Happy Birthday to you!

The soon to be elders and wives cutting the cake

No, Dave isn't celebrating his century, this is the fifth birthday of Thembalezizwe Church and a celebration of the first Sunday meeting in the new building that some of the guys from Eastbourne helped to build!

It was a fantastic morning of praise and thanks to God for his blessings and a time for envisioning the church for the future.

                                                                                            

The new building

What a blessing it was to have room to raise our hands and dance with space to spare, even though there were about 300 people there for the celebrations. The Hamara church arrived in a lorry complete with benches and there were also a few people from New Creation church in the city who came to support as well. 



The meeting



  It was also lovely for the children to be included in the meeting so that they could participate in the praise and worship rather than being squashed into a little room in the house. During the sermon they met under a tree nearby. The next building project is the 'caretaker's house' where Taurai and Tendi will eventually live. this will provide security for the site and enable the children to meet in two age groups, as at the moment there are kids of 3 with 11 year olds.



The children



The catering team



After the meeting we all had lunch together of bread, sausages and boiled eggs supplied by our great catering team over a wood fire.

The week before, when we were still in the old meeting place (Taurais house) Dave's chair broke in the middle of the sermon causing much hilarity, with me anyway! Actually everyone else was very respectful of the old boy, asking if he was ok but I assured them that he was only looking for attention, as you will all well know!!

This past Sunday Taurai preached a great sermon about evangelism and we prayed for people to receive boldness. As a follow up taps has asked Dave and I to go to all the life groups and help them to tell or write their own testimony to equip them. That will be very interesting as we have only been to a couple of groups so far. The Church has a great heart to be a blessing to their community as we have too.

Next Sunday we have another great celebration as Taps, Taurai and Mike are prayed into eldership.

The church is very excited and see this as a significant step forward. So watch out Bulawayo!!