Lets Find A Church

As I'm sure most of you know, we found an Awana Club here in Abu Dhabi, run by the Evangelical Community Church.  We are so grateful to have been part of the club at MBC, and were so incredibly thankful to find one here that we could slot right in to.  Different bible versions, and therefore different versions of verses, notwithstanding.

The club meets on a Sunday night, which is our first school day here, and runs while ECC hold their 'second' Sunday service (the first being on a Friday morning, the first day of our weekend).  The club itself runs very similarly (obviously) to the MBC club, but also very differently (obviously), and so I'm pretty glad I'm helping teach a Cubbies class and didn't try to slot straight in to the Spark age-group which I helped out with at MBC.  And the kids are loving it.

To find out more about ECC and the church building it meets in, you can read this.

We don't actually regularly attend ECC itself, but go to the church they planted off-island about three years ago, called... wait for it...  ECC Off-Island.  It's now run as a completely independent church, and meets in the restaurant of a local zoo - not as bizarre as it might sound!  The kids love that they can walk through the petting zoo every week to get to their Sunday School class, and one of these days we may actually pack a picnic and visit the zoo after church.  ECC Off-Island is only about 10-15 minutes away from our house, compared to the 30+ minutes it takes to travel on-island, and the pastor is a guy that was an associate pastor in one of the bigger churches back in Odessa, so it's a sweet taste of 'home'.  It takes time to get to know people well, but the kids have settled in wonderfully - yes, even Joey! - and are making great friends, and we are so thankful that this has been an easy process.  Dealing with ten 3 and 4-year olds every week is not so much!