I guess I should fill in the rest of what happened on the weekend. Just so you're not all in suspense.

I got woken up on at around 9am on Saturday morning by Jo and Jem poking their head into my room. They were on the phone to my concerned mother. I'm sure she wanted them to check up on me, make sure I wasn't dead or anything. I wasn't.

I got up and said "Hello" to my house and explained my new looks to those who were about. I had a conversation with my mother on the phone. That day we were going to my cousin's wedding and Mum offered to bring my clothes over to my house that I had been planning to pick up the night before. After that I got to sit down for a pancake breakfast. I liked the pancakes.

In between pancakes I looked for emergency dentist people. I tried one with an ugly ad that was close by, but they were booked out. I think I was a bit relieved about that. I found one in Chatswood that would have me as soon as I go there. So Jo (who had gone out to get a green slip) came and got me and we "raced" off to Chatswood.

On the way to Chatswood I called Mum to tell her we were no longer at our house. She had just got to our house. Oops. Sorry Mum.

In the Dentist they made me fill out a form. When the dentist saw me he said "S**t, we had better fix that!" So it was straight into the chair for me, more anesthetic, and lots of glue. In the end I got my front teeth splinted together because they'd all been knocked loose and a new false tooth glued in. It's only temporary, but it does the job. It was cool. He had a box full of false teeth and he just pulled one out. How exciting.

It was off to Grandpa and Valentina's place for lunch and getting ready for the wedding. By that staged I was feeling pretty whacked. I had a new experience at lunch. I got some food stuck in my gum. Not just on my gum, or between my teeth, but under my new false tooth and up on the large excavation left by my old tooth. It was a rather interesting experience digging that out with a tooth pick.

After lunch and a shower it was off to the wedding. By the time I got to the wedding I didn't feel like talking to anyone. I was so tired. I didn't really get all that excited about the service and I fell asleep in the sermon. Everytime I woke up the minister was looking at me so I felt bad. I think my tiredness was cause by the fact that I hadn't slept much, I had only eaten two pancakes and a little salmon roll since the night before, and I had probably burned up heaps of energy going into shock and being full of adrenaline for most of the night before. But I could just be a pansy too.

I had a Boost Juice (Banana Buzz) and a sleep between the wedding and the reception and I felt a lot better for that.

The reception was in the Harbour Watch room in Pier One. It was a pretty spectacular location. I was put on the young, single counsins table, so I was sitting next to my 20 year old cousin on one side and a year 10 guy and his year 7 sister on the other. I think they were cousins of my cousins. I had trouble talking to those two. I had to remind myself that it's my job to talk to people their age because I could have any kind of interesting conversation with them.

I went home from the reception early.

Sunday was just a normal Sunday. Except I had lots of people coming up to me and asking me how I was. I told the story of my demise often. But that's ok, I was prepared for that. It's rather draining having to accept so much sympathy. But we have a lovely community.

These days things are nice. I get to take my stitches out myself tomorrow. My lip is healing well. It's rather annoying because it hurts for most of the day, but it's nothing to worry about. My teeth ache a bit, especially when I bite them. And tomorrow I'm off to the dentist to get myself checked out for my new permanent tooth. How exciting.

And that, my friends, is the exciting adventures of Tom and his Friday Night Skating.

This is in the car on the way to the hospital.


Life gets hard waiting for the Triage


While in the waiting room I decided to pass the time by getting some shots done for my new modeling portfolio.


Once I made it to be examined I tragically slipped into a coma.


My swanky hospital room


The Operation


We're going home (Sorry Matt)

I was planning on buying shower curtain rings all day today. Actually I've been planning to buy them for the past two weeks. But I didn't manage it today as I didn't manage it all the other days. Today movies, beer, hot chips and Coke got in the way. Certainly things I'd say that should take precedence, just don't tell the people I live with that.

Tomorrow I am off to head office for an interview for candidacy to become a deacon. I was going to wear shorts and a t-shirt till I realised some people might regard this as a big deal.

I hate dressing up.

On Friday I went Ice Skating with my year 6-8 boys small group. There were only about 5 of them so we fitted very nicely in the van. Once we got to the Ice Rink we ate a bit of dinner then headed off to skate.

We were there right at the beginning of the session, which I've never done before. I think that must be when all the hard core skaters get there because they all seemed to be really good. A lot better then me of my crew.

Skating was fun. I'm not sure why going in a circle on to thin pieces of metal is fun, but it is.

Once we'd been skating for an hour and a bit I got a feeling that something was going to happen to me, like I was going to fall over or something. Listening to my intuition (which sometimes pays off) I hopped off the ice to visit one of the boys who was sitting out because he had blisters from his boots. After a few minutes with him, I didn't feel like anything was going to happen any more, so I hopped back on the ice. I couldn't have gone more than about 5 meters before someone came flying round the corner and ran into me.

They hit me from behind which spun me around. Unfortunately my legs kept their momentum and came up from under me. I landed on the ice face first. I hit my chin, which caused to me to bite into my lip and knocked my front right tooth out of my mouth.

Of course I didn't know all this at the time. I got up saw blood on the ice, felt blood on my face and realised something was wrong. I could feel a hole in my lip so I got off the ice, found my hankie and put it on my lip. I went to find my boys to let them know that I was off to clean myself up. I went looking for the bathroom but by the time I got to the other side of the ring I was feeling a little lost and noticed that there was a lot more blood coming from my face than I could fix with a quick dab of the paper towel. I went to the skate hire man and he saw and gave me this worried look. "Go knock on the office door they'll look after you."

I went over to the office and lined up at the door behind some people wanting to buy cans of Coke (which I subsequently found out are $1.60, rather expensive if you ask me) but when the people in line saw me they gave me a look of horror and stepped to the side. I knocked on the door and the manager man let me into the office and sat me in a chair next to the water cooler. He was the only one in the office, so he seemed to be doing everything at once. He pulled out the first aid box, put on his rubber gloves and cleaned the blood off my arms and face. He threw out my hankie which was soaked in blood. I said "That was my best hankie."

He said "Oh, so you want me to get it back?"

And I said "No, it was a joke"

He got out some gauze to put on my chin, which I didn't even know was hurt. He whacked the gauze on and taped it too my face. At some stage during this I stuck my tongue through the hole where my tooth should have been and felt only lip. After a bit more examination with me tongue, and searching my mouth to make sure what I was feeling was right, I piped up and said "I think I lost my tooth." I can't remember how the man responded to that. He got me an ice pack and a drink of water, and gave some more gauze to dab at my lip to clean up the blood. We had a bit of a conversation about who I'm here with and he filled out a form with my name and address and phone number and stuff on it. I think so that they have my details if I decide to sue them. I won't sue them though, that'd be silly. Skating isn't exactly the sport you do thinking you're going to be completely safe. Plus I don't like the idea of suing people.

I sat in the office trying to figure out what I should be doing. Wondering if I would be able to drive people home, how I would look at the wedding I had to go to the next day with out a tooth, wondering how much blood I was drinking.

Over the course of my time in the office I had a conversation with the man about how I was happy this had happened because I didn't want to have to iron my shirt for my wedding the next day, and I asked what would happen to my tooth. He said no one would find it and it'd get sucked up by the machine. It was all very serious for him. I tried some more light hearted banter about lost teeth and rubbish bins, but he didn't seem too keen to enjoy the moment. I figure it's not every day you get to loose a tooth so why not enjoy it?

I got the guy to summons one of my boys to the office so he could call his Dad and get the Dad to drive us all home. He did this then was sent out of the office again. He and the boys then peeked through the office windows at me. I smiled am poked my tongue through my new tooth hole at them. And they made pained faces at me went "Awwwww!"

At some stage the DJ came into the office. I recognised him as a guy who I went to school with. We had a conversation about the old school days (Him: "What year did you finish?" Me: "2000" Him: "I was the year above you. I don't remember you.") and then he proceeded to tell me that he's never going ice skating if people end up like me but what a fearless skier he is. He was fun. It was good to have someone to make a joke or two with. Although I did like the office man.

When the Dad arrived I took off my skate and left them in the office, then got ready to go. We collected our stuff, I put on my shoes and was stared at by everyone I walked past. Probable because I had blood on my clothes, some gauze taped to my face, a bloody lip and I was holding an ice pack to me chin. Either that or they were admiring my fashion choices.

The Dad took us to the car, prayed for us then droves us home. As we were leaving the boys were talking about my injury. Someone made a joke to which another of them replied "Not funny guys, Tom's just got hurt" I turned around and told the boys to make as many jokes as they wanted, I wouldn't be offended.

As we drove home I rang my boss. He was very concerned about me, I told him the injury was from all the drugs I had taken before small group.

Once back at church I met some concerned mothers and got my photo taken. The Dad waited to drive me to a hospital while I went to my office to collect my gear. In the office I met Matt and Beck who offered to drive me to the Hospital themselves. I figured this was a better idea, as they didn't have kids at home to look after. I took them up on the offer and, thanking him I sent the Dad on his way. He was very good to me. We have good parents at my church.

