December 4 - 10

Ken and I celebrated our six month anniversary this past Sunday and also welcomed Pepper, a 2-year-old fox terrier, into our family! We are so excited to have this little ball of energy to play with! We found her on accident - I talked Ken into visiting the SPCA (humane shelter for animals) but there were no dogs left. However, there was a sign for Pepper, a fox terrier, spade, and free! So we visited her, fell in love, and now have a new best friend in New Zealand!


Anglican church in Palmy that looked beautiful as the sun set on it


Pepper!!!

Besides playing with Pepper (and spoiling her rotten - she has a matching bed and food dish as well as a Christmas squeak toy and some dogie treats!) we celebrated our six months of marriage Saturday evening by going out to a nice dinner and getting martinis for dessert at a fancy lounge.

Dinner at the Mao Bar

The week was busy: The Olive Tree hit the press on Wednesday, so I spent most of Tuesday doing finishing touches. But the hard work paid off - sooooo many people have already commented to me how much they really enjoyed reading it! They said the layout was easy to follow, the stories were interesting, and they loved how large it was (20 pages)!! It should soon be uploaded onto the LCNZ website if you want to check it out: http://www.lutheran.org.nz/information.php?info_id=27 OR just go to http://www.lutheran.org.nz and click on "read about olive tree"

Ken also was busy writing and editing this week - a journal called The Lattice contacted him and asked for an article to be published later this month in their journal! It is a journal for young people of today who don't want a corporate ladder, but a corporate lattice. They asked for his opinion on how to balance work and life and family, so he wrote an article about letting the fields lay fallow. Check it out later this month at: http://www.thelatticegroup.org and click on "journal"

I finished outlining all the services for December and began getting everything in order for Christmas Eve and Christmas Day services (candles, the Christmas tree, and props for the Children's play). I also created a songbook of Christmas Carols for next weekend when I'm taking some people from church to the Lutheran Homes (retirement village) to sing carols! Plus I've been busy practicing piano for the Christmas Youth Fundraiser that Ken is leading for the youth on December 22 - it will be a donation based dinner and all funds raised will go towards helping a underprivileged village in the Darfur through the "Tear Fund" organization. If the youth can reach the goal of $600 that evening, Ken will let them shave his head!

Friday evening was the last night of the miracles Bible study and Ken wrapped it up with a interactive service that reviewed all seven miracles using all the youth's senses (we ate bread while he read the story of the feeding of the 5000, or we sang the song Forever for the miracle of healing the Roman officials son from afar, and we burned our sins at the altar for being healed like the lame man at the pool...)

Other exciting news at church: the mission outreach project team met last week to pray for a place to team up with. Please keep them in your prayers as they will meet again this week to continue the prayer/brainstorming sessions. They plan to arrive at a unanimous agreement of where to begin their partnership. Also, Sunday evening was Trinity's live worship service for the month and we did all Christmas songs! We reinvented O Come O Come Emmanuel and Joy To The World - everyone seemed to enjoy them. It was great to end this year with that team on such a good note.