soul food

This is the day before the first day of the second Colour of the year.

I decided today that I was sick of being healthy.
I bought a 2.25litre of Cola, white Tim Tams and some of those liquid breakfast drinks in vanilla falvouring. I'm convinced I'll be sick next week because of my lack of nutritional intake, but this is my taste bud's way of getting some soul food.

Tim Tams are purely for the soul.
Especially when they're on sale at Cole's for $2.00.

It's been some time

My details are wrong. I don't work at Riverside Church anymore.
I am no longer arguing about songwriting with Caitlin.

It's amazing how much you can change in one year.
My about me is based on things I don't like-- and the new me would never write about the hates only the loves. The hates are no longer worth mentioning (aka answering the phone..hate that) because there is so much more passion and vision in writing about what you love.

Things I'm currently in love with:

- short curly hair
- swedes & canadians
- phoenix & metric & the temper trap
- maxedia
- Continental brand 4 for $5 pasta packets
- feta cheese
- moccassins
- talking about the Olympics with my Canadian flat mate
- chai lattes(some things never change)
-mochas(that's new)
- bright floral arrangements that don't involve carnations
- the House of God
- floral dresses
- carrots during road trips
- Bourke Street
- books
- time to read books
-time to read a book and drink a chai latte

Cairns --> Sydney road trip 09

5 of my friends and I rented 2 camper vans, and ventured through the east coast of Australia. It takes 36 hours to get from point A to point B, but we decided to do it in 6 days. It was the best trip I've ever been on! These people are golden.

Highlights

Rebekah(Vancouver, Canada), me, and Lisa(Jersey)
Our home on the road.


The boys.
Danzo(Florida), Alf(Germany), Carson(Edmonton, Canada)

July 16th- flew to Cairns
-The sweet waterfalls that I was too sick to go in and enjoy

Milla Milla Falls

---Milla Milla Falls (where Bekah proved her womanhood)

so cold. How did they get in?!

Tarzan. aka Danzo


Rebekah proving she isn't scared.

---Zillie Falls
---Ellinjaa Falls (me & Carson explored the forest)

Carson exploring

---Found Coconuts on the side of the road to EAT!

Alf and Bekah enjoying fresh coconut

Pretty Lisa

July 17th – still in Cairns
-Free breakfast at a really nice hotel thanks to Mr.Hargis
-Great Barrier Reef

If only I had an underwater camera. It was incredible!

---Lisa, Rebekah and I snorkelled and took a submarine thing to cool parts of the reef

me and my gear

In the semi-submersible boat

sunshine. mmmm.

jump in!

poking sea cucumbers

What a tiny starfish!
---Carson, Alf and Danzo scubaed all the way to the depths of the reef...which isn't that far down

Carson.

Alf is stoked

---8 hour cruise with BIG buffet lunch
-Boys locked the keys in their camper, and then proceeded to retrieve them. I went on a road trip with McGiver.

found the key!

the Savior! A Hanger!

-12 hour drive to Bowan- lots of energy drinks
July 18th – Bowan
-Saw the sunrise beachside-- and then went to bed.

Please note Bekah's foot wear

-Chilled at Bowan beaches all day long.

---Tanned on top of sweet rocks
---I dropped our camper keys between 2 very large Australian-been-there-forever rocks.
---Rebekah dove down(because she was the only one who was in the water) and saved the day!
---She got all scratched up!
---She saw an orange and black eel!
---It was scary!
-Drove to Airlie Beach

Bowan's Big Mango

sugarcane! Heaps of it!

Lisa liked driving the most.

Airlie Beach! We missed the other college crew by like. an hour. so crap.

---road games
---LOTS of dead wallabes and kangaroos
---we made pancakes at Airlie
July 19th – middle of nowhere
-the boys almost ran out of gas and we had to wait til daylight for anything to open
woke up on the side of the road.

the gas station.

-Peed in a nasty nasty toilet on the side of the road. It was awesome.
-Drove to a park and had breakfast together

wrong side of the road, wrong side of the car. bring it on.

-Went to Tannum Beach (pretty! Go back!) also in the middle of nowhere. We spotted a little beach sign, and decided it was the last warm beach we would go to for awhile, so we took a little detour.
-Started our drive to Sunshine Coast

goin a little crazy

-midnight- we made soup and toast for dinner, and fell asleep beachside.
July 20th – Sunshine Coast
- Woke up to a man BANGING on the campers telling us to leave or there would be a fine. Oops.
-Hung out in Noosa Heads all day

showering where we can

al merrick's surf school

Noosa. pretty touristy, but still beautiful.

welcome.

---Went to 2 different beaches
---Saw crabs and hermits hanging out on the rocks I was reading on.
---Subway. Mmmm.
-Brisbane (really lame)

-Surfer's Paradise (would have been fun if we weren't DEAD tired. No photos, too tired to take them)
-Slept on the side of the road in Byron
July 21st – Byron Bay
-Woke up at 6:30am to viscious knocking and a warning to get off the side of the road.. haha. We can't win!
-Sightseeing in Byron Bay – little hippie town. I'll go back.



---Chilled at Byron Bay Sanctuary Beach
---Had the best burger of my life at Railz Pub

this is not a burger. I don't really know what this is. The question is: do we eat it?

Twilight

Some of the heroes on this statue have inappropriate names. If you zoom in...