On the way to hospital Beck took photos for the photo essay that I'll post soon while Matt made haste. It was fun trip. Really it was, I was quite enjoying the novelty of the situation and it had lots of opportunities for jokes. Plus when you're injured people are more likely to laugh out of sympathy.

We made it to the hospital after getting a little lost. We went to Royal Prince Alfred because it's close to my home. Plus I figured we could get on TV if they're still making RPH.

When I was waiting for the Triage I asked the Ambulance Officer sitting next to me if Napisan gets blood out of jeans. She didn't seem to know how you got blood out of clothes which I thought was odd seeing as I figure Ambulance people must get covered in blood regularly.

Once I got to talk the Triage man he told me that he lost his front two teeth three times in his life. He looked fine.

We were sent round to the Emergency Waiting Room where Matt, Beck and I were to spend the next 5 hours of our life. Time went relatively quickly seeing as all we had to do was watch late night TV, read old magazines and do their cross words.

In the waiting room we met a few interesting people. We met some girls in pink togas who brought in a drunk girl who couldn't walk. They were fun. When they were leaving one of them said "I hope your tooth gets better." I told her it probably wouldn't.

I went outside at one stage to send a message to Helen. While I was out the front I saw some people running of the road and shouting "Call triple-0". As they came closer I noticed one of them was holding his head and had blood all over him. He went into the emergency ward. As I went back inside I found him standing in a puddle of his blood being treated by an Ambulance dude and I heard him telling the Triage that just down the street someone had smashed a vodka bottle over his head.

At 3:30am we were taken in to see a doctor. A nurse cleaned me up a bit, then gave me a tetanus shot. The Doctor arrived, gave me some anesthetic and put 5 stitches in my chin. Then we were free to go home.

Matt and Beck drove me home. I did my teeth carefully then went to bed.

Thanks Matt and Beck.

I think I'll have to continue the weekend later. This has been rather long. Oh well. Well done for reading this far.



Just after I arrived back at church. As you can see the missing tooth makes me look that much hotter.

This is my first post from home internet. Thank you David for making it work after it died.

I woke up this morning and bought some tickets to Jamie Cullum. It really is the year of people to watch, U2, Jamie, Coldplay, Mundine vs Danny Green. It's gonna be cool.

Filling in the Blanks

There's an RSL club near my work that Helen, Jon and I discovered the other week. I've been working there for 3 years and only now have we discovered it. It's like an oasis in the desert. It's got all the TVs, pokies, Old Men and gwaudy carpets of an RSL club and it's just down the road. It's fantastic. We've lunched there three times since we discovered it. It's been real exciting. I've had a roast everytime.

Tonight I went out with Priscilla for the night. We thought we'd catch up, so we did. We went to Mama's Kitchen, I've never been there before. Then wandered around the city.

Rick Warren said in The Purpose Driven Life something like "Don't write about what you did each day, no body wants to hear about that". And I'm like, "Hey, don't be so rude". Of course maybe no one does want to read about what I do each day, but don't burst my bubble. But I think the blogging phonomena may have proved him wrong there. But it may just prove that there are lots of people out there who like to write about their days, it doesn't prove that people actually want to read that.

Phew, I'd hate it if Rick Warren was wrong. My whole world would crumble. I'd have no sense of purpose.

Seeing as we're doing 40 Days of Purpose at our church one of the girls in my Bible study group brought her Purpose Driven Life to the group on Monday and said "So do we just bring this book now? Does it replace the Bible?" I reckon it was a valid question. I wouldn't mind replacing the Bible with the Purpose Driven Life, it'd be much easier to read in a year. Although it doesn't have as many good stories.

I am enjoying doing 40DOP though. I think it'll be good for our church. It'll be good for us all to be doing stuff together.

Sluggish

I'm at David's office at the moment having a bit of a blog. I started a post at work yesterday but I think that work saps most of my blog inspiration out of me. It took me a few hours to write a few lines. So I guess that I'll just have to wait until we get the net at home. Which will happen tomorrow. Hooray. Cable and wireless at home. I love the idea of wireless. Although I have no way of connecting to it, and I'm not going to be carrying my computer around the house, I still like the fact that I could if I wanted to.

I caught the bus and train to Hornsby today to see David for lunch. It was my first bus catching experience by myself and it was pleasant enough. I didn't get off at the wrong stop, or accidentally have an emotional breakdown on the bus so that's good.

I got a phone call and a message today from my travel agent telling me to go pick up my plane tickets because they're closing down. That's a bit sad I think. I haven't been very disciplined at getting my tickets from them. They rang me at the beginning of January and I'm only getting around to it now. At least plane tickets don't take up much space.

Certain parts of our house are getting a little grotty, like the bathroom. I think because we haven't made our chores roster yet so the house is operating on skeleton chores at the moment. Things like washing the bathroom floors just aren't considered important enough. Every time I have a shower I think "I should clean the floor" but then I start thinking about how I would go about doing that and I can never figure out if we own a mop or not, so the floors don't get cleaned by me.

We have a slug problem at our house. Every night our kitchen fills with slugs, I think it's the local hang out for disaffected youth slugs. Next time I see them I'll tell them to get a job and stop living off our hard earned kitchen scum.

I haven't un-packed most of my boxes yet.

Mondays at work I never work very well. I keep getting distracted by everything. I keep having to rein myself in and make myself work. The only thing I look forward to on Mondays is lunch and small group. Small group is the fun part of my day. Sleeping in is good too.

I think I might go find some air plane tickets now.

I found myself a cafe. I haven't found my way to IKEA yet. I should go soon because I'd like to do things with my life other than go to IKEA.

Living here means I get aircraft noise. It's kinda fun. And building noise, it seems that a good proportion of my neighbours are building something. I like that noise less.

In Da House!

I'm sitting on my bed in my messy room. My room is just a mass of Babel-esque boxes, over flowing with the abridged contents of my 23 years. The only thing I've properly unpacked is my computer so I can write this and watch an episode or two of Lost before I go to sleep. We don't have the internet so I'll have to go and post this post when I get to an internet cafe tomorrow or something. Tomorrow will be the day of lots of things. I'm off to IKEA to buy all the things I need in my room.

Moving in was a good fun experience. I packed my car early in the morning. I took my bed and my essentials (books and cds) and headed off for my new home in Enmore. I picked up Chris along the way who kindly offered to help me move.

I arrived at the house and found the Landlady, Jo and Jemma sitting out in the backyard on Jemma's broken chairs. In about 5 minutes I'd signed my lease. It keeps occurring to me now that I didn't bother to read the lease so there's a good chance I've signed up for all sorts of nonsense, but what can you do eh? I reckon Jo or Jemma signed it. And there are 5 of us on the lease so I guess if I signed body away for medical experiments then I'll have 4 friends to go through it with.

Once the ceremony was done the four of us started inspecting the house. It's an old two story terrace house. It has all wood polished floors, except for the kitchen which had ugly brown tiles. Everything is a bit decrepit and the kitchen has mould in the cupboards. It's a really cool house. I'm a fan. My room is probably about the same size as my room in Hornsby, but it's wider and shorter. I reckon I'll be able to fit a good load of bookshelves in, which is a dream of mine. I love shelves.

The bathrooms all have holes in the doors.

While we were scoping out the house our Landlady got into a fight with the next door neighbour for their illegal building activities. The Landlady and the wife next door were standing in the street shouting at each other. The first words and only words I have heard from those neighbours are insults directed at our Landlady. Although I saw her later and she smiled at me so she's probably nice. Once she'd finished her altercating the our Landlady went home only to turn up a little while later to inform us that she'd called the Police because she couldn't work out how to deal with the people next door.

Jo and Jem went home. Chris and I moved stuff into the house and the Police arrived. They didn't seem all that interested. Chris and I locked up the house and left I didn't really feel like hanging around with the cops sorting out issues which are yet to be my issues. We went out for coffee and op shopping.

We came back met Mil, Martin and Gem and also met the other neighbours. They're young musician types and quite friendly. I like them.

I went to work that evening then came home and slept my first night in my new house. It was hot, full of bugs and the house makes noises. There was no one else there. I have a big spider who lives in my room. He's real scary. I hate spiders, I didn't get much sleep. I woke up at one stage and walked through the dark empty house looking for a drink. All I could think was "I wonder how many people have died in this house."

Saturday morning I got up, abluted and went for a stroll down Enmore Rd and King St looking for breakfast. I saw lots of lovely looking venues, but I was too scared to go in because I wasn't sure if I was meant to sit down and order or go to the counter, order then sit down. If I got it wrong I couldn't imagine the scorn people might heap on me. Life is hard sometimes. In the end I had some Boost juice because I know how that works.

Ryan and Libby came over and we tried to figure out how to move Jon's bed into the house. The stairwell to upstairs is very skinny, with a low ceiling. We ended up tying a rope around the bed then hoisting it up over the front balcony. That was good fun. It was a oft repeated exercise. I hope to do more hoisting of furniture in the future.

(Ooo, my door just opened itself. The house is haunted!)

