Category: <span>Ministry</span>

indelible.jpgLast night a mosquito gave me a fat lip and (it at least feels like it) mauled my face. I always use the word ‘needless’ – but needless to say, I didn’t sleep very well. I know I had a war with what I thought was a fly throughout that time – fly – mosquito, perhaps one and the same – annoying.

I have one assignment out of the way, one close to done and two more to finalise after that. A whopper headache due to the above paragraph, people coming for dinner and have spent too much money on buying supplies to submit uni assignments.

I have spent the past few days, catching up with some old Gush crew to think things , meeting Matt Glover (He’s a nice guy) and hanging out with Burkie and Beth. James (Burkie) is going to be doing our wedding photos – this is not why we went and hung out with them, we went because he is a ripper cook and we like them… Definitely the latter. The food was good. The house was intriguing and the months of meaning to catch up have finally eventuated – it turns out he lives only about 10mins from me. They’re fun.

We had a Slum Survivor night for youth group and had a fantastic evening. Youth is now all ‘blogged up’ so you can go and have a look.

One of my year seven girls leant me a Pink CD so I can listen to the song about homelessness – I am delighted and bemused, I haven’t listened to it yet.

I had a brainwave to do with something wedding related.

A long put off chat that needed to be had was had.

Dad came back from a month away in the Solomons.

And reading over my last blog. I apologise.

Photograph by William Eggleston 

Life Ministry Uni

something_to_say_by_autumn_rain.jpgI haven’t fallen off the side of the planet.

There is a mounting list of things I should be doing but quite literally, can’t.
I am about as bogged down in uni stuff as you can get. There needs to be a little space to live and sleep but in predicting the next two weekends, it’s only going to get worse.

One thing worth mentioning is that we’re trying something a bit new with our youth group. Every few weeks instead of our ‘Friday nights’ we are splitting into small groups. This happens whenever works best during the week. I have the Year 7 girls as my crew as I seem to have a bit of a relationship going with them and am really (to be honest) quite pleased about it. Laura is taking the Year 9 girls and Analise the Year 8’s, Geoff is taking all the boys (There are only about 3) and we’re on the lookout for co-leaders.

I’d like to run with a mix of fun stuff and of course, some deeper stuff (Wow, beautifully coherent, clever words). Any ideas would be welcome. The first one is this coming Friday.

And that’s that. News and news and not told that interestingly.

Oh, we do have a 90% confirmed reception place and we have gotten an absolute bargain due to one clever stumbling across!!!… and our engagement party is in a few weeks. Invites to go out soonish. Keep checking your email!

Life Ministry Wedding

desk.jpgFor the second-time I am participating in the ProBlogger writing project, for the last round I – and many others shared our Reviews and Predictions, this time it is our Top 5.

I was contemplating sharing my top 5 as a rant about university, due to the fact my creativity is being sucked dry into assignments instead of blog posts, however my life extends beyond that. Infact at the moment my life is driven by more things than I can count.

I could share highlights of recent times, early wedding tips, design happy’s, all the blogs I’ve starred for interest sake, why I haven’t been all that social lately, what meals I cook when I’m by myself, the who’s who in my world, the heroes I don’t normally name (might have to make some up), my top books, my top movies, my top five… It’s difficult to decide.

So here are the Top Five Things that Dictate my Time (at least at the moment).

  • Being a (Communication Design) University Student
  • What’s good: The ability to score a two day uni-week, a small course where faces are familiar and names are relatively well known, occasional discounts on the lifeblood-coffee, interesting conversations, creativity, lectures that are amusing despite being boring, cheap printing, free internet access, one building.
  • What’s bad: Endless homework, persistent ongoing folio work, whopping huge loads of class preparation, one hour train trips, 8:30am starts, no lunch break on Tuesdays, frustrating tutors.
  • Being recently Engaged
  • What’s good: Knowing I get to marry the best guy ever – and be married until one of us dies (how else do I put it?), a nice sparkly ring, no guilt in looking at anything wedding related, people’s greater acceptance of public affection, fun wedding planning, scoring good on a bargain buy of a wedding dress, being able to use the word fiance!
  • What’s bad: Organising a wedding when Point 1 is getting in the way. Other fiddly things around descision making that affects more than just you and your fiance.

