¡Feliz Navidad! Happy Christmas!

The Jones family dreaming of a white Christmas

We want to take this opportunity to wish you all a merry Christmas and a safe and happy new year. We also want to say thanks to everyone who has supported us, prayed for us, visited us and kept in touch throughout this year. Each one of you who maintains this connection with us, even by just reading the blog, is a massive blessing to us.

We invite you to remember the reason for the season - that the Creator God loved you and I so much that he sent his one and only Son, Jesus, to the Earth as a baby. At Christmas time we remember that Jesus was born, God in flesh and blood, living to show us what God is like and to show us how to live God's way in perfection. We also remember at Easter time his death, buying for us forgiveness of our sin with his blood. This is the good news - that God is not far off, God does not live in religious practices; God is near, a God of justice and forgiveness, a God who extends his grace to us and invites us to an intimate relationship with our Creator.

Have an excellent Christmas and don't forget the Christ in Christmas.

Phil, Sandy and Romi

RenovArte Update 30 November 2010

Grand Opening of RenovArte

On Thursday, we had our grand opening for the uni students at RenovArte Café. What an awesome day!


It gave us great joy to see God's hand at work and to see the café full of almost 20 uni students at one point during the afternoon. That is why we are here - to make connections, to live out a life transformed by Jesus Christ and to make disciples!

RenovArte - NOW OPEN!!

Thanks so much for your thoughts, prayers and encouragement over the past months. It's big news... RenovArte is NOW OPEN!!!

We are very excited by what God has done and is doing.

RenovArte opened its doors on Monday whilst we were still doing some minor renovations and installing the speakers for the audio system. We had four customers which was quite good given that it was a public holiday and there were no students in the university. We still don't have our signage up so we are working on getting the word out through the plaza and inviting the uni students.

This Saturday we will have our grand opening for friends, family and our church to celebrate God's goodness and share with them the vision for our ministry amongst uni students. The following week on Thursday we will be having an official opening for the university students and inviting them to "come and see"!

Check out this short video giving you a quick glimpse of RenovArte cafe.

RenovArte progress... 23 October... belated

We are progressing well with the cafe/gallery fitout although things have been slower than we would have liked. The video report above was prepared three weeks ago and things are considerably more advanced now - some more photos to come!

We have been troubled by slow workers doing some of the more specialised jobs and some badly completed work that we had to get the workers to come back and fix. God has been forming our character through the process and helping us to be patient and to trust in Him!!! We are very excited that things are almost ready... get excited...

RenovArte cafe is very close!!

Cafe progress

Hi all,

I know it's been a long time since we last updated and much has been happening. The reason for no updates has been our level of busyness - we're flat out!

Here are some recent photos of the constuction process - we're underway and with the pedal to the metal to get things ready. We haven't got a definite opening date because there's still many things to get done, but we are aiming for the last week of October or the first week of November.



God has been good to us and we have been given the coffee machine, grinder and coffee bar along with a few other items from the old Global Grounds café. We are managing the budget to try and fit out the café in the coolest way possible to make it an attractive hang-out for uni students.

We would love you to get excited about this ministry project and pray specifically that God would help us every step of the way in the cafe setup and opening to make an impact for the kingdom of God. Our goal is to make disciples and on the way to make some great coffee. Satan does not like it when God's people rise up to share the good news of Jesus and we have had some challenges along the way. Please pray for God's protection and strength each day as we seek to be and make disciples through all that we do, including the setup of the cafe.

We can't wait to share more of this exciting ministry project with you, so stay tuned!

Expocafe

We are SO excited about what God is doing in our ministry. We have been able to progress with the cafe/gallery plans to the stage where we are purchasing equipment and preparing the shop space. From 2-4 September, Sandy and I went to Mexico City to ExpoCafe which was a national coffee event. The purpose of our trip was to contact suppliers, look for equipment and gain information and skills in the world of coffee. It was a very beneficial time and we were able to put a deposit on the workhorse of our cafe - the espresso machine.

Check out the photos!