Martin and Hazel Frost Our Life in Argentina

We've begun sending out invites for our forthcoming Roadshows in the UK.

If you're near one of the venues on the dates above please drop in, we'd love to see you!

For more details Like us on our Facebook page where more details will be posted.

Here's a scary thought...one month from today we'll be boarding a plane for our UK trip.

It's not that the UK is scary, though watching Sky News we're often left feeling like strangers in a land that once was home. The scary bit is just how much work we've got to do before we board that plane.

Church wise things are pretty much sorted. I actually got a plan together back in January for Tree of Life in our absence so that's not too much of a concern. The biggest concern is getting all our filming etc. done ready for putting our various presentations together for our Facing The Mountain Roadshows. The filming will be finished in the next day or two and then begins the endless hours of editing, cursing, chopping, and computers crashing.


In anticipation of this delight I've downloaded a quality movie editing software suite of 540Mb's. However, I was dismayed to see that I then had to download 1.7Gb's of add-ons to make the thing work properly. That can get a bit stressful when you've only go an alleged 1Mb of bandwidth and your ISP throttles the downloads if they're too big. Thankfully it downloaded smoothly overnight and it should all mean that the finished products are good but I just know I'm going to have to pull some all-nighters to get there.

Meanwhile the boys are simply excited beyond all reason! Joel has even planned his on-board entertainment for the entire journey. I worry about that boy.

If you've got a spare minute or two please send up a prayer for us.

The 2013 Blogging From A to Z Challenge was a lot harder than last year, mainly because it crept up on me and I had failed to plan ahead so on the 30th March I found myself desperately looking for a theme and subjects for it. Will I never learn?!

Sadly time was a real issue and I failed dismally in my attempts to spend time looking at other blogs. I managed to visit everyone that left a comment on a post but beyond that I probably only blog hopped on a two or three occassions.

All in all I enjoyed it and it was great to give the blog some long overdue attention but hopefully next year I'll have more time and be more dilligent in my efforts. I ought to start planning for it now, but somehow I just know that's not going to happen.



























Hope you've enjoyed this summary of my A to Z posts.

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This post is part of a series in the Blogging From A To Z Challenge, April 2013.

"I am the Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End."Revelation 22:13
Like the English Z, Omega is the last letter of the Greek alphabet and a fitting way to sign off from this year's A to Z Blogging Challenge.

It's been a lot of fun for me and good to give the blog some long overdue attention.

Hope you've enjoyed it too!


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This post is part of a series in the Blogging From A To Z Challenge, April 2013.

If you're of the praying persuasion please pray for us at Tree of Life as we have a great set of young adults and kids who join us faithfully every Sunday.

Sadly because we're still quite small and lacking in resources we're not able to offer them much. In fact we pretty much ignore the young adults amongst us. Not because we want to, far from it!  We did ask a couple to lead our youth work but sadly personal issues have prevented them from getting involved and we're a bit stuck as a church.

So please pray for good solid folk who could take a lead in this for us.


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This post is part of a series in the Blogging From A To Z Challenge, April 2013.

We don't have a xylophone at Tree of Life.

In fact we have nothing that resembles a worship band in any way shape or form and yet we have some of the most liberating and meaningful worship I've ever experienced.

I remember several years ago when Matt Redman brought out his brilliant song The Heart of Worship and many churches responding by stripping their worship back to basics. Sadly the fad didn't last long and pretty soon we were making it about ourselves once again.  But these words stuck with me: "I'll bring You more than a song For a song in itself Is not what You have required". I'm still struck by these words and love how Matt grasped what true worship was about.

I feel this is where we're at at Tree of Life, we can't put on an all singing all dancing performance, thankfully we simply don't have the resources to do that. But what we can do is spend time in God's presence, worshipping in spirit and truth, leaving plenty of space for the Holy Spirit to minister. In this we bring so much more than a song to our Lord. Personally I find this very exciting!

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This post is part of a series in the Blogging From A To Z Challenge, April 2013.

Tree Of Life has a website.

It's not a very good one but it's a start.

We're not very good at keeping it up to date but it's still a good starting point for finding out a bit more about the church and for contacting us.

Feel free to take a look.

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This post is part of a series in the Blogging From A To Z Challenge, April 2013.

I've posted before on my favourite verse and it remains my favourite.

John 16:33 "I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world".

I love the simplicity and the matter of factness about this verse. In this world you will have trouble. Not you might have trouble but you will have trouble. I always think of the verse when the age old discussion about why bad things happen to good people debate. Quite simply it's not about bad things happening to good people but rather just the simple fact that in this world you/we/me will have trouble. End of.


