November 6-12

Yeay for Guy Fawkes! Here in New Zealand Guy Fawkes Day is a huge celebration and for the last two weeks we've been watching fireworks go off every night. It's awesome how you can walk into any store and buy backyard fireworks too! And of course, the youth group had to celebrate along with everyone else and on Friday we arranged for the youth and their families to go out to Rick and Kerri's house for food, a bonfire and a fireworks show out on their farm. It was a blast playing soccer and cricket with everyone, visiting with the parents of some youth, and playing with sparklers. Saturday we attended ANOTHER Guy Fawkes celebration that Richard (the drummer for the new team at Trinity) threw for friends in Feilding. Unfortunately, you'll just have to imagine these fun events since I forgot my camera on both occassions!

Some other fun events that occured this weekend: Ken gave the children's message this Sunday at both St. Luke's and Trinity, and I got to help by teaching the kids a fun song: "I Just Wanna Be A Sheep." Otherwise, this was one of the first Sunday's we were able to worship together without doing anything else! It was nice. After church Ken led another confirmation lesson, and then we were out the door to Trinity to practice with the team out there before worship. It's awesome to see how willing and excited they are for this new praise team! Worship ran very smooth out there as well, and Ken played the newest musical edition for the church that PLT allowed me to purchase: the djimbay! It is a small african drum with a nice deep "boom" sound, played between your legs. We're really excited to teach others how to use it - it will be great for slower/softer songs where a drum set isn't needed, but some sort of percussion is. As great as Sunday was, there also was some sad news dropped: Pastor and his family are moving back to Australia come January 2008 taking a call in Adelaide...that leaves us in an interesting position since Pastor was Ken's mentor/supervisor for internship. It's amazing how God's timing works though because next Monday Dr. Ross (internship advisor) is coming out to evaluate Ken as well as talk to PLT and the new LCNZ President to see who will be the next advisor. The timing couldn't be better. But please keep the Manawatu parish in your prayers since no one expected Greg to take the call...it came as quite the shocker and gutted a lot of members.

Monday was an amazing day of relaxation and sunshine! Saturday morning when Ken went to Shedmens (men's Bible study), I took a walk on the river with Jen and her new dog, Anna! So Monday, we went over and took Anna for a ride to the river again and went on a nice walk. Enjoy the pictures of the Manawatu river next to our house and Anna having a blast in it!

After our walk, we went home and did some work around the house/outside, and enjoyed some strawberries and cream! Then I took a 20 minute sunbath. It was glorious! We ended the day with a movie and made tacos...a great break since this past week we were busy at the church every day and every night between music groups, feeding the homeless ministry (Share N Care), and children's ministry meetings...and this next week looks very similar.

Our backyard

Our little patio set

A rose from our rosebush

This week God made something very evident to us through our quiet times: just how in control of life He really is! Sometimes it's easy to think we do everything and get ourselves where we are, but then we read something like "A man's steps are from the Lord; how then can man understand his way?" in Proverbs 20:24. Or "The king's heart is a steam of water in the hand of the Lord; he turns it wherever he will" in Proverbs 21:1. Or again, "The lot is cast into the lap, but its every decision is from the Lord" in Proverbs 16:33. It's pretty awesome to realize how important each and every one of us is to the Lord, that He invests so much time into each and every one of our lives!