Kids Club and Youth Starts on Friday the 14th!

On Friday Valentine's Day will be a very exciting day for our kids and youth ministry.  Chris and I have been working hard over the past few summer weeks to do a complete overhaul on our children's ministry and our youth group.   With the children's ministry we have finally been able to purchase AWANA here in Australia and are super excited to see the potential of outreach it will have here. Melissa has for the past 9 years been spending lot's of time programming and sorting out every week the kids ministry items that we would include.   I am very excited to see what God has in store for our new AWANA program.  
The Youth have been getting together over the summer still on Sunday nights and it has been vital to see them all continue to grow in their faith spite all that has happened in our church recently with the loss of one of our youth. But, God has been faithful and has been in the midst of all our conversations and the youth have seen God already at work through all of this in their own lives.
Pray for Chris and I this week as we try to book accommodation for our youth camp that will be around Easter time.


We will kick Friday off with an Olympic party for both groups and focus on Finishing the race with Jesus Christ as our first love! 

First day of School!!!

First Day of School 2014

Today was our children's first day of school for 2014.  School starts in February in Australia. So, Makayla is now entering 5th grade, Dawson is entering 3rd grade, and Brayden is entering Pre Primary.  The kids are super excited about their teachers and are really excited to go to school.   Pray for Brayden this week as he actually only knows one child in his class, Dawson knows a small handful, and Makayla has gone into her class with 12 friends. Pray that they would be able to stand strong and be a Christian influence around their friends. Pray for them to have the strength to invite their friends to our afterschool program, and pray for them to do well.   As we start school, I am as a parent worried about the realities that this year  of school holds for us.

1) Both Makayla and Dawson sit the NAPLAN. NAPLAN is an Australia test probably similar to your Regents state type exams. So, the children sit them and then it places them amongst other children in Australia. Pray that our kids will learn and understand the concepts they are learning. 

2) With us coming home in November to do home ministries after being in Australia 5 years, our children will be missing about 7 weeks of school at the end of the year. Pray that our children will build strong bonds with their teachers so, that they are willing to meet us half way and help us educate our children from a long distance away!

3) Next week I step down as the school's P&C secretary. I have loved the job, but really felt God asking me to step away from a lot of the "smaller" jobs I was doing and really focus on the church this year.  I know that God will show me how to still connect with people and will open doors for me to meet people still. But, pray that someone would step up and take on the job.

We love the school we are a part of. We have been blessed to have children who have been able to hold their own, so they could attend a public school in Australia and meet great people and build great friendships!   God has truly blessed us with the community we are apart of. and, God has build a relationship  with the school so far that is amazing. Pray that we would continue to build our bond between our church and school and that our church would have a great influence on our community school.