A Sad Tale...

Tess attended the Agricultural Fair here in East London and fell in love with a little fellow called Monk. After paying the handsome sum of R20 Beth, who is visiting from Cape Town, got to hold him as the girls and our new family member made their way home.

I heard calls from the front garden.."Come and see what I've bought you!!!"....as I got outside the tune changed slightly..."This is mine and his name is Monk!"
Released from his transportation facility Monk engaged with our lawn and starting searching for bugs and things to eat. He then explored our entire garden before settling in the hedge for the night.

Unfortunately at 6:20am Tuesday morning we heard Monk begin to crow. He went non-stop for about 20 minutes. This produced animated discussion between Tess, Beth and myself covering a wide range of topics including neighbours, our sanity and "what happens in summer when the sun comes up close to 4:30am?" Our conclusion was as follows: He only goes for 20 minutes just before sunrise. Lets go talk to the neighbours and make sure all are happy.

Tuesday afternoon was great. Monk did his thing and even started to follow us around a bit and was very comfortable having us in close proximity. He is a Peking Bantam Chicken...a stag to be accurate. They do become very tame and affectionate given time and love. They also have very small brains.

Unfortunately Wednesday morning came. Monk, having really settled in now, started at 5:20am....1 hr plus before sunrise...and he went and he went and he went. Then Tess and I went outside. I picked him up, put him back in his transportation facility and put it in the entrance hall. We now have a problem. Over an hour of crowing everyday before sunrise is not good. It will be worse in summer when an hour before sunrise starts at 3:30am. This could seriously hamper the odd weekend sleep in.

We then came to the sad conclusion that Monk is not suited for suburban life. As I type this he is sitting and snoozing on the spare desk in my office. I will be taking him to a local farm where they have animals for children to enjoy. If they do not want him I will be taking him back to the fair from where he came and return him to his original owner.

Chickens are cool.

The Hike

Well I have always been a bit reluctant to go on a hike when you can drive and see pretty views.... anyway 3 years into our marriage Tess got it right and we headed off with our friends the Marshall's for a 2-day hike called "2 River Trail" on a farm near Grahamstown. It was a blast and we all really enjoyed it!We arrived on Friday at around lunchtime and set up camp. The facilities are brilliant and we spent the afternoon snoozing and relaxing before having a braai in the evening. Andrew and I took on Tess and Karen at Pictionary and handed them their smashed ego's in a brown paper bag...ok...maybe it was the other way round.After a good nights rest leaving our bags behind to be transported by our hosts we set off for the first day which is an 18km stroll. As it turns out we loved walking so much that we made it a 20km day after missing a turnoff! The terrain is a mix of open plains, dense jungle and rocky outcrops. We saw a large variety of wildlife including a variety of bokke, birds, 1 hare and I think the count by the ladies was 13 types of butterfly.At around 4pm we arrived at the 2nd hut and were all feeling a little weary but cheerful. This location reminded me of "Little house on the Prairie"!Following a nice hot shower and a snooze, we heated up our pasta and sat around the fireplace before having an early night. We were up at 6am to be greeted by rain! It was actually quite pleasant as we hiked the 11km's of day 2 in gentle soaking rain. By the time we reached the 1st hut where we had parked the car it had cleared nicely so into the river for another swim.We then drove about an hour to Ocean Basket on the banks of the Kowie River in Port Alfred for a well deserved seafood feast. Then a hop, skip and a jump down the R72 to Kleinenmonde for a 1 night stay with family there and more swimming in the sea and river.
In the midst of this time the Marshall's celebrated their 6 year anniversary and we were a few days short of our 3 year.

What a great weekend!

Re-start

Well it feels like an age since I last updated this blog...because I suppose it has been! The year is well on its way and the Lord has been good to us!

We are now settled into our new house and had a last minute braai there on Saturday. We had a great turnout and hot weather which saw all the kids and most of the adults in the pool at some time during the afternoon.


We had the Flynn's up visiting from CT and it was great to see them. We spent some of the weekend at Tarka where our movement has a church. That was a lot of fun as we saw God touch His people! It was really wonderful to see them and catch up in the flesh as opposed to over the phone or email.

Otherwise work is going well for both of us with the only change being that Tess's contract at her morning job will not be renewed come the end of March. We are very excited about what the next step is for her and we feel strongly that the Lord has His hand in all of this.

Thats us in a nutshell. Here are some pictures of our back garden and pool during the braai and the view down the road from our house.

January the Pumper!!

January has been a hectic month as we have been settling into our new house. This week has been a pumper at work. I think next week I will put up some pictures of our new place. 2 weekends ago we headed back to CT with a work bakkie and a hired trailer to fetch the remainder of our furniture and set our parents free from our stuff! All went well until Sunday morning on the return leg where the trailer decided it wanted to stay in CT and tried to snap off at the A-frame. We heard it dragging on the ground just before Paarl on the N1, pulled over and called for help! Our 2 Dad's came to the rescue and to cut a long story short we loaded the bakkie and headed back to East London on Monday morning. So we had a bonus evening with our parents even if it was under stressful circumstances!

