the obligatory Christmas greeting :)

Yeah, I know the topic sounds cynical, but hope everyone has a Happy Christmas and all that stuff! :)

I'm going down to Melbourne in about 6 hours by car, so when I can get to a PC next I'll blog a (hopefully brief) summary about my trip.

-d

Stuck in my head tune: Anthony Callea "The Prayer"

parody

Just quickly, check out this blog, this guy posts up music and stuff, including parodies to some famous songs. One that I love is this parody of Wheatus's "Teenage Dirtbag", but with lyrics changed to describe the minor prophet books of the bible. Its really well done! Another clever one is the LOTR Rhapsody. So incredibly good!

-d

car tune: Delirious "History Maker"

Credo events and testing tunes

Too much has happened since last week, but I will summarise as much as possible.

Last Sat's baseball was neat, as we managed to beat Mac Uni, who smashed us with a score of lots to not lots last time. This time around, we played amesome, and beat them 6-5! I also had a great running to my right and backwards catch, which was just the most fun thing I've done in baseball for a while. You had to be there I think.

Following on from my testing of guitars last wednesday, I also stopped by Turra music store on Thursday to look at guitars. I was trying to compare the Fender I saw at Venue, but they didn't have it. The guy there told me his opinions on Fenders, and pointed me int eh direction of a Yamaha for a close price to the Fender. After testing it for a while, I think I was quite sold on the Yamaha..

I finally decided to go back yesterday morning, but not before praying about whether it was the right decision at this time, since I don't have all that much in the way of funds. Well, God was sure it was the wrong timing, because the guitar was sold out! They should get more in next Jan, so will probably go back then.

Credo Christmas party was fuuuun. It started with a photo and item scavenger hunt (I got no idea what to call it), where we journeyed from Uni to Hyde Park, then the Opera House and to Manly! My team arrived first, and we ended up winning with the best collection of items and pictures :) Yay team 3! We found ourselves finishing at Shelley Beach and had lunch then a salty swim (the water was extra salty). After lotsa beach stuff, as well as farewelling Kat (we'll miss you next year!), Kim, Grant, Amy, Ken, Phil (not Harding) and I had gelato from Gelatissimo at the ferry terminal. We found the worker ppls there really amusing.. as they all wore t-shirts saying "Get fresh with me!" or something along those lines. Quite shocking really, hehehe. You just don't expect that sort of fashion in public, let alone by a company trying to market something.

The inaugural Credo golf cup was held yesterday at North Ryde Golf Club and there were only 4 contenders for the title; Stu, Ben, Sneds and I. This was because we were the only ones to play 18 holes. James G, Andy and Carl played 9 holes and Eades only played like 13 holes. Eadie would have won (pretty much by default) if he played 18, but it was Sneds who was consistent all day and took out the trophy over Ben by one stroke! (Which is Stu's golf buggy at the moment actually) Well done Sneds! Afterwards, we went back to Stu's for a bbq where we were joined by Kim, Kath, Elise and Amy. What was funny about the dinner was the topic of conversation, where half of it was about chick flicks and Notting Hill in particular. The way its going there will be a screening of it by Sneds or Ben. The funny thing is that I'd probably go to it, haha! :)

Now, I'm way too tired at the moment and need sleep

-d

Envelopes, curry, guitars and cartoons

woowww, so much stuff has happened since I got back from NTE.. well, the first two days after weren't all that exciting.. but today was pretty funny.. (and way packed out)

I went in to hopefully finish off EngSoc financial stuff so I wouldn't have to worry about it anymore but it turned out that there were missing receipts and stuff.. how incredibly convenient!!
nah, it didn't matter really.. it gave me more time to do what I wanted in the city. . . . bludge of course!

So I met up with Kim who was stuffing envelopes for Credo down at Barneys church. I also entered this production line of enveloping and it was funny when Jono turned up in his only break between summer school class to join our enveloping efforts. When that finally finished I had lunch with Kim at broadway, where I had butter chicken. Now, this butter chicken wasn't that crash hot (the saying, not the spice) and indeed ranks quite low on my scale of butter chicken awesomeness (BCA). Off the top of my head:

1. Sidhu's North Indian Express (branches at Castle Towers, Parramatta and somewhere else I forget)
2. Some place in Parra that my mum buys from occasionally (I'll figure out what it is some day)
3. Gday or Happy Indian diner at UTS cafeteria.. I forget what its called, but its a funny name :)
4. The stuff my mum makes from Maggi seasoning mix
5. Macquarie Centre food court near Maccas
6. Hornsby Westfield food court
7. Broadway food court

hmmm, and thats only off the top of my head. There ya go, my butter chicken preference. The Sidhus stuff is the best in my opinion. If you disagree, then yay, just tell me where is better and why, so I can try it and work it out for myself :)

Anyways, back to today.. after lunch, I decided to go up to Venue music near QVB to look for a Dunlop guitar strap (you may remember my post a while ago about the Dunlop products, if not, click here) and I found them for only $20! Pretty neat for stuff which looks and is cool. Being in a guitar shop, I naturally had a look at acoustics and the prices. I was noting down some prices when a guy there asked if I would like to try some guitars out. I ended up staying there for like 45 mins just testing out Fender and Washburn guitars. I wasn't expecting that going in actually, hehe. Anyhow, after a while I decided to put the guitars down and think about what I wanted, and went back down to the Broadway district.

