THE KENNEDY GANG

To my dearest wife, happy birthday, great to have been part of it and enjoyed the evening with you and friends. It is good to have been around for so many of your birthdays, they seem to get better ever year.

Fiona with her confectionery master piece!

You certainly do not look like someone who is 44, well that is at least what it says on the cake! It was great that you had a couple of birthday celebrations and know that you are loved and special to many, especially me. Great to be able to share in your life and I look forward to many more.

Hope you had a good day, I know you had a relaxing morning with friends watching a movie and then did some preparations for the evening. You had a great evening with friends and a good meal and then you cleaned up with a big game of snitch, congratulations.

Love you

Garth

PS – I am trying to trace who is responsible for the confectionery malfunction, so that everyone knows, you are only 43.

Sunset on 2011

Well how about that, the New Year has started and so far it has been a great one. If you are an observant reader you will see it is a new month as well, so this is rather a late post. So what about the New Year resolutions, let me just say this, we had cinnamon buns for breakfast on the 1st, so much for that resolution, could not even make it past the first day.

It will be a good year, I look forward to it, maybe for me a time to take a back seat somewhat and see what God is going to do. Yes we can discuss the theological implications of that, but less me and more God. How about that another resolution, but one I am willing to have a full go at.

Thank you to you all for your support, going to be a great year.

Blessings

Garth

Oh, what a wonderful God we have! How great are his riches and wisdom and knowledge!
How impossible it is for us to understand his decisions and his methods!
For who can know what the Lord is thinking? Who knows enough to be his counselor?
And who could ever give him so much that he would have to pay it back?
For everything comes from him; everything exists by his power and is intended for his glory. To him be glory evermore. Amen.

 ROMANS 11:33-36

 So a little while back I was reading the above verses, and yes at the same time I was dealing with some issues and trying to find answers, when are we never doing this? I hit a speed bump when I read the above verses in Romans 11, there is just so much in there.

Does it give me the answers I am looking for? Probably not, make that a no in fact. You see the answers I am looking for involved my little world and me as the center of it, which is the way is should be,  not so!

Seems not from Romans 11, I like to think I could give God some counsel, in fact I try and do so all the time in my prayers. So when that does not work I move on the the next best thing and try and figure out why things happen and for what purpose, you know, make sense of things, nothing wrong with that! Well it seems to me that once again I was wrong, it has happened quite a few times in that last little while.

The last verse sums it all up, there is no arguing with it, does it make it any easier to accept and understand things, NO. Do I have to trust God and say ultimately anything and everything is intended for His glory, YES.  Does it make the road ahead any easier, NO. Are there things out there I will not understand in this present life and that are actually just way above my pay grade, YES.

May God grant me the peace to rest in Him no matter what the circumstances or issues at hand.

Praise Him

Garth

So what is it, we speak about it but have no real idea what the true definition of the word is and just presume as missionaries it relates to us and was invented for us – WRONG!

The dictionary says the following:

fur·lough  (fûrl)n.

a. A leave of absence or vacation, especially one granted to a member of the armed forces.

b. A usually temporary layoff from work.

c. A leave of absence from prison granted to a prisoner.

OK, so where do we fit in? I can not say we are members of the armed forces, although you can say we are in a fight but then that is a topic for another blog. Have we temporarily been laid off work, would be nice, but in this world of instant communications you are never out of reach. So that leaves the last option, what does that say about the work…….

We have had a good time on our ‘furlough’ or call it what you want, our time back in the land where we were brought up. It has been good catching up with our church, family and loads of friends around the place. There is a reason why we only do this once very three years, makes meeting and catching up all the more special. So what have we been up to: meals, meetings, food, stolen tyres and rims, new schools, fast trains, bird park, braais, game park, fishing, swimming, eating, travelling, breaking down, shopping, official documents, banks, more food, meeting new friends, long queues, banking issues, take aways, easter eggs and more chocolate….. you get the idea, it has been crazy and the waist line has grown almost as quick as our list of new friends!

The picture above was taken just before the great boiled-egg-down-the-driveway-race was held, which by the way left some of the competitors in tears since the eggs were somewhat worse for wear before making it to the bottom, despite the fact that all competitors were warned before the event.

All said, we have and are having a great time, furlough has been great and we praise God for the time out.

Garth