July 22nd – DRIVING---my camera died...
-The Big bananna- tobagging at a kids theme park for $3
-shopping at used books stores and music shops
-stopped in lots of little cities.
---Drove a lot! So good!
---Drove in Sydney!
-Came home!

end of last semester.

conference 09!! I was sick, I was tired, I was worn out. We'd get up at 5am and get home at midnight. or 1. or 2. BUT God still moved through me and the other 4,000 volunteers to make this golden week happen.
I love when our church makes events like this happen. This is just a local church. A body of believers who love Jesus and creativity and are committed to building His kingdom. I'm now becoming 'part of the furniture', and I'm really making this church my family. I love watching these youtube videos and watching people I do life with everyday. I love knowing these people aren't on that stage in front of over 20,000 delegates because they're talented. They are there because week in and week out, they serve wholeheartedly for the cause of Christ.


Check out these amazing highlights! (PS I may or may not be in a big puppet version of me at the end of this video...)

Happy Father's Day

It's late, so I'm really sorry that I'm not louder, but I couldn't run the risk of waking up my flatmates.. you know, courtesy and all.

Love you!

sometimes it's good to be quiet.

Tonight at connect group, I didn't say a word. It wasn't intentionally an experiment as much as it was me needing a break from being 'outgoing'. Sometimes you just need to shut up and observe.

But something hit me that I thought was interesting. Everything I would have said got said at the exact moment I would have said it.

It was as if nothing was taken away from connect group because I didn't say anything. I kind of liked it. I got so much out of it by not saying anything. I wasn't busy gathering my thoughts while someone else was talking, I wasn't trying to think about how I could intellectually respond to a question, I wasn't offering heavy prayers to the heavens, I was just listening and enjoying.
After wards, one of the guys asked if I was tired, because I was so quiet, and I told him I wasn't, but I guess the truth is I was.

I guess the truth is I was tired of thinking and talking.
sometimes it's just nice to fill up on other people's thoughts and words so that your words have more weight later.

I just want to suck in wisdom. This week, maybe I will focus more on being quiet in group situations-- I want to see what else I can take from a group with my mouth closed. :)

these are the encounters I'm learning to live for.

I am writing to you at 12:30 Sunday evening. This weekend marks the mid semester break, and although we are technically off of studies, our weekends are still full with kingdom purpose. Saturday morning I arrived at church at 8:30am for Street Teams. This week, we joined forces with a group who goes to State funded housing in Waterloo behind the church’s city campus area.
We started off by meeting a beautiful young Australian woman named Carmen. She was terribly ill, and so she asked us to take her dog out (she lives on the third floor of a run down apartment building wreaking of smoke and urine and dust.) Then we had a visit with a gentle old man stuck in his home because of past work injuries. Lory was a pilot for many years before he was the victim of a plane crash that put him into a coma for 4.5 months. Since the crash he has slurred speech and very little mobility. He lives alone in a little apartment, and it is beautiful to see him light up under the snowy white beard covering his gentle face. We talked with him about the weather and how it made him feel. We talked about getting transportation for him to join us at Hillsong on Sundays. Everything we mentioned seemed so significant to this man, he hung on our every word. Since it is difficult to understand him, he was patient to repeat everything several times and use what little body language he could muster. This man is living in a cocoon feeling alone and rejected and once a week 4 college students spend 10 minutes with him and he closes the door very obviously feeling like a million bucks. It seemed so wrong to me.
We met with others, including a man from Finland who learned the accordion and laughed about his poor form and lack of talent. We met with men who needed help lifting things because of back problems, and elderly who treated us like princesses in their home just so they could have a few companions for a bit.
Saturday reminded me that the community I have at home and now at Hillsong is an honor and a privilege and not the norm. We are living among the forgotten.
I so often pass by the women on their walkers and the drunkards on the side of the street without a second thought. But tonight I am reminded of a Savior who didn’t just see their outward appearance; He looked into their soul and saw something worth dying for.
I’m embarrassed to say that Friday night I debated on whether or not I should even go to Street Teams. I struggled all night and I finally went to bed thinking that Kingdom purpose is a better thing to live on than 2 more hours of sleep. And now I think of Lory’s face when he closed the door. I think of Carmen’s desperate plea for someone to just take a dog downstairs for a bit. I think of old men with windbreakers dreaming of more vodka as a companion, and being pleasantly surprised to get us instead. These are the encounters I’m learning to live for. This is the purpose I’m living out in Australia.

That same Saturday night I met a beautiful Norweigan woman appropriately named Bella. She had the wisdom of a life filled with adventure, academics and humanitarianism. Bella sat near me on the bus and we talked music and culture and science. I was inspired to live life her way. She had been to 17 universities in 8 different countries with varying degrees from the highest rated schools and was working as a pediatric neurosurgeon through an organization that sends her all over the world to the greatest need. She had lots of knowledge, but more than that she had a lot of appreciation.

Christine Caine spoke tonight about living without fear. Getting to death safely is no way to live. I would like to be a beautiful Bella one day. I would like to be sent to the greatest need, but also find room for the invisible need in places like Waterloo state funded housing.
This weekend reminded me that I am alive for more than my desires. God’s call is so much bigger than our circle of friends; and sometimes you only need to take a walk to find the need.