A weekend in Bendigo

Hello all!

Meg and I are now trying to recover from a big weekend. Not the least of which was helped by the hour of sleep we lost. Good old Daylight Savings, eh? But the good thing about it is that it's now easier to call us based on the time difference. Now, as i type this at 9:25AM on Monday morning, it's 3:25PM on Sunday afternoon in Calgary. Quick fact for you...China has only one time zone and doesn't believe in Daylight savings...crazy!

So, back to the big weekend. This weekend, we decided to honor our Senior pastors, Pastor Bruce and Jan, because they have now been in the ministry for 25 years! That's a long time! So, we thought it fitting to give them only the very best! On Saturday night, we organized a big shin-dig at a fancy restaurant for them. Had all thse special guests come and we just looked back on their 25 years of what they're doing. Had some videos and pictures which was pretty funny to see the styles that the 80's considered cool. We had about 140 people there that night. Which, I think, blew them away to have all their friends there. They just loved it. I think buying stock in Kleenex would have been a wise thing before this weekend, seeing how many were used. So, then we lost an hour sleep that night because of the daylight savings and then got up on Sunday morning to have an honouring service for them. And we had a lot of people there yesterday morning too. But of course, you can't go a weekned like this without a nice big gift. 3 nights, 4 days at the very elite Versace Hotel. Even the teaspoons and toilets are Versace. I think it's the only 6 star hotel in Australia.

So, all in all, a good weekend had by all. And a first for me...I wore cufflinks! They're in style at the moment. Ha! Never thought you'd see that in sentence! "Jeremy" and "in style". Yeah, that's right. I'm a cool cat!

But it wasn't without dramas...On Thursday, Meg had tried to go and book our Singapore accomodation, only to find out that they had cancelled our flight back on the 9th of jan, and changed to the 7th of Jan. Now, why we would do such a thing? I never called saying that.
"Oh well", they said, "Now you can spend a couple more days in Singapore"
Silly travel agents. So we had to go in this morning and work all that out, trying to convince them that we actually WANTED to spend more time with the family. So, they're in the process of "sorting it out" because I think they realized that they messed up and didn't want us to see them rush around in a panic trying to fix it.

So, there you go.

That's just another weekend here in Bendigo.
Hope to hear from you soon
Love Jer & Meg

Some Clarification Needed

We've received a few emails and replies to our "Dyck Ministries International" blog entry (which is great!) but we do have to clarify with you all that dyck ministries international does not exist. We called ourselves that because it was the first time we'd been sent out from our church to minister at a different town and church. Click here for further understanding.

Sorry for the misunderstanding to some, maybe one day it'll come true!

We'll post another blog soon.

Carmen, Kathlynn, Jane & Jarrad and Lindsay...thank you so much for your replies! We love you all!

A failed date

Meg and I tried to do something we haven’t done in a long time last night…go out on a date. Unfortunately, it didn’t turn out so great. Early in the day yesterday I emailed meg to let her know I wanted to take her out and she could let me know what restaurant she wanted to go out to…(that’s a big hint for all the single guys…let her pick EVERYTHING). So, she picked a restaurant, only to email me later to say that they aren’t open Mondays and Tuesdays…oh the joys of living in a small town (oops, excuse me, Bendigo people hate that…it’s a Regional City). So, there went Plan A. Meg then picked another restaurant, and after work we drove there only to park out front to find it was closed for renovations…now Plan B had failed. We made a hasty decision to try Thai instead, so we drove up to the Thai restaurant, which, in it’s defence, said it was “open”, but the lock on the gate and darkened empty room suggested otherwise.
Are we doomed to spend Monday nights at our house because nothing in town is open???? Would we walk the streets endlessly with blank looks on our faces, asking strangers, “Do you have a place we could go?”?? That’s what it felt like. But in the end, Meg and I decided to go see a movie, Into The Blue…which turned out to be a pretty good movie. So, the night wasn’t a total failure…we’ll try again another night…so it’s just been postponed for now.
So, for those of you who don’t know, and those who do, Meg and I are partly responsible for the Young Adults in our church and one thing we do is every three weeks, we all meet together and go out for coffee. Pretty fun because we don’t always mingle together, so these nights are always fun. And that night happens to be tonight. Hopefully it’s not a repeat of last night
Anyways…I hope you’ve noticed that link on the right saying Email us! It’s there for a purpose!

" Dyck Ministries International"

We set out on our very first ‘Dyck Ministries International’ adventure at a ungodly hour of 7am Sunday morning. Wangaratta was our intended destination in which you would be happy to know we arrived safely two and a half hours later.We were greeted by a little yellow tin shed with a sign “Freedom Ministries.” We had absolutely no idea of what to expect but stepped inside this shed to a little church set up with red plastic chairs set for about 50 people. It was interesting for both of us to be part of a small church service again. We experienced things you would never see at your church back home, such as singers walking off the stage to get a drink of water etc! The little church was filled with amazing and friendly people who welcomed us into their church, and who were very excited to meet us.

