Toddlers Social Scrapbooking

On Friday night, Toddlers held their first ever evening social - a chance for all the mummies, grannies and childminders to let their hair down without the children. We had asked Bangor's "Hobby-dashery" to come and demonstrate scrap-booking.

We spent several hours cutting, gluing, sticking and chatting and to top it all, we enjoyed a lovely supper together. It was a great night looking through each other's photos and enjoying the chocolate! Though of course there was some rivalry as to whose page was the best. Some of the mums went home won over to scrap-booking!

A special thanks to Marian and Ana from the "Hobby-dashery" who put so much hard work into bringing half of the shop with them! We appreciated all of their effort!

As Toddlers is off during the last week of October, the next social evening will be 28th November 2008. Put it in your diaries now!

Opening Service

Sunday 7th September 2008 marked the opening of our new facility on the Movilla Road in Newtownards. It was a special day for the church and we were delighted that so many of our friends, family, neighbours and work colleagues decided to join us and check out Thriving Life Church.

It was exactly a year to the day from our mobile was burnt down by vandals on the grounds of the Scout Hall and when we opened the service with the song Blessed be Your name and in particular the lines "You give and take away" - they held special signifcance for some of us. It is amazing to look back over the past year and watch how God has gently (and not so gently) led us to this point.

The building looked fantastic and many people commented on how great the grounds looked, but more than this, it was the smiles of our "Welcome Team" that really impressed our visitors.

As Gareth and the Leaders dedicated the building for the purposes of God, Cheryl and Marion sung a duet casting the vision for the future of our church "Let us build a house where love can reign and all may enter in".

The worship team led people before God's throne, the drama team raised the issue of dedication and Gareth challenged us about what and who we are dedicated.

Our fellowship has had an intensive summer, many of us have been working all day and well into the night to get the building ready for today, but the 'really' hard work continues as we try to turn our God -given vision of "turning spiritually lost people into passionate committed followers of Christ" into reality.