One of the great things about leading a church is getting to decide what is and isn't important in the life of the church.

One thing I've always believed strongly in but rarely seen modeled is leaders praying together. I've seen leaders all consumed with the business of leading but rarely seen leaders praying for the sake of praying.

I realise business is important but prayer is way more important than the mundane!

This morning I had the privilege of going into school with Eli's unicycle so that he could demonstrate how to ride it to his classmates for show & tell.

I get a real thrill out of seeing Eli riding his uni' but to see him ride it with a crowd really made my heart glow. It was great to hear Eli's classmates heaping praise and compliments on him, I think my favourite was hearing one of the lads telling the teacher "He makes it look so easy!".

The situation at the Lonmin Marikana platinum mine in South Africa has just hit the international news wires because of the slaughter of at least 30 people by the police.

Sadly it takes such an act for the story to become newsworthy.



Late this afternoon we were playing about in the garage and used Paula's camera to record some unicycling. We put it on 'Miniature Effect' mode and this was the result. all that was needed was some classic music!

So here you have it, in the spirit of Benny Hill, less the sauce!

Conspicuous In Our Absence

If we were writing this post a year ago, our conspicuous absence from the blog would have been because we felt unable to speak of the things that were going on.

Thankfully we've moved on from then and the simple reason for our conspicuous absence has been the sheer amount of stuff going on and not being able to keep up with it all.

Our last proper post was about our outreach back in June and here we are in August about to do another outreach this coming Saturday.

Eisteddfod

Some great news for Joel..

He's just participated in the local Eisteddfod again and improved on last year's showing by getting Cum Laude for his prepared reading.

Joel chose to read two pages from The boy In The Dress by David Walliams and really went to town on his characterisation. Even the judges commented on this and the humour he managed to convey.

We are so proud of him!




Eli Unicycling

Despite our absence from the blog we're well and really enjoying life but we're also really busy which probably explains the absence.

So here's a bit of fun to keep you going until we manage to post something over the weekend.

Enjoy Eli's latest exploits below...

A Tree Has Been Planted



If you managed to catch up with Paula at one of her recent Facing The Mountain Roadshows in Weald or Cheadle you will have seen our latest DVD offering.

If you didn't manage to catch up with Paula, shame on you you can watch the film right here from the comfort of your own computer screen.

We hope you find it helpful as you uphold our ministry here in Macassar in prayer.

So get some popcorn, put your feet up and enjoy the next 16½ minutes.



We had such an amazing time at our celebration meeting two weeks ago!

It was a real family time as Tree Of Life were joined by Love & Grace from Mitchell's Plain and Simon's Bay Christian Church from Simon's Town.

Graham's team from Mitchell's Plain lead the worship, Shaddie brought a great word and Tree Of Life organised the celebration and lead it. It's such a blessing to be involved in churches working together for the extension of the Kingdom!

Firstly, thank you to all of you that were praying for the weather on our outreach a couple of weeks ago, the weather turned out great despite the forecast and we are truly thankful to God for this!

It has indeed been a couple of weeks since the outreach and the reason it has taken so long to blog about it is that many of us are still blown away by the whole thing!

Miles For Smiles Assembly

I've lifted this straight out of the school's weekly newsletter:

"MILES FOR SMILES
THANK YOU! THANK YOU!
THANK YOU!
Through the combined efforts of the International School of Helderberg and Macquarie Securities South Africa, we raised a phenomenal R71878.70 [almost £5700] for Operation Smile South Africa!
Over the last 5 years we have raised almost R200 000-00 for Operation Smile.