HAPPY BIRTHDAY 2 U!!!!!

It's Pete's birthday today! (the 7th)

Happy Birthday Petey, hope you have a wonderful day!!!!

It's also Mum's birthday on Friday, so Happy Birthday Mum!!!! and Happy Mothers' Day too!!!!

Times like these make you wish you were home again! Still we're having an 'enlightening' time here at Darwin Corps. This week we have 4 days of being the CO's and the 'parents' of 3 teenagers while the Woods' are off on a conference in Melbourne! We're coping pretty good, but can't wait to get a day to ourselves to spend some birthday time just Pete and I!

It turns out we're guns at Mainly Music, who'd have known!!!! "Hip, hip hip, hippopotamus!" (Those songs must be the most irritatingly catchy songs in history!). Having a great time connecting with the mum's and kids, some came to church on Sunday and a women's event the night before (come on God, bring them in!). What a ministry!

Recently we had a go at MASH (Mature Aged Social Hour - group for senior citizens), we spoke about Justice, Human Trafficking and Fairtrade. Full credit to the MASH bunch, they got on board and bought a bunch of chocolo chocolate and Jasper coffee, but more importantly, seemed to really connect with these Social Justice issues.

The African Service celebrated their one year anniversary last Sunday, complete with singing, dancing, testimonies and fervent prayer..... and a MASSIVE lunch! It was great to see the African's sticking around to share with each other and celebrate together with the Salvos!!! Exciting to see a new addition to the African service, a Salvo from Zimbabwe, who was healed from epilepsy as a boy and is now a doctor up here in Darwin - I can see God has big plans for this man of God - in the African Service and beyond! God bless the Africans!

Pete preached at the FUSE combined Youth church last Saturday, it went off! The theme was "Run" (from their "Stand, Run, Fight" series), check out Pete's blog soon, hopefully he'll post some of the footage of his preach that night. Darwin youth are beginning to connect in, hopefully they'll get into spending time with some of these young people at FUSE - they have a huge passion for God that only inspires you to go further and deeper for Him!

A friend of ours that has jumped into life following God, recently went on a night of outreach with us and some officers to connect with the homeless and offer a bit of food and drink to get them through the night. He eagerly changed into a Red Shield shirt and during the course of the night, gave his own shirt to a indigenous man who was shirtless - he's living a life of self-sacrifice! Awesome to see someone getting serious about their beliefs so quickly - lets all live out what we believe, a life of holiness - and yes, that means giving stuff away!

God is faithful!