Jam-packed!

What a week! And it isn't even over yet! I think I'll start from where I left off last time...

Sunday 15th March - Church in the morning. As we walked towards the entrance of the hall, there was Tim with a cast around his arm. What a shock to hear that he had broken his wrist at Sport on Saturday while playing touch! He told me later that he had taken a couple painkillers so that he could get through preaching to us that morning. We're going through 1 Corinthians at the moment; a letter from Paul to the church in Corinth which was facing many problems.

After church, we had lunch back at 22MA ("the flat") and then Sarah and I were off to Hannah's 21st in Mt Albert. A gorgeous garden party with 300 cupcakes, punch, tea and club sammies! The weather was perfect for the occasion and beautiful Hannah was in a dress that she had fashioned up herself.

Straight after the 21st, there was a newcomers' dessert and coffee evening at the Webster's house at One Tree Hill. It was great to meet people who were new to the church (like myself) and also to hear a bit about the church's history, how it was formed and why it looks the way that it does today. Had some good conversations and great cheesecake! The Webster's are such a lovely couple and SO unbelievably hospitable! After that I went home and got some sleep, ready for...

The first official MILO MONDAY of the year!! Went a bit slow that morning but praying for a better morning next week. After milo monday, I went to get my support leaflets printed out. So exciting to see them printed out and ready to go! Thanks to the couple at Copies Plus for a good price and good service.

Tuesday - went to the AUTCF committee meeting - just a weekly meeting where things are planned, organised, suggested and prayed about for the coming weeks. Then had my supervision time with Jane, and had some good discussions about EU, AUT and my role within these groups. Am still trying to figure out how to balance my time and my roles on Campus but God is making things more clear each day as needs arise and opportunities for me to step up are presented.

Wednesday! Museum day with Keith - that's what is written in my diary, and that's what I did. Duncan, Keith and I went to the Auckland Museum, and even before I had gotten into the car and asked the big question, it seems that the boys had discussed it already - YES we were going to go see A T.Rex named Sue! I hadn't been to the Museum in ages so it was fun making new discoveries and randomly remembering things that I had drawn for art class last time we had a class trip there. I did see a few fashion things - one Rei Kawakubo outfit for Comme des Garcon and a World and a Zambesi dress. But there were many other interesting things there. I will upload photos once I get them off Duncan as I used his camera for most of the day. T-Rex was VERY cool I have to say - amazing how the palaeontologists had worked out how to put together the skeleton in the first place! Oh and mum and dad came down from Orewa for dinner, (YUM! have missed mum's cooking!) they were dropping my sister off cos she was going to stay the night - explained below...

So that brings us to today - Thursday. Thursday started with and early up-getting. Well not really but earlier than was normally neccessary. Got up around 7am, organised and packed some things that I would be taking with me to the Auckland Team Meeting at 10am. But before that I walked my sister down (and her luggage!) to Princes Wharf as she was going on the Spirit of New Zealand today - a 10 day berth on board this ship:

First thing that she did after she had been shown to her cabin was to climb over one of the smaller masts - they don't mess around on this ship! Straight into it! She was a bit nervous this morning but excited. I think it will be a good experience for her - testing and challenging herself personally and it will be a great life-skills-building experience.

After she got on the boat I hung around for a lil while to watch her, and to kill some time as I needed to go to the bank, and they don't open til 9am. As soon as I started walking towards Queen St, it started raining. Calming down a bit as I walked into the bank but when I came back out it was POURING! I tried to keep to the sheltered parts of the pavement but the last stretch to my place is uncovered and so, consequently, I was drenched. Thinking that the rest of the day was going to be similar, I changed warmer clothes, and rushed around my place trying to get ready for my 9:30 pick up for the trip to the office.

Had a good catch up with the rest of the staff at the Team Meeting - warning: Sarah and I have taken over your desk Gill! ...Well almost! :P We spent some time praying for each other then we started a maunscript Bible study in Mark, led by Andy. Spent the rest of the afternoon in the Office, having lunch, chatting and borrowing books from the library. Then headed back to AUT with Jeff for the Bible study this afternoon, picking up Jeff's daughter, Sascha, on the way.

We had 7 people with us for the bible study today and it was so encouraging! There were 3 new people and the way that they embraced the manuscript style of studying the Bible and the observations and interpretations that they were making were amazing. They were really engaging with the text! I had prepared myself to speak up and offer questions etc. in case no one did but straight off the ball there were questions and discussions happening and they were great discussions! This was such an encouraging and prayer-answering study, after yesterday where no new people turned up. And I know it's not always about the new people but after the great turn out at the welcome party (which I have forgotten to write about!!! Will do so below), it was a bit disheartening to see that none of them had turned up to the Bible study on Weds. It would be so sad to have lost contact with those people and to have missed an opportunity for them to study God's Word. I think that a more social, less formal gathering with them being invited might be good as a way of staying in contact and then inviting them again, individually, to Bible study.

So welcome party - happened Tuesday, 4-6pm with Pizza, drinks and bit of AUTCF vision as well as a brief informing about TSCF and IFES and AuSM. There was an awesome turn out and lots of conversations happening. It was a really exciting thing to see and what a great bunch of students!

So we're praying for more of these people to turn up to the Bible studies. Hopefully we'll have a good indication of who's coming and who needs following up after next week. We've also had some interested in sport on saturday - so that's really kewl. Let's hope that there'll be no more serious injuries at sport! EU tomorrow and then it's the weekend again! Time flies!

