News Update

Wow, we were so blessed this weekend! Thank you to all of you who made El’s visit to CT so special, she will be mailing soon but I just wanted to say thanks as well! Also, congrats to Al and Tess on the birth of Abigail! GOD rocks!

Last Tuesday, as you all know, was El’s birthday and so for her birthday I bought her a ticket to CT for the weekend and arranged with her mom and two of our best mates to throw her a baby shower – all as a surprise – which they pulled off superbly! On Tuesday evening we went to dinner at a stunning (and affordable!!) Italian restaurant at Clearwaters called Titolinos. We have walked passed it 100s of times and always say we’d like to ea there sometime. They have a mezzanine floor, which is where we sat, so you don’t see all the people walking passed and the music mix of big band, swing and 60’s allows you to forget that you’re in a mall, and we could have been at that beautiful place on Fish Hoek Main Rd, I forget the name, but it was awesome. We also hired Lord of the Rings III to watch in the evening.

Wednesday rolled out as usual, had a rocking time with our young people in the evening. We have started a course with them on their shape for ministry, so that was the intro night and it went really well.

I had worship on Thursday and El spent the evening prepping for her trip to CT, and writing 3 special letters for me to read on each day that she was away – and I thought I had all the surprises! We woke really early on Friday morning as El had to be at the airport at 04h30 for the 06h00 flight. We had breakfast together at the airport (well, I ate..) and then bade farewell.

I received my study material on Thursday and had decided that Friday evening would be devoted to watching the two movies that I’d rented and flipping through my UNISA stuff to see when my assignments were due. Paul came over and joined me for my first movie, and then, when I realised that I’d already watched the second one (dumbass!!) I dove into my books, to find out that my first assignment is due this Friday… El spent the day with her folks and Anthony, nice and chilled.

On Saturday I went to the shops (earlyish… about 11am) to pick up so neccesities and hoped to get a rug for the baby room that we’ve had our eye on for 2 months now. It was a little pricey so we prayed and felt that we needed the money up front and that when we had it, if the rug was still there, we’d get it. Well, it was still there, and I managed to negotiate a better price as well (must be the Durban/Scottish blood)! I also picked up some paint and started painting the skirtings in the baby room that were a badly varnished, old-school brown. They are now a clean, gloss white, which compliments the room way better than the previous hash job done before our arrival in JHB. El will no doubt fill you in on the host of surprises that she had! In the evening I finished my first assignment.

Sunday was awesome, church went really well, had lunch with the Smits, a great service in the evening, and then fetched El from Lanseria. After returning home, unpacking and ooohing and aaahhhing over all the baby stuff we flopped into bed after an amazing weekend for both of us.

Please keep El in your prayers as she has developed a nasty cold. I took her to the Doc on Monday and she’s been booked off for the week.

El's trip update

Today was El's surprise baby shower with all our friends and family in Cape Town! Thank you to everyone that was there, El is feeling so blessed and special and it's all thanks to you guys!

El was taken to breakfast and a special spa treatment for mom's-to-be, and then surprised with the shower this afternoon. I am glad that I sent her with a bigger suitcase, just hope it will be big enough to bring everything back in... otherwise our next CT visitors maybe temporarily solicited for their courier capabilities!!

I'll post more details when my wife and unborn children are back safe and sound - I can't wait to see all the awesome gifts and handmade goodies!

News Update

Today is El's birthday and I pray that it's going to be so special for her. She is going to be in CPT this weekend, which was a birthday surprise, so she is really excited to see as many of you as possible!

This passed week has been incredible! With Paul being away, I have been keeping things tight and had the awesome privilege of sharing with our church at all three services on Sunday, and leading worship for all of them! GOD has really laid in on my heart to share and expand on what it means to be an encourager as a Christian and I mailed it out to loads of my esteemed colleagues and received uplifting comments from almost all of them (some probably haven't read it yet...) so that was really good. The church received it well and there was an amazing vibe after the service, everyone really seemed adamant that they weren't going to wait before implementing the steps in their lives and I could see people all around encouraging one another - GOD is moving in our church and it's rocking! I'm even more excited for this Sunday, I'll be preaching on Excellence in Ministry, another topic that GOD has really put close to my heart.

