It's Christmas eve, i'm sitting looking out of the window at the falling snow. I'm not out in it, my toes are warm and my fingers unfrozen. the individual flakes are so amazingly intricate and the gathering together of them transforms the world. It makes m long for the body of Christ to be so, each one amazingly intricate, designed and loved, yet when we get together the world is clean and white and silent. There the image breaks down as all analogies do, "for now we see only in part" as Paul says in 1st Cor 13. Anyway, for snow to fall and stay around the conditions need to be right. And Holy Spirit is at work in the world creating the right conditions....

In the meantime, the daily round: i wake up thankfulness in my heart for a warm home and resources to build a new one for my family and friends to enjoy, a place to welcome strangers and see them transformed into friends, to see Isiah 25 v 6 - 10 become a reality. Out i go into the cold framing, siding plumbing electrical and the immense task of building a house goes on My brother Rod arrived Dec 7th and has been an immense help with siding the house and braving the waaay below freezing weather. We work and then huddle around the fire to thaw our frozen digits and faces. The tractor has been earning it's keep blowing snow from the driveway ( i love useful machinery) and when Rod gets on it a can't get him to quit, he's ready to clear snow from the whole town. Part of the cost of building a house is the room it takes in my mind. There are so may things to remember, so many decisions to make, it's quite overwhelming at times. I get home at night and fall asleep the moment i set my body down. We are so blessed to have this warm quiet rental house for the winter. The boys work at their schoolwork and then spend their hours creating, each in their own way, lego's, knex, drawing cutting and pasting, snow forts and sledding, Christmas plays, royal rangers, boys club and story time fill their days. We are truly beyond blessed living in this amazing community. It's like a womb, warm, healthy, nurturing, readying us to be sent out again for our next assignment in the world.

before

after

Rod wraps the house like a giant Christmas present

It seems like i have spent my life up on a ladder

our respite from Jack Frost's attacks

I love this little red baby!

I take a break from house building to train as a snowmobile guide.

Just an excuse to get out, away and meet more people. So Rod got to go with me on the first trip

It's a clod cold world out there.

We mad 35 gallons of cider in the frreezing cold. Next year we'll definitely do it earlier!

the boys at play

So we're off to play in the snow, visit with friends and enjoy a few days relaxing and trying to think of something other than the house. Merry Christmas to you all. I dream of having each of you to come and stay with us in our winter wonderland and while away the hours together, reminiscing about a life lived under the favor and blessing of our Warrior Father King.

Vision

I remember the day i showed this picture to some good friends of mine, excited about the purchase of the piece of land we now call "Gateway". The comment was:"boy you must have vision to see anything in that ugly barn. So after a long almost 3 year journey, studded all along the way with many moments of revelation and mind renewing flashes of Jesus unending kindness we hit a major milestone this week. Isiah 25 v 6 - 10 has been the passage that we have camped on and fed on for the past few years. So from a rumpled cobbled together barn in a tangle of trees, we see a home rising above the trees to take in the magnificent view of the valley and hamlet below. The milestone was the roofing of the house, and as the house started with a crowd of friends pouring the foundation under the barn, the roof was put on by a crew of men working hard to get it all done before the snow begins to fall, with my friend Aaron topping it off with he final layer of roofing. So here's a little photo essay of the journey sofar.


This is the Barn and property before we bought it in the Spring of 2006 (April for the S hemisphere folks)

Earl the logger, cuts down the first tree, clearing away for a good view

Good friends Art and Lisa camp out for a week of hard labor digging a foundation under the old barn. Note the Jack hammer to break up the concrete state of the clay in summer. When it rains it turns to soupy mess.

Getting the forms ready to pour concrete. My right arm's tendons were so inflamed from digging in the hard clay that i could do no good to help on the day of the concrete pour, but that's what friends are for and they showed up in droves to help out.

Father and son, Greg and Stephen manouver the big elephant hose of the concret pump truck


Note Becky's bold moves in the background

My three helpers dive in for a few minutes here and there to pull nails and pick up stuff.

Skye earns a penny a nail picking them up and is currently at about $15

Tim helps out with building the well house on top of the 1500 gallon storage tank on a trip over Last summer

By way of explanation, Gateway is about 3 hours drive from Anacortes and we would come over about once a month or so to work on the property until we got back from South Africa in April this year. We felt certain that it was time to move to Plan permenantly, even though we had not yet sold our house in Anacortes. We lived in this 5th wheel trailer, kindly lent to us by a friend, from April till October. Our house sold in October and the day after we recieved the offer we found a place to rent for the winter. Once again, Father's timing is always perfect.