I went home to Hornsby with Ryan and we got more stuff. Once we were back that evening we hoisted a few more things then it was off to dinner. It was the first time the whole household was together. We went out for Thai, and considering the abundance of Thai places in this part of the world I can foresee Thai becoming rather staple.

We came home after our meal and prayed for our house. It was lovely to commit the house to God. I do hope God has his way in this house.

The days following have been good. I'm excited to be living with the people I'm living with and starting this new chapter of my life. The people are great, the house is cool and the pub is just 50 meters down the road. What more could you want?

There's no internet in my house and no time when I'm not at home to blog. But internet will come.

It has been fun moving into my new place. I've only had one good sleep out of three so far but I'm hoping those odds will change.

I think I'll try and add more later. At the moment I should be working.

Almost Gone

Tonight will be my last night of sleeping in my room. I've been in this room for the past 12 year. It will also be the last night in this house, I've been here for the past 23 years. How sad.

Shame tonight's sleep will be short. I suspect I'll spend quite alot of time packing. Oh well.

I guess I'll get sentimental soon.

The problem with being at work all the time is that nothing new happens to write about.

I bought some butter chicken for lunch today but I didn't eat it all. Now it's sitting in the fridge getting grotty.

I had a conversation with the man at the Indian shop about my t-shirts and where I get them from. He said I have a good collection.

I had coffee with a new potential mentor. He's a friendly, godly man. I think I might be onto to a winner.

I didn't fit everything into my day.

I had my first scripture class for the year. My class seem like they have the possibility to be badly behaved but they were ok today.

I'm home now and I would like to go to sleep but I'm waiting for my dinner. I could lie on my bed and read but I might fall asleep.

Packing It

I'm packing my room up. I'm filling box after box after box. It seems that over the past 23 years I've just been hording stuff. My room is just one big storage facility. Oh well. At least we know I have a healthy love the past.

Anyone?

I came home all excited to watch The Contender and tonight seems to be just a rehash where they show all the old fights. What's up with that? So now I'm sitting around feeling bored. I'm not even sure if there's any food to eat.

I had my first small group with the year 11 and 12s today. It was fun. It was good to have a group who I didn't have to shout at to be quiet. And who I could ask big questions. Although we did even worse at getting through the study than in any other group I've run.

I'm a little bit nervous they're gonna need a better small group leader than me but I'll do my best.

I want Moral Corruption

I've been getting into Lost lately. I'm watching Season One so I'm a season behind. It's kinda fun.

I watched a really good episode this morning where the good guys tortured a man they thought was hiding medicine they needed to save a girl's life. It was this great look as a community's loss of innocence. As the days go on and things get desperate morals get more ambigous. Stick a bunch of humans together and it rarely ends well. As depressing as the tradjectory of this is heading I'm hoping it doesn't end well. There are many subplots of healing and redemption, but I don't want them to take precedence. I guess a community that starts with all these desires of a new start will rarely mean change. People's moral core doesn't change because they survive a plane crash and land on a desert island. If they end up as savages then perhaps it will challenge us who watch to look at our communities and make sure we don't go the same way. Plus it's more interesting when things don't end happy.

Then again they could all get eaten by the monster thing. I'm sure it's symbolic of something, something inside them all. But they better not slay the monster, I hope they just escape.

Please don't tell me how it's going. I want to see for myself.

Movie Clubbing

I went to Child Protection Training today. That was dull, useful and depressing as usual.

Tonight I went to join a Movie Club with Ryan and Libby. I had been told via email by the orgnaiser to meet at Dendy in Newtown at 6:30pm tonight, so we went to Newtown, ate some food then got to the Dendy at 6:33pm. We looked around for groups that could be a movie club, and we saw one. I went over to them and asked "Are you guys the movie club?" but they replied "No, but we'd like to be."

After that we couldn't find any groups that looked like a movie club. We waited till 6:45 then gave up. We'd been stood up by a whole club. Ouch.

We went and saw Brokeback Mountain despite not having a club to watch it with. It was good and depressing. I'm glad I'm not a married, gay cowboy. Life would be hard.

Fallout

Last weekend was one of the most intense I've had in a while.

On Friday night while I was out to dinner with the youth leaders Matt told us that a few hours before a local teenager had been killed when he was hit by a car riding to youth group. The youth group, he said, was the one whose camp I spoke on in the holidays a few weeks ago. But there was nothing much confirmed, everything was just rumours. It was pretty horrible news. We stopped and prayed for the family while in the restaurant. There wasn't much else to do. I was pretty worried about who it might have been, was it someone who I was on camp with, one of the boys I connected with? How would the youth group cope? And on top of that there was just this knowledge that out there his parents, whoever they were, would be having the worst night of their lives. It's so sad.

I didn't sleep well that night. I dreamt about death and the people I know.

On Saturday we had the Engagement Engagement and it was good. Our car broke down so I got there late. Through out the day I would often be reminded that someone I knew might be dead and I didn't know who it was.

I went out to dinner that night and got a call from Steve, my boss, and he asked me if I was aware of what had happened. I told him I knew a little but not much. He filled me in, told me who the boy was, where he was from, what schools he had gone too. He was in year 7 and didn't go to the youth group I spoke at. I didn't know the boy. It was a relief, but I felt guilty for it. Not knowing him personally didn't mean that he wasn't valuable and it wasn't just as terrible.

I was told a few extras would be coming to church with some of the girls who are in my youth group who were in his class.

I didn't sleep well that night either. I dreamt about the morning at church. I was feeling very out of my depth.

Dad gave me a lift to church because the car wasn't working.

At church, about half an hour before the service a family arrived who had a girl in the boy's class. They told me that there was a rumour going around the community that our church was running a memorial service. We needed to prepare just in case.

I met with a councilor who goes to my church before the service. She had been assigned to me so she could help me figure out how to best help anyone who was going to turn up. As we were talking I watched through the windows as out the front as lots of year 7 people and their parents arrived at church. This wasn't going to be a normal service.

By the time the service started we had about 70 extra people in our church. Steve started the service where talking about death, praying and reading from the Bible. I thought he did very well, Steve was in his element. This was then followed by communion. It was comforting for some reason. It went on for ages. We ran out of bread there were so many people.

When it was time for the Sunday School to go out I took my group. I had 19 extra people, all of them had known the boy who died. I was pretty scared. I had never had to do anything like this before. When you go into Youth Ministry you know that one day death will touch your ministry and now it had come to mine, but you never get to a stage where you're ready for it.

We sat down and I prayed before handing over to the councilor. She ran a debriefing session with the young people. She did very well. I was very glad she was there. When she had finished I talked about how God feels about death. I told the story of Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead, of the anger and sadness Jesus had when his friend died, but also the power that Jesus has over death. God hates death but he is not impotent in the face of death as we are, he will one day destroy it, we can trust that he holds all things in his hands, even the lives of those we have lost.

I'm not sure what the people who heard it thought. I prayed for them and I hope it was of some comfort.

During Church the parents went out for their own debrief session. After the service there was lots of ministry going on, lots of people being comforted and prayed for. It was wonderful to see our church had pulled together to help those who were grieving. All the young people hung out together after church. As the youth minister I felt like I should go and talk to them, but it was kinda strange because they all knew each other and I felt like the outsider. Generally they would talk to me for a bit then wander off. I got to talk to one or to for more than just a polite amount of time, but generally they were pretty happy to look after themselves, and I can understand that.

In the afternoon we had youth group. I do like playing soccer. During dinner we were in the playground at church and I was standing on a little kiddy swing talking to one of the girls. I was swinging on it while standing up. As I got higher and higher the girl told me that I was going to hurt myself, which I politely disagreed with. But sure enough I got hurt. I got to this point where I was so high that there wasn't enough momentum to keep me going against gravity's wishes. I stopped but the swing didn't, I fell to the ground onto me face. As I was coming down the swing came around and whacked me in the nose. It was rather painful.

I rolled over onto my back at which point someone noticed that my nose was bleeding. I lay on the ground thinking "It's the first injury of the year in the youth ministry and it's the youth minister." I felt at least that's what we call incarnational ministry.

The young people came and led me away to get first aid (tissues and lots of different people giving different instructions about where to put my nose) while the leaders filled the power vacuum and ran dinner while I sat on the sidelines trying not to bleed on things.

After dinner when I had cleaned myself up a bit I gathered the youth group together so we could pray for those people who had known the boy who died. It was another hard time. I'd found the whole day rather emotional, and this was no different. It was hard not to get choked up, but I pushed through. All the young people gathered around and prayed for those who were grieving and it was beautiful to see.

When I finished praying I realised that I had started bleeding again. I bled till halfway through Church.

We had a young adults do after church. I like young adults stuff but I had a head ache and was starting to feel sick. I didn't have a car so Tanya gave me a lift home. She's good value that Tanya.

When I was home and Tanya had gone (she came inside for a tour of the house) I came into my room to blog, but I couldn't concentrate. My head was feeling horrid and I wanted to vomit. I couldn't think straight. I think everything had finally caught up with me, the adrenaline kicked out.

I slept very well that night.