El has had a good start to the term, she is looking so relaxed and in control, I'm really proud of her! She is teaching extra remedial classes to her kids that are struggling and even with the extra workload she's coping extremely well! Her colleagues are also being really encouraging and understanding. She will probably take her mat leave from the beginning of next term, and then work a month or so of the following term before it will be school holidays again. We are really praying for more work opportunities for her and myself, but we trust that GOD will provide for us as HE has done constantly since the day we stepped out of the boat and onto the water.

Last Wednesday we had an awesome evening with our young people. We have been waning a bit on our evening service attendance but our midweek is going strong. I shared with them from Eph 4 and reminded them that Sunday is about GOD, thats our priority day, not Wednesday, which is has become. They unanimously decided to recommit to Sunday nights and we had a social evening on Friday night where we ate pizza, made an ad to show to the morning service, and watched 'Anchorman'. It was a fantastic evening.

That's all for now, thank you to all of you who regularly support us with prayers, calls, sms' and emails!

All our love and blessings,
Tim, El and the twins

Encouragement

This post has moved to http://stoplistenlove.blogspot.com/, please view it there.

News Update

Another week has flown by and we’re almost into the third month of the year! Our week has been busy again but this weekend we’ve been able to relax and do very little, which has been a nice change.

On Monday El came home early from school as her cold symptoms were getting worse and she was very exhausted, had a headache and was coughing lots. I put her to bed and she managed to rest for most of the afternoon. I cooked supper for us and we loafed in front of the television. El tried to do some work, against my advice, but was exhausted again within about half an hour. Her vice principal, Mac, had told her that if she wasn’t feeling well she should not come into work on Tuesday and so I further encouraged her to take a day off. She has been working hard lately in order to stay in front of all her deadlines and is way ahead of schedule at the moment. I managed to start painting our burglar bars that were installed a year ago – that’s been a maintenance job WELL overdue.

So Tuesday was El’s “relax and rejuvenate” day. I popped out in the morning to get some meds from the pharmacy to help El recover and picked up some roses to brighten up the bedroom. The TLC seemed to work wonders as she was feeling way better and managed to do some admin in the afternoon whilst I was giving music lessons. I still have two students from last year and their lessons are now on the same afternoon, which suits me superbly. Paul and Matthew seemed to be getting sicker and both were suffering from some kind of chest issues. They both have asthma and so any kind of chest infection hits them pretty hard. Several other people in our church have been suffering from Bronchial infections so I guess it follows that we would pick it up to.

On Wednesday morning I was feeling pretty grotty but El was much better and ready for work again. Fortunately our probationer, Clarence, organized the collection of the Woolies food as I would not have been up to carting the crates around. We had an executive meeting in the evening Paul kept it short as he was not feeling well at all. I was really hoping that our building and maintenance commissioner would be at the meeting as he still has done nothing about our gutters and leak issues on certain walls that are losing their plaster. I have obtained quotes and will be putting up the gutters myself… I’ll let you know who that goes, probably a whole letter in itself!

I was feeling really sick on Thursday and probably should have stayed at home but forged along regardless. El was continuing to mend so that was encouraging. One of our young adults has been diagnosed with an Auto Immune disease and she has lost feeling in the left side of her body. She was admitted into Wilgeheuwel for a lumbar puncture and so I followed up with her mom on how she was doing. The doctors were not entirely sure of what to do but had Jeanine on hectic cortisone drips, so we’ve been praying for her big time! I had a worship practice in the evening and by the end of it was completely drained. It was with the other worship team and I was trying to help them improve musically, but it meant working on EVERY SINGLE song that they had chosen. They struggle with two fundamental issues, timing and tuning, so it’s not just an easy hour and a half practice. Plus, with me not feeling well it was a great effort.