The Week That Was

This week was the second week of Orientation for AUT on both campuses. On the North Shore campus, clubs day took place on Tuesday and Sarah, Jeff and I ventured up to help out with North Shore Christian Fellowship - a new group set up by Laura and Jack. We weren't the only ones there though. There were 5 other Christian groups with stalls there - Campus Christian Movment, Christian Club, Real, Ako 4 Christ and Red Frog. The presence of the 6 Christian groups definitely made an impact on the students with many of them saying that we were all there "to battle it out". With just Toastmasters and the Salsa club there with stalls, we were the majority (I don't know if that happens very often?).

Now, I don't know what the other groups believed about Jesus and the Bible, so I don't know how relevant this will be but I remember during a bible study last year (I think that it was a bible study.. or maybe a discussion), we were discussing if Jesus is talked about and people hear about Him, even if it is in a negative context, is it really a bad thing? Jesus is still present in people's minds, whether it be because of that man proclaiming Him on the street or because of the unexpectedness of someone saying "I burn bibles" (which actually did happen - more on that later). So, regardless of whether these people are right or wrong about Jesus, the bottom line is that people are hearing of Jesus. But here is the tough part; teachings of Jesus and hearing of Jesus. Different - yes, but sometimes confused. This kinda ties in (?) with a bible study that we were doing with EU (More on them later too - exciting!). In 2 John 1:1-13, there is a warning about "deceivers" as those "who do not acknowledge Jesus Christ as coming in the flesh" and those who do "not continue in the teaching of Christ"; it says, "Watch out that you do not lose what you have worked for" and "If anyone comes to you and does not bring this teaching [of Christ], do not take him into your house or welcome him. Anyone who welcomes him shares in his wicked work." What am I trying to say here...it's good that people are hearing about Jesus, but when it comes to learning about Jesus, people need to discern whether what they're learning is correct, or is in fact of Christ. Confusing, and I haven't made it very clear here, and I haven't come to a definite conclusion, but just wanted to get it down - maybe something to come back to.

Anyway, so, NSCF got about 10 sign ups - an encouraging start for them I think and exciting to see what will come from this group this year.

AUTCF - took up the optional clubs days this week (Mon, Wed and Fri) with the actual clubs day on Thursday. They handed out milo and flyers and there were good conversations and lots of keen people who signed up. I wasn't actually there on Thursday as I was at an Auckland Team Meeting at the TSCF office, but AUTCF took up the opportunity to have stage time - so about 5-10 minutes of time on the stage in the centre of the quad. They did a milo-chugging competition, with the winner drinking about 10 cups of milo (from what I've heard) and walking away with a 1.9kg tin of Milo (which I'm sure he won't finish before it expires!) Jess also got up on stage and shared what AUTCF were about during our stage time. There's going to be a welcome event with pizza this coming Tuesday, where we'll get to meet the new people who have signed up.

EU - we had our first meeting yesterday, talking abit about vision and why everyone was there, as well as doing a manuscript bible study in 2 John. It was a small group but all were keen and very encouraging. One guy who came along had just become a Christian 3 weeks ago and was keen to get into the bible studies - amazing. Am planning on chatting to him more in the coming weeks, but he has class til 3pm and the EU meeting is 2-3:30pm at the moment, and there are a few people who couldn't come because of the time so that might be revised. Really exciting to see this group starting to get off the ground, and with all new members I think they will be able to take ownership of this group and do amazing things.

So the "I burn bibles" guy - was actually a lecturer - don't know his name or lecturer of what but I overheard him saying that he burnt Bibles. The guy that goes around AUT and AU trying to get you to update your election enrolment details happened to be standing next to our stand yesterday (and had a couple milos himself) and the lecturer, came up to him and said something along the lines of "what do you think about christians, I burn Bibles." And the election guy just straight out said, "I'm a Christian." Now, election guy seemed quite soft-spoken, so it turned out to be a very short conversation with the lecturer saying, "Oh, well I burn Bibles, I think all religions are evil" And thats about all the dialogue i heard. But election guy came over after lecturer left and said, "I didn't expect to hear that. People with different views huh. The end times are coming soon." ??? But I myself was thinking "did i really just hear that?" ("I burn Bibles"). And thought that the election guy was VERY cool - just saying, straight out, "I'm a Christian." Not ashamed and not afraid but confident that he had Christ.

So and interesting week that was.. I'm sure there will be many more...

First Ramblings

So, I have decided to create a blog. I'm thinking it will just be my thoughts and ramblings on here about what I get up to, so there will be a lot of randomness. The most exciting thing I've dont so far since creating this blog is to go through A LOT of free blogger templates, and picking this one. There are a few others that I downloaded, but whether I remember what they look like, or whether I can be bothered unzipping them and uploading them (with the possibility of having to reformat my posts) remains to be seen.

Is there an "about me" section in this template? I forgot to check so I'll just do an "about me" blurb here. So, I've just graduated from AUT with a Bachelor of Design in Fashion. 3 years of studio time, that was spent mostly thinking about our collections and didn't really feel like a "degree" at all. This year I am doing MINTY - a Ministry INTernship Year with Tertiary Students Christian Fellowship. There will most definitely be more written about MINTY on here as it will be my life for the next 9 months. Oh and family - I have a mum and dad and a younger sister, Lynda - who all live in Orewa, just north of Auckland (just before the new electronic toll gates). I live in Auckland Central with my older brother - Jonathan, a "graduate electrical engineer" (that's the title he has on his business card) for Opus. My brother and I are Auckland-born and my sister was born in Melbourne, Australia, and we're of Chinese-Cambodian heritage. I love latin and ballroom dancing - but now I have to be content with watching it on Dancing with the Stars - where I don't know who the celebs are and cheer for their partners instead. My favourite colour is orange. I love cooking, and trying different foods, LOVE oysters - raw with lots of lemon juice.

So, that's about it. Let's hope that 1. there will be upcoming posts, and 2. they'll make some kind of sense.