Life has been so full lately. What with full time work and all. I need a briefcase and a suit. There has been no time to blog. I have plans to blog about my weekend, it was pretty crazy. I started but Mozilla died on me. Mozilla isn't as stable as it used to be it seems to crash. Actually every program on my computer seems to die. It helps you grasp the whole ethereal nature of computers (grasping something ethereal, I think that may be oxy-moronic).

I'm reading a book by John Birmingham. It's the squeal to Weapons of Choice which I read last year. For a violent airport novel it asks good questions about where our society is headed and what the consequences of the War on Terror will be on the morality of future generations.

The books are part of a trilogy, this book doesn't seem to be going so well for the good guys. It's seems like the Empire Strikes Back of the three. I wonder how much stuff will hit the fan before the end of the book. I never like the part of stories when things go bad. I like stories to be happy all the time.

I'm turning into a bit of a Birmo nut, this is the second book in a row I've read of his, third in five months, and I read his blog regulalarly. He sounds like a friendly guy, and he treats his blog readers well, I like him.

I went to a gathering of Youth Ministers from my area today. That and sending 4 emails was the only work I did all day. I did like the youth ministers hang out.

I got a mass email from a Youth Ministry person today asking if any of us who are on the list would be willing to speak in churches. If we are interested we're to send them a copy of one of our talks. That would be fun, but I did it 18 months ago and never got a response. Even with a follow up email I never got a response. I get the feeling I'm not the sort of speaker they're interested in. I'm not sure if offered my services again I'd seem incorrigible. Oh well. I'll decide later.

We have a house.

I'm moving out.

Fun.

Ryan on loving your enemies:

"If vengeance is a currency then someone has to come up empty handed."

I thought it sounded quotable so I quoted it.

Helen has lent me her car for a day or two so I can get around. It's very nice of her. Now I won't have to contend with nearly so many buses.

Thanks Helen.

Train's the way to Go

I had to catch public transport today to and from work. From the time I first left work for home it took me almost an hour and a half to catch a bus. I read timetables wrong, other timetables were wrong, I waited at bus stops where there were no buses, missed buses and had late buses. I'll tell you, I'm not smart enough for buses.

Birthday

It was good. I spent a lot of time with people today. Presents with Parents and Hannah, coffee with Kaye, lunch with Jamie, Kid's Club with Kids, Youth Group with Youth, dinner with the leaders. It was real nice seeing so many people.

I think spending my birthday night with the youth group was lots of fun. We launched the year and it was smashing. We played games, had a laugh, prayed, sang. It was a good way to start the year. I really do love being a youth minister.

The leaders went out for dinner afterwards, which was also fun. I do like the leaders.

The day has ended on a rather sad note. But it's not news for the blog.

I am happy for the Gospel.

Thinking Big

I ate breakfast with Mil today. That was fun. I was walking home today after visiting the bank and reading in the Library, wondering what the big thoughts are that I'm thinking at the moment.

Incarnational Evangelism

I've been thinking about Evangelism and how best to do it. I've been listening to a series of talks that Mike Frost gave at Cooma 2002. He's talking about the need to do incarnational evangelism. That means doing evangelism where you go and join people in their lives and culture rather than inviting them into yours.

Which is in many ways the opposite of what we do in my youth ministry. We get people to invite their friends into the culture/community that we have created. When people are immersed in a loving community they'll want to hang around. That's the idea. Frost says that we should go out into the communities of non-Christians and live like Christ there.

Which is also part of our strategy. We designed a ministry that tried to free people up so they can participate in the social lives of their peers. We don't have small group go too late on a Friday so people can go to parties. We don't provide a full calendar of social activities so our young people are building social lives with their non-Christian peers, we hope.

Then again, Frost also says we should be building our own social "nets" outside the church to "catch" people in. I guess in some ways to a degree we also do that.

Anyway, it's been challenging to keep thinking about how to best to do evangelism. It's a challenge to work out how best to connect. I think probably we need to find a combination of both being "out" and inviting "in". Because without both we probably don't have the ability to meet all types of people and all types of needs.

What has interested me is the challenge to make sure I'm not living in a Christian bubble. To be living with people who aren't Christians, joining their clubs, drinking where they drink, eating where they eat. We should not just be where they are, but building relationships with them so that we can love them as Christ would have us love them. That is definitely something I am up for. I need to be making space for it. I wonder if there is a movie watching club in Sydney I could join. I love movies and then I might meet people who also like movies. And we could be friends that'd be fun.

It's always interesting thinking about evangelism and how when you talk about it often feels like you have relationships with people who aren't Christians purely because you want to convert them. That shouldn't be the case and more huge amounts of Christians it's not the case. I want to meet more people who aren't Christians because they have all the same potential to be my friends as Christians do. In fact in many ways I'm more interested in being their friends because Christians are a little boring. We have too much in common. I know too many of them already. Although I love them all.

Oh well.

Images of Salvation

I'm also thinking about images of salvation, themes of redemption, stories to invoke a yearning for wholeness.

We're working on the story for new Breakthru' Artz major project. I've been having images, scenes and scrapes of stories floating around my head. I want to figure out how to create a theatre/film/dance piece that creates a space for the Gospel to be told. I want to find a way to tell a story that will stand alone, but will create a resonance in people when they hear about Jesus. It's a hard task to do. At the moment I have things I want to do, but I'm waiting for the magic that brings it all together or creates something new.

But then, my idea may not be used. Matt and I are both coming up with ideas so we could use Matt's.

Boxing

I'm also thinking about how I might be able to go see the Anthony Mundine and Danny Green fight that's on during Soul Survivor. It's looking difficult at the moment.

I just finished my mail out. Only 1 day and 6 hours later than I'd planned.

Monday night was made for TV.

This Given Sunday

It was my first Sunday back at Church today and it was a good one.

I was commissioned to tell a story before the sermon this week. Originally Beck had been asked to do a drama about a military camp, but that evolved into me telling a story about my male science teacher in year 8 who I thought was pregnant. It was a little weird, I stood up and told a story before the sermon. It was kinda like Sally had outsourced a sermon illustration. Oh well. People seemed to like the story. Especially the 10am crew.

I went to lunch with the Young Marrieds (and soon to be marrieds). They're a fun bunch. Smart, mature, funny. I enjoyed myself, and felt rather young.

I went to the Pub before Church tonight with Matt. It was good to have a pre-Church beer. I think I might change the location for youth group to the Pub. I'm sure its popularly would soar.

I did my story for Sally again at night in Church. I also got to do the announcements. I'm never sure if I do a very good job at telling information, but it's a good chance for a bit of silliness, and what's church about if not silliness?

Sally preached well today. Both services.

After Church I visited Maccas with the youth. The great thing about being the Youth Minister is that you get to hang out with the youth. They're all good fun. Maccas with the young people is always a highlight.

I'm looking forward to the year.

"Violence is the last resort of the impotent."

Many have said it. I wonder it it's true.

I doubt it.

Munich

I went to see Munich with the boys.

It was a good movie. The movie was rather brutal. It was violent and it wasn't dressed up and polished. It was mostly un-Speilbergish. It was shot quite gritty with a lot of handheld, high contrast shots. Unlike his usual squeaky clean style. Although I like Spielburg in all his forms.

It was nice to see Spielburg asking questions, and answering them more quietly than usual. There was plenty of time given to the Palistinians as well as the Israelis. The terrorists were humanised. And the Isrealis often seem just as terrible as the Palistinians. There was one bit where the Prime Minister said: "Every civilisation finds it necessary to negotiate compromises with its own values" which led Israel on a trajectory of violence, assassinating the people who hurt Israel. Israel would not compromise on having its power threatened, but it would compromise on the values that give legitimacy to that power.

I found it interesting that in the last scene of the film was shot across the river from the UN Headquarters with the building in the background while the characters talked in an overgrown playground probably symbolising lost innocence. And the very last shot was of the twin towers. As if Steven was saying “We need to work towards peace because violence just gives birth to violence.” Really he wasn’t saying anything new. But as is often the case with truth it gains more currency when you have gone on a journey to find it.

“We are supposed to be righteous.”

From Joshua

I just got this email from a person called Joshua:

Hi there lovely,
I was searching the net few days ago. I am new to this thing.
and saw your profile. I decided to email you cause I found
you attractive. I might come down to your city in few weeks.
Let me know if we can meet each other in person.
I am attractive girl. I am sure you won't regret it.
Reply to my personal email at nice@free4mail.info

I don't want to meet any attractive girls called Joshua, especially with such bad English. Joshua might steal my kidney.

Martin is Hot

Happy Birthday Sister Jo for yesterday.

I said it to her yesterday, I just didn't blog it.

Bad Brain

I used to never forget appointments. In the past five weeks I've forgotten to turn up to a store I volunteered on, forgotten a production team meeting in Chatswood, I've almost turned up to a camp meeting on the wrong day and I forgot to turn up to a Kid's Club meeting today and took the day off instead. I don't know what's wrong. I used to do so well. Now I'm flaky and keep letting people down.

Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.