I picked up the passport photos I took at Broadway earlier, then headed back to HQ. I have to comment at this point... apparently for Australian passports you aren't even allowed to smile! Huh? I find it difficult ot understand this. Is it because people going through customs are always in a bad mood? Or people travelling overseas are incredibly blank and miserable? Its quite baffling really. Who knows the reason?!? I NEEEEED to know!!!..... :)

Well, after waiting at HQ for a little while... Kim, Kath, Gaz and I made our way down to the weird art deco golden tree with tongue at the bottom of sussex st. This was our meeting ppl place. I've already commented on how art in Canberra was odd. I think just art in general is odd. After everyone arrived (Kat, Phil, James, Grant and Graham.. Jenna met us after) we walked over to "Eating World" (don't you love the names of asian places? ), but not before having to combat the Dixon street gauntlet of every single restaurant trying to push you into their place to eat and assuming you are going to eat there by indicating with hand gestures how big a table you will be requiring. Argh I hate that. If I wanted to eat at your restaurant, or even CONSIDER going, I would walk in or stop near the menu.. not walk PAST the place. *random grumble*

Eating world had funny moments like the drink shop sales person who was wearing a see through black shirt with sequins on it (I thought I was looking at an asian Prince!) , but this post is getting too long already, so I'll just summarise. After dinner we went to the arcade! Yes the arcade, which was great fun; watching Graham DDR to exhaustion and playing Daytona where I was alll set to win, when Phil out of nowhere knocked me aside and claimed victory like 50 metres from the finish! Well, cool for us anyways..

We ventured back to HQ after our Daytona run, where we saw a 1986 anime called Tenkû no shiro Rapyuta (or Laputa: Castle in the Sky) that Gary loved and wanted us to watch. At first it looked a bit dodge, and we proceeded to bag lots of bits by implying it took things from other movies, like Titanic and Lord of the Rings (it even mentions GONDOR, that took the cake and I cracked up so much at hearing that). References aside tho, it turned out to be a reaaaally good movie, and I'd like to see it again actually. Especially since I learned James Van der Beek was the voice of the kid in it. I thought he sounded familiar.

This is a very long post now, and will probably rival my NTE posts, which I am still in the process of putting together. So I'll sign off now

-d

disclaimer

it has been brought to my attention that these posts are extremely long (duh, I knew that, hehe)
So I apologise for that fact, its just a bit hard to cram it any smaller considering so much happened in each day.. I might condense it all down a bit later, when I complete the epic journalling... so yeah, if the length offends you (like I know it does to you Phinners, and Jimmy too :P) Then yeah, do what you did before and jus not read it, hehe

-d

tune: Third Day "Show Me Your Glory"

Day 9: Countdown to the big night

I was up bright and early this morning as I had to be at church by 8am for music practice! I was singing for the service and it was rather interesting, especially considering I couldn't hit the note for one of the songs. Singing is tough, hehe. I always get nervous before singing during church and try and practice as much as possible, which isn't that good as I stuff my voice up during practice sometimes, heh.

The service was good, Gary did a talk on work and Ed talked on the passage of Luke and the coming of Jesus. It was funny that Rene got a bit confused during the service, and actually forgot the offering! This was rectified quickly though, to the amusement of all.

After the service, I had planned to go to lunch with my host and her grandkids, I just had to be at our team meeting first. After the meeting, I went by the house and no one was home! So I went out with Ed and Gaz to Eadie's place. We had lunch at Dee Why shops where I spent waaay too much on two gourmet pies (The Steak & Guiness was good, teh Mexican was ick).

I still had to keep working on my talk, so as the guys went off to the beach, I kept going with writing my talk with a plan to go down to the beach later on when I had finished or come close. Well, I was really struggling for progress. Eventually I got to a point where I had done a decent amount, and I had to leave the Eadie's house. I rushed off the Warringah Mall first, then off to the beach where I continued on my talk for a little while more.

We went back to the church at 5 something, and I was still finishing my talk! I finally finished it at around 6.25pm, the service was at 7pm! I just had enough time to run through it with Bec, Kim, Amy and Lisa to get some feedback, and then rushed through a hot dog for dinner. I was also fitted with a cordless mic, which was way cool.. I hadn't done this before!

I was anxious throughout the service until the time of my talk. I was interviewed by Kim during the service, and then after there were some skits performed about bad leadership, I went up to give my sermon on good leadership (Jesus). I started off rather nervous and I'm pretty sure that it showed, but I got into it and I ended up being quite happy with it. The pastor was also happy with it and thought that the message really connected with some of the young people in the congretation. Talk about encouragement! I also had some comments from people later on that said my talk was quite good, so praise God for that :) I even got a tape of my sermon! Woah!

After chatting with a few people after the service though, it was time to say farewells to the team and the church. It has been one of the best trips away I've ever had and such an awesome experience! I learnt so many new things about both God and myself and will definitely be back next year!


Previous: NTE Day 8

NTE Day 8: Generosity all round

I began the day rather lazily. I tried to get up at 7am, but I looked at my phone as the alarm went... I shut it off and went back to sleep. (It was a rest day!) I finally woke at 8, and got ready before getting to the church at 9.45 with a lift from Ed.

We looked at the rest of James from 4:13 till the end in the study. We then had a team meeting and decided to do door knocking because the weather was good (big contrast to yesterday). I was excused from the task because I had to work on my talk. Only problem was that I was struggling a bit with progress in relation to the talk.. I managed to find some verses to help my talk a long, but before I knew it everyone was back!

The team came together to discuss the experiences of the door knocking. There were some good encounters had by the team, which was cool. We then discussed the rest of the day and the preparation for tomorrow (Church Sunday!). It was time for free time after that, and we decided to go to Dee Why beach!