The long drop (actually a prety short drop as i dug the new hole in the summer by hand!)

The black domes are infiltrator panels for the massive drainfield system that we have to have for the septic. 270 ' of trench, two 1000gal tanks and more electronics and pumps than you could imagine, just to deal with poop!

Finally the roof comes off and work on the house begins. Our Anacortes house still has not closed, but we feel Father blessing the move to go ahead with the framing, so i subcontract it out to my framer friend Rob.

Walls going up ( the good kind)

My Little red helper gets unloaded 3 days after the Anacortes house money is in the bank.

This baby will dig ditches, plough snow, grade roads, move logs and lumber and generally save me hours of backbreaking work.

Beams go up on the day of our first snowfall!

The race is on to see of we can get it roofed before the snow comes to stay.

Framers race to sheet and paper the roof while Aaron is hot on their tails with roofing shingles going down at high speed.

The view from the roof as the rain and snow fall all around us. I asked for a miracle and we had no rain or snow the whole day we were working on roofing. as we pcked up for the day the sleet began. The next day was dry too. Yeah God!!!!

Now here is a man sized saw. Jason helps me cut beams and posts for woodhenge, the porches on each side of the house.

Thar she be folks, the house as of 4 pm today. Future home of the campbells and anyone else that may need a home, place of feasing, fine wines, veils being removed, blindness, deafness and brokenness healed and the exclamation " this is our God for whom we have been waiting and longing" Isiah 25v 6 - 10

It has been a pretty full few months and all the good intentions in the world have not gotten me to sit down at the computer and document this for you guys. Tonight however, i have lain in bed sleepless, mind racing between the amazing blessing of being a son of the most high Father God and the million details entailed in building a house on the beautiful piece of land that we own. In short our house sold, actually it closes Oct 29 th, after a deeply convicting realization of my place as steward of that land and my responsibility not to just shift the selling of it onto Jesus shoulders, but to ask as steward what His intentions and desires were and then to pray along with Him for the "on earth as it is in heaven" So after two weeks on concerted praying, something shifted and we had a miracle as a buyer came along, made us an offer, accepted our offer and signed the deal, all while i was out in the back country on a Father son trip, doing business by cell phone. The wonders and usefulness of modern technology.

Well there has been several days since i wrote that and our house has closed and we no longer own a home in Anacortes, a chapter closed and a season ended. Winter is fast approaching, frosty mornings, the leaves have lost their stunning colors and the sky is grey. We are racing the snow to get the roof on our house here in Plain so that i can spend the winter finishing off the inside. There is an interesting nesting instinct that happens here in the fall, somehow the knowledge that everything will be covered in several feet of snow for the next 4 to 6 months makes you want to tidy up outside and cover up and build shelters and get the firewood in and hunker down for the winter. We are blessed with a great little house that we are able to rent for the winter, perfect for our family, room for friends, warm and a great meeting room above the garage for doing men's group, setting up the slot cars or hanging out with a bunch of people.

Each day we are delighted more and more by this amazing community of people that we get to live amongst. So many new things for the boys and for us. I got to bow hunt this fall with my own home built longbow and learned a lot about deer, but did not get one yet, though i have 2 more weeks to hunt in late November. My hunting partner John got a doe and we got the boys all out there to witness field dressing it.

The weather has definitely changed to winter, rain turning to snow. I think that we'll get the roof on just in time. Here are some pics of the project and the amazing views from upstairs.

So each full day goes by, cabinet work keeps coming in like a flood, a new mens group with 6 guys on thursday mornings, a sunday school gathering with men before church on sundays, Royal rangers on thursday nights, squeezing in hours wherever possible at Gateway, managing framers, getting bids purchasing materials and doing whatever work i can fit in to build the house, work on the facility for the new community pantry to reach out to the needy in the community, training to be Family Foundations facilitators, praying and dreaming with God for this community, wrestling through the tensions of Fathering 3 boys as i deal with the lies about myself that i've made agreement with for so many years, and overall just basking in the sunshine of Grace and an ALWAYS good Father.

