Confirmation Service

 On Sunday Evening we had the teens confirmation service. Twelve wonderful young people came to confirm their faith in Christ and vow to take their stand for Him. They are Kelsey Anderson; Joshua Campbell; Alex de Koning; Richard Finlayson; Theodore Gray; Reder Joubert; Taryn Kotze; Nicole Malcomson; Christopher Sotiralis; Gareth Tyler; Louis van Zyl; and Pierre Volschenk.

It was a moving and meaningful service with our young people making their vows together and Gavin Tucker reading a verse that had be pre-selected for each teen. After they had been confirmed, their parents came and stood with them and blessed them as the congregation sang a blessing over them.

There were few dry eyes in church!

Theo preached about "Stunted Growth" and contrasted King Saul who hid in the baggage and never grew to his potential with King David who was a man after God's heart. Then the newly confirmed teens helped with serving communion.

We took a moment to thank all those who taught our teens through the year:  Ryan Karusseit, Jean Lamont, Ben Gouws, Brenda Groeneveld, Marieta Gray, Gavin Tucker, Martin van Zyl, Louis Scheepers, Tara-Lynn Smith. Craig Smith was especially thanked for going above-and-beyond in all that he had done in co-ordinating the course this year.

Then the Benediction was pronounced and sung and a wonderful service came to an end.

Soli Deo Gloria!

Web Team Hack-a-thon

Some of our web and social media committee members met at Theo's home tonight to do some updating of the church's web pages and to learn new skills. We were fortunate to have Shawn Fouche there to teach us some of the basics and although the learning curve was steep, we were able to get some good work done!

Thanks websters (Shawn, Martin, Ryan, Barbara and Erika) for your hard work and Brenda for all the coffee!

The Ladies

The Gents

Junior Confirmation Camp

At the beginning of September our Teen Confirmation program came to a high-point as we had our Confirmation Camp. We have twelve stunning confirmation candidates this year (four from Grace and eight from Emmanuel) They are Kelsey Anderson; Joshua Campbell; Alex de Koning; Richard Finlayson; Theodore Gray; Reder Joubert; Taryn Kotze; Nicole Malcomson; Christopher Sotiralis; Gareth Tyler; Louis van Zyl; and Pierre Volschenk. 

FRONT: Alex, Kelsey, Taryn, Christopher, Nicole
MIDDLE: Pierre, Theodore, Theo
BACK: Joshua, Gareth, Craig, Louis

The camp is always held at the church and we started on Friday night with a braai followed by the "Flywheel" movie which raises some very important discussion points. On Saturday we explored membership and some ethical challenges.

We were very impressed by the very high level of engagement that we have seen in our young people. They asked challenging questions and were eager to learn. In the individual discussions we had with them, we sensed that they had grappled with the issues of faith and had were ready to make real commitments.

After the camp, parents and siblings joined in and we had a super braai together.

A very special vote of thanks must go to Craig who worked really hard to put the logistics together so that we were well-looked after and that the camp was organised with excellence.