Another highlight of the holidays has been our annual pastoral care visit from our friends at CMS. It was so refreshing having a few days to de-brief, discuss how we are going and just generally have a laugh with. It's also fun showing people around our new environment. These friends actually teach the training course in Melbourne where we spent 6 months preparing for mission work, so we had a heap of news to catch up on and fun reminiscing too. Rachel loved visiting the womens prison with me and David was introduced to some of the people that Tony works most closely with. A lovely 2 days that went way too fast, and we miss them alot, but we feel very encouraged by the time they were here.

Some waterfalls about 20 minutes from our place.

Rachel and the kids braving the water.

Teppanyaki dinner at local restaurant

The last 2 weeks have been school holidays for us -here are some snaps of what we've been up to.

A wonderful parcel full of chocolate,chai,book,lollies and much more from a lovely friend at our church St Albans.A highlight was the cards the youth group kids signed for each of the kids.

Celebrating the parcel with hot choc and marshmallows!

Tony's good friend Andrew visited for a few days-here we are enjoying his hotel with him. We're good like that.

We found a new spot to walk the dog..and swim the dog.

The great thing about our house that it's surrounded by kids on every side. To our left, there are about 12 kids and behind us are another 6. In the last couple of months, we have managed to make contact with them and the kids are enjoying being part of an instant "gang" now and then. Here are some of the latest goings on.

Good ol' fashioned rope swing from a tree

Different set of boys that live behind us -Ethan in heaven in this photo

and then the zombie version

The last week or so..

The last week has been a blur of nurofen, codral and sleep, but we managed to have some fun in between. Soph LOVED the school camp and looked slightly put out when we came to visit on the last night for the concert. Not that I had a problem with that. Much. Anyway, she enjoyed the dorm with literally 20 or so bunk beds in it and she delighted in mothering the kindy kids...whether they needed it or not, I'm guessing! If she saw them lying in bed, having neglected to brush their teeth, then she was onto it.Good food, hikes, 6am swims(!), a cat who regularly visited their room and making friends from another school were all highlights.They almost made up for the fact there was no hot water for showering. The only lowlight was a boy(from the other school) calling her and her family and her country stupid. Ethan happened to be visiting that day and soon put an end to that. Bad timing on the other kids part. But a good chance for us to praise his care of his little sister and keep talking about godly ways of continuing to do that in the future (let the reader understand).

Soph is the middle grasshopper-talking to the Ants!

The year 3/4 reciting a whole chapter of Mark from the bible.

About 2 hours after getting home.

Yesterday we decided to drive and explore just outside Suva

we thought this was cool until we saw.......

this bigger one!

Ethan channelling "Indiana Jones" at this point.

We just had a really good weekend at the Pacific Students for Christ Annual Conference- down the road at Pacific Harbour. There were about 90 students and Tony spoke on the book of Galatians. We were reminded again that you can't DO anything to earn your way to heaven, only thank God for what He has already DONE for us. Also, the Saturday night was spent celebrating 40 years since PSFC was established! I loved getting to spend time with people I don't normally see -as Tony is always out and about on the campuses while I am at home. Very different to parish ministry, where we felt like we were in in together a bit more. So, it's good to make the most of these camps where we can minister as a family. The kids were happy swimming and digging in the sand -despite the cold(for Fiji), rain and wind! Nothing a hot milo and codral couldn't fix -all up a fun weekend.

Singing time

Tony with the legendary Ateca- who he most closely works with and learns from.

Our kids and Ateca's kids digging happily while the talks were on.

Heading off to camp this morning -having packed a week ago!

Too excited to hang around for another photo -so I got the bags and teachers instead.