We are in such an amazing season at the moment. Yesterday i went down the river with Curtis who spent a few weeks in SA at Anton and Hazel's last year and was deeply impacted by his trip. As we were floating along a section of waves, he told the kids in the boat to close their eyes and just experience without seeing. I closed my eyes too and just had this amazing sensations my sense of hearing was heightened and the motion of the boat and the temperature of the air and water were more intensely felt. It brought about a new understanding of what this season of our lives is all about right now. When i lose ( or voluntarily give up ) the use of one of my senses, it heightens the others significantly. In our lives right now, not being able to see ahead is heightening other senses, like the ability to hear the unhearable, the quiet whispers of Fathers voice, the ability to feel the wind of the Spirit blowing us in a particular direction, one which words can't really explain. We live by faith, not by sight, faith being confident in that which has not yet been revealed to the senses.

We have not sold our home in Anacortes yet and the split up of our property here in Plain has stalled once more in bureaucratic red tape. Yet as i choose to focus on what God is doing rather than what he is not doing, choose to hear His voice rather than the squalling of circumstances, somehow He lets me into a whole other realm of seeing without eyes and hearing without ears. Maybe this is what Paul writes about in 2 nd Cor 4, fixing our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, for what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.

I'm looking out of the trailer window at the greening valley, the sun is out the days are warm and everything is growing as fast as it can here in the mountains. The smell of pine trees a fresh air is like narcotics to me and each morning Becky and i wake up with the question " what are you up to today Father?"



I sat with Phil the pastor of the church here in Plain and talked about worship being something so much more than singing the same old songs and even the latest new ones each week. Worship we decided and are living, is simply recognising Jesus presence and responding to it. Walking through each day with our eyes and ears open to catch a glimpse and hear a whisper of His presence and when we see or hear just to revel in the moment. It's like an endless game of hide and seek with Daddy. No wonder Jesus says that we need to be like little children to see the Kingdom of God.

In the midst of our new life that is developing here in Plain, we have a house left in Anacortes that costs us too much money to have just sitting there empty each month, it has become a burden and my focus turned to it all this last week and i began to be offended at God for not selling it so we can get on with our lives here in the valley, build a house and get settled before winter comes. When i get offended with God and focus on what He is not doing, my whole life seems to spin out of control and circumstaces become bigger than Jesus can handle and i feel a desprate need to take control of things, and people and all that results from that is an ugly mess that i have to repent my way out of. Restoration only happens when i" set my eyes on things unseen" (1 Corinthians 4) and focus on what Jesus is doing and trust absolutely in His goodness and kind intentions toward me. What a rollercoaster the past few days has been and the hurt my family has had to suffer because i get angry when i feel out of control.

But there is grace! and iam a beloved son! It makes no sense in my mind and culture that there should be any grace for my failure or that i could be even remotely loveable at all, But Jesus....
we all know that He died for our sins, but i never knew till recently that He did'nt die to wipe out sin, but His motivation was that He loves me so much that He would rather die than live without me!

Wow it's been along time since i updated this thing, but now we're back in the USA i have an internet connection that can cope with doing this. It has been an amazing adventure into expriencing Jesus kindnes that past months in South Africa and now the past 3 weeks that we have been home.We enjoyed a week together with my family over easter again and just saw God's amazing grace at work as more of the old barries to relationship were broken down. I've arrived back here to the other side of the world feeling for the first time in my life that i have left my family behind. I have come to discover that the word repentance really means to have a changed mind. Re means to go back and Pent is the same word that begins penthouse, the top floor of a building, so repentance simply means "go back to the top." In other words, go pack to God's perspective on reality! Having a renewed mind is the most freeing thing in the world and i am become more and more addicted to God's perspective!

We hopped on the airplane in Durban on March 31st and began one of the most harrowing flights i have ever experienced. By the time we fell into the loving arms of my dear friend Neil in Seattle and were placed into the comfort of his lovely home, i was dry as dust and felt like death warmed up. As this did not get any better and i began to turn more yellow each day i decided it was time to get a blood test and figure out wether i had hepatitis which is what we had begun to expect. A few days later it was confirmed that not only did i have Hep A, but tested positive for Hep B antigens as well. By this time i was feeling better each day. After very uncomfortable week and then feeling better each day i was amazed to find that in the midst of it all i could lie in bed and find nothing but peace inside of me, not worry or fear or even mild concern. The peace that truy passes all understanding had been guarding my heart and mind "in Christ Jesus"

