Day 9 Sunday 18th August
We are finding ourselves full circle at another Sunday morning church service. It is good to come together and worship God. Caroline spoke powerfully on how we serve an awesome God who must be feared but at the same time we can come to Him and call "Abba Father". Igor spoke on Matthew 5:5-6. The youth make a significant contribution to the service by leading in the worship songs and they certainly have a gifting in this area.
After the service it was a time for our traditional group church photo and making our farewells.
We must say that during our time here we have been more than truly blessed, it's been a time of 'Koinonia' - As believers in Jesus Christ, we have shared our lives on a level that is much deeper than friendship - we realise we are part of one family, children of God 1 John 1:3
Our Sunday lunch was with Igor & Veronica and their family. They have such warm and gentle characters that it's a real pleasure to be in their company.
Igor keeps honey bees on his land and takes the honey that the bees do not need (it's a beautiful clear honey with a superb and natural taste). After lunch, he invited us to take a look at his bee hives but Brian and Anna were the only takers!
Honeybees are really fascinating creatures and play a vital part in nature. Besides producing honey and wax, which have medicinal uses in themselves, the honey- bee while gathering nectar from the flowers also helps to transfer pollen from plant to plant which enables their flowers to ripen into many kinds of fruit and vegetables that we eat.
A bee colony (hive) consists of: firstly, a queen, who can live up to 5 years and is the only one that lays eggs. She is busiest in the summer months, when the hive needs to be at its maximum strength, and lays up to 1500 eggs per day; secondly, during the spring and summer a few hundred males (drones) but they are expelled for the winter months when the hive goes into a lean survival modes;, and, thirdly, from 10,000 to 80,000 workers, who live for about 6 weeks. Of these three very different-looking bees,
two—the queen and the workers—are female.
When the queen bee dies or becomes unproductive, the other bees will "make" a new queen
by selecting a young larva and feeding it a diet of "royal jelly" (the
powerful, milky substance that turns an ordinary bee into a queen-bee. It is
made of digested pollen and honey or nectar mixed with a chemical secreted from
a gland in a nursing bee's head)
A hive is a social community, highly organised, all the bees in the colony work together for the good of the hive, and are persistent and dedicated to their work, each one having it's own specific role. It is very clear that each bee has a purpose and if each one does not fulfill it's
purpose, then the hive is at risk of dying.
It’s wonderful to realise
that these little creatures have a purpose and have been created and designed to be part of God’s amazing
plan.
When we look at the plan for our lives we must look at God’s
word and we see that everything points to Jesus. (Revelation 4:11)
