August 20th

Today was our last Sunday here - shame! It was the church's anniversary today and they had the President Elect of the Baptist Union of Queensland - Lorraine Walker - who preached. Goodness - two women preachers in less than a month! The morning service went really well - including my speedstacks demonstration in the children's talk about choosing good foundations - Christian's need to build on Christ. We had prepared a presentation as a thank you but because of technical hitches with the laptop at church we had to show it without sound. Ian thanked us for our involvement in the church and gave us a beautiful book called 'The Great South Land' which funnily enough was the title of the song that we had chosen to accompany our presentation. People have written some lovely messages to us in it.

After lunch at McDonalds (a most interesting Sunday lunch) we just had time to complete the communion service leaflet and get back to church for the Prayer Wheel Event. With only half an hour we managed to get nearly everything done but people began arriving before we were totally ready - Jon needed to get the photocopying of the service leaflet done, but someone was photocopying the womens' meeting devotions leaflet as more people wanted copies – it's taking over the world!!

We did communion as a guided service with led responses. We gave people the opportunity to share what God had laid on their hearts – and a couple of people spoke, though with a bit more time others might have been willing to share as well.

Once communion was finished we all took lots of photos of each other while we waited for the pizzas. We had a wonderful time of fellowship and were able to give our thank you cards to the church. Ian thanked us again at the end. Then more photos were taken and we swapped e-mails before we all came back to the flat with Kerry and Nancy for coffee.

We are both tired but glad that today seems to have been a real blessing to the people in the church.