This last Sunday we were all together in one service (incorporating our annual society meeting) and had a chance to look back on 2018 and share some of our plans for 2019. Here are some of the highlights if you missed out:

• Three of our society stewards come to the end of their terms this year - Kelan, Kenny and Paddy complete their time as stewards and we confirmed the appointment of Karien Nell and Sue Wills. Our stewards in 2019 will be Ant Tibbit (Worship), Marcia Moodie (Children and Youth), Pieter Stoltz (Finance and Admin), Karien Nell (Care and Community-building) and Sue Wills (Mission). We are still needing to appoint one further steward to fill the Discipleship portfolio.
• Worship: The 08h30 worship team have had a great year - with new members joining the team and the hosting of a fantastic outdoor worship evening. We saw growth in the 10am service this year, but average attendances at the other two services were slightly down. This probably reflects the global trend that worshippers are in services less often than previously and means that we need to be more intentional about building community outside of Sundays.
• Pastoral Care/Community-building: We heard positive feedback from our third GriefShare course as well as the quiz evening that was hosted earlier in the year. In the year ahead we will continue to focus on welcoming newcomers to UMC and look for more opportunities to get people together as a community.
• Discipleship: Home groups continued to meet this year and a couple of new groups were launched. The WA continues to grow and provides a great space for women to meet and serve together. Likewise our men's fellowship has gone from strength to strength this year. Our bookshop continues to provide excellent discipleship material and this year we launched the Journey App to provide mobile access to small group materials, lectionary readings, recorded sermons etc. During this year, June led a number of Saturday prayer retreats and the Friday morning Centering prayer group continues to meet. In 2019 a week of guided prayer will be offered.
• Youth and children: We welcomed Ozzy as our new youth pastor this year and his focus has been mostly on the Sunday School in 2018. In 2019, Candice will co-ordinate the Sunday School and Ozzy will focus on youth and continuing to build relationships with the DLA students.
• Finance: Schalk presented an encouraging set of financial results for the year to date (a surplus is projected for the year). We approved our 2019 budget, which will include a commitment to giving away 15% of our income.
• Property: In 2019 we embark on a building project - three classrooms (to be used on Sundays for Sunday School and during the week for small groups and various mission projects) and a toilet block (for use during the week by DLA, easing the pressure on the small UMC toilet block). Tony Southwood is overseeing the building and the managing committee is meeting this week to plan the way forward.
• Mission: We heard such positive feedback from the many projects that we lead and partner with - from the various relief efforts (organisations supported by the WA and sewing group as well as the Hambanathi Toiletry Drive) to the empowerment projects under the Khanyisa umbrella (literacy, teacher training and aftercare programmes). A highlight of the year was our mission week which gave members of the church a chance to see firsthand the work that is going on.

If you were there on Sunday, there was a real buzz in the service (which not even a power failure could put out!) and it was so good to all be together. People stayed long after the service talking over tea and cake - we must do this more!