Wednesday 28 September 2005

iPod


Think i forgot to say... we'd also love an iPod!! We're praying that in also. As we shed all our CD's before we left, we have all our music as MP3. It totally makes sense!!! Pray it in guys!

Kareoke

I decided to keep posting on the blog little and often, as I'm aware that we have only really been writing on big occasions. This way, you'll get a far more balanced representation of our life!!!

So... the sofa and the bed arrived and they are great; Last night I had an extremely comfortable night sleep, and was able to wake up and sit on the sofa in our lounge. For some reason, what used to be normality feels likea total luxury!!!

Last night St Paul's held a karaoke night at our local pub; It was quite a lot of fun although i really don't enjoy getting up and doing karaoke. Never-the-less, the evening was a great success; Every couple of months we have big church socials, and it is great to get people together and chat to lots of different people.

We gave out awards to several acts; Sadly the staff were exempt from prizes. Rich and I closed the evening by murdering My Way!!! I think everyone was glad it was over by that point!!
Thats my news for the day...

PS we bought a cheap toaster last night, so you can cross that off your prayer list!!! We desperately needed one for our latest breakfast craze..... Bagels!

Tuesday 27 September 2005

New Sofa



Well this story is equally as awesome as the bed, car, and countless donations of money!!!!

As you'll probably know, we moved house little over 3 weeks ago, and for all of that time we have been living sofaless and having to sit on the floor. Now, I don't mind sitting on the floor all that much, but when you are having people over for dinner, it's nice to be able to offer them something more comfortable than a toilet seat!!!

Well, Laura's boss gave her a call on Monday (she owns a very very trendy design store called Eon). The shop has recently had a 3 seater sofa on display, and whilst on display one of its arms got scuffed. They fixed the problem, but because of the high standards of the shop and its trenyness, they are unable to sell it there.

So, guttingly they also didn't have enough space to keep the sofa in their store so she asked Laura if we would like to have it for FREE!!!! It's the same as the above photo!

This really is such an incredible blessing for us; This is a sofa that there is no way we could even consider affording - everything is seriously expensive in the shop, so to get it free really is awesome. The sofa arrives this afternoon which we are very excited about. Once we are furnished, we will do another video tour for all those absent!

God is SO good, and we're SO blessed by the generosity of the people here in New Zealand. If you want to continue praying with us, these are the things we're praying for now....

2 Widescreen TVs (one for us, one for Rich & Kath)
Coffee Table
Bedside Tables
Hi-Fi
Book case
Toaster
More money!!!

New Bed!!!

With a couple of different awesome stories of God's provision i thought i would split them up a little. As you may know, when we arrived in Auckland we had to borrow someones bed as we didn't have one, and certainly couldn't afford one!!! Well we have to give this bed back tomorrow as the Lady we borrowed it from is moving and needs it back.

We've been slightly concerned about this over the last couple of weeks, and have spent a fair old amount of time praying about it... On Sunday, someone came up to Laura at church in the morning and told her that she and her husband were going to buy us a bed. Sure enough, that afternoon we got a phone call from them; they were at Farmers (department store) buying us a queen size bed. In the shop, they were told that the bed could take up to 2 weeks to arrive.

Well, It arrived this morning with one day to spare!!! How awesome is God's provision; it's really awesome that he is able to use people to bless us when we need it the most - Praise God!!!

My guitar

So most of you will remember that before we left for New Zealand I arranged myself an endorsement with Avalon Guitars; I came away to Auckland with a beautiful L201 which is a sensational sounding guitar. There was a delay in me receiving the guitar because it had been sent off to Guitar & Bass magazine to be reviewed for their August edition.

So, I was walking along Ponsonby road on Saturday and found myself drift into a specialist magazine shop, and they had the guitar magazine in... And low and behold my beautiful little guitar was on page 30!!!

I took the liberty of visiting their website and purchased the article for download for nostalgia, and so that i could show you all what a beauty i play every week at church. You can download the review by clicking here

Wednesday 21 September 2005

Hello!


Hi everyone, sorry we haven't posted for a while, things have been busy and we've been having lots of fun!

We've just return from the staff retreat in Waiheke, a small island about a 40/50 minute ferry ride from Auckland, and had a really nice couple of days together-getting to know one another and getting an idea of were everyone is going in their roles and ministries in the church. The island was beautiful and we had fun playing rounders, french cricket and rugby on the beach.
Other events include a new worship night Paul has set up called 'seek', which went really well and everyone enjoyed.

My new job is going well although i've been very tired with the early starts (however i also love the early finish as well!). Holly is gorgeous and Stella and myself are getting to know how each other work!

We so value your prayers, support, emails, letters and phone calls-please keep them up! I'm not sure if you know our new details so here goes...

Our new telephone number is: 0046 9 3020491
Our address: 427/184 Symonds Street, Grafton, Auckland, NZ
Hope to hear from you soon! xxx

Monday 5 September 2005

All Blacks Game


I totally forgot when i blogged yesterday to write about the All Blacks game on Saturday. Firstly, It was fantastic to whitness them win; It makes a plesent change to be supporting the winning side after the embarassment of the Lions tour.

However, the NZ'ers just do not know how to support a team when they go to a match. There was pretty much no atmosphere whatsoever. It was a little dissapointing!!! Having been to an english football match, where you leave the stadium drained of all energy(through shouting and singing etc) I was heavily shocked that there was no singing, and relatively little crowd noise at all. We all just sat, very politely watching the 2 greatest rugby teams in the world, battle out the deciding match of the Tri-Nations competition.

Anyway, enough on that; Yesterday we picked up our new car - it's a Mazda Cronos 1.8i Automatic. It's a really great car for us, and we feel totally blessed by being given it! It's awesome how God is working things out here. This morning someone else came up to me and told me that God had told them to give us some money, wrote a cheque there and then and gave it to us!!!

Keep praying in the blessings guys!!! Love you all lots

Sunday 4 September 2005

The Move!!


Well, finally we are in our new flat and boy was it a mission!!! It was a total nightmare; I honestly never thought that moving house to be quite so stressful!! However, we are in our new place and it rocks!! It is warm, cosy, and cool!!

One of the stressful things (although minor) was that our sofas couldn't fit through the door - due to abnormal size feet and the doorway going straight in to a coridor there was no way of manoevering the things in. Needless to say, we finally gave up, and took a well over due trip to the Transfer Station (The Tip) and got rid of the sofas as well as a load of other junk that we have somehow acumalated in the 3 months that we have been here.

We are now SOFAless which is fairly frustrating!! So last night at home we sat down and spent some time praying; amongst other things, we pleaded for 2 things from God

  1. That God would provide us with quality furniture
  2. That God would provide us with a quality car (as we don't own one here, and have no way of being able to afford one.

We are faithful that God will answer prayer 1. This morning though I received a phone call in the office from a member of our congregation - he is getting a company car this afternoon with his job, and would there for like to give us the car that he owns... TODAY!!!! How amazing is that! God is so amazing! We feel blessed at this provision (although as I'm writing, Laura still doesn't know as I haven't been able to contact her!) and are more certain that God will provide every need we have.

Please continue to pray with us over the furniture, we really would love something to sit on!!!

Gotta go now, love you all