22 hour day

A 22 hour day

So yesterday was my first experience serving at Hillsong. One of the other students had to take 50 cases of water from one end of the city to the church library (3 flights of stairs)—so I helped. He commissioned me as the navigator; and naturally, we got lost. Thankfully, he’s been here long enough to know a way home, and we were back at the church amidst volunteers getting summer games ready for their tribal war night for Fuel and Wildlife. There was a slip n slide inside on the church carpet. Soap included. Yes. Every youth pastor’s dream, and every maintenance man’s nightmare—I wasn’t there for the outcome, but I’m pretty sure an indoor slip n side is a recipe for success.

Vanessa and I have spent countless hours trying to catch up on all of the wonderful emails and facebook messages. We’ve been going out to Crema Station(their iced mocha lattes kick Starbuck’s in the face) and getting free wifi, but it’s a little dodgy at times… On this particular night, we spotted Dan and Anders and they invited us to go watch Braveheart. So we went and watched with a group of people and the movie finally finished at like 1. So we decided to try and get wifi from Crema on the outside of the café and it worked! We got to sit on a little park bench and everything.

FYI: at 1am there are still normal looking people coming from God knows where walking around the Meritans. It’s hilarious! They have ice cream cones and shopping bags—Vanessa and I sat in perplexity.

So we hung out there for about an hour, and then decided to hit the hay when my computer’s battery finally died.

When we walked into the courtyard of the Meritans, we noticed David sitting in his PJs jamming on his guitar. So naturally we went up to him and started hanging out. Our brief banter turned into hours of dopey comedy, rumbly bellies, and some significant conversation.

When we realized it was past 4am, we decided to stay up for the sunrise. I took them across the highway to a golf course where we wandered around a scene straight out of Lord of the Rings. The perfect grass, the gorgeous trees hovering overhead.. It was magnificent. We climbed to the highest hill and sat on the only dry piece of concrete on the property. Facing east we watched as the sky drifted from grey to purple to orange to blue. The sky was clear and blue before the sun had even shown it’s face. Some kind of power.

After doing a bit more searching, we found a sweet park bench on the golf lawn, and a walking bridge that takes you over the highway.

Vanessa and I parted ways with David and went home to our showers and our beds. We drifted to sleep around 7am, and it was so worth it.