Friday was a breathe of fresh air, both El and I were looking forward to a chilled weekend and I was having a youth commission meeting that I was very excited about. The meeting went really well and we are all excited to see this year through. I have someone in charge of Sunday School, teenchurch and Youth with me heading up the young adults and the commission. So, I pray that things will grow even more so that when it comes time for us to move on there will be a smooth transition and the youth will not collapse! The worship is going to be a little more difficult to leave behind, I keep praying that God will grow that area as well. He has made huge moves within the church’s understanding and acceptance of worship so that is enormously encouraging. I must also thank all of you who have encouraged me to keep on striving ahead!

Our cousin, Tarryn, was up here this weekend for a waterpolo competition with her school and so on Saturday we drove through to St Peter’s College to watch her play. Not being big waterpolo enthusiasts it was a nice change from our normal antics and it was a pleasure to watch such talented sportswomen. Tarryn is really good! On our way home in the evening we picked up a movie and some Chinese takeout and settled in for the night. We hired “Disturbia”, a movie about a teenager who is put under house arrest and through his absolute boredom starts to observe his neighbours and keeps track on what everyone gets up to. He starts to think that his one neighbour is a serial killer, so it gets pretty intense – if you like thrillers then it’s a good movie to watch.

We headed out to watch Tarryn’s last game again on Sunday morning and unfortunately they lost to Westerford, but they played well and, had their shooters not thrown directly at the goalie each time, would have won easily. It was really awesome to see Tarryn and were quite sad that we couldn’t have spent more time together. We heard news that Jeanine was doing much better and so that was a definite answer to prayer! In the evening El spent some time working whilst I ran the young adults home group. We had a fantastic turnout and some really meaningful time with God :).

Well that’s all for now, hope you enjoyed the Oscars last night – have put some new movies on our ‘to-do’ list! Have a blessed week!!!!

We have had an insanely busy two weeks and are feeling so drained and tired – we are so ready to come home for Christmas! This passed weekend was kind of the climax of all my efforts at work over the passed two weeks and El has been an absolute angel in helping me through it.

Two weeks back we had a surprise visit from my dad – he literally popped in for an hour and had lunch with me. He phoned me as I was walking home from the office and said that he was on his way – I didn't even know that he was in JHB! So that was fantastic! Then the next week (last weekend) Mike Horne was in JHB and spent the Sunday and Monday with us. He was playing a corporate gig in the evening out in Town and we were going to fetch him the following morning after church but we found out (just in time) that there was a massive cycle race on Sunday and that pretty much all the roads around us were going to be closed between 4am-4pm… so we decided to fetch Mike straight after his gig. So at midnight we took a drive through to Rivonia/Sandton area and were back home around 1:30am, and we were leading worship 8 hours later… that was just the start of the busyness…

On Monday last week I started off knowing that I had a lot to do, from prepping for three services (two morning services and the evening carol service) for which I was solely responsible for all three, to printing certificates for our Sunday School, finishing the editing of the Church preschool video to practicing carols and printing notices and programmes. So, I went into work with a game plan and then at 09h30 the power went off for four hours!

We continued to have another 6 power failures throughout the week, our photocopier jammed, the church computer lost half the files for the school video that I was busy with and rushing to get finished! Coupled with all these frustrations were a couple of difficult people to test my resolve. Then, to cap the work week off, MTN, who've had my cellphone for almost a month, called to let me know that it was repaired and ready for collection. So El and I went through to Northgate that afternoon to fetch it, only to be told that it actually hasn't been repaired and that because there was liquid damage they would not fix it and that I would need to buy a new phone. This was an absolute nonsense story as it is the second time that they've tried to fix it in three months and the first time they said that the problems were due to software. Now, when they realize that they might need to replace it (as per their policy) they say its not repairable and it's not their responsiblility! So I had words with the manager and they have booked it in for a THIRD time… we'll keep you updated.