Lunch was caught at Dee Why shops (it was just floating all around us) and we went down to the beach playground area to eat at first. After lunch, we went down to the actual beach for an arvo of waves, sun and funny water soccer games. However, it being mission time for NTE, we decided to be extreme and carve out the Two Ways to Live symbols in the sand! Unfortunately we didn't get to talk to anybody about it, but it did draw some attention :)

We left the beach just in time as the weather started turning dodge. We went to Warringah Mall to get presents for our hosts! I got my host Queen's greatest hits because she's a fan and is going to see the "We Will Rock You".

A return to the church was in order with the intention of spending the night there hanging out, but Gary's host veryvery generously offered their house for us to hang at! How mad! Thus we had a night of pizza, card games and stupid conversations. Way cool :) Ed came by later and went through his talk so we could hear it and give suggestions. We had to get some rest for church the next morning, so we made our ways to our homes at a reasonable hour :)


Next: NTE Day 9
Previous: NTE Day 7

NTE Day 7: Starting the day afresh

The day began bright and early at 6am... Carl and I were planning to nip down to the beach for a possible swim and stuff, and Justin was also up for the idea. Man it was early. No matter though, as it was the beaches, and how many times do you get to wake up on a beach? Well, for me in the hills anyway, no chance whatsoever. So we took our opportunity and went down to Dee Why beach. The water looked too cold to swim in (ie. we chickened out) so we had a nice jog up to Long Reef, then back again. It was such a relaxing and top way to start a day, and I'm loving this area of Sydney more and more. I wonder what it would be like to live up here...

We went back for breakfast and Carl got his stuff all packed up as he was leaving early for work! It was sad to see him go, but he had a great time atleast so that was good.

We went up to the church for our team meeting, where we did more of the book of James. It was then time for visitations. Along with Rene, I went to visit Mark who lived nearby to have a chat to him and stuff. It was great to hear how happy he was for us to be there to provide company. We were there until lunchtime, where we ventured back to the church to eat. I had some rolls that Faye had made for us. We seriously get spoiled for food by her, hehe.

We had another meeting to discuss the plan for the arvo but it was raining! We were supposed to go out and do door knocking to tell the community about a carols service that the church was running.. with the rain though we decided to look at it again tomorrow.

As a result, we had the arvo to sort of bludge and stuff. It was a pretty nice relaxing time, and some of us planned for skits that would be associated with my sermon on Sunday night. Maaan, I still haven't written my sermon, I'm scared as about it! :P

The skit stuff was way fun, and we raided the kids costume box for things like stuffed tails and stuff. Skit people were Bec, Kim, Amy, Grant and James. They came up with some wacy things!

After the festivities of the afternoon, I got a lift back with Ed so I could have dinner and change before youth group! Another great dinner later, and after Ed was a little late in picking me up (he went down to the beach again), we were off to Ignite!

There was a cool chair related get to know your game (will definitely hold that for future ideas), donut on a string eating competition (I came like 4th!) and rolled up newspaper hockey! Soooo much fun! Snack food was served after that, and then a talk was given by Amy on Micah as well. Heres took on a different approach than mine, which was good, aimed at the youngsters around us.

After the meeting, some girls were eagerly chatting about Switchfoot to me. Its so cool meeting other Switchfoot fans :P hehehe! Half of the team went out to maccas when everyone went home. We tried to find a 24hrs maccas, and we were in luck as there was one on Pittwater rd. We hung there for a while, witnessing a weird guy who was quite angry with the fact he didn't get any free chips get very violent with a burger and the wall. Some people, seriously.

Home awaited, as well as a shower, and then zzzzzzzz.. I hope the rain stays away tomorrow for beach action on our day off!

Next: NTE Day 8
Previous: NTE Day 6

NTE Day 6: Oh how I love the beach

I woke around 7ish (I like this sleeping pattern, it does wonders for your health, and I don't mean that sarcastically :P). While we didn't go to the beach, I did step out into the backyard of Faye's place and jus soaked up the air. Such an awesome place to live I think. The whole place just seems to have this different vibe to it than back home in the hills. More laid back and stuff. It must be the beach.

After a nice brekky with Faye, Carl and I were off to Narra for a team meeting at 9ish. We studied the first chapter of James, discussed about it and prayed. We split into the two teams for our morning visits, a Nursing Home and a Special School. I was in the nursing home team and we had to sing carols! It was funny because the carols list that we had had heaps of these odd ones that no one had heard before. I think they were like Aussie carols sorta.

We went off to the home, and I got to drive Ed's car there! (which is heaps fun to drive, hehe). Upon arrival, we filtered throughout the room amongst the residents and sat with them, attempting to get some conversation going.. This did prove to be difficult, as many were very hard of hearing and due to my rather quick and mumbling voice, they had no idea what I was talking about! Not to matter, I did manage to talk to a few of the residents after we had the carols part. We didn't have to all stand in a choir and sing or anything, which was good.. we just sang at the tables along with the residents. They were very happy with our visit and it was great to see them just enjoying our company. During the carols there was one old lady who didn't sing, she just kept watching me sing. That was funny I thought, hehe. Each of us also got interviewd by the minister who ran the service. A question I got was "Sum up your course in one word" I said "Difficult". Heehee

Some of us went back early to Narra to get ready for the outreach luncheon. I was actually leading it, and we had to figure out the order of stuff. It went well, except for the carols which was a bit of a shambles :) But it was cool, a learning experience, heh. Met some really nice people, especially Colin. He had gone to church when he was a kid, then found the local surf club and was in that for like 40 years or something until he retired, then came back to the church I think. Since I'm not from this area, its interesting to hear stories of that.. its not like many people I know are that involved with surf clubs :)

After our lunch we had an earlier team meeting to allow us all to have more free time (!!). We reviewed what happened in the morning and discussed how each visitation went. It was really great to hear of the success of the special school visit, as well as how the Credoites found the experience. They did a skit at the visit as well, which was very funny :) (Gaz as the baby Jesus! haha!)