Read about my engagement here and here.

  • Being a Youth Group Leader
  • What’s good: Hanging out with some fantastic kids and getting to talk about God and life with them. Fun nights.
  • What’s bad: No free Friday nights and that being my standard ‘crash time moment’ of the week.
  • Living out of Home
  • What’s good: Freedom from ‘set’ be at home by xyz times, and other such household restrictions, more space, more supposed responsibility, the niceness of having a good housemate.
  • What’s bad: Having to get home and cook when you’re tired, waiting to get a full load’s worth of clothes before you can do your washing, paying rent, paying for groceries.
  • Work
  • What’s good: Nice bosses, nice colleagues, getting paid, work conferences to Tasmania, feeling like I’m at a better place to be working there, feeling useful, free lunch, good coffee, the street atmosphere of Albert Park, the orange door, my own business card, salary sacrifice mobile phone bills, steady shifts, holiday pay, sick leave and no one breathing fire down my neck.
  • What’s bad: The hour and half to get there, the longish day, the Friday afternoon knowledge that I have to spend my Saturday doing homework, the trip home (see point 5), the occasional left hanging as to what I could best be doing.

And that’s that! I really have very little spare time at all at the moment, pick or choose which of the above is eating it. My favourite clearly belongs with anything wedding related, my least favourite is the excessive homework.

Large apologies to all those people I’ve said I’ll catch up with, but haven’t had time for. In three weeks I have uni holidays. I will then have a spare 9 weeks (!!!!) up my sleeve to do everything else I wish would be on that list and avoid most of the things I’d rather not have there.

Blogging Life Ministry On The Train Out of Home Uni Wedding

Seeing God do good stuff in my youth girls (and the boys)! They are almost all up at Soul Survivor for the week. I joined them this evening and I’ll shall return on Friday night. I was somewhat thrilled when the first main session lined up pretty well exactly with what we’ve been looking at over the past few months around not letting the world dictate who you are and much about building character and the pettishness of how we treat and believe the externals. Please pray for them.

Christianity Church Ministry

renokawai.jpgGeoff’s claim to the youth this morning that last night at 12.01am he proposed to me in the McDonalds carpark had our youth kids literally leaping for joy – the boys were hugging and the girls in their excitement were complaining that it was, “Not the way we told you to do it”, (oh yes, they’re very well versed in things!) there was even a triumphant, “I knew it!”, which was shortly swallowed after we disparaged our lies, but quickly made smooth as the same girl happened to find $50 on the floor.

After our April Fools hilarity – oh it was good – we actually had a really fun, engaging (NB. bad pun here) Sunday morning with the story of the four men lowering their friend through the roof. Some new kids came out of the woodwork, boys – and we need them as we are sadly lacking them, and Geoff pulled out some brilliant footy analogy that just worked.

We talked about taking risks in joining with God and it was nicely aligned (at least in my head) with what I’ve been rambling on about Chasing Truth in Quiet.

It is really encouraging seeing where youth is going and finding a bit more motivation in some new ideas that we have been contemplating for our Friday nights. I would love to have some time (and I think/hope to take some eventually) to think further about how I can play my part in doing more with the girls. It’s not an easy group to lead in many ways.

It seems to me that God has put us who bear his Message on stage in a theater in which no one wants to buy a ticket. We’re something everyone stands around and stares at, like an accident in the street. We’re the Messiah’s misfits.” (v9)

Go have a read of the rest of 1 Corinthians 4 and please pray for us and our youth to be fools for Christ (Haha, key second really bad pun here). OK. Stop.

Christianity Church Humor Ministry