Another weekend in EL!

This past weekend was a cracker as far as our schedule went...but it looks like we have lost our ability to attend 100 things in one weekend! By Saturday night we were finished and pulled out of a planned waffle evening and crashed early!!!

Friday night we spent at Craig Dup's house playing Balderdash until after 11pm with Tess coming out as the winner! It was a good evening. Saturday morning we went South of East London for the first time and expored many beaches and caravan parks looking for future weekend spots... not too much luck. A lot of the places were overgrown and the facilities very average.

We had a light lunch at a coffe shop overlooking the sea at a place called Winterstrand. Then off to a birthday tea for Derek Wheals which was cool. We met some more Highway people for the first time which was nice.
Then headed home to watch a fairly depressing verging on hilarious delayed broadcast of the rugby where NZ made us look like somebody had put sleeping tablets in our breakfast..

Saturday night, as already mentioned, we were planning to do waffles with a whole bunch of people but we faded BIG TIME!

Sunday morning was another RIPPER of a preach as we contimue to go through the book of Revelation... mind-blowing!

Then Reid (A farmer) treated us to a lunch at a little place right near the beach. It was cool to hang. Then off to soccer for me and off for an afternoon snooze for Tess. Sunday night we spent some time with Scott and Di Wilson where we discussed some upcoming plans for some things which may be divulged at a later time! All in all a good weekend..

Sewing things..

Well Tess has finally finished her intensive sewing course and some wonderful beautiful things have been made and are in the pipeline. This type of sewing is called freestyle. Here are some pics of a handbag that Tess made using scraps of material.... pretty pretty...

Changing gears...

Well....this morning we discovered that Tess's car had been broken into last night. The little window that forms part of the right back door had been smashed. All they took was the face of the oldest tape/radio player you have ever seen! How ridiculous! All's fine though. Had the window replaced and had the car valeted. It was quite odd. I did not get angry or even slightly phased by this thing! In fact I rather enjoyed the morning with Tess. We drove to PG Glass and sat in their reception area for about 45 minutes and chatted while the window was replaced. Then we went and had the car vacuumed etc. It was great. The entire time I had "The joy of the Lord is my strength" going around in my head....this while we were spending around R500 on the consequences of somebody else's silly act of crime! I love it! I got to work at about 11:15am and it has been pretty frantic since then!

So...back to the weekend. Friday night we had a great farewell dinner with Don. He flew out on Saturday morning after we had watched the All Blacks take the Tri-nations by defeating Australia. Tess and I headed for some leadership training which we felt very priviledged to be a part of seeing we are quite new on the scene. Saturday night we crashed early. Tess preached at Sunday school again while I sang in the worship team. Really enjoyed it. We are currently enjoying a revelatory series on the book of Revelation! The Sunday morning sermon was a cracker! Seriously anointed stuff. If anybody wants a copy drop me a line...it was awesome!

Sunday night we headed over to the Thompsons to hear about an outreach opportunity. We are all very excited. Currently it is in the early planning stages but looks something like this. We set up a big tent in the parking lot of a club as a "chill room" offering free coffee and bottled water. We will then be chatting with the people that drift in and giving them invitations to an event coming up where an evangelist from Durban will be speaking. This will take place from about 12-4am so should be heaps of fun!

Tess and I have had such an expectation recently of things beginning to shift and change gear. I believe we are beginning to see the outworkings ...YEEHAA!

On my side I am going into the studio tonight with a new song which I am really looking forward to recording.

Tess is in the last week of her sewing course...look out for pictures of her work shortly.....

Here are some pics of last nights session....

A Blast of a weekend

As I write this I feel as though I have been on holiday for a month. I think it is a combo of having Don here and taking Friday off giving me a 3 day weekend. Saturday morning we went Lavender Blue for breakfast. It is a farmer's market with fantastic reasonably priced food. Apart from the food to eat there is other food on sale such as homemade gingerbeer, koeksusters, biltong etc. A whole bunch of us enjoyed a quality breakfast and a good time....and bought some other food.
We also celebrated James's great recovery after he had one of his kidneys out earlier that morning and still made it for breakfast. Now that's what I call commitment to community! Below is a picture of him holding his kidney. It could also be a large sweet potato that his mom grew. If it is in fact a large sweet potato that his mother grew then that would render my kidney story completely invalid....you decide.

Then we picked up the Playstation2 from James. Our motivation for this is that we had somehow convinced ourselves that SA was playing the NZ...but it turns out they weren't. So we decided to rent out Rugby2006 and play each other. But obviously many other people had the same idea and all 5 copies were out. So we stuck to what we had which in this case was "Need for Speed". This is, for the Playstation illiterate, a car racing game. With both of us having slightly competitive natures we decided to complete the different challenges where you had to beat the clock or outrun the cops etc. Anyway 6hrs later we were finshed....literally. My right eye had gone slightly bloodshot and Don was on the couch with both of his shut! Tess meanwhile had crashed on the bed for 6 hours after feeling like she was coming down with a bug. So she was ready to play cards or something but we were finished. So at 9:30pm we were in bed and lights out!

Sunday morning we had a great meeting. 2 babies were dedicated and the elders prayed and prophesied over the little ones.

Don had been considering a bit of a retreat. I had this place called "Forest Way" on my mind. It is a beautiful spot near Stutterheim with rivers, dams and forest as part of the huge property. I had done some basic research and it was looking good. It all came together as I landed up being seated next to a lady called Janine. She introduced herslef to me and it turns out she lives at Forest way and either owns or runs the place (Can't remember the details). Anyway the long and the short of it is that I am taking Don out there tonight..so all sorted out! Great stuff...GOD is good! He will be there until sometime towards the end of the week.

