I'm sure that some of your carefully laid plans for the last week were disrupted by the sudden re-implementation of load-shedding. It's always frustrating, but sometimes these enforced "Eskom sabbaths" bring unexpected gifts. This last Wednesday, the load-shedding schedule managed to take out both sessions of our Lent course with incredible precision! So, in the office, we spent two hours that morning working with ancient technology (pens and paper) - Laura and Valda took the chance to work through and update our membership list, and I made more progress on a sermon with pen in hand than I normally would in front of a PC with all its email and internet distractions.

Another gift from this Eskom sabbath is the chance to tell more of you about our Lent course (we have spoken of it on Sundays, but haven't advertised as widely as we could have). The course runs at the church on Wednesdays (10am or 6:30pm) and is based on Adam Hamilton's book "The walk: five essential practices of the Christian life". The format each week will be: A short time of worship, video input from Adam Hamilton, and then a cup of tea or coffee as we break into smaller groups to talk together about the subject for that day. All in all, we should be done in an hour and a half at the most. I hope you'll be able to join us next Wednesday - load-shedding permitting, of course :)