The weekend

Well this weekend has been really fantastic - I'll start at the beginning with Friday; we are so loving having Fridays off, but of course this last Friday was special because it was my 25th Birthday - so in celebration, Laura took me out for a fantastic brunch in Mission Bay; It was such a gorgeous day on Friday that we sat up on the balcony of De Fontaine and ate our breakfast whilst basking in the very hot sun, watching the boats out on the water - what could be a better way to start the day.

From there, we made our way over to a fantastic crazy golf course right next to the airport - i feel a great deal of shame in saying that I lost to Laura by 7 shots - my only solice was that we followed crazy golf with 100 balls at the driving range and boy did i perform!!! It was great to hit some balls, although the hire clubs were just totally shocking!!!

So you'd be fooled to think that our day ended here - we went on from the driving range to have a cup of tea and piece of chocolate in Parnell which is another really nice part of town. We popped in on our friend Brent who has a fantastic little Jewellery store - he makes his own stuff and is seriously one of the most talented jewellers in New Zealand, and probably beyond - check him out. Him and his wife Anna have been really fantastic, and we're loving hanging out and getting to know them. Brent is also about to buy a Bow and we're gonna get into a bit of Archery - very excited by that!!!

So the evening started with a burger fuel which i believe i wrote about just a few days ago - i was really dissapointed that i couldn't finish the bastard; it completey defeated me!! We moved on from there to a pool bar where we played several rounds of killer pool. We ended up in a very trendy bar in Parnell, only ruined by the disproportionate volume of the music - it was a massive bar with probably anout 25 peeps in it, but a pumping sound system with a DJ - very surreal. The night had all but ended at midnight when everyone had left - the party got started again though when Brent arrived, shortly followed by Paul Trevor of Chorleywood - we've been having lots of fun with Paul, and love having him around over here.

So then, in recovery we slepped in on Saturday until 1:30 which was blissfull - the last 7 weeks have been utterly exhausting, and non stop. We chilled out for most of the day before heading over to Brent & Anna's for an Indian and DVD - all i can say is, there is nothing like an English Currry; certainly something that the Kiwis haven't mastered!!! Was nice though, just not English!!

So today we had SOAK which went to an absolute storm - we clad the church with coloured mood lighting and set up prayer stations all around the place - a slight logistical task as we still have pews here that don't move - we got it looking pretty good though.
The evening started with a talk by me on the evening, we then had a great time of worship led by me, and then guys went off and did the prayer stations with the band playing in the background - the whole evening went down so well; the response to the evening was actually fairly overwhelming.

A lot of the congregation have come from large pentecostal churches in Auckland where there often isn't space to SOAK in worship - it can tend to be quite prescriptive from what i've worked out, so tonight was really refreshing for people to have 45 minutes to just really get into God and have no songs or hype; people were just so hungry. The potential in the church is so huge, and the temperature is certainly rising. We're so excited to see what God does here - we really are here at the start of somethign quite incredible...

We are really anticipated the arrival of Rich & Kath next weekend - they are going to be such an asset to the team and we can't wait to hang out with them.

So its getting pretty late, so I'll love ya and leave ya