Then we hit lunch, then Tess and I hit a couple of showhouses, then Don and I hit a disappointing touch rugby game before we all hit a great braai at the Rautenbachs. We were then all hit-out...so we hit the bed. You might have noticed as I just have that Tess was in absolutely no pictures...I can assure you that she is alive and fine. She took most of the pictures and all the other times I have absoluely no idea what happened..but as Walt says: That's the way the boerewors bends!

A Dreamed of Friday

Friday was a day with the mix of elements that I have dreamt of during the chillier months.... NO wind, WARM sunshine of about 26degrees, WARM sea water of about 20degrees, LOW tide, NO crowds, NO work, JUST chill time.

We hit Nahoon beach at about 2pm. PERFECT. Tess lay on her towel while Don and I almost dislocated our arms throwing the frisbee for an extended period of time. Perfect conditions...no reason to stop.... except for a swim to bodysurf the shorebreak that was running nicely. NO reason to get out of the water except for exhaustion and the need to carry on with the frisbee....then no reason to stop except to swim in the shorebreak which had increased in size and so Miller get pounded on the wave of the day. By now the sun had just dipped behind the sanddune...time 5:40pm. What a great day.
After supper Miller chilled at the house while Tess and I headed up to the prophetic training session with the Highway church. We had to get into groups of 3. 2 of the people would have a chat about their day or whatever while the other 1 had to pray and get a word for one of the 2! It was great!

After the meeting we swung by our place to pick up Don and then off to the Spur for coffee with all the HCC folk.

It's MILLER time!

Well Don Miller currently based in Mozambique formerly of Cape Town has come to stay with us here in East London for an indefinite period of time...he has yet to book a return to Cape Town flight! So our caravan has become his home. It has been a real blessing. I worked on Wednesday and then on Thursday I went out to site and took Don with me. There were loads of broken down trucks on the way out through the Transkei with the usual assortment of people, goats, cows, chickens and other "lack of road-sense" things floating around! There was still snow on the interior mountain ranges which was beautiful even thought it was warm on-site.

I spent the time on site collecting info and connecting with the guys while Don watched the Landy! It was good fun.

The bakkie is history....

On monday night we got a bit of a shock as we heard my boet had been involved in an accident. He was turning into the Spur parking lot to go to the hardware store when a bakkie going 100km/h plus some came through his passenger side. The impact almost broke my boets bakkie in 2 pieces. It ripped the canopy right off and sprayed the contents all over Ladies Mile. The people who witnessed the accident have all remarked how they could not believe the speed of the oncoming vehicle.

The good news is that Nick walked away from the prang shaken with a bump on his head but fine...he has been checked by good old Dr.Richards! The driver of the other bakkie is also fine health-wise but not legal-wise as he is only 17yrs old and needless to say has no license! The two other younger occupants are in hospital recovering after being taken away in an ambulance.

This is not my boet's first car accident that he should not have walked away from. I am sensing a bit of John 10:10a and at the same Divine protection and a call in the Lord. We are praying and trusting for Isaiah 6:1-8

If you would like to get hold of Nick for any reason, get hold of me and I will put you in touch...


Here are some pics of the bent bakkie. If you look at the bottom picture you will see that the canopy is nowhere to be seen!

A weekend of significances..

Friday was a great day as I got to hit the road in the Landy as I travelled 3hrs to PE for work. It was great and at times I felt like Arnie Schwarzenegger as I drove into the storm with all the traffic going the other way! The big bonus was hooking up with Andy Pearce for a significant chat. If all unfolds as we feel it will then the details of our chat will be revealed at a later stage!! I then headed for home.

The other significant news of the day was that Tess had an interview and was hired by a private practise starting in January 2007. We feel it is right in the Lord and are very excited about it.

Friday night we headed for a prayer meeting at Highway. Even with a small gale blowing we had over 100 people turnout to seek the Lord for the next season at Highway. It was a RIPPER!

Saturday morning we had a good sleep-in. Then off to watch a boring boring rugby match with Retief who has just returned from a couple of weeks on the mercy ships. Tess went in another direction to do some more sewing with Karen Marshall.

Saturday afternoon we headed back to Retief and Karen's place for Ian's 1yr birthday.
We used to look after him once a week while Retief and Karen were attending a course for about 12weeks.

It was fun except for this kid called Jessie ( The son of ex-springbok rugby player Henrich Vuls) who would not let me play with any of the toys. So while his dad was not looking I sorted him out. I reckon after I had taken the kid I could have taken his dad 'cos I was pumped!!Heinrich Vuls was not the only ex-springbok rugger there. Phillip Schutte who is about 3 storeys tall was also there...nations. I didn't mess with his kid.
Saturday night we went with a couple of friends to check out Pirates of the Carribean 2. It was average. Much darker and not nearly as funny as the first one but not bad.

Sunday was my first appeareance in the worship team as a singer...good times. It was a great meeting. Sunday afternoon I hit the weekly footy game while Tess went to look at some houses.
Sunday night our lead elder was preaching at a Presbyterian church so we went along to support. It was cool. The preach was a ripper. Then we had Walt, Gaylene and Andrew Harper around for coffee and another significant conversation occured which as with the earlier one may be expanded on at a later stage.

Snow in Umthata?!

Well I was on my way to site this morning just after 6am. The rain was thumping down and overtaking trucks was like overtaking a speedboat and going through the wake! There were branches, dirt and layers of water all over the place. About an hour into my trip and I was wondering about the terribly small amount of wisdom involved in being on the road in these conditions when my boss called and told me to turn around and come home. On site things had gone a bit pear-shaped with lots of rain and snow. Carports had collapsed and the tracks around site had become un-navigable.

Jody onsite has emailed me some pics...have a look..Canada, Russia.......nope, Umthata!!!! (The green pics are how it normally is!)