As regular readers of this blog and people following me on social media will know, I recently led a team of 12 on a mission trip to Kupang, West Timor. The team consisted of myself, my wife, our four children, and another six members from our local church community.

We had some great experiences in West Timor, and spent time at the New Hope Home, Elpida School, and travelled to a remote mission post to start building a school.

We are currently fund-raising for a roof over the concrete soccer pitch at Elpida School. The soccer pitch is used for a wide variety of community events, from weddings to soccer competitions, and a roof will keep the sun off, and allow for a wider use of the facility. (I also visited West Timor in 2014 as part of another Wings To Work trip, and was involved in pouring the concrete soccer pitch.)

If you are interested in donating some funds towards the New Hope Home or the roof for the Elpida soccer pitch, please contact me for more information.

I hope to post some more photos of our experiences in West Timor on my blog in the coming weeks. See below for a video of our trip, as well as an article about our trip that two team members, Dani and Trish, wrote for a local mission publication. As their article provides a great overview of our trip, I'm publishing it here too (with their permission).

Ninja Wren!

While photographing some Splendid Fairy-Wrens in Pemberton earlier this year, there were two wrens posing on top of a fence post. (In Western Australia, they are often referred to as "blue wrens".)
I captured a number of frames of these two birds with my Canon EF 70-200mm f/4L lens. It was only later that day when I was reviewing my photos on my laptop that I noticed that I had captured one of the birds in mid-air, looking like it is performing a martial arts kick on the other bird!

I've included a couple of other photos of the same birds below, in some more "normal" poses.