El's school is busy winding down and last week we had a prize giving on the Tuesday night and their grade 7 farewell on Thursday night. On the Tuesday evening we had a power failure in the middle of the ceremony which was followed by a massive storm – so it made for a rather interesting evening. The Grade 7 farewell included an honours awards ceremony for which the headgirl took most of the awards and received two standing ovations, so it was quite a stirring evening. All of El's reports and admin are finished so she's pretty much in holiday mode already and comes home early everyday which is really awesome.

This passed weekend was really action packed. El and I had a worship commission meeting in the morning, which was followed by the preschool concert. Due to the computer issues I was unable to finish their video but managed to put a three-minute teaser together, which was well received. Then when we got home I worked on my sermon and the slides, then we went up to church to practice carols and our solo item with Catherine.

Paul and Catherine had bought Pirates of the Caribbean III so we borrowed that from them to chill a bit in the evening. I woke early on Sunday morning to finish my sermon prep and then El joined me at the second service. We had been invited to lunch with the Krige's (the people that gave us the iPod and curtains) and we drove with Paul and Catherine. They live in Dainfern, which is a STUNNING private estate. We were sent an sms for our access code and they literally scanned the car and numberplate at the entrance. We had a lovely lunch and arrived back just in time to start setting up for the carol service. All went well and the service was a great success. Many people have contacted me to say how much they enjoyed it. El, Catherine and I sang a solo item and it was such a blessing to be up their together.

We are looking forward to the next three weeks as we'll be winding down and getting ready for our long drive home – Anthony will also be staying with us for a while and we're really looking forward to having our little brother up here. We miss you all stacks!!

Immortalised in Clay

I now have the rare privilege of being immortalized in clay! One of the guys in our church, Solomon, left us a couple of months ago to look for work in Cape Town. He returned last week with this statue and said that he'd been praying about God's plan for his life and God showed him a picture of two men - Paul and I. He knew that God wanted him to come back here and get involved in church again - how awesome is that!

So, he's given us the statue and presented it to us along with a poem in our service yesterday.

Our Weekly Update

El and I had a fantastic week that was really really blessed and busy. We’re amped for the next couple of weeks as it’s always such an exciting time of year as we prepare to celebrate the birth of The King and get to share with others AND see you guys again! Well, on with last week.

El worked late at school almost everyday as she was busy with the décor for their fashionshow/pageant which was held on Friday night. I made good use of my afternoons and found myself with almost no work to do on Friday, which was perfect because, being the soundguy for El’s schools pageant, I needed to get there early to setup and test stuff whilst the kids were still there. I went through the day before to test the system and found that their tweeters were blown… so that was typical of a school system, and of course, no-one understood what I was talking about but they knew that the sound was terrible. I helped El and her colleagues hang drapes and pin the lettering of “A night with the stars” – which left us all covered in glitter. On Friday I left work early and took my speakers through to use alongside the school's, and the sound was a million times better (apporximately)... Up until Thursday we still hadn’t been told what music they wanted to use so I just had a whole lot of tracks in a playlist on our Mac ready to play and by Friday evening, 5 minutes AFTER the show was scheduled to begin, I was still being given music by some of the performers!! Despite the organizational hinderances the show went off extremely well. The MC, Luan de Beer, was an excellent showman and he had a whole lot of swing backing tracks (songs like Mack the Knife and Sway)… which I quickly ripped to the Mac for future use… that were very very good and he put on a great performance.

My music lessons went pretty well – they all happened on Tuesday so I killed three birds with one stone. The piano student, Tristan, is needing some serious motivation from his parents, I hope they keep at him and encourage him to stick to it – otherwise I might be one student less next year. But that may not be a bad thing as God will have something new in store me! I played at a memorial service on Wednesday, some family who live in the area and just wanted to use our church, minister and organist.

