Fresh Start Mission

"I will extol the LORD at all times;
his praise will always be on my lips.
My soul will boast in the LORD;
let the afflicted hear and rejoice.
Glorify the LORD with me;
let us exalt his name together."

-Psalm 34:1-3

If you hadn't noticed... I have been away all week. Last Sunday night I 'moved' to Kensington into the Hodgkinson household. It was such a lovely house and I was given a very nice room (I've been inspired to clean my room up). I went to St Matthias church in Padington and met Jess who is one of the Hodgkinsons... as well as many other people. After church we went to a tasty tasty thai restaurant called Chao Praya... only cost us $10 each!

Monday was my first day of "fresh start" mission. This was where people from Campus Bible Study (CBS) came to uni everyday to meet new students and invite them to study the Bible on campus this year... it was O-week so there were stacks of people there and a lot of people signed up to join CBS and find out more about God and the Bible. At first I was quite anxious about walking up to strangers and talking to them about Christianity... but praise God... he helped me out so much.

What I found from 0-week mission was that God is fully in control of everything. At times when I was tired and unmotivated to go talk to people... people would just walk up to me and start asking me about what CBS was. It was so encouraging. And even after approaching heaps of people and being rejected, God would bring along a person who I could have a really good conversation with and that would get me excited again about ministering to the people on campus.

Not only were we working hard to meet people and organise BBQs and the like... we were being trained by John Chapman and Paul Grimmond. We learned about God's will for evangelism and how to do it better. We learned about God's love for people and his desire for people to be saved. And I was encouraged to keep on trusting in God... not relying on my own works... but on God because he is Almighty and Sovereign. Chappo also gave us a good talk on 1 Cor 8 & 9 which was very helpful in thinking about how to encourage other Christians in our deeds.

One thing I really loved about o-week mission was that all the 50 CBS people who came and stayed locally grew as a team and as a family. During the evenings we ate dinner together or went out to get coffee and we were able to reflect on our experiences and pray a lot together. I love all my brothers and sisters in Christ who I served with during o-week. They were so supportive and encouraged us to take breaks when we were doing too much and told jokes and made funny faces to cheer us up. How will I ever forget:

-our night at Tea Scapes where Doris showed us how she could plug her nose and where Becky found it difficult to lift her pinky
-the large amounts of slab cake and plums consumed (thank you Steph!)
-those sickingly sweet cadbury creme eggs which we often ate for breakfast
-evil Dan (Wilt) painting us with cornflour glue
-water guns and water fights, seeing Grimmo going crazy with his water bottle
-Morris (leader-Dan) doing some amazing impersonations of Napoleon Dynamite
-pegging grapes at everyone
-bountiful amounts of free stuff with Doris picking up double so that she could give it to Elsie

I'm sad it's over but I'm excited about seeing new people at CBS and hopefully growing together in Christ.

From Car-O-Line

I've had an epiphany! (or a few more)

Ok... so people have been asking where I've been during the day... and here is the answer!

I've been at uni doing my summer course. And my first epiphany for this blog is that it is so boring! There are people in the class who know a lot more than my lecturer... including me. So the course is called "Introduction to the internet and e-commerce." The e-commerce part of it is that businesses have webpages (woo!) and the internet part is... "google is a search engine... to search something... just type it and click search." Today we did a bit of html which was a little more exciting (although I do know the basic html already... so it was a bit of revision). Now... onto more exciting epiphanies:

On my first day of my summer course... (get ready for epiphany no. 2) I got there at 9am ready for my lab... and then realised (along with the other 40 people in the course) that there was no lab for the first day... so we were all 3hrs early for our lecture. So I took the bus to Bondi Westfield. Man that place is a cool place. And I found the most awesome shop! Epiphany no. 3 - Smiggle!!! It has all this really cool and cute stuff. They had all these notebooks and journals... I wanted to buy them all. But since I have many notebooks/journals already (epiphany no.4) I decided to buy something that I didn't have...

2 blue mini highlighters, blue staples, a stapler and an elephant cut out punch.

I went on the smiggle website today and they have so much more stuff that I didn't see. Lucky for me they have a store in Hornsby (epiphany no.5) so I can go browse there if I want. Their pencils/crayons/textas look very cool. I'm thinking of getting some new coloured pencils and one of their pencil sharpeners.

Today is one of the days that I'll actually be home for dinner with the parents this week. Tomorrow is CBS summer edition... thursday is work and friday I will be rushing to go to switch (plus tutoring before that). I'll also be working saturday. I think my parents miss me.

From Car-O-Line

busyness

I've been busy catching up with school friends which has been awesome. Yesterday Me, Jen and Jenny watched movies at Jenny's house. Haven't seen Jenny in possibly a year... so it was good to catch up. I took lots of pics:

Me shocked and Jen striking a pose

Me, Jenny and Jen.... then Me and half of Jenny

Sexy Jen... and not so sexy Jen

Happy Jenny... and not so happy Jenny

Jen's eye.... she blinked.... or was in the middle of the blink

Then today I went to Steve's house for a fare-thee-well party for Sarah who is going overseas for 5 weeks! I saw Sarah and Bec and Jen and Elly and other people. We played a bit of e-toy "play sports" and had a very fun round of carrots, stupid, big tractor and g'day Bruce. Then Jen, Jono and Sarah got in the pool (sometimes thrown in) and they had an interpretive handstand competition which was very amusing. We had crossaints and raisin toast and multiple spreads, plus coffee, tea and orange juice (with and without pulp! oh the choices!!!) and we also had pizza for lunch. They have 2 very cute king-cavalier spaniel doggies... Ronny and Ginny. Ronny is very sweet. Unfortunately I didn't take any pictures there.

This evening I worked for a bit in pizza cutters. Pretty ordinary.

From Car-O-Line

the Corinthians???

Ok... So I sorta didn't finish up my 'read a bible in a year' last year... I'm currently a month behind. So yeah... I've sorta been trying to read more quicker to get it done... which hasn't really been helpful. Today I finished reading the letters to the Corinthians... and I'm totally confused. I have no idea what it's about. Well... I do understand parts of it (all the little passages that you do in sunday school and stuff). There are just parts where Paul seems like a complete weirdo... not sure what he's trying to say. So... let me share a confusing verse with you:

"I know a man in Christ who fourteen years ago was caught up to the third heaven." - 2 Cor 12:2

To give you some context... Paul had just been talking about boasting for about 3 whole chapters. In the context of the passage... Paul's above example makes some sense but my question is... what is this third heaven?!?!

Paul is too deep for me. Once I finish my reading plan I think I'll have to come back to the Corinthians and read it a whole lot slower (I basically read it all in 4 days?!). Yeah... reading fast just doesn't work for me.

From Car-O-Line