Our Normal Busy Lives! Let me start out by apologizing to everyone out there in blog world that likes to keep updated on our lives through this site. I have been very lazy with this blog and I will try to do better in the near future. So many things have happened in our lives and our ministry over the past few weeks that I have decided to designate a paragraph for each thing. (You may need a few minutes to read it all) So get yourself a cup of coffee, sit back and enjoy my review of us over the past few weeks.

1. Mum and Dad George's Visit- They were here for three weeks and we had a great time spending time with them. It was great because we were saying that when we are home in the states we travel so much that we don't even see them as much as we did in those three weeks. We spent the first week living our lives. Mum enjoyed seeing how we live our daily lives and getting to know our church family and hanging with the grandkids. The second week, we visited a lot of the local attractions that Perth has to offer (many of which we had never done). There were some busy days but evenings were nice to relax and enjoy family at our house. The third week we took a road trip. We went for a six day trip down south where we hiked the highest point in the southwest of Australia, stayed at several different caravan parks and drove just over 1000 kilometers. Their visit seemed short but we did have a great time and we are so blessed to have wonderful parents. Thanks mum and dad for making the "long" trip to Australia.

2. Church Beach BBQ- The first Saturday that mum and dad were here, we had a church bbq at the beach. We dipped dad in sun-screen and headed down to the sand. We had a great turnout and everyone enjoyed themselves. We had several new young adults come and join us for our picnic and our time was very enjoyable.

3. Valentine's Banquet- The youth group put on a Valentine's banquet and we had around 40 people in attendance. Everyone said that it was very good and are looking forward to next year. The most exciting thing was how excited the teens were to serve. That was our original purpose, to allow the teens an opportunity to serve others, and we think we succeeded in that. We were able to make a few hundred bucks for the youth group as well.

4. Melissa the preacher- We are currently in a series "Faces of Easter" where we look at several characters in the Easter story. Melissa took on the task of Peter and did a great job. Her message was both informative and challenging and all of our church members enjoyed it. Now maybe I can have a week off once in a while...!

5. Youth Group Sausage Sizzle- We held a sausage sizzle for all the teens in the area where we openned up the youth centre and gave out free food. We had 20 kids (a few of our regulars were missing as well) and we were very encouraged to see that many teens said they will be back next week. It was a good night and I am still the ping pong champ over the teens!

6. Easter Egg Hunt- On Palm Sunday we had our second annual Easter egg hunt in Landsdale. We had around 75-80 people and many new families. We were very excited to see all of our church pull together to put this event on. There was kilos of chocolate, crafts, contests, give aways and egg tossing. To reach out to people this year, we had a booth where they made the christian bracelets with the colors, and at each spot was a card, and the parents could read what the colors represented to their children. We also had a skit room, where we had the keeper of the tomb do a mystery skit and the kids would go into the tomb and figure out the surprise that Jesus Christ rose from the dead! It was great and alot of fun. Please pray with us that we will be able to make contact with the families that came for the first time and somehow tie their chilren into kids club and into our church.

7. Wilson- We have a housemate. He is a nursing student from Zimbabwe who is attending a University close to our home. To make a long story short, he was praying for a Christian family to stay with closer to his school and we were praying for help from God with a bit of relief on our finances because of the exchange rate right now. Wilson stays in our guest room and has been a blessing to have in our home. He is a confident Christian and has already been an encouragement to me.

8. Greenwood High School- Chris has been invited to share an Easter message at a local PUBLIC high school. Look here later this week to see how it went. Pray that God will be able to use me in that setting to challenge the teens.

I hope that gives you a picture of what we have been up to over the past few weeks. If there is something that you were hoping to be updated on that I missed, please just leave a comment with your question and I will try to answer for you. Otherwise, I will see you next time. God bless you and have a wonderful Easter weekend.