his Spirit to work in people as they read His Word.

We thank God for your prayers for his work in Slovenia,

Kingsley and Veronica Box

Dear partners in prayer,

Hello from cold and dark Maribor! I am writing to you on the shortest day of the year, which is a bit of a relief, because from now on at least the days are getting longer! At the moment it is dark at 4.30pm and light again after 7.30am, which is a bit depressing. Snow arrived this last week but there wasn’t heaps and it is slowly disappearing or turning to ice so unless it snows again we may not have a white Christmas as such. We arrived safely back in Maribor and have now adjusted to the new time zone. Our bodies are still making the adjustment to the weather though - after six months in Australia of being almost sickness free, we have come down with colds this week. (We were expecting that though…)

We are still trying to find our feet here and get our life worked out again. We have to work out which things to get back into and which things are better not spending time on. Pray for wisdom in knowing how best to serve God with our time.

We had the student couple we have gotten to know better around for dinner on Sunday night. It was good to see them, and we hope to continue to get to know them and their family better - they are keen for us to join one of their family gatherings in the New Year again. They are not really studying anymore, as with a lot of the students that came to Kingsley’s group last year. Kingsley is hoping to start up another group after the winter break - probably late February. Pray that some students might come back, that we can contact some more students and that Kingsley can have some good contact with students in the next couple of months before it starts.

The contract on our apartment finishes at the end of February, so we have started looking around at what else is available in Maribor. (We are currently in a 2 bedroom apartment and on the 2nd floor with no lift, which means Kingsley can’t have his Bible study at our place - the older ladies can’t handle the stairs.) There aren’t many three bedroom apartments or houses around in Maribor - four or five in total. Pray that God will give us wisdom about whether to move and which things we should prioritise in a house/apartment.

Kingsley will be preaching in Smartno ob Paki on Sunday 1st January. He is preaching on 1 Cor 15. Please pray that God will give him the right words and that he might preach faithfully. Pray that God will help Kingsley as he talks with the church about whether he can help them more regularly while Jovan is recovering. Please continue to pray for Jovan. He has shown some improvement in recent weeks and was even allowed to go home for a couple of days last weekend, but now has developed a fever and an infection.

The boys are settling back into school okay. Zac and Sam’s friends were all very excited to see them again. Timothy started preschool this week and is finding it hard to remember his Slovene. It is also a bit harder for him because he is starting in a new group - he feels like the other children don’t play with him. His Slovene will come back to him, but it will take a few weeks. Please pray for all of the boys as they get used to school and preschool again in Slovenia.

Tomorrow Kingsley and Zac will be attending a funeral for a boy who was in Zac’s year at his school. Jakob had leukemia and died last week. His family is not Christian, but his father has been attending the Baptist church for a number of months now. Their extended family and friends were not very visibly supportive and didn’t really visit Jakob in hospital, especially towards the end, but our American friends Randy and Joan from the Baptist church have been giving them lots of support and visiting him in hospital. Randy says Jakob trusted Jesus and was not afraid to die, so he is now with Jesus, which is great. Please pray for his family and friends, that they might be challenged by Randy’s message at the funeral and that God might be glorified in this boy’s death.