LOY KRATHONG - THAI FESTIVAL AT BRIGHTWATER COMMONS

Last week all of the fellowshippers took a night off to join in the festivities at the Thailand Festival at Brightwater Commons. It was great to immerse ourselves in a bit of Thai culture again, even though it was only a glimpse of the real Thailand. Good food, good fellowship and loads of fun.

The Thai's were celebrating the festival of Loy Krathong. Loy means float in Thai and krathong is a banana leaf. The leaf is decorated with elaborately-folded banana leaves, flowers, candles and incense sticks. A low value coin is sometimes included as an offering to the river spirits. During the night of the full moon, Thais will float their krathong on a river, canal or a pond lake. The festival is believed to originate in an ancient practice of paying respect to the spirit of the waters. It is also an opportunity for the Thai's to send their grudges, failing and sins off down the river on their Krathong. It was quite a sight to see all the Krathong's floating off into the Brightwater fountains.

They also sent floating lanterns off into the sky with their sin's attached. The lanterns looked a bit like miniature hot air balloons. It was impressive.
What a lot of lanterns.... and sin
The day was ended with a Thai massage for those brave enough to be twisted into a pretzel and a late night coffee. Those who tried the pretzel treatment paid the price the next day when they couldn't get out of bed. Mwaaaaaahaaaaaaahaaaaaahaaaaa.

No meeting last week... and no meeting this week

Well, nobody pitched, so I said I would do the blog!
This approaching Saturday there will be no fellowship at the KE Base as we will all be meeting at Brightwater Commons to attend the Thai Festival....We are not entirely sure what it is all about but thought it a good way to have fellowship.
If you do not know how to get there, give us a call. If you need a ride, LET US KNOW and come to the base as the 'bus' will leave at 15h00.

The balance between meeting the need and exercising God's kingdom will.

The subject for the KE fellowship this last Saturday (6 November) was the balance between meeting the need and exercising Gods kingdom will.

Amongst many “golden nuggets”, the following concepts arose out of the discussion:

1) Jesus never went looking for the need to be met. He just met the need while performing His Fathers will (while on His mission).
2) Is your contribution truly an investment into the Kingdom with tangible returns? (For the Kingdom of course!)
3) We need to change our mind set that if we are executing His kingdom will then we have unlimited resources at our disposal and the “problem” is not insurmountable.
4) A suggestion – cross-cultural missions will naturally sort out the local need.
5) Human logic and emotion are dangerous allies when confronted with the “need”. We need to seek God’s strategy and establish the real need from the people themselves.

Another angle on Mathew 25:42-46 ???

SAT EVE 30 OCTOBER 2010

Eight adults and three children gathered for fine fellowship, fine food and fine discussions. We started off by sharing about any conflict situations we had experienced in the past week. We had a good laugh at some of our marital spats but also shared how we have grown through the journey and changed to the extent that our conflict situations now only last a short time (i.e. half an hour and not a week). The group realised that our conflicts paled in comparison to what Schwemma had experienced the previous week. God had sent him to Upington to meet a certain women and be a witness in her life but it had not come without a good share of "suffering for the sake of the kingdom".

We had a quick dinner which was sumptious and then we got back to our discussions. We discussed kingdom matters until late into the night and finally left at 22:30.