I figure it has happened ever since I started using my organiser. Now I put meetings in my phone and so I don't put them in my head. If I don't put something in my phone, it doesn't happen. Bum.

Quiet

It's been rather quiet in the office today, which has meant I could make it loud. I've spent most of today listening to music. It's been nice. I do like music.

I've also managed to send 17 emails which could be a record for me. Probably not for others though. Not for email freaks. My office is also looking even cleaner than yesterday.

Hi Ho, Hi Ho

I have to go to bed soon because I have to go to work tomorrow. I went to work today too. Wow, two days in a row I'll be at work! This full time work thing, I don't know, it's like being back at school. After 6 years it feels like the holidays have finally ended.

Or maybe it felt like this 4 weeks ago before I went on holidays. Not quite sure, it all kinda blurs into one.

Yesterday I did manage to spend most of it lying around. I finished my book Preaching Without Notes which was mostly a waste of time. For all you budding noteless preachers out there, I'll sum up all 132-pages for you in a few easy steps:

1. Write Lots of Notes
2. Write a Sermon Outline
3. Memorise it
4. Rehearse it
5. Preach it

Anyway you can borrow it off me if you want. The people who visited Amazon liked the book, so that's ok. I'll let them like it.

I went back to TCBC last night. It was fun. I felt rather comfortable, except hot. I missed my church though, going to church makes you miss church. I wanted to go to maccas and hang with all the youth.

I almost didn't go to church last night because I was feeling lazy. It occurred to me "Sometimes this is how people who don't work for the church feel." I felt almost like a normal person.

During church the guy beside me said "Is this your first time?"

To which I replied "Second"

"Well you're onto a winner" he said

I think he thought I'd joined the church. Or perhaps it was his subtle way of getting me to join. A good try too. Unfortunately my church will pay me a couple of thousand dollars more to attend theirs.

After church we played a bit of Balderdash. And I watched the cricket. I got rather excited. I'm not sure I could sit through a whole day of it, but 30 mins worked quite fine, even if we did get demolished.

Today at work I had lots of meetings, tried cleaning my offices but made it messier, and a had a planning meeting by myself which made me appreciate that planning with another is more fun than planning alone.

Which reminds me Happy, Happy, Happiness to Helen and Jon for their lifetime ring exchange program. Well done! I look forward to coming over for vegetarian barbies!

Lazy Days

Today I've decided to have a sit/lie around kinda day. I'll read books, type stuff, eat stuff, listen to music. And tonight I'll go to church.

It's the last day of holidays so I figure I should try and do very little.

I watched the making of Batman Begins (what a cool movie) today. That's a good dvd that one. So much juicy bits. I throughly enjoyed myself.

I'm so happy to see summer has come back. Hooray for the sunshine!

Dancing after Breakfast



Dancing after breakfast should be done regularly. You look stupid, but it's good for digestion.

High Productivity High Country

I'm off to Katoomba today. Mitch, Graham and I are going to visit Gus the Animator Newsagent Manager.

I've had a very productive morning. I rang up about getting deaconised, rang my Big Sister Big Brother case worker and applied for an ABN. And now I'm off to eat a lonely lunch in the food court before Graham arrives and we head for the hills.

The great thing about going on long drives is that I've developed a habit of burning mix cds for the driver. The driver may not like it, but I have a good time.

Sometimes life feels like many small victories and big defeats. The defeats are always with you, but the victories you must look back to find.

Yesterday Hannah and I went to Hungry Jacks in Dural for some afternoon tea. She thought it was lots of fun. We had the whole restrurant to ourselves. It was good but the food wasn't.

Perhaps today we'll go up to the park and play with my remote control car.

Actually while I'm on the topic of movies, I'm real excited about X-Men 3. Wolverine is just the coolest. Who wants to be his best friend? Me!

I watch Murderball tonight. It was cool. It's about Wheelchair Rugby in North America. Most of it is pretty sporty and macho, but they followed this one guy who was a new paraplegic to show how he coped with it. He wasn't too happy until he was given a chance to have a go in a rugby wheelchair and his face lit up. He was so happy to find something good about his new life. It warmed my heart.

I'm not actually quite sure what a "dirty ripper" is, but I like the saying. I think I might use it. Except perhaps it sounds like "dirty stripper".

Chris told me a rumour last night that Peter Jackson is planning on releasing two more Kong films. It was a rather depressing idea.

Thankfully I Googled the web high and low and found nothing about it except for a few fan boys having an intense discussion on discussion boards (who would have thought!)

But now I have gotten to the bottom of it. Here is the source. My old friend Harry. Harry at Ain't it Cool used to be a daily read for me. Now I'm rarely there. Anyway, notice the date of the post and then you'll understand the reason for the rumour.

In other news The Superman Returns Video Blog is a dirty ripper. It's fantastic. I want to make films!!!

Hooray

Sony has just joined iTunes

Camping

Going on camp with a youth group who you don't know is a little daunting. Especially when they all know each other. You feel a little like the odd one out, which I was. But it was ok.

The camp was fun. The young people were all aged between year 8 and 11. They were a good bunch, fun and friendly.

I did a series of talks which were adaptated from the series I did in June last year (which I am about to start posting on the Preaching Blog). People seemed to be happy and challenged. It was hard adapting for a smaller group (about 30) as you have to be less note reliant. So I spent a lot of time speaking from memory.

On the Sunday Night we had our Gospel night. On Sunday afternoon I felt like I should prepare a new talk instead of doing the one I had planned. So I quickly put it together using old stuff and new stuff. It was a little stressful, but I felt calmer about the talk when I had done that. I guess that's what you call listening to the Spirit.

The night went really well. After a night of worship, speaking and contemplation, of the young people that were there all but one of the them came down the front for prayer. By the end all but one or two of them were in tears. It was a pretty special experience, you can't ask for a much better response (not that I'm claiming the credit!) I felt privleged to have been there.

The camp had high ropes and a giant swing. They were lots of fun. I'd like to do more high ropes and go as fast as I can. That'd be cool. Perhaps I'll build my own high ropes course with all my fantastic construction skills.

The youth group had been to Soul Survivor last year. It was funny, some of the campers were pretty impressed that I was Donny Jaffa. When I sat next to one of them at breakfast they said "I'm sitting next to a famous person." I enjoyed that. Although I don't think she really thought I was all that famous. One boy asked me "If your famous, how did they get you to come on this camp?"

Now I'm home and happy.

I was going to blog well tonight about the camp but now it's late and I want to lie in bed.

I did watch The Contender while having an extended stint on the couch tonight. It was fun. Boxing reality tv show. That's what we need more of. Apart from the silly "drag a log up a hill" challenge I enjoyed the show. I would have liked it to have been more documentary and less "reality" (it's funny how reality means gripping music with people doing things they would never really do in a hyped up American-network TV way). I would have liked to have seen the full fight rather than the edited highlights, with lots of Rocky-esq slow-mo. Anyway, I shouldn't complain, I enjoyed it. I like boxing.

I'm home from camp number 2 now.

I'll probably fall asleep on the couch now and be buzzing later. Then I'll blog.

Big Spiders Break Legs

A 19-year-old leader on a camp at the campsite I was at last week for Dirt Bike Camp has broken his leg trying to kill a Huntsman Spider. He said it was the biggest spider he's ever seen. SMH worte a story about it.

I saw that spider, it lived behind the exit sign in the Dining Room. It was big, it scared me. We all put in effort to keep the thing alive. But now it's dead. Poor spider. I hope the guy's leg heals.

I don't know why we need a news report about it.

Library, Bullet and A Collapse

Ryan and I went to the State Library today to work on my new website.

I've had a plan to create a website for a few months now. I've often found that I'm at work and I have to find a speaker for an event but I can never find a speaker, or if I do find one, I don't know what they're like. So to solve that problem I've decided to make a website. It's a site that Christian Speakers will sign up to and upload a sample message of theirs. Then people who need to find speakers can go to the site, read their profile and listen to the sermon. If they like it, they book the speaker. It's like online dating except for speakers and people who need speakers.

Anyway Ryan and I sat in the Library (an Gloria Jeans) all day and did that. He did all the technical typing, I sat next to him and read magazines.

I bought Green Day's Bullet in a Bible today with a gift voucher. It's fun.

On the way home from the City a man in my carriage collapsed. I was in the front carriage and it was packed full. At Milson's Point station I noticed a commotion behind me and I looked down and saw a man's arm on the floor and thought "This train is so packed, it's a bit rude to take up space sitting on the floor like that." But when I looked better I saw a man very uncomfortably sprawled on the ground. People started saying "Stop the train! Stop the train!" So a few of us jumped out and started waving at the guards. They looked at us funny and closed the doors. We kept waving while other passengers held our doors open.

A man who was sitting on the platform said "Should we get the driver?"

I thought "That's a good idea" and ran to the driver's window and knocked. He got up out of his seat and opened his door. "A man has just collapsed in our carriage!" I said. He came out to have a look but by this stage the man was being helped off the train. He was sitting down while people were crowding around. He was saying "I'm alright, I'm alright." At this point a lady who had been on the train with us offered to stay with the man, he kept saying he was alright, so everyone piled back onto the train. I was the last on the train and the guard closed the door on me. My bag got squashed.