With the meeting done, Justin needed to get boardies and Bec needed stuff for the kids on Sunday, so half of us went to the beach while the other half went to Warringah Mall. We eventually made it to the beach after a while, as the shopping trip took longer than we thought. It was a brief visit at the beach for Carl and I though, because we needed to get back for dinner at Faye's with her son and his family! This was easier said than done though, as we had to take some people back first..

Dinner was so great, one of the best roast dinners I've ever had (truly). And my brief conversation with her son and his family revolved mostly around baseball! So good to see another baseball family :) All three of his kids play and he coaches, so we got all got along great. He had to leave soon after we got there though, as he had to take the eldest son to a performance sorta thing at CCC I think. The other two kids stayed behind and we had fun hanging out with them.

The rest of the night was a pretty relaxed affair, watching tv and doing a bit of reading. I managed to get onto a PC and checked up some uni stuff and blogged! I'm such a geek. I didn't manage to go a week without using a computer, hehehe. Sleep awaited after I finished my blog post... zzz

Next: NTE Day 7
Previous: NTE Day 5

NTE Day 5: Promising talks, tribal beats, farewells and greetings.

I managed to get up at 7:30am, so I got around 4 hours of sleep. I was praying I wouldn't fall asleep in the talks and stuff.. I tried to work on my talk a bit more.. or atleast look at my notes... and then had brekky a little later.

I made my way over to LH for what would be my last strand sessions for NTE. Sniff. I wasn't thinking this at the time however, as I was quite worried about how my talk would go. We split into two groups, guys and girls, with Tim facilitating the girls and Rowan taking us. We found a spot in the main hall of LH, where only one other group was (Leah's coincidently) and who had taken the main stage area but didn't use the lectern!. Such a waste, we would have :)

Matt has his talk first, which was good and complete (and also managed to fit in his own pre-NTE story as well, good work :) I had my talk next, and only had like half of it.. the background parts.. so I had to pretty much make up the application sorta thingy.. hope I can remember it for when I give my actual talk. Anyhows, it went rather well, compared to my first strand talk in Strand 1, which majorly bombed since I was trying to memorise points. I also got some good tips in the feedback on improving it, especially about using the method Phillip Jensen said about talking about Gospel arcs, without actually having to explain in stacks of detail about stuff Jesus did for example. So yeah, all in all, cool! Sam had a great talk considering he didn't really have much prepared at all, as did Rowan (but he's a strand leader, so we all expected that... :P). With all the stressful part of NTE done, it was time to go back to our usual strand meeting spot. The girls were majorly quick and had been waiting for us for a while (I thought we would have been quicker than them, hehe). Then after some words of thanks and praise to the rest of the group and to Tim and Rowan, as well as giving Tim our emails so we get the group photo and all, strand was over! Sniff². We bidded farewell to each other and made our way to the main hall for the final talk from Phillip Jensen.

I started off quite well in the talk but after a while my lack of sleep really hit me.. I think it was around 30 mins or so in.. Its funny because my notes are all messy around a certain point in the page, and quite neat before it. I do this in all lectures and stuff. Its always funny to see the words I've tried to write while half asleep. But its bad that I did fall asleep. Oh well. I woke up properly a bit after that episode, and was right there at the end with the stuff he said about God's mission and message, not our own. Heaps good stuff, and lots of it you just don't think about normally.

And with that, NTE's conference part was over! The time seemed to go quite quickly, since we were doing stuff alll the time (me anyway). And now we have the chance to put stuff we've learnt into practice on mission! Woot! We all got a self served packed lunch, which was quite nice actually and gathered as a large group of Credoites for the last time before separating and making our way to mission locations.

Oh, I should mention the drummer in the NTE music team at this point. Throughout NTE, Phil, Dave and I savoured the moments when the NTE drummer would crank out these killer drum beats, like the tribal one in "Rock of Ages" (I think). I joined this all late though, as the others already heard her at the last NTE. Some of the best times was the air drumming when we remembered great beats from songs that we just weren't expecting them from(!). Okay, it sounds silly, especially considering I have drums in my youth band all the time... but the ace beats were given out sparingly, so we weren't overwhelmed by it. See, its all about what you don't play, as much as what you do play.. I always hear that in regards to guitar, hehe. Anyway (I've diverted again), Dave came up to me and Phil and wanted us to get a photo with the drummer! I was definitely up for it, as was Phil, but then Dave chickened out and said he was joking! Disappointing mate, we missed a chance at history. She may go on to great things. Heehee :)

There were many hugs and words of encouragement exchanged amongst the Credo crew. After many moments were had, Amy hurried the contents of her car (Me, Angie B and Kimmy) so that we could get to Narraweena without encountering mega traffic and thus being late. We left around 2 something and took our leave of ANU.

The car ride was pretty standard, we stopped for petrol before leaving Canberra where we ran into James W's car (saw them, not actually hit them) and stopped at Goulburn maccas where we saw Rowan and his friends. And Kim knew him from school or something as well! She knows too many people. We also decided to put up a sign to see who else driving past us went to NTE, and we got a few responses! Yay! I'm going to make sure I put up a sign in whatever car I'm in for the next one.

