Our life group in Macassar last night was such an encouraging and humbling time.

It was a real privilege to hear testimony after testimony of how God has moved mightily through the year to bring folk to the point of being excited about planting a new church into Macassar early next year. For some of the guys there last night this has been a torrid year, starting with the collapse of the church and the hassles resulting from it. Some have then lost jobs, had to move house a number of times, had family members die, one of our number has lost two brothers this year! Others have had to look after extended family to help out financially in tough times and one family have had a terrible time with drug dealers and all sorts of related nonsense.

Weekend Stuff

Summer seems to be toying with us at present as the weather has generally been pretty good during the week and then pretty horrid at weekends. Winter is definitely hanging on to the bitter end!

This last week and the weekends either side of it has been a good time for us as we've managed to sort out and rise above a bit of rubbish that was thrown our way and as a consequence find ourselves in a stronger position than before.

Praise God for friends who believe in the best of you!

I've been really encouraged of late by John Wesley and more particularly by an excerpt from his diary. John Wesley (with his brother Charles) is one of the biggest names in 18th century British history, though his impact goes way beyond Britain's borders.

So here's the excerpt from his diary:

Here's a tale of two guys I care for very much and have a huge amount of respect for and two guys who are struggling through very different but equally tough times.

As I said a few posts below Ernest has just suffered a massive stroke. Thankfully he has an amazing family around him who are taking excellent care of him. As an outsider looking in it's a real privilege to see just how well loved Ernest is. My family circle consists of Paula, my fantastic sons and my brother. Ernest had 40, yes 40 members of family by his bed the afternoon after his stroke!

Hopefully many of you will have received our November update by email. If you haven't had it and would like to receive our monthly updates and quarterly prayerletters let us know and we'll add you to the list.

Now that we're (almost) no longer Crosslinks mission partners we're taking control of our monthly updates and prayerletters and we want to distribute these by email as much as possible. In fact we will no longer be sending the monthly updates by snail mail, apologies if this impacts you. If you have been receiving our news via snail mail but you have an email address please let us know as it's so much easier (and cheaper) to email them. If you're old fashioned like me and want a piece of paper in your hand then it's easy to print.