Cape Argus

Wow! I rode the Argus, lived to tell the tale and cracked a decent time of 4hours 6minutes according to my bike computer. The official results will be out on Thursday and I expect it to be a bit longer, maybe 4:20ish as I stopped for a few drinks along the way. My computer stops when I do but the official timing chips don't register stops.

Church Planting In Durban

Last Friday I had the amazing privilege of leaving all my boys and flying up to be part of a team that was gathering from all over South Africa to boost the current congregation of Hope Church, Durban and to encourage them by participating in all sorts of evangelism before the official church launch on Sunday afternoon.

Reasons We Love Africa - Pt2½

What can you say about the following pictures...not a lot so enjoy them.

It's Broadband Jim, But Not As We Know It

We finally have a 'broadband' connection. It's great to ditch the unreliability of dial up networking. However, our broadband is actually a 384kb bandwidth adsl line with a 1GB monthly cap for both uploading & downloading. Hardly the whizz bang one would expect in the 21st century, but a step in the right direction. And the cost for all this; a mere R500 (£40) per month, what a bargain - not!

The View From Here - Pt 3

This one is a shorter post than the others as there are only two photos but both are of great views. Today we're showing you views from our church building, so we're at work rather than play.

Almost There

I love our family routine as you know that by 7pm peace & quiet reign supreme as the boys are in bed and adult time takes over - bliss! We've had some fun today, church was rocking this morning, Nick, one of our worship leaders has played with the hymn 'How Great Thou Art', basically he's written new verses and really beefed up the chorus, brilliant. Once again about half the church came forward to be prayed for to released in their gifts, this is really exciting. Steve Van Ryhn from Jubilee Community Church preached on 'the local church' and as ever he was superb. Steve is a really gifted expositional preacher and probably my favourite local preacher, you know you're going to get solid biblical teaching from him and today was no exception.

The Jesus Tomb

I couldn't resist posting this cartoon, judge for yourself but I thought it was quite good.

Further to my previous post about the Tomb of Jesus, Ben Witherington has written two further posts on the subject, both of which are excellent!

Fatherhood - For Real Men Or Not?

So here we are, the first of three nights without Paula and the house is calm. Eli was in bed at the usual time (6.30pm), fed, watered, bathed and with clean teeth - all 6 of them. Joel was an hour late to bed but that was planned as we had pizza for tea whilst watching Disney's Peter Pan. Joel really enjoyed both and after demolishing his pizza asked for more! He went to bed at 8pm very tired but very happy. I even managed a two hour ride up Sir Lowry's Pass (could that be misconstrued as a 'double entendre'?) this afternoon. I know it's only the first night, but it's great to know that our family routine continues despite any changes.

Paula Heading To Durban

Paula's off to Durban tomorrow for the weekend as she joins the team planting Hope Church. 

The View From Here - Pt 2

In this installment we're taking in some of the views from Chris Nissen and more specifically from Michael's stoep (porch) at the front of his house. The reason I've included this is because we meet there each Thursday morning for our men's bible study.

Free NHS Treatment

There are many drawbacks to leaving the UK to serve in mission overseas but the benefits DEFINITELY outweigh the negatives. However we tend not to focus on those negatives but every once in a while it's worth drawing attention to them. Some of the biggest drawbacks are unsurprisingly financial.