My evening commitments of home group and worship unfolded with nary a hitch. El spent most evenings marking assessments for her kids and working on reports. Home group was just a chilled evening as all the guys are busy with exams so we played Dwala and laughed a lot – one of the girls said it was just what they needed to break the stress of exams. Worship also went well and they managed to retain what I taught them as Sunday’s service was extremely encouraging. I have felt like the work we put in on a Thursday evening never pays off but I have seen a break in the clouds and they are definitely improving. It is also encouraging to hear the increased volume of our church’s response to the worship, more and more people are singing and they are not holding anything back – ROCK ON!

On Saturday El and I had a royal lie in which was followed by a lovely breakfast at Mugg&Bean whilst we waited for our car to be cleaned. It took them almost 2 hours to finish the car because it was so filthy – it was well overdue. We browsed the shops and then joined the Smits for an afternoon braai and swim in the new pool. We capped the evening off by playing poker and after losing the first round hopelessly, I managed to call in on Lady Luck and won the second round! I tried Gunther’s famous shuffling trick but they caught me out… I need a little more practice!

Anthony and Nadia invited us to coffee and a movie last night so we joined them at Clearwaters in the evening and watched Mr Woodcock, which lived up to it’s good reviews.

This week we have two functions on at El’s school and I need to get started on rehearsals for our carol service, so we have another really busy week planned. We wish all of you a blessed week!

Our Weekly Update (5 Nov)

El and I seem to have fully recovered from our gastric flu last weekend and are feeling much better, but now El seems to have developed a sore throat and nasal drip. She’s a fighter though, so I’m sure she’ll make it through… We have her school’s fashion show at the end of this week so we’re gonna be pretty busy with that this week. We had a very busy weekend and it was thoroughly enjoyable!

Paul was out of the office the whole week on study leave so I had the days to myself and as I was preaching yesterday I spent most of my time preparing the message and an extra little message on Halloween – which was really fun to do. I’ll be sending the powerpoint to you all for your own edification – there was a lot of info that I didn’t actually know. I presented it to the Sunday school during the service as they joined us for worship – they seemed to stay focused which was awesome.

At our worship practice on Thursday evening I got our one guitarist to play electric and she really enjoyed it – which is very kiff. I’m hoping that she’ll grow in this instrument and then we’ll be able to expand our capabilities as a band. She also brought her friend along who used to play in the evening services and she was not bad at all on acoustic. Still plays some oudoos chords but she strums well – and that’s quite something for our current standards. So, next year I’ll be looking to seriously up the standard of worship – still just need two capable drummers… (hint hint mr Hopkins…)

I think the highlight of our week was our whole weekend… On Friday our grass for our back section of the house arrived so I was keen to get it laid so that it could start to take and green up a bit. El and I spent our whole afternoon at Clearwaters doing the weekly shopping vibe. On Saturday morning I got Themba to help me lay the grass and I’m glad I did that because it was actually a huge graft. In the afternoon El went to a scrap-book workshop on Saturday and I went to play PS2 with Anthony as Nadia was at the workshop with El. So we had a rocking guy’s afternoon playing racing and combat games and the ladies had fun doing chick stuff. We had supper with Nadia and Anthony that evening and by the time we got home we were absolutely FINISHED. I had an early wakeup call as I was preaching at both services and needed to be prepped and up at the church by 07h15. Both services went really well and were well attended. Several people have asked me for the notes on my sermon and for the notes of the Halloween presentation – which was very encouraging.

Our friends from Springs – Terry, her son Gavin and his fiancé Di – joined us for the service and then stayed on for a braai for lunch and we had a great afternoon with them. Gav and Di have a little daughter (we went to her 1st birthday earlier in the year) and she is growing up incredibly fast! And what a handful, when we have kids I think we’ll press the chapter skip button and go from 12 months to four years old… that’ll be a winner I think.

Shelly, our tortoise, is doing well – she’s survived the kitten playing ‘paw hockey’ with her and Honey’s attempt to eat her… She mostly stays in a box in the spare room which is where we plan to keep her until we can get a safe outside pen of sorts for her. Roo’s stitches have pretty much fallen out all by themselves and she’s become a real little terror, hiding under the bed and attacking our feet in the mornings – she’s really cute. The dogs are well, barking far too much, but not as much as Paul’s Zeke, so I guess that’s not too bad.

