We are going on a vacation

Friends, Lollie and I leave for the ocean tomorrow!
Have a great Christmas and Happy New Year,

We'll be back on the 2nd of January.

During this time we can't read ..

E-mails
Internet
Any bills
Bad weather

Geniet julle vakansie!

The thief in the night

We woke up this morning and found that our wheel (hub) caps were stolen last night. It's sick to think that someone jumped over our gate and stole them. I told Lollie: 'thankfully they only stole the caps', she responded that it's so sad that we should be grateful that they only stole our caps!

This week was a hard work week. Our whole community will be scaterred throughout South Africa and we decided to follow a joint liturgy wherever we are - a church in a box if you will. We prepared three services this week, I hope everyone will use them!

I'm using Typepad to build a site for our community. Check it out at kleipotgemeente.org.

This floated in cyberspace for the last few weeks, I guess someone found NEMO!!!

Guess what? I realized today that our faith community is totally organic. We are living the script of our own geography and not copying something that works in another city, country or continent. It takes so much pressure off! I guess it must be like finding out that you can only parent your children by being you. Kleipot gemeente is proving to be a wonderful experiment of home-grown grace. The best of all is that we don't have to attend conferences or read the latest blockbusters in church models. Anyhoo, just thought I would share.

A lot happened in the last week here in the Smith house:

- My dad had an operation on his shoulder. I’m the official dresser at the moment – it’s kind of weird to dress
my dad!
- Dirk (my brother) wrote the Charted Financial Analyst exam and studied his butt off. He also went to the Christmas party at my dad’s firm. (it was a fancy dress)
- Francois (the other brother) had his twentieth party and I acted as the official barbeque engineer.
- Kleipot Gemeente (our community) had a good week of fellowship, praying and growing together.
- Lollie ran her first ten kilometers on the road! She’s really running well, I’m battling to keep up with her.

God is good and the weather's good in Africa.

Taxi to soweto

Slimer and i went to Soweto today. Soweto is the toenship South of Johannesburg. It was created as a segregated black area during the apartheids regime. It was fun. My friend graciously donated his mattress to Gloria and she really appreciated it.