We spent a few days camping out in our old, empty moved out of home in Anacortes and then left for Plain on a journey of discovery, to see if this was where the next chapter of our lives was to be lived out. We had been suspecting for some time that we were to spend a season here and each day spent at Stonewater Ranch it became clear that this was where Jesus wants us to be. So the long and short of it all is that On thursday last week i drove over here with a 5th wheel trailer kindly lent to us by a friend, towed with another friends truck. I parked the trailer and headed home to return the truck and then on Friday 18th April we officially moved to Plain Washington, now having a mailing address here! We drove most of the 3 hours in an unseasonably late snowstorm/blizzard and shivered the night away in the trailer. On Saturday i got all the necessary connections wired and plumbed and now our 35 foot by7foot home is warm, lighted and has running water. The tempratures have been well below freezing each night, meaning i have to drain the water lines before going to bed, but both mornings we have woken up to sunshine and a light dusting of snow. This morning we sat out in the sunshine by the campfire and made breakfast on our skottel ( cast iron ploughshare)before we left for church.

April 21st: Today i did the first day's paid work in 5 months. I started working for a local cabinet maker here in Plain named Pete Lambeth. I felt very rusty getting back into cabinetmaking mode, but thoroughly enjoyed the day and enjoyed working with Pete. It is a part time job while we work the rest of the time on the house and help out at Youth Dynamics off and on also. When our house sells in Anacortes, we'll have the finances to go full steam ahead on the house at Gateway. For those that don't know Gateway is the name of the 3.8 acre property we own in Plain and are building a house on to use for retreats, prayer ministry, mens retreats and for guests to come and be quiet for a while. Isiah 25 v 6 - 9 is the theme verse that has been pinned up over the door since before we bought the place.

Tim helping Dad build the well house last summer.

I took some pics of us just moved into the trailer, but the cord for my camera is somewhere between here and our old house and misplaced in the move so they will have to wait, instead some old pics, but to show where we are living at the moment.

this is the view of where we live ( the houses at bottom right)

I'm sitting sweltering in the heat of a King Willaims Town summer day. This is the Town i spent much of my childhood in arriving in 6th grade to boarding school. It is not exactly pleasant to be back as most of my memories of this town and school are not pleasant, however it is good to spend time with my family and enjoy the growing relationship between us. The boys are loving the swimming pool at my brothers house and Skye is loving going to school with his cousin Nathan. Tim has been to the playschool at Grandma's house a couple of times too. (grandma lives at the church where the shool is) Keldan the chip off the old block would not even set foot in the school, not even for the experience. Just as well we're home schooling him! We spent a day at the beach where i learned to surf as a kid and the boys caught fish in the same rockpools i did with my Grandpa. I think that after a week and half we are looking forward to getting back to the cooler less humid mountains at Kululapa. (Anton and Hazel's farm)

The men's camp that we had at Kululapa jst before we left was an eye opening time for some of the guys and a good reminder for the others. The guys who led the wek end was one of my childhood heroes. Sean was on YFC team when i was a kid and used to stay at our house often. I enjoyed getting to know him again and see how Jesus is using the heart that i loved so much back 31 years ago. The morning of the camp i had planned to book the rental car that we were to drive down to King williams Town with. I felt led not to do that, but instead asked Father if He would provide us with one. That week end one of the guys at camp who i recognised from the years i lived at L'Abri offered to lend us a car. He is a car dealer and set us up with a luxurious van for the drive. What a blessing, as we would have to have crammed ourself into a small car as that was all we could afford. So once again we are recipients of our Father's rich blessings through the kids who love Him. We will be staying with Greg and Alice his wife and their 5 daughters and son on our way home. They have an 1800 acre farm that they long to turn into a community where the tenets of Jesus Kingdom can be lived out practically. Sadly they can't find any "christians who want to take Jesus literally. Everyone seem's to be too busy building their own kindom's living out their own plans and storing up for themselves treasures on earth and worrying over how to safeguard them from theft and depreciation.

I wonder at how easily the enemy has duped us into blieving that happiness and security come from posessions, and 401K's and investments in the so easily destructible stock exchange. How easily we are impressed by the words of men who care only for themselves, and so little for the words of Jesus who loved us so much that He gave up his Glory and was rejected by His Father and died for love of us.

As Becky and i live out this season, we are deeply challenged to look at ur priorities and lifestyle again. As i weigh them up against Jesus words i am left feeling the hollow self centredness of much of what we have built and gathered around ourelves. We are looking forward to something deeper as we journey with Jesus. The only thing that can change the world is His presence and His love lived out through us.

