A full week!

[Here are some old pictures! Funny!]

This past couple weeks have been rather full but exciting. I've been trying to get deep into the life of Hillsong Church and it's working! It's really amazing to see all the different aspects Hillsong is involved in up close and personal.

Mondays, are right now, a day off, since I haven't been working lately.

Tuesdays - Thursdays start off with classes.

Every Tuesday night I go to connect group. Every other Tuesday is up-connect where the newly engaged couple Dan Lee-Archer and Jas Ludher lead the way. They are the leaders of our tribe Soul in Wildlife. When I'm not going to up-connect, I'm going to down-connect where Robbo was generous enough to let me help lead his already amazing connect group of Wildlife boys. It's awesome just to get together and do the study that Brian Houston hands to all the connect groups of the church. Plus, there is always food!

This past Wednesday afternoon I had the privilege to join a group and head out to a Senior home in Rockdale. The eldest lady there was 100 turning 101 this year and could function great although she was blind which was still amazing. Oliva played her piano as we sung some new and old school tunes. It was a good time. Later in the night, Hillsong puts on a Worship and Creative Arts meeting, also know as WACA. I don't sing or play an instrument, but I do act. So I meet with other Dramatic Arts enthusiast. We went to a coffee shop Max Brenner to discuss the script for a Christian film festival, the Ignite Film Festival.

Thursdays are another day of their own, literally. Later on in the evening, I help out with the Discovery and Reconnect class. We were discussing Grace and Faith. Every time I go I'm so blessed. Sometimes it's great to start off with the basics Christianity as we get caught up in all the details.


Friday morning is Hillsong Men/Women. I get to be apart of the lovely Kitchen Team for the men's breakfast. Fruit salad is my specialty! After Hillsong Men I go to class for a couple hours. When night arrives I head back to the church for Wildlife. High School Age. Were we start another great and exciting night reaching out to the Youth of Sydney.

Saturday I slept in! Till 9:30! Woohoo! Felt great! Got some assessments done and such. We at flat 272 had a barbeque with potatoes and chips and soda. It was good, had a great time chatting and such. Later in the night, went to Makeda's flat as we were having a Good-bye get together for Raymond, who is in South Africa right now, kinda unexpectedly, but things happen.

Sundayyyyyyy! Church time! I served at the 11:30 AM service doing Meet and Greet. Sunday night I did Hillsong Kids. I got to be Max, which is one of the mascots for Hillsong Kids, which is pretty fun.

Now you meet me where I am. Sitting at home in my room, at my desk, on my laptop, writing on here. Waiting for the next week to begin! Thanks for taking the time to read through everything, if you did. Thanks Grandpa, as I know you always read! Love you lots! As for the rest of you, just kidding. Thanks to!

I just want to give a thanks to everyone that's apart of my life in some way, shape, or form. I just think it's pretty awesome that we all are intertwined into each other's lives in such wonderful way's. Really, I just want to say I love you all!

I have a couple prayer requests, I'm just looking for another job at the moment. I can only work Mondays or Saturdays and right now at Hilton they don't need people for those times. It's been like that for a month and a bit, but there is nothing I can do so I'm just trying to survive right now. Also for Hillsong Conference which is coming up shortly, it's going to be really intense but it'll be worth it for all the lives changed. Direction is another thing, I'm planing on going to school in Calgary in September of 2008 if my application goes through, I think it's the right move to make, so we'll see if the door stays open. Energy is another thing, I'm trying to manage, but things gets complicated, I just don't want to run out of it. I know it seems like a lot, but a quick prayer would mean a lot. Thanks!

Take a step back

Do you ever wonder what God is really like? Who is God, how does he see us?

God is the creator of all things. Whhooooaaa, crazy, Eh? He created the heavens and the earth and all the exists within it. He is all-powerful, all knowing, and is everywhere present. Where ever you are, God is! God always was, always is, and will always be. This is something that our mind cannot comprehend because as humans it is in our history to be born [a beginning] and to die [an end] so something contrary to that just doesn't make sense. Let's see if you can wrap your mind around this, God is love. Because God is love, love creates. As humans, when we love each other in the act of sex, we create. So since God is love he created, he created us! These might seem like such crazy thoughts, it is something that we won't really understand, but if we could understand all these things, would that make God, God?