Diaspora

My holidays haven't been all that holiday like. I've been spending most of my time doing work for camp or being on camp.

But when I have had time to do things with firends it's been hard to find friends. Hornsby is has leaked lots of my friends to other suburbs, cities or countries. Meeting up with firends takes a lot more effort. So when you think "It's 9:20pm I might go and see a movie at 9:30" There is a lot less chance that I'll have friends around. That's why I'm moving to Newtown.

The last week of the year was easy to find friends though. I think people were on holidays and around. It was good. Did I mention that I saw 52 movies last year. I managed it. That last week had 5 movies in it or something, but it was good. I made it.

Right now I'm burning a cd of all my iTues songs so Howie can have them on his lappy.

I managed to find more things to do today.

On Monday I went and saw Broken Flowers with Ryan. It was my first movie of the year. It was good. As Bill Murray has gotten older he has certainly done the wine thing on us. It was a funny movie. It was slow too which meant that I had plenty of time to contemplate the symbolism and stuff. Made me feel smart.

I'm doing a really bad job at doing anything today. It's 2:30pm and I haven't eaten breakfast yet.

I have installed some programes and mooched around on the net. But other than that, I've been a bit of a disappoint really.

In a few weeks I'm moving to Newtown. I'll move out of this house that I've lived in all my life and into a 5 bedroom house with 7 other people. I think things may change a little.

I'm also going to get my first car in the next month or so and I'm going to start my first ever full time job (or at least go full time in an old job).

I haven't had this many changes since puberty.

Dirty Week Ended



I'm home from Dirt Bike Camp. Pwoah! What a camp. It was one of the most full on camps I've been on. We were in a meeting at 6:45am every morning and we didn't stop until about 10pm every night, no breaks. Spending that much time with boys in years 5 and 6 is a very long time.

Actually I had some breaks. There were days when I would take a session (3 hours) off to work on my talk. But it doesn't take 3 hours so I would have to sleep to fill in some of the time. Although I didn't get to do that too much.

There was lots of dirt bike riding. About 3 hours a day each in two sessions. My job was usually Crowd Control which means that I sent riders of from the waiting area to the bikes. It was fun. My conversations with the boys would usually go something like this:

"What do you want 80 or 100?...80...You're a 100? Ok... Right you take the 100...No you can't take the CRF, take the XR...Take the XR! Go!...Get yourself a helmet then you can go...You take that 80. Go!....Oi! Come back here. Did I say you can go? Sit down!...Now you can go...Ok. There's an 80. You want an 80? Go!...Who here wants a 100?...Get yourself a helmet than you can go!...Go take the 100! Now, Go!"

It was fun. I may not have had the most highly skilled job on the course but I reckon I had on of the most mentally challenging. Everyone else just had to ride a bike or watch a track. I had to juggle everyone's bike preferences, watch the bikes, mediate in the fights, discipline the people who misbehaved on and off the track, have conversations with the kids, mediate between kids and leaders, and make sure everyone got on a bike in as swift, orderly and safe fashion as possible. I enjoyed the challenge.

I did a little bit of riding. On Sunday I learnt how to ride for a few hours. I wasn't very good, the whole clutch, gears, throttle, hands, fingers, feet, brains things didn't quite gel with me. But I got better.

On Tuesday I rode a second time. I was up to a Level 2 track by that stage (out of 6 levels) and I wasn't doing very well. By the end of the session I had the track pretty much down. I decided to have one more circuit before I moved up a track. I was doing a hair-pin bend in what I thought was 2nd gear but turned out 3rd. I put in too much throttle. Instead of going around the bend I rode straight off the track, up a dirt wall and into a fence. I put the front wheel of the bike straight through this wire fence. The bike got stuck completely in the fence. When the rest of the riders found me they laughed profusely at my feat and the head bike man told me he had never seen a leader ever do that well with crashing a bike before.

I didn't ride after that. Not cause I was scared ,more because I was lazy. I was too lazy to have to learn how not to ride into fences. I figure I'll do that later.

Bikes are a little dangerous. We were very blessed we had so few injuries. Only one kid finished the camp with a broken arm and finger. Other than that it was just a few scrapes, grazes, bruises and sprains. I cut my finger too.

The weather was terrible. It was so cold some days. After Sunday's scorcher, it was freezing. I was wearing two jumpers on some days. It was like winter. I wanted my money back.

My talks (which is what I was there for) went pretty well. I put in effort to make appropriate illustrations for young boys which meant farts, poo, pus, cars and crime. They seemed to like that. And they seemed to respond well to the serious bits too, which is more important.

All up it was good. The kids were great. There were times when I was reminded of Lord of the Flies and was very glad that we leaders were around to stop another Piggy incident. But mostly they were just fun. Lots of very friendly guys who I enjoyed hanging out with. It was great to have an all male week with lots of macho stupid stuff, silly jokes and 12-year-old guys trying to beat you up. Out of all the leaders I certainly felt rather un-manly being unable to ride a bike properly and the only one still on a lower bike skill level at the end of the camp than the majority of the campers were. Oh well. They were a good leadership team.

I'm glad I did the camp. Maybe I'll learn to ride properly this year. That'd be fun. Right now I'm stuffed.

Happy New Year

Ya' bunch of blog readers.

I'm off for a Dirt Bike Camp. No introspection from me, just petrol and speed. Yeehaa!

I'll see you all when I get back.

Stuck in a Moment

I'm going on Dirt Bike Camp for boys in years 5 and 6 tomorrow (8am! Ahhh!) and I'm the speaker. Over the past week I've been writing 5 talks. It's an odd experience writing 5 talks at once. It's daunting, hard, unrelenting. You just get lost in this world of a never ending cycle of "point, illustrate, apply, repeat, point, illustrate, apply, repeat". It's so hard thinking of illustrations all the time.

When I planned it I thought "Oh I'll just rehash some talks, make them for a younger audience, cut stuff out, easy" But I've found it's not that easy. I'm basically rewriting the old ones from scratch and writing some brand new ones.

Oh well the end is in sight.

Leaving on a Jet Plane

Yesterday Jo and I bought our tickets to Europe for next year. Yeepah!

I have no savings.

Did you know that it was a Belgian priest who first proposed the Big Bang theory?

It was. His name was Georges Lemaître and he did it in 1927. I think that's cool.

From here.

I forgot to say, I thought the White Witch in Narnia was excellent. She was the best character of them all. So well done. So vicious. Tilda's the bomb!

I went and watched Good Night, and Good Luck. today with Ryan, Libby and Lesley.

What a great film! It's about Ed Murrow who was a News Reporter with CBS in the 1950s. He did a series of reports on Sentator McCarthy during the height of his communist witch hunt. I first read about him in February while sitting in a park in Croydon reading my book Tell Me Know Lies. I thought he was pretty cool then. The McCarthy witch hunts have always interested me, ever since studying The Crucible in school. So it was fun to see McCarthy and Ed Murrow (or at least an Ed Murrow actor) do their thing.

The film is a very pointed critique of the erosion of civil liberties which is currently going on in the US. I thought it was interesting that The Crucible was written about the Salam Trials as an allegory of what was going on in the McCarthy era. Now the McCarthy trials are being used to take a shot at what's happening now. I hope they make a film about what's happening now in the future to have a go at their contemporary issues. Although if we have to wait 300 hundred years (as was the space between The Salam Witch Trials and The Crucible) I may sadly miss the film.

But all that said, it was good, well written, well acted and smart. The film reminded me a bit of Fail Safe but that may have just been because it was shot in black and white and had George Clooney in it.

So in light of the past few days film watching I will have to revise my Top 10 of 2005:

1. Million Dollar Baby
2. Cinderella Man
3. Batman Begins
4. The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe
5. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
6. Ray
7. Kiss Kiss Bang Bang
8. Good Night, and Good Luck.
9. Downfall
10. The Aviator

Gravity

Gravity, is working against me
And Gravity, wants to bring me down
Oh, I've never known what makes this man
With all the love that this heart can stand
Dream of ways to throw it all away

...Just keep me where the light is - John Mayer

I watched Fun with Dick and Jane with Ryan yesterday. I was expecting it to be pretty crappy. But, alas, it was surprisingly good. It made me laugh, and engaged in a bit of social commentary. What more could you want from a bit of Hollywood fluff?

Narnynaa

I went and saw The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe tonight with the usual suspects. And what a special film it was. Oh, yes. It was sheer joy. I loved it to bits. It was well written, well cast, well shot, well acted, well…everything. I’d give it a proper review, but I can’t, it was just special.

I think Adam Adamson had a real hard job directing in the shadow of Lord of the Rings but he did it. And it came off well. It’s a kid’s movie, it’s not LOTR. It’s not as violent as I would have liked, but 7 year-olds have to watch this, so I can cope.

Aslan was great. I want to meet Aslan and hug him. Please don’t tell me I already have.

