Category: <span>Holidays</span>

Published June 22, 2009 by

Painted

painting

Shock horror, I can paint. Yes I cheated and used a technique from a book called The Weekend Artist, but I needed something to kick me up the bum and suggest again to myself that I could.

I’ve never really done abstracty stuff before with paint, nor have I ever used gel medium. Infact for a while it looked like there was snot all over the top section of the painting until I bought a little more red paint to the rescue, dont’ think I’ve quite got the hang of using it properly. Gel medium can be used to make acryllics looks a bit more like oils and it took freaking forever to dry in this lovely cold Melbourne – I might as well have used oils. In this photo the varnish on the lower half is still drying.

It’s no masterpiece, but it sure was fun!

Design Experiments Holidays

Published April 20, 2009 by

Soul Survivor 2009

sime2

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

Camping Christianity Holidays Ministry

Published April 14, 2009 by

Hiatus

remoteAnd 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? 😛

Camping Holidays Life Ministry Wedding

Published March 10, 2009 by

Johanna Beach

johanna

Long weekends…

Holidays Life

Great Ocean Road Johanna Beach Long weekend Muxy's Place

Published February 5, 2009 by

Fresh Air Fund

THE FRESH AIR FUND, an independent, not-for-profit agency, has provided free summer vacations to more than 1.7 million New York City children from low-income communities since 1877. Nearly 10,000 New York City children enjoy free Fresh Air Fund programs annually. In 2008, close to 5,000 children visited volunteer host families in suburbs and small town communities across 13 states from Virginia to Maine and Canada. 3,000 children also attended five Fresh Air camps on a 2,300-acre site in Fishkill, New York. The Fund’s year-round camping program serves an additional 2,000 young people each year.

It is across the other side of the globe (to Australian readers), but as I know at least one person who shot over the US recently, then this is the Fresh Air Fund and it’s possible someone might run into the idea here and then go get themselves involved. I really love initiatives like this that add value to kids lives.

Although not always possible, offering camps free of charge is an ideal position. It leaves to wonder what it would take to organise something like this in Australia. I don’t know of any quite on this scale yet over here but if you poke your nose at the background of Fresh Air, then you’ll realise that it was just a small idea and a banding together of a church to serve those around them that kicked this off.

So if you don’t want to go lead, you could go and donate, or if you happen to live on the right side of the globe, you could even be a host family.

*A note about advertising on this blog. I was asked by email to promote this campsite and am gladly doing so because I think it contributes well to the world and adds to building the kingdom of God. I have been asked before to advertise random things/do a link swaps to things I don’t care about and really, don’t bother unless you think it might be something I would get on board with – otherwise I will just ignore your emails.

Camping Christianity Holidays Social Justice

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