However, Jesus then goes on to encourage his disciples with one of the most amazing promises: "But take heart! I have overcome the world". Regardless of what may come our way, Jesus has already overcome and we can draw strength to face the challenges that come our way.

The Christian faith is no guarantee of an easy or quiet life, in fact it should be quite the opposite looking at the things Jesus and his disciples taught. But regardless of whether it's raining or the sun is shining the simple truth of John 16:33 remains undimmed. God is awesome!

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This post is part of a series in the Blogging From A To Z Challenge, April 2013.

Unity is a word so often bounded around but with seemingly little meaning, and yet in the church context it's incredibly important.

One of my joys in church life is marvelling at how seemingly disparate groups of people can be brought together through genuine love.

I'm not aware of any other aspect of life that can bring the unlikliest people together for the good of themselves and their communities. Local church is amazing!

At Tree of Life we have South Africans, Angolan and Brits amongst us which makes for a great sense of diversity and I believe this reflects the nature of heaven.


In Ephesians 4 Paul talks about how different ministries are given to the church for the equipping of the saints for works of service. Paul goes on to say: "This will continue until we are united by our faith and by our understanding of the Son of God. Then we will be mature, just as Christ is, and we will be completely like him." v13, he then tells us in Colossians that in bearing with each other and forgiving each other, we should "over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity" Col 3:14. Unity is essential to church life but it's not just some pipe dream out there somewhere, it's something that we should be seeking in our own church life.

However, unity is so much bigger than what's going on in our local church. We know that the church is the bride of Christ. I made reference to this in my E post. One day Christ will present his bride to his father. This is part of the joy that was set before him on the cross (Heb 12:2). When he presents his bride there won't be an Anglican bride, a Catholic Bride, a Methodist Bride and a Charismatic bride. There will be one bride, the church. As such unity transcends our local church and should compel us to build bridges between our neighbouring churches. After all, one day we're going to be united whether we like it or not.

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This post is part of a series in the Blogging From A To Z Challenge, April 2013.

Being part of Tree of Life is truly a privilege and a blessing. To be a part of the leadership team doubles that privilege and blessing!

I'm not going to repeat last year's post on Tree of Life but rather talk about the joys of the leadership team.

We're very blessed to serve alongside Gerrit & Sharon and Chris & Veronica, two quality couples with huge hearts for Jesus and the community.

Tree of Life just wouldn't be the same without these guys and we love them dearly. We're so grateful to God for blessing us with a quality leadership team!



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This post is part of a series in the Blogging From A To Z Challenge, April 2013.

I love Sundays!
When I first became a Christian many moons ago I loved church. The church I was involved with was a new plant so things were exciting and we were on the cutting edge of things.

Since then my love of church has waned to the absolute low of 2010.

Between 2004 and 2010 I used to joke that we lived in the most beautiful place on earth and had the worst church life possible. I guess it's true, for every action there's an equal and opposite re-action.


My love of church picked up again when we were going through to Mitchell's Plain on Sundays in 2011 and my love of church has been fully rekindled with the planting of Tree of Life! 

Yesterday was a classic example of why I love church so much. We've been talking about blessings lately and we've heard some amazing testimonies of God's awesome blessings but that hasn't changed the fact that some folk are still facing incredibly tough situations. As a church we could ignore this and focus on the blessings but rather we chose to spend our time praying for folk, waiting on the Holy spirit and prophesying over them. It was an amazing morning!

I love Sundays!
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This post is part of a series in the Blogging From A To Z Challenge, April 2013.

Our faith rests on this one fact; Jesus' resurrection from the dead. So much so that even Paul acknowledged in 1 Corinthians 15:14 that "if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith".

So are we wasting our time?

I would argue that no we're not wasting our time.

John's gospel account of Jesus death is quite clear that when the Romans pierced Jesus' side blood and water flowed out. Anyone with a modicum of medical knowledge knows that in death blood and water separate. So we know that Jesus was dead. Also, he's been brutally attacked in his run up to the actual Crucifixion which would have helped to hasten his death.



The Bible then tells us that Jesus made a number of appearances after His death. Over a forty-day period Jesus appeared to hundreds of people. His first appearances are recorded on Easter Sunday when he appeared to Mary Magdalene, the women that came to Jesus tomb (Mary the Mother of James, Salome, and Joanna), Peter, and two disciples on the Emmaus road. He also appeared to the remainder of the Twelve Disciples though Thomas was absent, which gave rise to his title doubting Thomas. Later Jesus appeared to them with Thomas present.