On the way, we stopped at Ben's place to drop off a present and then on to battling traffic on Lane Cove Rd. Our original plan to try and beat the traffic wasn't working so well, as the traffic was reaaaally bad. Amy decided to take a shortcut through Lindfield and we ended up being at Narraweena around 6:35ish. There was a dinner that was put on for us by the church, and it started at 6:30 so we got there just on time (we thought we'd be stacks late actually). Before the food though, we got details of where we were staying, as well as name tags. On the details for my billet, my surname was spelt kim, not an lim. Which was incredibly funny, as I had been turned into a korean by the typo! Ok, not that funny, but it was the subject of many icebreaking jokes with us all for like the first half an hour or so..

The dinner was cool (yay for bbqs!) and then there was some formal sorts of welcome stuff for us all, as well as a testimony given by Gary and an interview with Cindy. Justin and Grant had fun at my expense at dinner when they told me to sit near a bunch of Narraweena girls then proceeded to continue giggling, so I had to do my best not to laugh as well. Turned out Justin was just in a massively giggly mood.. must have been the real meal we had :) Met some cool people though, and it was quite a good first event.

A funny thing to note is the message that Eades put into the church's bulletin a week before regarding us.. "This could be your chance to meet a nice Christian guy or girl!" or something to that effect. Funny guy that Eades, funny guy.. :P

After dinner I met my billet host, and along with Carl (my billetmate) followed her back to what would be our home for the next 4-5 days. Her house was realllly nice, and whats more, is that we had this full den sort of downstairs room to ourselves! Complete with like tv, stereo, bathroom and everything! Cool as. Carl and I discussed with Faye about the week, as well as any food requirements (me being the difficult one of course :P). We also talked about the possibility of going down to the beach in the morning, which sounds so great considering I never ever get to do that sort of thing! We decided not do to it tomorrow morning but maybe the next one. I was pretty buggered after the hectic day and the fact I got little sleep the previous night, so after cleaning up and all that, sleep awaited!

zzzzzz

Next: NTE Day 6
Previous: NTE Day 4

NTE Day 4: Salty fruit and the people who run our country

I was up even earlier this morning at 6:30, so after a shower and all that getting up stuff, I wandered around the two levels of CCA because it was wet out on the balcony, and didn't get any reading done, despite my repeated attempts.

Breakfast was interesting.. I was eating with Kat, Amy, Gary I think, and was tucking into watermelon in my bowl when Glen came along and put vegemite on the watermelon.. I am quite game to take chances on food these days, so I ate the piece which had vegemite on it. It was quite nice actually, and the taste of the salt with the refreshment of the melon went well together. So I still maintain Kat, it wasn't as bad as you think :P

We started the day with a talk from David Cook again, and he gave us more great teachings on troubled times and how to behave in a way that sets a great example in times such as those. I loved the bit where he was talking about the Scriptures, and he said they weren't inspired by God, but expired (breathed out of). I thought that was a neat way to consider it.

Strand time was cool, but the pressure was on.. we had to start writing our talks, and frankly I was no where near prepared to start. Tim asked me how I was going just as time to work on the talk started, and I really had no idea what to write about. He gave me an awesome idea to look at the leadership aspect of Micah and the bad kings that Judah and Israel had through their history. As I thought aobut it and jotted some notes down, this idea really came together and I hope that I will be able to craft a decent talk out of this idea.

After another great packed lunch (I wish it was like this alllllll the time back home. . . ) another two hour chunk of free time awaited us. Some decided to go to the Art gallery and others (including me) went to Parliament House for question time. These socially conscious and politically savvy (or just bored) individuals included myself, Ange D, Kate, Angie B, James W and his friend from USyd, Alan, Jono, Paul and someone I forget.. maybe Rene. Anyways, we ventured to the seat of Australia's power with the sun and blue sky blazing against our heads.. We were so in the mood to roll down the sides of the building but the grassy areas were all barricaded off! Tragic. We entered and made our way through to the parliament chamber after passing through many security checkpoints and droppping off phones and stuff. Darn, I wanted to take a photo of Johnny looking dumbfounded or something. The time started off pretty dull, with some routine stuff about policies and funding given to some rural area in Queensland for roads. Then this seemingly rural issue became the hottest news as that responsible, D Kelly, was accused for lots and lots of things. It was exciting to see such events unfold but it did get tiring after a while as they all just ran in circles arguing the whole thing. What was brought up was an interesting constituitional issue about accountability of MPs but wasn't really considered much at all it seemed. I don't have all that much faith in Australian democracy after seeing that drama.

After that educational experience we had to get back to CCA for a mission team meeting. The weather had turned incredibly bad on us within 1.5 hours, quite a stark contrast. Upon getting back to CCA, I found Phil and Dave who had gotten coffee for $1. I didn't need anymore encouragement than that for a caffeine hit.

The mission meeting was more like a big Credo summary for the year and for 2005. I had to explain about some of the happenings that we are doing for Uni-wide mission next year and we heard about MYE, the mission trip and ETC. ETC was interesting, as Becca, Paul, Jono and Amy sung a song to the tune of Bob the Builder about ETC. I won't really comment about it really but it was brave of them to do that :P hehe. We broke into mission team groups after the summary and some prayer time, and decided on tasks to be allocated to for mission. I was put on the team for the nursing home visit to sing carols, as well as leading the 'outreach' luncheon and a guys discipleship session with Rene. This is in addition to the night service talk which I was still thinking about.. but I decided to do. It would teach me stuff :)

We journeyed downstairs after the meeting for dinner, where fish was served (again), and was ordinary (again). It was hot atleast... that was a plus. The last talk by David Cook followed dinner, where he told us (or it could have been in Q&A) something which really stuck with me, that God takes our greatest perceived weakness and leaves us where we have to completely call out to or rely on Him. This hit me hard because one of my biggest perceived weaknesses is public speaking and due to the fact I get nervous easy and lose concentration, I absolutely suck at it. This is why I was so terrified of the Sunday night talk. I knew this had to be the way it is though, because I knew the only way I could do it is not on my own but through God's strength. That definitely was a revelation to me and made me feel much better about the talk. Speaking of the talk...