I was up first with my communion message that I was little concerned about because I hadn’t spoken in front of adults in so long, (I’m used to talking to little kiddies!) but I was given many great reports about how significant it was to each individual, so really I had nothing to be nervous about.

After communion I handed the mic over to Jeremy and he did an amazing job. (Biased Wife!) His message title was “How to take ownership of your church” with his three key points being 1. You have to love your church. 2. You have to contribute to it and 3. You have to grow it. His message ended with us both praying for people, and many many people thanking Jeremy for such an amazing message. I think it was a very significant message for the church and the stage they are at.

One of the perks of ‘Dyck Ministries International’ was the thick wad of cash we were handed for the morning. Well, not so thick but it sure was a huge blessing to us, something we were not expecting.

We were then taken out for lunch with the Senior Pastor, her husband and a few other couples which was really nice. Conversation was great, lunch was even better and soon after that we headed towards Victoria’s best-preserved gold town, Beechworth.

Jeremy and I had wanted to visit Beechworth for sometime now and seeing it was only 20 minutes from Wangaratta we thought we’d make the trip over. It was such a pretty little town with the most amazing lolly shop that we just HAD to visit. After walking the streets of Beechworth we decided to make the three-hour trip home.

We were very happy to arrive home safely and get out of the car into some comfy clothes after our first outing as ‘Dyck Ministries International!’

Jeremy and I hear from a little birdie, that we have a huge fan base logging on to our blog to check for latest updates, so we hope you’re quite satisfied with this latest entry. We’d love to be able to post photos with each entry but we do not have a digital camera as yet, but we’re planning on purchasing one in Singapore on our way over to Canada at Christmas, so once we get back there’ll be photos galore on here. But until then everyone will just have to wait to see us in person!

Well that’s it from ‘Dyck Ministries International’ for today, we hope you are well and please don’t forget to email us. Just click on to the link on the right. Now that you’ve spent the time reading it you might as well drop us a line. =)

Love Meg & Jeremy

Thursday afternoon ramblings

So, hello and welcome

I'm glad Meg came up with this (and no I'm not afraid to say it was Meg's idea). This way insetad of talking to everyone and making thousands of dollars of phone calls, everyone can just come to this site, and check it all out. I suppose the onus is ours to make sure the blog is updated, but I'm sure that won't be a problem

This weekend, we've got some cool stuff happenening. Tomorrow night at church is the Young Guns Night, where all the young guys get a chance to do their thing...worship lead, preach...and with me chairing the meeting. Friday nights are always a cool night to come and check out what the young people are up to. And then Saturday is our free day to prepare for Sunday, which will be a big one for us. On Sunday, Meg and I have been invited to go to this church about a couple hours from Bendigo, in a little town called Wangaratta. They've asked me to preach there. Victory always sends someone over every couple months or so, and my name came up! Interesting...and they've asked Meg to do communion as well. So, it should be a good day except for the fact we have to leave Bendigo at 7AM on Sunday to get there on time...BOO!! We would've stayed overnight on Saturday night, but some friends of ours are having their engagement party that night....the nerve of them...I know! So, I don't think this church is very big at all...like 60-70 people, so I'll let you all know what it's like. I'm very excited/nervous but I'm sure it will be all well and good. I think Meg and I are more looking forward to some time away. It's been a while...a LOOOOOONG while since that has happened.

And after this weekend, the next thing we're looking forward to is the Lion King Production on Novermber 19th. That's the cool thing about having a world-class city only 90 minutes away....we get all these cool things coming to Melbourne. So, that's on the 19th of Nov. We've got aisle seats, and apparently, those are the best to have because all the animals will be running down the aisles, right beside us! We'll actually be able to smell their sweat! YES! I think Meg is looking forward to this more than me...The Lion King was her favorite movie and she even has the collectable cards...So, Dad, if you remember what I was like at the Phantom, this is what Meg will be like the entire night.

Well, Don't forget we have an email address linked to this page, so email us when you get a chance. Love you all
Jez & Meg

First Entry

Well it seems like having your very own blog is the latest craze that we just had to be a part of! I personally thought it would be a good idea to create one seeing as we're on the other side of the world from Jeremy's family, but also because we have so many friends from Bible College that we keep in touch with and it's easy now for everyone to come and check out this blog to see what we're looking like these days and what's going on in our lives!

We miss you all terribly and cannot wait to be back in Canada at Christmas!