Last week I attended the annual Equip Easter conference. This was my fourth Equip and I continue to find encouragement and inspiration in it.

This year the speaker was Michael Schafer from KwaZulu-Natal where he is the director of the ENTRUST Training Course. He took us through the books of Haggai and Malachi in a series entitled "Playing the Waiting Game". It encouraged us to stay faithful and obedient, and to persevere despite what we might perceive as unfairness and inertia.

As an old-timer I was again in the keynote speaker's (Michael) small group this year. We discussed how to present evangelistic talks. This served as a sort of refresher course for me, but was very good as it presented new perspectives. Michael's role as director of ENTRUST and his love for the gospel was very evident and served to reorientate us to what is important in carrying out gospel messages.

There were a number of new and exciting electives this year. I took the one on ministry in the South African context. The focus was on how to evangelistically reach out to traditional African people groups. I found it very insightful: we considered traditional African beliefs, the effects of Apartheid, and past, current and emerging cultural trends. As an Afrikaner living in a predominantly white and Western culture this was a big eye-opener. I believe that this "equipping" in particular will be valuable in the future.

This year I was privileged to contribute in a small way. For the elective on apologetics I did a short presentation on the Moral Argument for the existence of God. I am happy to say that it was well received and generated some good discussions. This experience encouraged me to deepen my knowledge on the Moral Argument as an area of "expertise" for my apologetics.

Further there were usual encouragements and friendships which has largely contributed to my love of this conference. Friday night was a games night, Saturday night was the obligatory sokkie night and Sunday morning we were again blessed with weather which was clear enough to have a sunrise Easter service, where we remember with joy and thankfulness why we were all there. And of course the catering was fantastic! Thanks to everyone who contributed, especially the organisers.

Going off topic a bit, I just want say that the past month or two has been really rough. Much of it can be attributed to work, which is going well, just busy, so I am thankful for that. But the nett effect has been that I have not been able to write as much for this website as I would like to do. The good news is that I expect things to quiet down a bit, especially as winter approaches. I have heaps that I want to write about, and some other ideas for the website as well. Stay tuned!

Grace and peace.