Friday 15 August 2008

Lejla Allison's Testimony - Operation Christmas Child - Video Edition

I just came across this video by Jeff Douglas of Lejla's story and some follow-up content. I think it's a great promotion of what Operation Christmas Child is about, which is acting on God's heart of compassion for the poor and downtrodden in order to bring about hope and healing.

My advice (unless you've got a nice speedy connection) is to press play, then pause it and wait for it to buffer a decent chunk so that you can watch it without it pausing on you all the time.


The Lejla Allison Story from Jeff Douglas on Vimeo.

Wednesday 13 August 2008

5th Sunday Service in Narembeen August 31

Lejla Allison's Testimony - Operation Christmas Child

This is a very powerful story of a young girl in war-torn Sarajevo whose life was transformed through the gift of a Christmas Shoebox. Worth sharing with friends!
Lejla's Story

Tuesday 12 August 2008

Church website updated

I've been busily learning a few more tricks with Javascript, and the last few weeks' sermons have been added to the website to take advantage of some new functionality.

The new stuff is designed to make it easier to switch between audio & video sections and look at scripture passages and other resources without interrupting streaming media. Let me know if you have any problems!

http://www.birchfamily.org/church

Mike's Creamy Coconut Chicken Curry!

A bit of experimentation for last night's dinner, but it worked out pretty nicely - give this one a try if you like a mild chicken curry:

500g skinless diced chicken breast
1 can of creamy coconut milk
sprinkle of paprika
as much peas and corn as you like
1 small can of champignons, sliced & diced (easier for the kids to handle!)
1 tspn (not tbspn!) of curry powder
250ml cream (I use lactose free)

They're listed in the order that I added them to the pan, and the final product was served with steamed rice.
A true cook might shudder, but it went down pretty well with the family!

Maybe the best part about it is that Tim has been learning his alphabet this year, so we gave "Curly C" a real workout with our creamy coconut chicken curry!

Sunday 10 August 2008

Sermon - Light and Darkness pt 3

As we explore together what it means to follow Jesus - turning from darkness into light - we need to face the reality that not all Christians agree on the specifics of what that looks like. This message deals with the situation of not being able to agree on a specific course of action in a specific circumstance, using the example of Paul and Barnabas in Acts 15. My plan is to follow this up with a message that deals with disagreements on general standards of belief and conduct.

Sermon video and audio are available on the church website, together with Scripture links, or you can simply view below.