On other more exciting fronts we are beginning to see a real increase in the number and variety of healings at church. Two of the more glamorous ones have been a little girl having 15 warts either fall off or disappear off of her hands and a woman having an egg-sized lump disappear from her breast! HIP HIP HOOORAY!!!! Good times......

Currently we are experiencing seriaaas load-shedding. For the past 2 weeks we are off from 2-4pm in the afternooon. It might not sound like a long time but it severely trashes the working day!! I am going to be working 6am-4pm in order to try and keep on top of things! We are having a monster generator installed so hopefully that will be up and running by the end of next week.

This weekend we are off to Kleinemonde to visit Tess's cousin who is down from the UK. So there is that to look forward to. We are having very warm weather at the moment so most days after work we walk down to the beach for a swim...hope to be doing more of that this weekend!

Thats all for now......

News and an update!

I thought I should give a basic update seeing it has been ages since I have blogged and apparently some people do read this thing! Well life has been really speeding up as we hit the downhill slope towards the end of the year. I have 13 working days left until shutdown and Tess has 8 days left until she flies of to Cape Town.

The biggest piece of news since I last blogged is that Tess has 2 new jobs! Her position at the NGO where she had been from the beginning of 2007 was slowly becoming more and more admin focused and less OT which is what she wants to do. After hearing numerous promises about change and seeing none it was time for some intervention!! Well we prayed and after hearing nothing specific decided that we would wait until 2008 and if there was no change would actively seek new employment for Tess. Well that same week Tess was headhunted, in a sense, by a rehabilitation centre focusing on spinal chord injury and stroke injury rehabilitation. She works there in the mornings only. Then she received another call and now works at a paedeatric practice in the afternoons. GOD IS GOOD!

The other wonderful news is that we are seeing God pour out His Spirit in refreshing and healing on Sunday mornings. For the last 3 weeks God has”wrecked” our meetings and the preaching does not get to happen. It basically goes like this…. Welcome, worship, get lost in Him and pop out about 3 hours later having encountered Father in a fresh way! Wonderful! The other great thing is that we are seeing people get saved, healed and delivered into our body. We have 3-5 new people at our community group and we are experiencing the Presence of God in a powerful way at our mid-week meetings as well!

Our December plans look like this…fly to CT on 7^th December for Steve (Tess’s cousin) and Lara’s wedding. I fly back on Sunday 9^th for the last week of work. Then I fly back to CT on Friday 14^th to rejoin Tess and family until 26^th December. In those 10 days we will also be spending some time at Betty’s with the family. Over New Years we will be looking to be at Kleinemonde with Tess’s wider family and friends.

So there it is……

Celebration Time!

We are into a season of celebration and it feels good! We officially finished our 21day corporate fast this past Sunday. (It has been sooooo good to taste food again)

We have an exciting busy time ahead with the following happening:

• My folks are currently up visiting from CT for the week.
  
• Next week we head to PE to stay with Tess's Grandparents and Mom who is meeting us there from CT.
  
• This week Tess is involved in the mornings with a children's conference.
  
• I am looking to finish up my second subject for the bridging course of my studies.
• Garth Watson and Lauren Hartman were married yesterday in CT and we have heard it was a blast!

Yesterday was a glorious public holiday and we spent it cruising around with my parents. We headed to Lavender Blue for a light breakfast in the form of fruit salads and smoothies...gotta be careful coming off a fast. Then off to the EL Zoo followed by a drive through the West Bank, Winterstrand, Igoda and then Kidds Beach where we sat in a restaurant overlooking the stormy sea and rain that was passing through. Beautiful view and good company!

We headed home and then after relaxing together for the evening Tess and I headed home for an early night in preparation for the week.....

(Pics to follow...forgot my breakfast and the camera at home this morning!)

The Countdown is on...

We are now into day 15 of our 21 day fast as a body of believers and it has really gone well so far. The grace of God is so evidently on this thing and it is wonderful to feel His sustaining power with you through the day.

There have been some encouraging stories throughout this time and I would like to share this one as we see ourselves joining God in His purposes for our city and nation.

During this time we have been encouraged to use the money we would normally spend on food to still buy food but then distribute it to the poor. See Isaiah 58:6-7. We really enjoyed going to Pick 'n Pay and loading a trolley to overflowing and knowing we were doing this for other people!

Our church has been distributing the food and clothes in the poorer areas of our city and this time Neville Chan, who leads a church plant in one of the townships, went to help deliver the food. Anyway a whole crowd had gathered and he kind of got to preach and God kind of rocked up and people kind of got saved! WAHOOO! So now we have walked through an open door into a new area of Duncan Village where bible study will be run twice a week.

God is good!