The film opened really well with London being bombed. It anchored us in the read world, and established the characters and their situation quickly.

Yeah. It was cool. I reckon I’ll buy it. Yeppers.

How’s that for a good review?

I feel like I should write about Christmas. I don't have much to say, it was rather quiet. Grandpa and Valentina came around. As tradition dictates we went to the Castle's before that. And before that I went to church at St Pete's for the one service of the year (not including weddings). And that was it.

But it was nice. It felt more like a Sunday when people came over for lunch, but that's ok. Tomorrow I'm off to the Gong for Christmas with the large (numerous, not fat) side of the family, so the fun continues. I'll try and be less tired tomorrow.

I got a tool kit. Now I'm a real man. And I got a dictionary so I'll be smart. And the new John Mayer CD, so I'll be happy. Plus other happy goods.

It was good of Jesus to come to earth, it meant that I get presents.

For your viewing pleasure

In the continuing tradition stupid photos of me...

This was taken last night after the Midnight Service.



And this is the Christmas Tree in Darling Harbour with the Novotel in the background. I took that on Friday night.



I went to 3 church services yesterday. I was almost over Christmas before it had even started, but doesn't that happen every year?

I did a children's talk in the 5pm service and it was one of the hardest kid's talks I've done in my life. The kids were noisy, and playing with Christmas presents. They didn't really seem to be understanding me very much. And every time I'd say something like "Isn't it true that one of the best things about Christmas is the presents?" they'd say "No" or just look at me like they had no idea what I was talking about. Oh well, these things happen.

Christmas Cheer

Click Here to See My Christmas Card

Happy Christmas to you all!

Oh. It's Christmas.

I finished most of my Christmas shopping today. It's a nice feeling. I did it all but 2 presents about 1 hour. How good am I?

Don't you worry 'bout your mind
Don't you worry 'bout your mind
You should worry 'bout the day
That the pain, it goes away
You know, I miss mine sometimes - Fast Cars - U2

Top 10s

Paul Byrnes has picked his top 10 and bottom 10 of the year on SMH. I don't often agree with Paul, and I don't really agree with him now. I guess anyone who spells Byrnes like that is bound to someone I disagree with.

Here's what he said and my comments on the ones I've seen:

Tops

1 War of the Worlds - Good but top? No, MDB was much better. I don't think it'd make my top 10
2 Downfall - Yes, this was good. It was depressing. This deserves a place
3 Mysterious Skin
4 Million Dollar Baby - What a film! Ouch, it hurt. Clint is a genius.
5 Look Both Ways
6 Little Fish - Well written, fantastic characters, silly implausable ending
7 Bad Education
8 The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill
9 Sideways - Good
10 The Upside of Anger

Turkeys
1 Alexander - Yes Paul, yes. What a useless piece of film. They should have lengthened the men's skirts and shortened the film
2 Luther - Perhaps I'm biased because I owe so much to the reformation, but it wasn't that bad
3 Heights
4 The Island - Come one, don't we need some fluff here and there? It was fun. And Scarlett is great.
5 Bewitched - As above, minus Scarlett
6 You and Your Stupid Mate
7 Elektra
8 Alfie
9 MirrorMask
10 Elizabethtown - This film was cool.
___

Ok so it's not that bad. I agreed a bit, not with his bottom 10. Perhaps I should make my list.

Tops

1. Million Dollar Baby
2. Cinderella Man
3. Batman Begins
4. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
5. Ray
6. Kiss Kiss Bang Bang
7. Downfall
8. The Aviator
9. Closer
10. Oyster Farmer

Turkeys

1. Sister Hood of the Travelling Pants
2. Constantine
3. Alexander
4. The Dukes of Hazard
5. Fantastic Four
6. Raise Your Voice
7. Cellular
8. Be Cool
9. Hide and Seek
10. Stealth

I had a full day at work today but mostly it just involved sitting around and talking to people. I drank Coke, ate Thai food and drank Beer as I conversed. What a good job I have.

Kanye

Kanye West will be the Support Act for U2 in Australia. That's fun. I was just thinking while I was in the shower today that I would be interested in going to see Kanye, now I guess I won't have to. He's coming to me.

Of course I only know two of his songs, now I'll have to learn a few more if I am to fully appreciate the experience.

Angels on the Back Verandah



Yesterday was fat.

It started at midnight when I was still writing my sermon for the morning. It was a hard one to write. It only really started to feel good at 11pm after a conversation with my family. I was writing till 3am.

After 3 hours sleep, I got up, showered, got dressed, drove to work. I was there by 7:20. It was rather early. I added an illustration to the sermon then printed it out. I ran through the hard parts then headed over to the church. I was feeling pretty shot. It's a bad way to start the working day.

I preached at 8am. It felt ok. My tiredness got me a few times, I almost lost my voice, and in an illustration I said "when I was in year sex" instead of six. No one laughed at then, which was sad. I got good feed back though. The 8am congregation are very encouraging. I like them all.

10am was a rushed service, but I preached better. I'd warmed up, and I knew the sermon a bit better.

I think people liked the sermon. I only heard good comments. Lots of people came up to me and said they appreciated my honesty, and my bravery with sharing my stories, but I didn't think they were particularly hard to share.

After that service it was Back to Bethlehem all the way. Back to Bethlehem is our church's annual Carols by Candlelight equivalent. We set up our church property to look like Bethlehem (sort of) and run a market place were people can do craft and enjoy the atmosphere, then we do a nativity play. Last year I was Joseph. This year I borrowed a sheet from the Buckley's, wrapped it around me like a toga and called my self Hotus Guyus Maximus.

Back to Bethlehem was good. The market place was fun. I got to do lots of craft, and meet people. And the play was well done. Probably one of the best nativity plays I've done. They used the whole property, stables in the park, the Inn under a slippery dip, Joseph's house in the car park, Angels on the back verandah. It was fun.

After the Back to Bethlehem there was a lot of packing up and carrying to do. Finally Jon, Helen, Stephen and I retired to Big Fish Little Fish in Chatswood at around 11pm for dinner. That was very exciting. I do love dinner.

I just got booked for driving through a red light. Oops. I wasn't really paying attention. It was at Hornsby Station. I was turning left, the cars around me were moving and I didn't check the lighs.

That's $300 and 3 demerit points. But at least I got to talk to a cop and see the flashing lights. That was fun.

I think I need to learn to think about driving while I drive. It may save me money.

The Youth Ministers - 2004-2005




Tonight was the last night I did youth ministry with Helen. We had our youth ministry Christmas party. It was fun, it was sad. We said goodbye to Kristen, Rob and Helen. They're all tops. Everyone is great. I heaps of fun hanging out with the young people. They're lots of fun.

Leading the youth ministry these past 2 years with Helen has been special. She's good stuff.

It was fun. Thanks Helen.

The photo was taken in January at Glenelg in Adelaide. I figured this would be a good time to pull it out. We had a whole set of us staring into the distance attempting to look inspired or inspiring. I think this is the one that turned out best. I would have prefered Helen in the front but we did a follow up series with Helen in the foreground but they didn't work. So you'll just have to put up with my ugly mug. Sorry.

Long Kong

My life is so full at the moment. I'm having dinners and meetings, writing sermons, going to parties, sleeping, watching films. It's kinda fun but rather bulky.

I watched King Kong last night with David. It was ok. The script was pretty poor, Peter, Fran and Phillipa didn't have Tolkien backing them up this time. It was too long. We spent about 2 hours just on the island with the main characters battling overgrown animals. There was good stuff there, but way too much of it. Peter Jackson shouldn't have been given free reign. A bit like the Watchowski's and their overgrown trilogy, Jackson seems to have been let free to do whatever he wants because he's made the studios so much money.

Once the film got back to New York it got better. The scene in the theatre was so sad. But still, there was too much of New York. They should have cut it down.

Oh, well, better luck next time.

I'm home from being away in Forster. I went up on Sunday night and now I'm back. Since I left Sydney's started bashing each other and I'm disgusted. I need to go to bed but I have to go to work early tomorrow as I have no car. But I wanted to register my disapproval before I go to bed. I'm especially upset with those people who look more like me, because I guess I feel like I'm part of that group.

One of the reasons Mike Spence, the president of the California Republican Assembly, has for wanting Mel Gibson to run for Governer of California: "His [Gibson's] last movie made more money than the Governor's [Terminator 3]."

From here.

Moving to the Country

Iran's president has said that Isreal should move to Europe. What a stunning idea! Why didn't anyone else think of that? I wonder if they'd put every building on the back of a truck and drive in a massive convoy up the road?

Perhaps while we're at it, we should move a few other things. Canberra could move to Tasmainia, just so that Tasmainia can feel important and New South Wales can get the valuable land back that we lost when they made Lake Burley Griffin, and built the world's biggest round about. Australia could move to America to complete the sell-out. Guantanimo Bay could move to Mars because I don't think even international law applies there.

Oh the posibilities!