We have been created in God's image, and everyone is significant in His eyes. We were created to be in relationship with God. He has a plan and purpose for us all. One thing that we have to understand is God gave us choice, also know as freewill. The first humans, Adam and Eve, chose to disobey God. This disobedience is called sin. Sin is to disobey God. I want you to know that we all have sinned, or we all have disobeyed God, our sin separates from God. Although God wants a relationship with us, His justice requires this punishment for sin to be carried out.

I sin everyday, honestly, it's true. I have a past, a history and guess what... I'm not perfect. [I know, who would've guessed?] So what is the solution to this problem of sin. Let's figure this out. So God ordained that the shedding of innocent blood could only pay for sin. Before Jesus, people would sacrifice all sorts of animals regarded as pure and holy to cover their sins before God. God had a plan though, he sent his son Jesus to live on earth as man. Jesus Christ was innocent, he had no sin and didn't take part of any sin.

Jesus Christ was innocent but allowed Himself to be killed on a cross. A sacrifice.

After three days Jesus overcame the power of sin and the Devil and now has the keys to death and hell. God planned this as payment, the ultimate sacrifice for the sins of all humankind so that we might be saved.

We have a choice.

Either we live our own lives independent of God and pay for our own sin, OR
we live our lives dependent on God and accept His payment for our sin.

We either reject Jesus Christ or we follow Him.

If we decide to follow Him, then we must with our mouth, confess our sins, believe what Jesus has done for us and confess that He is Lord of our lives.

WE ARE FORGIVEN! Our sins are washed away. We are clean, white as snow. We have a brand new life as children of God. God now lives in us and helps us to grow spiritually.

We are promised eternal life with God in heaven.

That's it. That is how you become a Christian, a follower of Jesus. This is something so real that words cannot express the change that you will feel in your life. If you want to know more let me know. There is freedom in Jesus. There is hope! Come and see.

I shaved!

Okay, so being able to grow a beard, I did! It took only a couple days to get something going and after three weeks I had a well established beard. So after what seemed like forever, I shaved, which was yesterday. It feels good, but I look really young. I think I'll cut my shaving down from every day to once a week though. It's just so much easier. I transformed from a man to a boy in one day! It's funny how much age a beard can add and how much age can drop with shaving.

On that note, I had an amazing experience with the Holy Spirit. Now some of you may not know who that is or what I'm talking about and are a little confused, let me explain. The Holy Spirit is God, He is the third person of the trinity, the trinity being God the Father, God the Son; Jesus, and God the Holy Spirit. A lot of Christians don't really acknowledge the Holy Spirit and all that he does for us. His role on this earth is to be our helper and counselor. He glorifies Jesus and makes him know. One thing he does often is convicts of sin, righteousness, and judgement.

So during our Discovery and Reconnect class for new Christians on Thursday nights, I had the honour to pray for the baptism of the Holy Spirit with a friend. Now when we are baptised by the Holy Spirit, [It's different than water baptism as it requires no water] the Spirit of God comes and lives within us and gives us power to be His witness, it gives us boldness and courage, it enables us to live God's way. It's really great because after we become a Christian, all we have to do is ask God to full us with His Spirit and He will! So he fully got baptized with the Spirit of God and started to speak in tongues, and with that he received an interpretation which could've only come from God [When you experience this, you'll understand.] All this may sound out of the normal, but who wouldn't want God's Spirit living inside of them? Honestly, you CAN have that! If your a Christian and haven't received the baptism of the Holy Spirit, I encourage you to go talk to a leader and have them lay hands on you and pray for you, it really is truly amazing. If your not a Christan, come and see!

It's cold!

So winter is finally here over in Australia and it's cold! Very cold! It hasn't dropped below 0, actually I don't think it's gotten lower than 5 degrees. It's not to bad, but it's a damp cold that kinda sticks to your skin and freezes you. Sometimes it feels like it could snow!

