The best seven

There are certain moments when it's good to be an Englishman in New Zealand. This is one of those moments. This weekend the IRB Sevens World Series has reached its Wellington leg. New Zealand were at home, favourites and looking to retain the trophy they won last year. 43 games passed. Two teams remained - New Zealand and England. New Zealand led 17-5 at half-time. As the hooter sounded to end the second half New Zealand led 17-12. But unlike football play continues at the end of normal time until the ball goes out of play. So England had one last chance. Which they took. A try under the posts, duly converted. England win 19-17. In the Kiwis backyard. Ouch! :)

Yesterday, making the most of the lovely weather and the public holiday that is Waitangi Day Joanne and I took our bikes up to Bottle Lake Forest Park for a ride around. It's a lovely place on the northern edge of town, with tracks and paths where people ride horses, walk, cycle or run or whatever. It's so nice to get out and do some outdoorsy stuff whenever we can.

Last night we went round to Jona and Jane's, friends from church, for a bit of a party type thing, which was nice, to catch up with a few people. And this morning we went round to Dave & Kylie's for morning tea. Dave is the new assistant minister at St John's and one of his responsibilities is Bible studies and that includes the Christianity Explored and Exploring Discipleship courses. It was really just an introductory thing so we could get to meet them and so that he could hear from us about ED and from Cam & Jo about CE and stuff. If you are after prayer requests by the way, it would be great if you could pray for the Christianity Explored course that starts at church a week on Wednesday, that people would come along and have open hearts and minds to what they'll hear discussed from Mark's gospel. We're not involved in leading at CE any more of course, with our involvement in ED, but it'll still be great to have you joining us in prayer for the course.