After David Cook's sermon and Q&A, we went back to CCA and many people were planning to stay out and bludge or play games and stuff. I knew I wanted to get my talk done, so I committed to trying to get it done. This meant sitting in the cafe attempting to learn and read the bible and writing my talk, while the others did fun stuff. The worst thing is that I didn't even get it finished! I did a lot of things to pretty much bludge though: like go to the vending machine, make tea, talk to people, listen to music. I stayed up until 3ish, when Jono (who napped on a cafe couch) had to leave to get his bus back to Sydney for summer school class. This meant I couldn't hear his speech but I had about half a talk prepared and sounding okay. Well, I hope it did, I ran through it with Jono and made a change as a result. Sleep was defnitely sounding good and I hoped that I would be somewhat alert in the morning.

zzz

Next: NTE Day 5
Previous: NTE Day 3

NTE Day 3: Tangy antics and crashing the house of random Canberra residents

The morning started a lot better than the previous, as I managed to actually sleep for a decent amount of time and got up around 6:45.. meaning I also didn't have to contend with mega shower queues. Being the opportunist that I am (of course), I took the chance to go up to the balcony to read over Micah again (I didn't read it all during the Strand time) and to jus wake up on a good note pretty much. It was cool, and I need to do this sort of thing more often :)

We started the day off differently, as we had strand time straight after breakfast until lunch time. There was a lot of searching through the passage to answer questions regarding the context at the time.. Which I didn't really do properly, and looked at questions from a wrong page. But it was okay still, I did sort of work out the structure for the passage. Got to do it out in the sun, which was neat as Canberra's weather was being quite damn good actually. Apart from the pollen. Damn stupid allergies. I rebuke thee. Ahem, yes, moving on.

We returned to CCA to get ready for our free time, and to eat our packed lunch that we picked up before going to strand. Apparently the CCA cafe opens to the public on weekdays, thus we couldn't eat in there, and had to have some sort of roll with stuff in it, a muesli bar and a drink. I got an awesome blue drink, which had an interesting taste to it. A texture, a zest, a kick!

It had. . . . tang.

Everybody else said it tasted like Windex or Toilet Duck or , but unanimously they all hated it. But me, along with Grant, could see past the ordinary horribly sweet and artificially coloured beverage.. we saw something which transcended normal human understanding and we could only see it because we could appreciate the importance of this aspect. The tang. This "flavour" (if you can describe such a thing in such base words) or as I prefer to call it: "spice of life", may be just what the crowded beverage market needs... something which really will give you the energy to go off the deep end. (No, I'm fine really, just over caffeinated at the time of writing this)

Er, okay, back to NTE again... It was time for major Credo NTE group activity!! (yaaay!!!) This consisted of going to Em's place and pretty much taking over her house. It was prety cool, the place was practically chill room relocated to the ACT.. Groups formed everywhere to play games and stuff and it was just a great vibe around the place. Thanks Em for opening your place to us all! You were a great host :) There were lotsa cool stuff that we did, but my highlight was probably attempting to sing along with Kat on that Moulin Rouge song. And I was actually seriously trying for like, half the song as well! Eeek, shocking, heheh.

The time seemed to go really quickly while we were there, and before I knew it we were off again back to CCA and culinary bliss once more.. Except, it actually WAS culinary bliss! In my opinion anyway. Chicken Parmigiana and chips and stuff. Truly inspiring stuff. I'll stop exclaiming about the food now.

The talk tonight was by Phillip Jensen again, on the Content of Evangelism. It was also heavy (as his talks are) but reaaally good. A great thing that I learnt tonight was of talking about different arcs of the gospel in evangelism or giving a talk which imply the whole gospel. I think one would be like Jesus is the way, the truth and the life. I never thought about it in ways like that before, and its quite a great thing to remember when sharing. After the talk there was a short time of Q&A with Phillip which posed some big questions and answers, but I can't really remember the responses well. Maybe I could listen to a tape of it later.

One thing that was particular about tonight was when Rene approached me to do the 'youth' night service talk on Sunday night at Narraweena. Now, I have only ever done one bit of talking in front of youth roup, a testimony. I haven't even really said anything in front of the whole church before but I was being asked to do not just a talk, but a sermon! (Ok, same thing but it sounds more dramatic like that :) Needless to say, I was terrified and unsure, so Rene told me to pray about it and get back to him. I was quite relieved at the chance to think about it.

It had rained while we were in the meeting, and walking back to CCA, I was in a really jumpy (literally) mood (I think I forgot about the fact I had to do that night service talk), and proceeded to jump into about 3 or 4 puddles, soaking my socks pretty good. I later paid for this, as my ankles got pretty itchy while we were in the Credo-CCA cafe. I was feeling unconfident about my ability to understand Micah, so I tried to get some help from Sneds and Kimmy. Then I tried to work on it myself as well. This didn't really go to plan, as I kept getting distracted and Phil or Paul said that it was NTE policy not to do work outside of strand time. At this point, that sounded like a really good idea, and thus I went back to bludging. I then went up to get to bed at an early time for once for what looks like a huge day tomorrow (staying up late to do my talk for Wednesday, haha).

-d

Next: NTE Day 4
Previous: NTE Day 2

NTE Day 2: Got it stuck in my head...

