Building Work Week

Building Work Week was the title of the week when everyone was expected to take their part in repairing and repainting our church building in Dronfield it could be great fun and we had plenty of time for fellowship while we worked. We haven't done much decorating since leaving the UK, there was a little in Denmark 

but it was more just freshening up the paint than wholesale from scratch

 decorating. It has been great fun getting back to decorating and it is nice to see the transformation and Ian finally got a tool belt too- so he is a happy bunny and now feels like a proper professional. Mind you I don't think our neighbour below will echo are thoughts as we laid the laminate flooring down on Sunday, please pray for him we would like to be good neighbours but at the moment we must get our apartment done before the arrival of our furniture on Thursday when we won't have a lot of room to decorate and lay floors. (It has been raining most of the time since we got here so please also pray that it is fine when our furniture arrives.)

The rain means that the dirt roads around here are not so good but that did mean that the truck was well and truly tested this week with off-road like conditions. We were looking for the tip (landfill) and our friend couldn't remember where it was, although he thought he did, so he rang someone else. We followed the instructions but it was at this point that we discovered that they had difficulty with left and right, so all in all we had a wonderful detour on some very muddy roads which Ian thoroughly enjoyed.

Steve, Natalija, Alona, Samuel and the new addition to the family, Simon visited on Saturday and since we only have two of everything including the rings to cook on (two don't work) we went out for a meal. As we sat around talking about the church and where we feel we fit in, our hopes and expectations I remember thinking that this sure feels like church to me. Sharing a meal and our faith together sounds like the church of Acts. 

Acts 2:46 Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts.

We are endevouring to meet with other Christians rather than go to meetings. Hebrews 10:25 says "Let us not give up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but let us encourage one another—and all the more as you see the Day approaching." I often think that we interpret that as do not give up going to meetings, rather than do not give up meeting together to encourage one another. We can all go to meetings and not be encouraged by anyone, in fact we can all go to a meeting and not even talk to anyone and that kind of misses the point. We were certainly encouraged by our visit from our friends, I got to cuddle a little baby, and Ian and Steve got to take off some more revolting cladding (cladding can look good but not the way it has been done, and most of it is damaged now as well, thanks to the installation of the new radiators you can see the before picture and next week the transformation) and we also got to share and build each other up at the same time. Perfect!