To place us geographically, we are now living in the south east of Pretoria, in a little suburb called Moreleta Park. We moved into our rented duplex a month and a half ago, and have settled in pretty well. It’s a two-bedroomed place with one bathroom, lounge and dining room area and little private garden. We are finding Pretoria a “lekker place to be”, despite living on the other side of the “boerewors curtain” as Nick puts it.
The reason for our move North was not to emigrate for the winter, but rather because Nick was called to Constantia Park Baptist Church as an associate pastor, or pastor in training. Having graduated from John Wycliffe Theological College and obtaining his BA Theol., he is currently doing a fourth year at Baptist Theological College to obtain Baptist Union accreditation. However, some aspects of the college were not pleasing to Nick, so he approached Martin Holdt, who is the pastor of CPBC, to discuss some issues. God used these events to call Nick to this church, to sit under Martin’s mentorship and learn about the inner workings of church life. We were officially welcomed into the church just a couple of weeks ago.
Nick is now firmly established in the church and loving it. This new position does, of course, mean that he is more busy than ever. His main area of responsibility is the young adults, and he leads a bible study on Saturday nights amongst other things. He is also assisting with doing children’s talks during the Sunday worship services. Not quite where he pictured himself, but taking it in his stride. These responsibilities, along with attending elders’ meetings and deacons’ meetings, have not caused him to hold back with college work. He is writing his longest assignment yet called “The Decalogue as a Foundation to Christian Ethics”, with a current word count of almost 33,000 words, and that’s not even half way through.
I am continuing with my working from home for an enterprise architecture company, where I am involved with salaries, invoicing, and other administrative functions. It is often tricky finding time to concentrate on work with the offspring under feet (or on lap at the keyboard), but I press on. Housework is also always there waiting, hanging around, shaking its finger at the dust and unfolded washing.
Caleb is now two and a bit, and has the attitude to prove it. On the whole he’s most endearing, but the other bits are better left to the imagination. His passion for cars does not seem to be waning. He is becoming quite creative in bringing cars into every aspect of his life – the latest, it appears, is that the bath is a car, particularly when Aaron is driving with him in the watery vehicle.
Aaron, now seven months, has just started crawling. I don’t think he knows yet that this means he can get anywhere in the house, as he limits himself to objects within a metre or so of himself. A little uncoordinated still though, but on his way to great places. No teeth yet.
We were recently sponsored by the church to attend a Reformed Evangelical Conference at Skogheim, just near Margate, for about six days. What a wonderful time of teaching, fellowship and relaxing, as well as a break from cooking and the other accompanying bothers. Unfortunately, Nick connected with a fellow soccer-player on the beach and broke a toe, which put an abrupt end to any further sporty pursuits. He did manage to have a good swim in the ocean though, where he was stung by fireweed…
