Café on the Rock

It's hard to believe, but 2009 is already finalised and wrapped up, and soon it will be put in storage along with all those other years past. But that process always has a flip side: planning and looking forward to the next year. In the week past, St Paul's and TBT launched their theme for 2010: Amazing Grace (a.k.a. "Putting 'Amazing' Back into Grace").

Over the past few days I had been privileged to be able to attend a few really good, powerful and challenging talks. It was like coming across a pleasant little oasis during a period of rough and demanding times.

I just put up my final TIM talk for 2009. Is the year that old already that we are finishing up things? Good grief... Anyway, it can be found here.

This week, Vijay Menon is in Stellenbosch. He is a former Hindu who converted to Christianity and has spent a number of years preaching the gospel. Born in India, he has spent much of his life in London (where he still lives) working as an engineer and is now retired. St. Paul's in Stellenbosch is privileged to have him speak there this coming Thursday evening at 19:00 in lieu of the regular student Bible study. The title of his talk the evening is "What God wants most of you". He'll also be giving a special Lunch Time Talk on Thursday afternoon (13:00–13:45) in the Regter Van Zijl Hall in the Neelsie student centre. The title of that talk is "Why I gave up religion".

"News" is that, two weeks ago, I added another map—I just never got around to announcing it. The map shows the boundaries of the kingdom of Herod I "The Great".

Tonight we had the annual general meeting (AGM) for TBT for 2009. Looking through the handout which briefly explains the events and activities of the year, I realize again how many initiatives TBT are involved in! It was one of the things that stood out for me when last year I started attending TBT regularly: for such a comparitively small church, it has a lot of energy, enthusiasm and zeal. A large part of the congregation is involved in these initiatives and that gives one a true sense of "community church". Hopefully I can get more involved in this new administrative year.

Sorry for the late notice, but the TBT church in Stellenbosch will be hosting the following events tomorrow, the 17th of August:

So I have recovered about 95% from my bout with the flu. Thank you to everyone who gave their well wishes! I just wish I had more to show for all that downtime...

I was suppose to give another TIM talk today, but the flu got me.  It got me bad.  Luckily I'm over the worst of it.  Now it is just rest, rest, rest, rest, rest, rest, rest......  This is actually a great opportunity for me to do the things I can't/don't make time (or enough of it) for normally.  But I guess we'll have to see how my laziness, tiredness, eagerness and guilt balances out in the end.

It is generally a Good Idea to make sure that anything you do, no matter what it is, is legal before doing it. In that sense, quoting the Bible could be a bit of a Bad Idea.