Marilyn and I headed down to Nelson on Saturday to catch up with Richard and Maria Batchelar, speak in their services and dedicate their new baby Eva to the Lord. Eva makes three with Joel and Bella. Richard was our Youth Pastor for a number of years. They are doing an awesome job in the church and I love their plans for the new church building. They have been very wise in the way they have led the church and built it into a vibrant, multi-generational congregation. Plans are for construction to begin this year.

On Friday night the Elders and key leaders met to plan our way forward keeping in mind our BHAGS. (Big hairy audacious goals). We have had to expand on some of them since we set them a couple of years ago as we had grown past them in some areas. We also received word that the Prime Minister will come an open our new school in April. Some of us slipped back around to the church after the meeting to catch the end of the youth service. The place was packed and buzzing with over 400 young people from across our four congregations. 

We are holding discussions with the Pakuranga Golf Club at the moment on purchasing some land off them for sports fields for the college. The timing is not great with all the other developments but hopefully we can work out something that would be of mutual benefit. It would give us another 1.5ha which is just a bit bigger than our 159 Botany site. This would give us around 17 acres of land in Howick which would be amazing. Keep us in your prayers.