For He who would seek to save his life will lose it, but he who would lose his life for my sake will gain it.

the boys favorite transportation

our house

Tim looking fierce

My humble apologies for not getting to write for so long. We definitely live in a different time zone here, everything moving at a very slow pace. African time, they call it. Anywhere we go takes at least an hour or more by car or by foot.
Last week I got to second a friend and his partner on a 3 day canoe (think sea kayak) race down the Duzi river from Pietermaritzburg to Durban, a distance of 120km on the river. There were over 2000 participants in the race, mostly in double canoes. For those in the know it would be like going down the Owyhee river in a seak kayak, a crazy undertaking. Needless to say there was much chaos and carnage on the river, broken boats, frayed tempers and blood, sweat and tears on the long portages. Steve and James did well and survived unscathed. Tomorrow we will join James (an ornithologist for the provincial parks in Kwazulu-Natal) in capturing and ringing some birds at a wetland area. The boys are getting into bird watching since there’s such a huge variety here and they’re easy to see.
We’re making progress on the Lapa ( lodge) in preparation for the Men’s wild at heart camp thet we will be hosting on Feb 8th. Becky is preparing menu’s and shopping lists as well as putting together a brochure for this place which now finally has a name. “Kululapa” means “come and be free” a bit like make yourself at home, but the emphasis of the word is freedom. Coming into real relationship with Jesus results in freedom.
Resources are rather limited, so we’re “making do” with what materials and tools we can scrounge up from hither and yon. The place will end up looking very rustic as a result, but that will fit in nicely with the environment and the groups of men that it is meant for. I will take plenty of pictures and some video, so if I still can’t figure out how to get them on the blog, at least we will be able to show you when we get home. The whole place has been built by men needing to get away from it all for a while and get their hands dirty, fathers and sons needing time together and others who just wanted to give of themselves for a time. As a result it’s more a labor of love than a monument to building skill. It’s now my responsibility to take all the crookedness and character and pull it together into a cohesive useful space. Some days I just spend hours looking at it and wondering how on earth to make it work. It’s a good challenge.
We are enjoying going to church at Shalom very much. I’ve enjoyed getting together with Mark Poree the pastor to chat a couple of times. He has a Kingdom perspective like few people that I know and it’s very inspiring to be taught by him. Yesterday I got to work with him and another pastor and a few of the church staff doing some building in a warehouse that is going to be used for feeding aids orphans from a local squatter camp, as well as a housing the church that they are planting in that community. The sad event of the day was when Keldan and I were driving home, unbeknown to me the water pump died on our little Russian Lada 4x4 resulting in some major damage to the engine. Keldan and I were stranded about 45 min from home until a kind neighbor that I managed to get hold of came and towed us home in the mud and the rain. So our character filled vehicle is unserviceable for the foreseeable future. But with every crisis comes provision, so I look forward to seeing what comes of this. At the very least it will end up with me increasing my skills as a motor mechanic.
On the home front I think that I have come to the beginnings of a breakthrough in being a dad. It’s easy to become a dad by default, a result of marriage and an idealistic view of parenthood. However when the reality of fathering 3 sons sets in, the good idea of family as a priority after relationship with Jesus, soon just becomes lip service as I find escape from the pain of failure in tasks, busyness, discipline and many other ways of not really engaging. Coming here I thought that with all the time in the world available, I would make the most of the opportunity to be with by boys and do things with them. However, the reality is that it’s not a fundamental desire or commitment on my part to be a dad, only a good idea that’s much easier said than done. So with that realization of the truth of my actual position, I’m faced with the choice: Do I continue to parent the way I have been, as a (necessary, but unpleasant) responsibility that comes with having kids? Or: Do I commit myself to loving Becky as Jesus loved the church and gave himself up for her and love my children in the same way, committing myself so sacrificing my life for their sake because they are of inestimable value to me?
I keep thinking of Abraham, called the Father of faith. When he believed God’s promises to him, he committed to living his life accordingly, even though he never did get to see the fulfilment of the promise. He lived his life for the next generation. That’s tough for me since I’m a results person. I like to sit back at the end of the day and see something for my labor. Parenting is not so easy, I can’t control how my children will turn out and if I try, it seems I mostly do damage. Parenting, I’m beginning to realise is a journey of faith. I sow love and presence, care, discipline and time into the boys God has given me and then they choose what they will do with that. I can’t control the outcome, God doesn’t even control the outcome. He always lets us choose. Wow that is love. Anyway I could ramble on for a long time about this as it has filled my thoughts and prayers and conversations with Becky for many days now. Suffice to say that repentance means turning away from my old direction and facing a new way, hand in hand with God’s grace. It seems impossible that he could change my heart so deeply, but I know from experience that with Him all things are possible. Lord I believe, help my unbelief.
So the journey continues.