The Preaching Blog

I have been thinking for a few months about making a podcast/blog of my preaching. I have been tossing up whether it would be a good idea to stick my sermons on the net so the whole world can listen. The reason I wouldn't is because it feels like self-promotion, unhumble. But I also think if God has gifted me then I should use my gifts, and sticking my preaching on the net is a way of doing that. It means they might be able to impact more people.

So now I have made a blog and posted my sermons. I've posted four of my sermons 2 old ones and two new ones. Over time I'll add more as I go. I've also made it a podcast so that all my many, many fans can subscribe and always know when a new sermon has been posted. Hopefully this podcast will balance people's view of me a little against the me on the other podcasts.

I've also made a comment on each sermon, kinda like the preacher's commentary. I guess to justify the blog, but also because it's nice to be able to give some notes. Clarify some things, talk about what worked and what didn't. It also means I'm able to review myself and hopefully pick up my faults. So far I discovered that I really need to stop saying "Um" and "Ahh". And I finish every sermon with "I'm gonna pray".

Anyway, if you're interested (I won't be offended if you're not), here is the site: http://tompreaches.blogspot.com/

And you can subscribe to the podcast at this address: http://feeds.feedburner.com/tompreaches

As the Bible doesn't, but perhaps should say: "Preach the Word; be prepared in iTunes and out of iTunes; correct, rebuke and encourage - ?with great patience and careful instruction." - 1 Timothy 4:2

Feeling the Rhymes

I had a dream last night that I was at the park with a bunch of firends having a meeting. One of them said something offensive to my friend Graham about a close relative of his who died (I don't think he's lost any relatives lately). Graham got upset and started crying and shouting at them through angry tears. I saw this and jumped up to encourage him saying "Don't stop mate, let it out, don't stop! This is where the Hip-Hop comes from!"

Enticed

I was standing at the lights near the Botanic Gardens on Macquarie St today waiting for the lights. I was listening to my diskman and looking at the building across the road. It had three statues on the corner built into it's facade. They were called "Mercy", "Compassion" and "Justice". I found this very interesting, I thought about the fact that they were three attributes of God, wondered about whether or not they were an ideal lived up to by the designers of the building, and what they might look like up close.

As I was staring at these, the beeper for the crossing went off, so I started off towards the statues, thinking only about getting a closer look. As I walked across the road I noticed there was a black 4WD coming very quickly towards me. I thought "That person is obviously is not obeying the road rules." I looked up at the little green man and found, to my confusion, that he was red.

I looked around and found myself in the middle of peak hour Sydney, with everything driving towards me. I ran for the other side of the road, realising that the beeping had been for the other crossing next to me and feeling rather embarrassed that lots of people just saw me do something vague and stupid enough to get myself killed. Like Odysseus'' sirens, the lure of Mercy, Compassion and Justice had enticed my towards my death. But I'll tell you I forgot all about them when I was about to get run over.

So the moral to the story is: When confronted by the imminent death (or severe physical injury) mercy, compassion and justice go out the window.

Cooling Down

I heard it was 38 degrees today. My body odour can testify to that at the moment. I had a fun-ish day.

It started early with a trip to my scripture school. It was my last time there this year. I'm happy with that. My Scripture class this year really didn't like me. I don't I have been so disliked by a group of people as I have by my class this year. Except perhaps when I went to Griffith and told the whole of Year 8 they deserved to go hell*. But I have never been this disliked for such as sustained period of time.

Today, though, I didn't have to teach any classes. It was Christmas Scripture Assembly day. I was privileged enough to be the speaker again. I'm the regular speaker now. One day I'll get bumped and my ego will take a bruising. But till then..

My talk was about what makes Jesus so special. It was fun because I got to talk about Jesus being really smart and creating a rocket ship out of grass and manure, or being really strong and tearing a cow in half. In the end I said that the baby Jesus didn't do any of them. He was special because he was "God with us". It was way fun. Especially the infants, they thought it was quite funny.

After the Assembly, when I was going back to my car and I got surrounded by Kindergarten kids who wanted me to tell them jokes. I tried but couldn't think of anything. In the end I resorted to just giving them high fives. That descended into 25 little kids repeatedly slapping me. I thought I was going to get slapped to death by a bunch of 5 year-olds in an horrific, Lord of the Flies-style scene of abuse and over-zealous affection. I was lucky to get out alive.

We had staff meeting after that and I fell asleep during the prayer time, so I got too scared to pray, in case I said the same thing as someone else.

The rest of the day was hot really. I mooched around the office, ate a quiet lunch with Helen and Maryanne, made some posters and some phone calls.

Tonight I went bowling with the Young Adults. It was pleasent, I enjoy the people. I was a rather mild bowler though.

And that is the day concluded.

*That sounds really bad. I tried to be as diplomatic about it as possible.

We're going to U2!

So Much to Tell You

Of course I've been a real bad blogger lately. Harry, Bible Study Marathons, Weddings. So much to say.

But it's real late at night at the moment. So I'll just share something small.

On Friday morning I paid the deposit for Jo and I to go to Europe in June/July next year with Granpa and Valentina. That was fun. I've enjoyed visiting the travel agent. I've felt all grown up doing it all by myself. And what I thought would be a big, daunting experience turned out to be rather easy. Of course there was a lot of work to find the cheapest, easiest way of getting around. But it wasn't some complex process that you have to be really smart to do. You just rock up and say "I wanna do this" and the Travel Agent says "Ok" and off you go. So fun. I want to go overseas more.

I really wanna go to America. The Mother Country!

20 minutes

Waiting for the Code

I'm a paying member of U2.com which means that I should get a Pre-Sale code for U2 tickets. The problem is that I haven't gotten one. The presale ends in 48 minutes. I called Customer Service in America yesterday and they said they'd try and get me a code. I called this morning and they said they'd send me a code as soon as they could. Now I'm waiting. Waiting. Waiting.

I'm checking my emails constantly. The stress. The stress. If I get my code in the next 47 minutes I'll have tickets to U2 today. If not I have to wait till Monday and join in with the General Public. Oi! It's not the end of the world. But it'll be the start of a whole new level special feelings if I get tickets today.

At least I have tickets to Harry Potter tonight.

Reading

Today Jem and I went and saw Elizabethtown. That was a pretty fun film. Orlando if pretty good looking. I can see why girls find him hot. He was a bit of a pansy as Legolas though. Not that Orlando's looks were the highlight of the movie, I just noticed it. In a manly, hetro kinda way.

The memoral scene was pretty special. I was impressed.

Afterwards we went to the St Mary's Cathedral to see inside. It was very impressive. I reckon the nicest church in Sydney. Better then the Anglican Cathedral. I reckon we should see if we can swap for a bit. Run a Cathedral exchange program.

We folled this with a visit to the State Library. Wow, that was cool. Last time I went I was too scared to go into the big library. But since I had a friend I made it through. I looked though the catalogues and wondered about all the information that must be in the stack. So fun. Although I wasn't brave enough to figure it out. I'll have to take Lesley one day.

I read a book called Leviathan: The unauthorised biography of Sydney. I much enjoyed the first 13 pages. I want to go buy it. He's good that Birmo.

I had Chef's Lucky Noodles of dinner. No 31 with Thick Rice Noodles. Lovely!

Burn in Hell

Last night when I started my sermon I pretended to have a good rant about the prosperity doctrine. I got to say that anyone who preaches it is "spawn of Satan!" (which I don't believe.) It was way fun. And my favourite bit was saying "Come out! Come out and stand on the Truth that God wants you to be miserable and poor!" or something like that.

I hadn't really thought about whether or not it'd be fun before hand. I just decided it was the right thing for the job. But once I'd done it I wanted to do it again. I think I need to become an angrier preacher and call down more curses. That'd be heaps fun.

It's sad I don't think it's a very good idea.

From the Dust

"Music, as well as being the most dispensable of arts, is probably the hardest to throw off. It pursues...by strange means. Music lives beneath the soles of our feet. Given no encouragement music rises from the dust itself." - Tim Winton

Mr Miyagi has Died

Pat Morita, who played Mr Miyagi in The Karate Kid series, has died. He was 73.

That's sad.

From here.

Post-Podcast Comedown

The day after podcasting is always a hard one. I live in fear that this time I've oversteped the mark. I'm going to make someone, somewhere angry. That'll I'll get angry emails from parents of people in my youth group.

That hasn't happened yet, but it certainly is a fear. I guess I realise that most of the world doesn't find toilet humour as funny as I do. And that my humour, when it's at it's most offensive (eg characters making racist comments), is usually making the opposite point than is being espoused. It's scary because you're jumping between the extreamly childish and the social commentary (which is hopefully a little more grown up, although it's probably not much). I doubt anyone really comes away thinking "Yeah that really made me think." But I do at least hope that people don't come away saying "The world could do without that sort of thing."

Podcast 5: For Angus

Well here it is. The people I would like to appologise to this time are:
Indonesians and Michelle Leslie.

I'm sure one day I'll get in trouble for this.

Podcast 5

I love Chef's Lucky Noodle. I'm having it for the second Friday in a row. God is good!

I tried writing Sunday's sermon yesterday. It didn't work. It was like trying to give birth to a echidna, which I assume is rather difficult.