When I tried to get to bed last night, I was full of optimism.. Figuring I would get about 6.5 hours of sleep to make up for the 4 that I got the night before due to last second packing.. waking up at 7am, to shower, then read my bible for a bit or something.. How my plans went out the window, or more specifically, in the window (cue laughter.. yeah, that was a bad joke). I was kept up till about 2-2.30am due to the fact that Canberra had decided to have its only party in the entire city.. right outside my room.. below my window.. ARG... Canberra cafes shut at 11 but people insist on making a complete racket outside CCA.. Yes, I'm still quite bitter about it :P Add to that that a car decided to treat the road outside CCA as a roundabout (like the rest of Canberra is), and drive past CCA about 100 million times, each time with its turbo cutting in and out (I think)... well... I'm not going to say anymore, it was plain annoying

Anyhows, after that truly refreshing and enlightening experience, and waiting in the shower queue (other guys had the same idea that I did), I had breakfast, then walked off to LH for the first meeting of the day.

At this point I would like to comment on the incredible amount of traffic in Canberra.. I had many close shaves with death, many of them occuring with cars within 300 metres of me even! Like, the amount of traffic almost rivals that of County Drive in Cherrybrook... at 1am. Gasp.

Seriously though, Canberra is pretty darn dead, I know its probably because it is the weekend but after what I saw of Saturday night, and what I heard of Friday night, I think I would go nuts in a town like that!

The talk was given by David Cook on 2 Timothy 2, on what to do when you hit hard times. It was really good to learn what he said, as it told us of many things which we should do when challenged in our Christian walk and stuff.

After a morning tea break, where I felt energetic and walked back to CCA and then back to LH again (10 mins each way in a 1 hour break), we had strand stuff again. Yesterday after our strand half time, we found a really cool spot to have our strand meetings on the ground floor of LH, so we didn't have to contend with the noise in the room where 5 groups were crammed in. This little spot had like a semi circle couch sorta seat, and windows which made it look like a bunker. Very cool. Anyways, during the strand time, we did a "place the event or people in timeline order" like I did in strand 1+. Except instead of pieces of paper, events were fruit bars and people were freddo frogs.. mmm.. edible history.... After that, we did an great timeline of the entire bible based on what we learnt.. we were going into quite a bit of detail with it all, but it was cool, and taught me quite a lot about some stuff I thought I knew, but obviously didn't know :)

After the session, back to CCA for lunch, where an absolutely wonderful soup was served. If you like that sort of thing.

..

After the quest through culinary bliss, free time awaited us all! A group of us: Glen, Graham, James, Kimmy, Justin, Jenna and her friends (I forget your names sorry),.. I forget who else.. went to the shopping mall behind CCA.. Jenna had told Justin about the fact Sportsgirl sold guy's accessories, so she took him in there to find out.. I forget why that was funny, haha... umm, the most important part of going to the mall was to get... instant noodles! Graham and I went looking for food while the others waited, and we decided to pretend to be English (seeing as we were staying at a backpackers hostel).. tho my accent has gotten shoddy, I've been in such bad form with accents recently, ah well.. after that, some of the group went back to CCA, while Glen, Kimmy and I followed Graham to the arcade to watch him DDR. He is scary on that "dance" pad. I won't say anymore :P

Walking back from the arcade, we observed some really odd art.. one of them being a statue of sheep sitting in a rather provocative position, with another sheep staring at it... Also, a giant metal pillow (that was cool however) and a wall that had speakers playing the voice of someone trying to get the attention of a dog or a monkey or a Port Adelaide player... Canberra is odd moments #2, #3 and #4... THey'll probably argue that Sydney has weird stuff, but still, its fun to bag Canberra :)

At about 3pm, the middle of this free time block, I met up with my strand group, as we had decided to do a social sorta thingy. So I went back to the mall and we decided to go to the food place for ice creams. Except.. no one wanted ice creams... hahah... but I got chips from some place called Kingsley's tho.. which were expensive and loaded with salt.. but alright I guess.. We played a hide and seek sort of game in the mall, called sardines or something, where someone hid and we had to find them, and when we find them, we had to hide with them in the same area. I sucked at the game :) At the end, everyone had found Prue (who had done the hiding) except for Cindy and I. Ah well, it was pretty funny though :)

We all then went off to our electives. Because it was my first time at NTE, I had to do the "How to give a testimony" elective. I had thought that I didn't really need to do it, because I had given one at youth group before, but I was pleasantly surprised that I learnt quite a bit through it.. and I also learnt from helping those that I was partnered with in their own testimonies, so yay!

Dinner was "apparently" veal schnitzel. We'll leave it at that.

The talk tonight was pretty full on. Phillip Jensen spoke about the doctrine of evangelism part 1, telling us of the purpose of evagelism. He spoke really well about things, and really got us thinking about many things, one of them being deduction, induction and revelation. Actually, it didn't get me only thinking, but plain confused. Thankfully I got it after a while :P

We visited the Groombridges after that, who are going to be missionaries to Slovenia next year. Mark is an ex-Credoite, so we all went to support them, even though we heard their mission stuff in small group this year when they visited :)

We once again claimed the cafe in CCA when we got back there, and hung about, with Phil dispensing his huge knowledge of music as usual. Sniff, you'll be missed next year Phil!

-d

Next: NTE Day 3
Previous: NTE Day 1

NTE Day 1: Journey to the centre of the nation... or a dwelling place of rather odd people...http://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gif

(Warning: this post is long and all of my NTE posts will be.. as well as backdated)

Had a reallly early start today, where I woke up at around 5:55am (actually really got out at 6am, but 5 something sounds better :P), rushed through breakfast and extra packing, and was ready for Alan to pick me up at 6:30am.. I then had to wait about 20 mins because he was late. Hehe, funny since I was actually on time for once!

