Miles For Smiles - Update

Joel and Eli were proud and thrilled to come home from school today with Certificates for Outstanding Contribution for raising so much money for Miles For Smiles!  Thank you so much to all of you who contributed and made this possible. The school have raised over £2500, which is great news for the children needing the operations. Well done everyone for your combined efforts!!

Family Bits & Bobs

Family life continues apace with the boys thirst for knowledge and new experiences seemingly insatiable, but to be honest we'd have it no other way. At a very simple level life revolves around eating, sleeping, school and riding their bikes and whilst this is not an inaccurate summary of life it's also far from the whole picture.

Father's Day

Apparently it's Father's Day soon. I personally don't have a lot of time for this given that most Dad's do considerably less around the house and for their families than the Mums do. As such I really don't think we deserve a special day to commemorate our domination of the remote control. I also think it's just another cynical ploy by the greetings card industry to ramp up their sales.

World Cup Tickets

I picked up our World Cup tickets this morning and it feels really good to be going to so many games in such a short space of time.

Joel's particularly excited as we're taking him and Eli to the Portugal v N.Korea game as his teacher has Portuguese roots and he loves his teacher!

We're just thrilled to have this amazing once in a lifetime opportunity to see some of the world's greatest football players right here in our own back yard. What a privilege!

World Cup Kick Off 2010

On Saturday Grace Community Church joined with Ukuthasa Peer Education to support their World Cup Kick Off 2010. This was an event to raise money for fixing the many broken windows in the schools in Macassar.

As a church we decided to serve coffee & donuts from a tent on the edge of the playing fields and it has to be said that our tent was brilliant! We were by far the best stall there and as a church we were well represented throughout the event and with two teams in the competition we certainly achieved our aim of raising awareness of Grace Community Church.

Eli's Latest Bike Trick

Eli's only been riding for a week without the baby wheels but he's already keen to develop some new skills on the bike.

Awesome Healing Confirmed!

Every now and then God chooses to 'blow our socks off' by revealing something HUGE about Himself that thrills us to the core. This morning was one such time for us. Paula went to visit Maggie and to encourage her with a bit of Bible study. Before they could even sit down Maggie confirmed that she had been back to the Day Hospital for a second HIV re-test to confirm her healing. Wonderfully, she is now in possession of two pieces of paper. The first is dated 1 Feb 2010 and has HIV+ written on it. The second is dated 17 May 2010 and clearly states HIV-!!!! To top it off, she has put on 4.5 kg in a week and yet she still has next to no food in her house. God has done a mighty, mighty work in her life and she and Paula could not help but jump around her room and praise Him for His grace and mercy. Maggie truly is a changed woman - everything about her is transformed from her appearance to her hunger for more and more of God.

Joel Rides His Bike

Following hot on the heels of Eli learning to ride his bike (Eli Rides His Bike) without the baby wheels (as my boys disparagingly call the stabilisers) Joel has mastered riding too and needless to say is very proud of himself. As is his Dad! We're definitely a bike mad household now.

Amazing Sunday & Awesome Healing!

This morning we were welcoming Gerrit into eldership so we were expecting a really good meeting especially as Evan Rogers had been invited to lead the worship. There's never a dull or boring moment when Evan's leading!

Gerrit's ordination (if that's the right word) was great and it's a privilege to have guys like him leading the church. Charl, one of the elders from HCC came and gave a short teaching on eldership and then the various leaders of Grace laid hands on Gerrit and prayed for him and Sharon his excellent wife. All in all a great time and topped off with a great lunch at Daniel and Zelda's.

Weekend

Winter seems to have arrived early and with a vengeance! The rain over the last two and a bit weeks has been horrendous with only the odd day of calmer weather. Thankfully we missed the really bad storm as we were in Franschhoek which doesn't seem to suffer from the Northwester like we do here. It all makes us very glad that the woodburner is in and the wood arrived (see: Firewood below) as it's the only form of heating we have in the house.

Firewood

Our winter wood pile arrived this afternoon so I'm well chuffed as we were running very low from last year's pile. We had enough left for the weekend (see the pile by Michael in the pic) but no more, so it all worked out quite nicely.