Felt Good to be Back in the Saddle!

It seems as though I am in a once a week mood these days when it comes to blogging. Sorry there are few pictures yet since my computer hard drive crashed I lost them all. Boohoo:(.

Last week we enjoyed more of the new country that we get to live and minister in. We enjoyed a couple of days in a city 2 hours drive from here named Rotorua. Very beautiful and very touristy and of course that means mucho denarii’s! It helped that one of the families in the church has access to an apartment style room that took a lot of the edge off financially. We had a really good time. We did a couple of crazy fun things. One called the Lug(sp?) and the other called Zorbing. Here are a couple of photos that we took from these different events.




This week I also took a one-day retreat with John and Carolyn to pray, to seek the Lord and to simply chat and get to know one another. It was a really good time and we made plans to repeat the process for the next little while as we continue to get to know and understand each other.

And probably the biggest event for me personally was getting back behind the pulpit again. It has been a good long 7 months with a few speaking engagements here and there but this was the real deal. After 10 months of planning, praying, doubting, second guessing, finding faith to meet the demands of this process it all became the real deal once I stood to proclaim what the Lord had put on my heart. I have started with a series called "His-Story in my life." and it has been a total delight to reminisce since I was a kid the different times that God and I have had some pretty special moments, some serious moments, some fun filled joyful moments and some times where we just couldn’t seem to get along. My prayer is that the folks here will get a pretty good idea of who I am, what makes me tick, what I love and hate, what I struggle with and what I have gained victory over, and secondly I will be encouraging them to share "His-story" in their lives with each other as well along the way. I preached for 30 minutes and only got to age 8 so I figure I should be at this for a few weeks anyway... there are some things you just cant rush.














All of this good stuff was followed a wonderful afternoon at the beach with friends and then a suprise bbq when a family on the beach (who happened to notice their son Matt hanging out with us) invited us over to their amazing home just off the beach. We all had a great time. Any way, thanks for reading, thanks for praying and also thanks for giving to keep us alive and kicking over here.
God is Good All the Time!