The brainchild of Jay Jeffries – is a book called Awaken the Spirit – The Sacred Texts is finally online (At least in sample chapter form).

I’ve worked on the book design and a number of very talented artists and photographers have contributed work. I think the project is well worth supporting in any way possible.

You can view the sample chapter Awaken the Spirit – The Sacred Texts of Jesus, read more about the project, and sign the petition to get it published.

“At the same time you love it but you also hate it with all your guts” (Thanks Les…)

This is exactly how I feel, or at least in the past have felt about Gush. It intrigues me to work out if this is where I need to again pour some effort or if I should wait for somewhere else to pour that expense. It is an expense. It is time, heart, pain and mental energy. It is well and truly worth it.

Do we get a say in what our ministry is? (I don’t like the term ministry by the way, and I’m not even sure of the concept of it as a stand-alone but just run with it). Or do we just somehow arrive there?

I also reckon marriage is a ministry by this definition. Not in a bad way – of hating it’s guts, ha. It’s wonderful, but at the same time it’s a lot of giving up of self and that’s marvelously difficult at times. Today Geoff made me breakfast in bed and made me lunch (err.. when I was in bed again being lazy/sleepy). It was very good.

Soul Survivor Melbourne 2009.

It was an exceptional week away where God did many things (visible and not so visible) in the lives of those attending. Geoff and I were on team and so spent a lot of the week running around. We had the added not-so-bonus of having to ‘tent it’ as Village Hosts. Which is great in principle but lousy for sleeping purposes.

I pulled out the camera on about day 3 after I decided that no one else was doing anything about recording the event in that way, but frankly wasn’t overly prepared and hadn’t thought much about photography where lighting is so horrendous. Next year – considering we are still involved, I think I will take it on a bit more and see what we can get. The variety of photos isn’t huge and I am a little disappointed I didn’t get more of general camping and seminars/workshops. Ah well, the recording of such things is important but not imperative and certainly not as important as what God was doing.

It was really great to see things pull together with the major shift of leadership that has happened since the 2008 festival. I’m really proud of the steering group and rest of us for our involvement and hard work. A huge clang, bang, hurrah must go out here about the individuals and teams running the food venues. As someone said, it’s such a massive but thankless task – even if you are thanked over and over. Priority here to Jess for her mind boggling coordination and Em, who didn’t stop running Le Den, also Nissa, Dave and Ruth who kept Revive up to scratch.

The Soul Survivor experience as far as scheduling goes consists of main sessions (music/worship, speaker), seminars (different speakers tailored topics), workshops (more hands on creative stuff), camping, fantastic food venues (of various themes and focus), gigs, music, prayer etc…

God spoke to me a little on dependancy, but not a great deal. I was perhaps more slowly – less vividly encouraged to do a few things differently. To realign some of how I am living. All good, no lights show for me, but then God kinda knows that light shows don’t press my buttons anyway.

photos here and here

And this then is the pause button. I’m off to Soul Survivor – which starts tomorrow, but there is much setting up to be done yet. I spent some of my afternoon doing PR damage control and malware hunting in code as some loser hacker duped the Soul Survivor website… I found one instance of the code but I think Tim S might’ve found the rest (Hurrah for him).

Tonight I have a bridesmaids dress fitting with Sam, April, Natalie and the girl making the dresses.

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*It appears I fixed it myself… am I allowed to be a little self satisfied?