Today we enjoyed worship at this little church down the road from us—Jensen Uniting Church. We were 2 of I think 17 in attendance including the Pastor—Peter Ireland. It was a great group of women who were there—poor Chris was out numbered—and they truly made us feel welcome though it was hard to not be noticed with a congregation that small. I guess we can’t tease Paula about the size of her congregations anymore, can we???
The service was very casual as are most things we encounter here and the pastor played guitar for the music, had the songs put up on the overhead projector and had an interactive sermon which was nice. He is a part time pastor—has 2 churches and works 3 days a week as a water engineer so he is pretty busy all of the time. He is leaving at the end of the year from the sounds of it but we really enjoyed his message. One of his points today was that God was a party animal—–he loves to see his people having a good time!!! I loved that !
After service we went to the little fellowship area outside and shared a cuppa and some delicious cake and had great conversations. We also viewed a video about Samaritan’s Purse shoeboxes as they are collecting them and it was just such a neat thing to know that something that I was active in for many years in the US is something that they do here also!!! Of course one of the clips they showed was this heart wrenching song sung by a child and I got a little teary eyed—at the end someone else was sniffing so we shared the kleenex box and joked about it so at least I was in good company!!! When we left one of the ladies came up and gave me the roses that had been on the table and i was really touched. It may be a very small group of people but we were made to feel welcome and that was such a wonderful feeling.

We stopped at the grocery store to get a few things on the way home and then came home and Chris grilled some marvelous steaks and we ate outside. It is so beautiful today—the humidity has dropped a bit and it is very breezy. Chris is still napping and we are looking forward to much more relaxation today!!!