Our church organised a PINK pampering session for the ladies a couple of weeks ago. About 50 ladies turned up from all over Matamata! It was held in a really pretty family ran restaurant down the road from town.

They invited a professional make up artist, manicurist, hairdresser and masseuse and we could pay a minimum fee to sign up and enjoy the services! It was great!

I was actually really exhausted by evening time and wasn't up to going but so glad I did! I enjoyed the food, drinks and company. Although I didn't sign up for anything, I was blessed with a manicure!

Happy happy

Since we returned, we've been going to a playgroup at church on Monday mornings. It's called Monsters! It's a bit like our church's mums group back home.

We are only a very small church with about 50-60 people on a regular Sunday plus 10-20 kids. So, our very creative Pastor's wife Stace plans most of these gatherings. The best part about this playgroup is that most of the people that come are not from the church! What amazing place for outreach and just hanging out with people from the community. It's not just for mums and kids, dads that are free also come along!

This week we had a special theme party called Rainbow Monday. Sophie won the best dressed award! Haha she looked most like a rainbow thanks to the top that Mama sent last week. She didn't even realise what was going on and why she got a prize. She was too busy decorating cookies, eating rainbow fruit and candy sticks and playing!

It was really great fun. I'm so thankful for the effort that Stace and the others put in to make it such a wonderful time for the kids!

James found out about Soul Church through a doctor in town and we decided to go check it out with the Freestones. It’s on Sunday at 6pm.

When we arrived, the kids were eating fish and chips for dinner and Sophie happily joined in with Toby and Eli. Little Soul (the kids’ church) start at 5.45pm and they serve fish and chips for the kids! Woo hoo! That’s a real draw. It’s not a big thing for Sophie because she’s not into fried fish or chips BUT I thought it was such a cool idea! We had a good chat with the pastor’s wife who was also in charge of the children’s ministry. She was really enthusiatic and very nice. Sophie was fine for a while and when dinner ended and they went for dancing and worship time, she came to get me. So I joined in for a bit. It was SO FUN! We danced to some cool bible verse music with cool actions (no hillsongs here, yey!). After that they did some craft and then watched TV. When Soph was more settled, I went back to the main service which was just next door. The following week, she was totally fine on her own which was great.

Soul Church starts at 6pm – extremely seeker friendly timing. It’s great for us because after a long week, we can sleep in on a Sunday and spend some family time. Service is short, ended by 7/7.30pm and very simple preaching. In fact, they are in their Commitment series and the pastor was challenging the congregation to commit. Soul is a part of the Mosaic church in the US. They started as a home church, a church plant and grew. They just started meeting as a service recently. The pastor has a full time job but he and his wife took the challenge and planted the church in Matamata. It really reminded me of early HeartBeat days where everyone knew everyone. Lotsa youths and young adults. Prob only about 60 people each week. So much potential for growth here. Just felt like God gave me a burden to pray for the staff and leaders and a passion to serve in anyway possible in this growing church. We like the family atmosphere.

We’re looking forward to spend more time to get to know the people here and grow with them over the next year. In fact, I know I really like it because I’m going to miss it when we’re away and Sophie keeps asking when we’re going back.

The great thing about this particular YWAM base is that we try our best to involve the kids in all that we do. I’m finding myself leading quite a bit of the family events e.g games, intercession, worship etc. I’ve not really done these things before with children coz I used to work with youths more. It’s really quite different working with young children and some don’t even speak English well. But I’m really enjoying it – singing Who’s the King of the Jungle?, pretending to be able to play the guitar (hiak!) and being silly… secretly loving it!

Last week, we had class intercession and we made prayer posters (making collages of prayer items) for our outreach locations and had a time of popcorn prayer (one sentence prayer).

If anyone has more ideas of how to involve the families in prayer and worship, I’d really like to learn more! Pls email me!