There was also an appearance to seven disciples on the Sea of Galilee. On another occasion he appeared to over five hundred people at the same time. There is also an appearance to James. Finally Jesus appeared to Saul of Tarsus – the man who became the apostle Paul.

These appearances convinced his disciples, beyond any doubt that he had risen from the dead and I'm convinced of it too.

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This post is part of a series in the Blogging From A To Z Challenge, April 2013.

This is totally unconnected to my theme but I was a bit stumped for this one and I really didn't want to steal yet another post from last year!

So Q is for Queen Size, as in bed.

Being a Brit I fully understand why a king size bed is smaller than a queen size bed and the reason makes a lot of sense. Traditionally the king's bed was a place of business, it had a perfunctory role. The queen's bed however was used by her for luxuriating in and being pampered, hence the size difference.

I thought this was universally known and understood but anyone who's ever lived in another country will know it's far from the case. It seems that some nations don't understand the nuances of monarchy and have switched it around so the king size is bigger than the queen size. I'm not sure why this would be the case. Maybe it has to do with hanging on to outdated notions of the king being more important than the queen? Just a thought.


I guess it's just one of the many imponderables of living cross culturally or is it a case of being separated by a common language? I'm still trying to figure that one out.


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This post is part of a series in the Blogging From A To Z Challenge, April 2013.

I really enjoy the Coffee With Jesus cartoons from Radio Free Babylon and I especially like this one about Pontius Pilate.

I've always felt that Pilate got a bit of an unnecessarily unfair press for his role in Jesus' crucufiction. He was between a rock and a hard place thanks to the religious leaders of the day and they manipulated the situation to get the outcome they wanted.


The Nicene Creed tells us that "For our sake he was crucified under Pontius Pilate", and whilst this is technically correct, it was the religious leaders that did the real damage.

Regardless of how we feel about Pilate and his guilt, we're all equally guilty with him! John 8:7

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This post is part of a series in the Blogging From A To Z Challenge, April 2013.

Oom Paul is a great man!
At 86 there's not much in life he hasn't seen and having been married to Molly for a little over 60 years with loads of children, grandchildren and great grandchildren there isn't much he hasn't done.

I've had the privilege of sitting with Oom Paul on a few occassions and consider him to be my very own Nelson Mandela.  I've never met Madiba and am highly unlikely to ever have the chance to, but sitting with someone like Oom Paul is just as great a privilege!

In our modern throw away age it's all too easy to underestimate the value of people like Oom Paul when we should really be taking time out to sit at the feet of such people and soak up their knowledge.

Like Mandela, Oom Paul won't be around for much longer but I intend to sit at his feet as much as I can and just soak up what he has to offer.

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This post is part of a series in the Blogging From A To Z Challenge, April 2013.

You can choose which name of God you like the most, for me I like Father.

I had a dream through my childhood that one day I would live with my dad but I was robbed of this dream at 18.

Thankfully shortly after my dad died I was introduced to my heavenly father and now my dream has been fulfilled more than I could ever have hoped for.

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This post is part of a series in the Blogging From A To Z Challenge, April 2013.

M is for Macassar

I wrote a post on Macassar last year and rather than steal yet another post from last year's challenge I thought I'd have a go at writing something a bit different.

We still serve Tree of Life church in Macassar and spend a lot of our time in the community and we still love it! So in that regard nothing has changed and as a church we are still passionate about winning the community for Christ.

Tree of Life meets on Sundays at Macassar High school so it seems appropriate to focus on education in Macassar.

Education is generally a bit of a hot potato in South Africa and nowhere are the difficulties more pronounced than in Macassar.

Because Macassar is located within the Helderberg it is considered by the Education Dept to be in a wealthy area and not in need of any extra finances or resources. This is an unfortunate accident of birth! Macassar's schools desperately need more govt investment but they just won't get it.

This brings me to the picture which was taken just over a week ago. It shows residents in Macassar Village protesting over their lack of access to schools. Macassar village is on the far end of the town and getting to either of the high schools is quite a trek.

But it's not all doom and gloom in Macassar. Recent matric results were very encouraging with both high schools achieving a higher pass rate than the provincial average of 82,8%.  Zandvliet High had a pass rate of 88.5%, an 8% improvement on its pass rate of the previous year, while Macassar High achieved a pass rate of 87.5%.  An article in the local press shows just how much progress the Macassar schools have made because they are now out performing some of the bigger helderberg schools.

This can only be good news for Macassar!

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This post is part of a series in the Blogging From A To Z Challenge, April 2013.

L is for life and abundant life at that! John 10:10 "I came that they may have life and have it abundantly"

L could also be for the person I'm blogging about and it could also be for Lady because she is a remarkable lady. I guess I should also count this post as part of my Heroes Of The Faith series.