new years day

New years day 2008, I went to bed early last night, thinking that really, what is a new year, just a change in numbers on a piece of paper, but it was not to be a night of sleep. I spent long hours lying in bed, interceding for L’abri wilderness school, where we are staying with my family this week. So much has changed here since I left 14 years ago. The place that was such and incredible home and community to me is now nothing more than a shell of buildings and abandoned trails, overgrown and unused. They still run camps here, but many of the staff are not even believers and most are afraid of the forest and stay out of it. Only two people live here full time compared to the 3 couples and 7 single staff in community when I was here. I don’t know what goes on here day to day , but I sense that Jesus is no longer the centre of attention as he has not even been mentioned in their newsletters for the past 10 years.

Two days ago I got to sit with the new director and chat for a few hours, which was very encouraging. His heart is to see the Gospel once more become the focus of the program and the staff who don’t know Jesus be introduced to Him. As I sat up on the hill at the foot of the cross which has been erected at the corner of three of the four properties I sensed more of Fathers heart to come and dwell here so that those who come to one of the four ministries here will meet Jesus and be transformed. There is much work to be done here, both Physically and more importantly, spiritually in repentance and worship, building unity of heart, relationships and attitudes.

Let me back up and describe where we are. We are about 1 hour drive from Pietermaritzburg in Kwazulu/Natal province in the NE corner of South Africa. The terrain is Mountainous, rather like the Appalachians, with plantations of pine, wattle and blue gum, interspersed with grasslands, sugar cane fields and deeper valleys and kloofs (gorges) filled with dense indigenous forest.

The 4 properties I mentioned are adjacent to to each other and have the Mshwati river flowing through or alongside them. The majority of the land is indigenous forest with some small patches of plantation and a lot of grassland. On the river are 5 significantly beautiful waterfalls, many pools and deep rocky clefts through which the river flows. L’Abri outdoor center approximately 400 acres belong to Youth For Christ and has been used to run camps for teenagers primarily. Bekezela Adventure Farm is about 300 acres and is at the top of the hill and has mostly been used to minister to younger kids and was started by Anton and Hazel who we are now staying with. Vumelana ( Zulu word for “place of covenant”) is owned by Anton’s brother and is the Family foundations international Africa headquarters and ministry centre. They do Ancient Paths seminars here and all over South Africa. Anton and Hazels property as yet unnamed is about 120 acres and his vision is to see it used for men’s ministry and Father/son ministry, though he is wiling to establish it he is not wanting to run it day to day and so is looking and praying for someone to do that. Currently, Bekezela and L’abri have the infrastructure to run programs, Vumelana is partially able to and is building more and Anton’s place is almost finished. The lodge which I have been working on is at the finishing stages, interor walls are going up and we are needing the finances (approximately $5000) to finish it.

We have a men’s camp booked in early February. So that’s a brief overview of the physical situation. The people are way more complex and we are just beginning to see into some of the relationships here. All in all I would say that everyone has been working really hard for a really long time and could use a fresh visitation from Jesus, even more that He would come and dwell here and change the atmosphere!

As for us we have just spent 12 days with my whole family except for my youngest brother and his family who could not make it. The 7 boy cousins ranging from Tim at 5 years old to Jed at 12 years old have had a blast together as only boys can. My two brothers Rod and David and I have enjoyed being together for the first time ever as we have all come from a very distant family, not to mention the geographical distance in my case. David’s wife Charmaine dared him to shave his head which then led to Rod shaving his head and then all the cousins ending up with either skinheads or Mohawks. Keldan and Tim are currently sporting Mohawks and Skye looks like a cancer patient. Hair however does grow so this is not a permanent state! (I hope) In spite of all the years of not communicating and all the messes contained in a dysfunctional family (and what family is not in some way?) we have seen Jesus do so much healing in our lives that we can now enjoy being together and dealing with our history in healthier ways.

Yeah God!!!

Well I’m going to Quit this chapter for now other than to say that it is good to be here, challenging the default modes we have lived in for so long, and most of all great to have time to be silent, time for my boys and much time for Becky and I to talk, enjoy each other and pray about the new season ahead of us as a family.