We wish you all a blessed week, think of us lots!

Our Weekly Update

Dear family and friends

El and I both had bouts of gastric flu this weekend and we had our NZ cousin Hannah and her new husband staying with us… so it was pretty hectic! All in all, though, it was a rocking weekend because we got to spend a lot of time just chilling and catching up on the last 9 years or so – which was awesome. Another new addition to our family arrived last week – a baby tortoise… it’s the cutest thing ever!

Monday morning El took Roo to the vet to have her kittyrectimy. We had borrowed a fancy cat transporter vibe from Heather and Owen and on the way to the vet Roo managed to get out of it! There was one catch missing along the side and she managed to force it open far enough to break the second catch and push the door off… that’s determination! When El got back from school in the afternoon we went to fetch her and she was highly cantankerous to say the least, the drugs weren’t kind to her temperament. She was fine on the way home but when we took her to our room she swore and moaned whenever we tried to pick her up to move her. We decided that she would recover best with some alone-time so closed her in our bedroom for the evening. I got the Weber fired up and we had a braai for supper, the weather was stunning.

On Tuesday I tried something new with my two guitar students, I combined their lessons to try and get them to compete with one another. It worked fabulously and they seem lank amped to practice for next week now. El’s colleague is still off on personal issue reasons and so school is still pretty hectic. They’re also in the process of organizing a fashion show so she’s busy busy busy. I’m going to be operating the sound desk and now they’ve also asked me to source all the music… and the show is in a week’s time! But it’ll all be good fun.

Hannah and Caleb arrived on Friday afternoon and shortly after we sat down to have some coffee El started feeling very nauseous… it was quite sudden and unexpected and we thought it may have been food poisoning or something. She got progressively worse as the evening wore on so we stayed in and watched a DVD. The weather was also very miserable so it worked out quite well actually. We had planned to go to Monte Casino on Saturday and check out their birdpark with the cousins (Stu and Sarah you remember the bird park in the yellow car…) but the weather was just as miserable as the day before, really bucketing down. El was not any better on Saturday morning so I went to the chemist and took H&C with me. When I got to the dispensary the pharmo told us that gastric flu was rife and they were having loads of people coming in with the same symptoms that El had – upset tummy and aching joints and muscles. They told me that I had to get her to a doctor for a drip, which seemed a little intense to me, lover of needles and hospital stuff, so I phoned the family nurse (me mom) and she said plenty of fluids, some painkillers and TLC should to the trick. So we stocked up on fruit juices, coke and lucozade and headed home. El spent the whole day resting but joined us in the lounge for a movie in the evening. Caleb brought a copy of his band’s demo and I was lank impressed with it – they’re called Fly by Wire and sound (in my opinion) like Foo Fighters, which is a good thing :). They are very tight on the recording and have a full sound, keep an eye out for them in the shops!!

We introduced the New Zealanders to the SA braai on Saturday night and El was feeling much better. We decided to skip church and try for Monte’s again if the weather was good. The weather was stunning but then I woke up with the GF… so that was bad bad bad luck! I agreed to brave a breakfast as long as we were close to some public facilities so we drove through to Clearwater and had a great meal together. In the afternoon we had invited some people around for a braai so I asked Gabba to take the position of braaimaster so that I could sleep. When we got home from Clearwater I was absolutely finished and crashed for a couple of hours. It was great to see Gabba and Yvette again, we haven’t been able to hook up for a couple of weeks so I was glad that we could spend the afternoon with them (even if it wasn’t that long for me… but El enjoyed the afternoon).

I couldn’t get out of work on Monday and neither could El, although both of us still felt pretty grotty. I got to jam a bit with Caleb before we took them off to the airport for the stay in CT. We were sad to see them go as we got along really well and had so much in common, hopefully we’ll be able to catch them on their way home at the end of November.

We wish you all the best of God’s presence and blessing in your weeks