We had to then go down south to pick up Jenna on the way, and when we got there she was just a little (read:extremely) agitated about the fact we were late but after much plugging of ears, we finally got on the M5 then onto the Hume, putting us on our way to the nation's capital!

After a session of singing along to U2, Pete Murray and U2 (again), we found ourselves at Canberra with Alan and Jenna trying to remember how to get to our rego spot, based on their knowledge of last year's NTE. After rego (and running into Glen, James, Graham and Dave.. well, waving at them), we raced to drop off our bags at Canberra City, a backpacker's hostel in what is (apparently) the centre of Canberra... this was all amid continual complaints from Jenna that we did not get allocated Fenner Hall, where you are given individual rooms. I personally was quite happy at Canberra City, as bunks and dorms are allll part of the camp experience!

We ran into Becca and Rene outside Canberra City (CCA), and after check in and stuff, we made our way over to ANU's Llewellyn Hall for the first meeting/talk of the conference.

When I got in to the hall, it was so cool just looking around and seeking over 900 other uni students just gathering together in a place and praising God! It was quite different to what I'm used to though (but expected), as both the style of the songs and the mood of the students quite sombre compared to my church, hehe. But it didn't matter of course and it was so incredibly good!

We had the welcome and all that stuff, and then a talk from David Cook on 2 Timothy 1, on loyalty to Jesus. We then went back to CCA for lunch, which consisted of a wonderfully delicious bread roll.. (note: some details in the previous sentence have been extremely exaggerated) After lunch, we had free time! I spent this going to the shopping mall which was really close to CCA, with Kate, Becca, Kat and Jono. This was a short free time, and before you knew it, we had to go off to strand group, which met back at Llewellyn. But I still had to time to get some sunscreen and socks from Target... which also are the same pair that Jono got as well.. heehee

If you don't know, strand time is the main chunk of NTE, and we study a bible passage intently, then have to give a talk based on it! My group members were Matt, Ruth, Kathryn, Cindy, Virginia and Jono from Credo, Prue and Sam who came later, and of course our awesome leaders Rowan and Tim! Hi there guys if you're reading this!

After a few get to know you games, learning such crucial things as what was wrong with Sydney, Newcastle and Melbourne (all members were from one of these places) we got stuck into the teachings, and the passage we had was Micah 4:6 to 5:9. I knew it was going to be tough to understand, with it being OT, but when we started it really did hit me, as just trying to read the whole book of Micah was tough enough to understand!

After strand we went back to CCA for dinner, and had some half fried fish and chips.. I won't comment on the merits of that meal.

A REALLY odd thing happened as we just left CCA to walk towards Llwellelyn (LH from now on) for the evening meeting. Outside CCA there are like two blocks, I think they might be gas line or fire hydrant related. Well, these two concrete blocks are about 2 metres high and about 3-4 metres apart. Anyways, while walking past, a teen about 17-18 was trying to leap across from one block to another. For no particular reason whatsover. Needless to say we were completely shocked, with Becca especially shocked and pretty much screamed as we all witnessed this guy nearly axe himself, and barely land on the other side with one leg! That was Canberra is odd moment #1.

The meeting was quite good, as Phillip Jensen spoke about the future of AFES, which actually turned into a past of AFES, or Uni evangelism in general. At first I was confused as to its relevance, but by the end I found it really cool how so much of the growth of Christianity over the years is due to Christians around my age! Truly inspiring stuff.

Afterwards, a large group of us were waiting around for Jono to purchase a book (on femanism funnily enough) and as a result were really late for our first Credo meeting for to discuss issues and mission. Actually turning around the corner in sight of CCA, Paul was waiting for all of us and I actually thought he would bite our heads off! He didn't, so it was all cool :)

The meeting went good, and it was funny when we split into mission groups, as Kimmy (who is leading the Narraweena team) wasn't at NTE yet, so Rene just told us what sort of things would be happening, without really knowing what was going on! :)

Afterwards we just hung about in the cafe area, talking and all that sort of stuff before going to bed around 12:30..

-d

Next: NTE Day 2

Guitar tune: Hillsong "Perfect King"

the complete and incomplete happenings of an exam completer

Finishing exams is fun.. and hectic
Today is the first day I have had at home since exams finished. My exam finished at 12:40pm Monday and as I was running out of Uni at about 12:45pm, on a bus at 12:55, and at Dee Why Beach at about 2ish. Since then its been like, do as much stuff possible, which has beeen awesome. Went to Kathmandu (shop, not the city) twice this week to get stuff, and yesterday while I was there I had to hold off my tendency to buy geeky stuff (I was thinking of a bright led keychain doobie).. Also yesterday I helped out at an Auslife program for YFC Australia, which was pretty neat to do.. and Morgs' 21st last night, which was THE funniest party I've ever been to I think. The speeches were absolutely top notch comedy, and just capped off a great night spent catching up with some Credo ppls I hadn't seen since... the previous 21st, Robbo's... (um, two weeks ago, hehehe)

I'll be going to National Training Event (NTE) on Saturday morning (leaving at 6:30am!) and will be away until the 12th of December.. I'll try and journal when I can about all the goings on at what looks like an awesome conference and mission (whether live there or delayed), so if you're bored, you can come see what I'm up to there, mebe photos if I can manage to get any put up :)

as for now, I should get back to packing

-d

tune: Jars of Clay "Liquid"