Finnie, Dean and Paula - South Africa
Prayer Update
August 2006
Our prayer e:Mail update is long overdue but we were out of the country for 5 weeks spanning June and July . Since arriving back in Somerset West we do not seem to have had a moment’s break with catching up on important things – like writing this update! However, we do hope that many of you have been catching up with our news via our blogs online: . We really plugged this during our recent mission education trip to the UK and we hope that you are enjoying the news and photos.
Well, we have now been back from the UK for a month and have arrived to the harshest South African winter for many years - typical! It really is freezing cold, gale force winds, driving rain etc. etc. As a result our wood pile is diminishing rapidly and the boys have been sick non-stop. Poor Eli has had 2 ear infections and a cold and Joel has had 2 colds and his usual bought of bronchialitis. We can't wait for summer - bring it on!
Mission education was a very good time but we were exhausted by the time we got back home. We managed to stay in 6 different places during the 5 weeks and spoke on 8 different occasions including the usual church visits, a Rotary club lunch, a pre-school and a cheese and wine just to add to the variety! It was great to visit 2 new churches and to forge some excellent links there as well as to return to some older partnerships and renew our acquaintances there. We are now praying for good fruit as our budget is ever increasing! We know that people were touched by the presentations as many of you came to tell us and we hope that you are now better equipped to pray for both Chris Nissen and our family. Mission ed' is a bit of a double edged sword, it is so vital and enjoyable(!) and yet it is so hard on family life. Having said that, the boys coped remarkably and did us proud all the way, but we have come home knowing that we must think hard about how we do things next time. In this vein we just did not see as many of you as we would have liked, but we hope you will understand that we did all was humanly possible without putting undue pressure on the family as a whole. We will try our best next time, but please bear with us.
Joel is growing up fast. We have just secured a Nursery place for him in a local school from January, so we are delighted about that. He still loves his play group and is very much one of the 'big boys' there. It is going to be quite a wrench for us all and for his teachers to say goodbye in December. He loves Eli to bits but is starting to get more challenged by him now that he can independently swipe Joel's toys from under his nose. They can really make each other laugh and we often smile at their communication skills! Joel's main passions in life are construction vehicles (all Bob the Builder's crew); Thomas the Tank Engine (especially since a trip with Grandad on a steam train in the UK); airplanes, helicopters and reading his books.
Eli is an absolute delight. At 7.5 months now he is crawling and just about the opposite to Joel as a baby as you can imagine. It is fun learning all the development stages with him and he has a real love of life. He is incredibly sociable and, thankfully, will go to anyone. He has beaten 9000+ entrants to become a finalist in the Johnson and Johnson Baby of the Year 2006, which we think is really funny - so watch this space!! Eli loves food and is a big boy, extremely strong and already eyeing up the furniture or any nearby leg to work out how to climb up. A real current prayer need is that we find someone to look after him for 1 morning a week to enable Paula's work in Chris Nissen to continue. Up to now Dean has been doing this, but it isn't really viable and is becoming a strain for him.
We received a really warm and delighted welcome back from our friends in Chris Nissen, which was so encouraging. We seemed to have touched the ground running and are already caught up in the long rounds of visiting, funerals, sorting out feuding, hospital visits etc. etc. It is exhausting, and having come back too tired, we thank God that it looks like we are going to be able to get away in September to a friend's house in the Garden Route. Our cell group and Bible study groups have started back really well and both have grown. Please pray for good fruit this term.
We have come back having made certain decisions about our working patterns, friendships etc here, so please pray that we will stick to them and that God would honour and continue to bless all that we do. We desperately need to find some space as a family and as a couple, so please pray for this.
Thank you so much for your continuing partnership in all that we do.
With lots of love
Paula, Dean, Joel and Eli
XXX
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