So I started at the beginning of my bible. I'm making a commitment to get through the entire bible this year. I'm finding it heaps easier using this website I found. ESV Bible Online. I started in Genesis 1 and I'm going to work my way through. What made it easier was right beside the title of Genesis 1, it's says listen, just click on that, and it reads out the entire text to you, and it's not monotone! Just how the Old Testament should be heard, through speech.

I just found out I'll be hosting at Hillsong Conference. When I hosted at Colour it was pretty fun so I'm excited to do this for Conference as well.

MEGA PRAYER NIGHT was last night, and it was, wow, by the end of the night I was exhausted from praying, clapping, cheering, and worshipping. Everyone joined together to pray for rain, the conference, and child soldiers in Uganda. A lot of ground was taken for the Kingdom of Heaven last night which is pretty awesome.

I'm a great cook [This is new information to me], so if you want me to cook you something ever, just ask because I got a few tricks up my sleeve.

Another cool thing is I'm doing Hillsong Kids at the Sunday 5 PM service. I did it for my second time last week and it's been sweet connecting with the kids. Fun stuff, I can't wait to get super involved in this area.

I'm just heading to connect group now. We got a bunch of new boys so it should be sweet. We will be watching a couple of the Nooma videos. For all the great people reading this, I LOVE YOU! Hahahaha.

Good night!

SMILE!

A Hot Winter!

I'm not to sure where to begin. The last time I posted it was a month ago, and so much has happened in a month. Partly to the reason why I haven't posted was because we didn't have Internet for the past couple of weeks. We also just finished a two week break from college where me and Tine [Pronounce Tina, from Norway] and Katie, went up to the Gold Coast for five days. So I'll just bring this blog up to date on whats been going on. We'll see how long this gets...haha.


The Gold Coast. Wow. I never knew a winter could still be so hot. We had an amazing five days of pure Australian sun and waves. For four of the days we went to Surfer's Paradise, and the waves live up to the name. The ocean was beautiful. The beach stretched on for kilometres in both directions. Another funny thing was that all the tall building were all residential and they weren't business, which was kinda funny but weird. I didn't surf, but soaking in the sun was good enough for me. On the last day we took the bus down to Barleigh Heads for they day and enjoyed some more beach. The hostel we stayed at had a check-out at 10 AM so we had to bring our luggage on the beach. The hostel itself was pretty awesome, called Trekkers, it had free breakfast, which meant Weet-Bix and toast for four mornings in a row. Free tea and coffee all day which was cool. Pretty funny being the only ones on the beach with three bags of luggage though. It was nice just to relax and just refresh before college started up again. Things are already picking up here before Hillsong Conference comes in six weeks.


I got to experience something amazing this past Thursday. I wasn't to sure what I was getting involved in but I knew I should be there. I went to the Discovery and Reconnect course at Hillsong. They have this course for new Christians and people that want to get reconnected into the life of the church as well. So I got to help out the first week of a six week course, discussing salvation and what it means with a group of 6 other people. I never thought I could be so blessed. It also challenged me on how much I know about Jesus and what he has done. Doing this also just brought to life the battle in which we live in and how real it is.


Friday night at youth was pretty good, except I jammed my toe into a nail while we were packing down. It didn't get in to far, so I disinfected it and bandaged it up. Should be fine.

Last night I got to hear Ruth Graham's Testimony, the daughter of the evangelist Billy Graham, he's 89 eh? Crazy! She spoke about the prodigal son and how it relates to her life, what an amazing testimony of the grace of God that we all can have.


After the service we had a BBQ, men only. Hahaha, it was good. We had three rounds of meat. Sausages, macaroni salad, and rice with a mushroom sauce. Then we had a round of steaks. Then whatever was left over. We did an old-school BBQ grill with charcoal on one of those round grills. Pretty sweet. Then we watched Godfather...? Can't remember much of it, but we were all pretty sleepy after all that food. Good times!


I just wanted to wish Marlee a Happy Birthday! You've been an amazing friend for the past 6 or so years, we've made some good memories and some special ones, haha, and I look forward to making some more!



Thanks for reading. Love you all and miss you!