Saturday, February 21, 2015

Second generation Islanders in Australia

from w
There are Tongan and Fijian Islanders in our local church congregation. Ben and Mona Lisa - from a Tongan family, and Andrew and Jordan from our Fijian family. Jhaia is part Aboriginal and Ebony's Dad came from Scotland.  A nice ethic mix to celebrate.
It wasn't exactly preaching up a storm but we did have a delightful worship service this morning with a youth accent - at East Geelong. The boys and girls aged 12 to 17 led the service with their youth leader Calum, each youth doing a mini-sermon based on their favourite reading. Andrew was first and he read a paraphrase of Psalm 23 from 'The Message'. Four of the boys sang 'I Believe' with a backup youtube, Ebony led a children's time, Jordan read Prayers of the People, Jhaia gave an excellent little sermon showing how he values our congregation and God's help in his life, We had a funny video for the children on 'Obey your parents' after one of the readings that Ben read in Tongan and English a verse he learnt at White Sunday many years ago. Mona Lisa will probably be a great speaker in the future after we heard her clearly articulated thoughts on a verse from Philippians. Our ;congregation on most Sundays has about seventy-five people, mostly older, so it's beaut to see our youth up the front today. One announcement certainly gave us heart for our engagement with mission overseas. The former members of the South ;congregation (who lost their church in the Uniting church kerfuffle last year) have made a substantial donation of $10,000 A to a church building project in Vatuadova village, Fiji. So it was a great morning. We signed love hearts to give out to friends in the congregation that we especially value..

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