L is an amazing lady! She has two sons, both at high school, she's a hairdresser and lives with her mother. all quite unremarkable, but that's one of the things I love about the true heroes in life.

But L has some complexities in her life that would make many of us want to give up. Firstly, her oldes son was recently diagnosed as being bi-polar and he's recently been talking about taking his own life. not words that any mother wants to hear. He's a bright boy who was doing really well at school but that's all come to an end. L lives with her sons in a two room wooden shack in the garden of her mother's house, which turns out not to be her mother's house at all! L's mother is a seriously addicted gambler and has all the attendant problems associated with her addiction which just piles on a load of uncertainty that L really doesn't need.
To add to the problems, L decided to give up her salon business and go to college for three years to better herself and to give her sons a better life.

We all have a ton of rubbish to deal with in life, none of us have a nice straight path to walk, so what makes L so special?

L is special to us because we see her growing in faith and maturity through these testing circumstances and she steadfastly thanks God for the many blessings in her life. Yes, you read that right! It feels like the worse her circumstances get the more she's at the front of church sharing testimony of how God has answered more prayers and provided for her needs. Most folk in her situation would be up the front asking for prayer, but L just keeps on testigying to God's faithfulness in her life. WOW!

I recently did a short series in Tree of Life looking at blessing and came to the conclusion that God's blessing comes through faithfulness. So often we see folk who just want God to perform a quick and easy miracle and then move on with the next thing but all their doing is missing the inherent biblical principle of faithfulness. How can we expect God to bless us if we're not being faithful?

L is blessed because she is faithful to God, spending time in his presence and word and constantly bringing her family to him in prayer. This is why she is blessed and this is why she's a hero of the faith; because she's such a great model for others to follow.

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This post is part of a series in the Blogging From A To Z Challenge, April 2013.

Here's a question for all church leaders...

Are you kingdom building or empire building?

Jesus spoke of the Kingdom of God 116 times across the four gospels, so it was obviously an important part of his message. Much of what we do in church is about building and extending the kingdom for His glory. Sadly this sometimes goes awry.

Having been a Christian and a regular churchgoer for more years than I care to remember I've had many opportunities to observe church leaders and learn lessons from them. The good ones serve as role models and the bad ones serve as warnings on how not to do it.

My question arises from the fact that I've seen more and more behaviour from leaders which leaves me wondering who is being worshipped on a Sunday morning? I especially find myself asking this question of many of the larger trendy charismatic churches with their famous pastors. I recently saw some photos of a big church conference here in SA and was disturbed by some of the images of a well known pastor soaking up the adulation of the crowd. I guess it's not for me to judge as the photos are but a fleeting snapshot in time but I certainly wouldn't make my home in a church like that.

Another aspect of church or leadership behaviour that leads me to asking this question is to do with leaders who seem to view their calling to pastor as a career choice. This can be especially pronounced within apostolic circles where certain leaders jockey for position and miss the essence of the apostolic, namely that apostles are church planters, not self appointed grandees directing church affairs from afar.

The model of Paul in the new testament is so often misconstrued by apostles. Yes Paul spoke into church life, yes he directed churches from afar, he had to given he was locked up. But the distinctive of Paul's ministry is that he planted each of those churches and so was a father figure to the leaders and this is where his authority as an apostle came from. He didn't jockey for position to become an apostle, nor was it a career choice. Rather he got off his butt and planted churches.

Acts 15 makes it clear that apostles can only act with the consent of elders and it is the elders that send apostles. Then in Acts 16:4 we learn that the major decisions were made jointly by the apostles and elders. "As they went on their way through the cities, they delivered to them for observance the decisions that had been reached by the apostles and elders who were in Jerusalem.".  When apostles act without the permission of the elders it's time to get away from them!

Unbelievably there are apostolic circles in which the apostle/s have never planted a single church! It does make you wonder what is being built, the kingdom of God or a personal empire?

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This post is part of a series in the Blogging From A To Z Challenge, April 2013.

Image borrowed from Resurgence

I make no apologies in stating that as far as I'm concerned it's all about Jesus.

Whilst there seems to be a growing fashion to remove Jesus from church as certain leaders gain celebrity status I have to say that for me and Tree of Life Church, Jesus is and will remain central to all that we do.

Lecture over!

I was looking for a serious picture to accompany this post but whilst searching google images I came across this selection of hideous images and had a chuckle to myself. Take a look at the picture and once you've spotted what's wrong leave a comment.

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This post is part of a series in the Blogging From A To Z Challenge, April 2013.