The Sunday Summary [12-04]

This week has been an absolutely gruelling week at work with January Ministry Conference.

Monday morning first thing I was up to take my car down to the smash repairers to have my side mirrors replaced. It was then a train and bus trip, with a wander in the rain, via Pablo & Rusty’s for a coffee back to Church to face the last minute preparations and registrations for JMC.

For the rest of the week I found myself working from 8:30am till 9:30pm with a few breaks in between for lunch, and a little bit of free-time with the rest of the JMC attendees. It was, however, worthwhile as I got to spend time speaking to plenty of different people, quite a lot of those whom I don’t normally speak to. The talks from both Simon Manchester and Nathan Walter were good, meaty and challenging. I’m working on getting a wrap up of them to post up here.

On Tuesday in the mid-afternoon, Simon and Annabel stopped by the church as a newly engaged couple!! It was such great and joyous news to hear, and I want to pass on a huge congratulations again to them. I have a little surprise that I’m working on, and hope to get that done soon, if I can find any time to put it together.

Thursday morning I headed out early to West Ryde to pick up my car, only to find that it was not quite ready yet. Luckily they gave me their loan car so that I could get back to church. I finally picked up my car in the afternoon, complete with new mirrors. It was a really interesting experience driving without mirrors, it definitely makes reverse parking harder, both normal and parallel, as well as changing lanes.

Friday afternoon touch was pretty enjoyable, we got a good 18 people along, and despite an injury to a players head, the game was fast and exciting. In the evening I headed home to my folks place for dinner, bringing Nat along with me.

Yesterday was a very eventful day; I got along to 2 weddings and a dinner.
First wedding was that of Evan and Bonita McFarlane. It was a beautiful wedding, packing out the church, and a little bit different to many of the other weddings I’ve been to… This wedding had a really big focus on children, with activity bags being given out to all as they came in, a children’s talk being given during the service, and a children’s program run during the lunch. It was also an interesting passage combination of Psalm 45 and Ephesians 5:18-33.

Second wedding was that of Jorge and Claire Wind at Epping Presbyterian Church. It was a lovely little wedding. This shot of the kiss is a pretty unique one, and I’m happy that it was caught. I also got to see and catch up, a little, with an old friend from Canberra; Claire, who happened to be a family friend of Jorge‘s

In the evening, I headed around to Dodo aka Michael and Christina Dodd‘s place in Dural for dinner with them, Luke; their son, and Alfie and Mon Symons. When I first got there Luke was a bit afraid of me, but after about an hour, and a bowl of Korean chips, he started to warm up… Dinner was good; we had Leb bread pizzas, followed up by orange and poppy-seed muffins and passionfruit & vanilla slice. We also had some fun talking about weddings, particularly some of the good and the bad that we’ve experienced over the years… My we are getting into the realms of the elderly, talking of things back in my day…

This morning I wasn’t able to meet up with Nic as he was away… Instead, I had a relaxed day, messing around with DJing software, editing photos from the weddings and catching up on more television. Tonight at graceat6 we had the final talk in our summer series on Paul‘s prayers from Brett Carroll; one of the members of our congregation, from Colossians 1:9-14. There was plenty of content to the talk, perhaps too much even, and we jumped around to plenty of passages with quite a number of throwaway references. Brett did a good job of wrapping up the series, giving us a summary of the last 3 talks, with their big ideas or points, as well as a background for the book of Colossians. As he moved through the passage, he outlined Paul‘s prayer and the way he prays for the Colossians and then in the way that it applies to us, that we need to pray constantly, pray wide as God’s Kingdom is wide, and pray big.
After church, I headed home to my folks place for dinner, as today is Chinese New Year’s Eve. It was a delicious dinner consisting of abalone & mushrooms, chicken, vegetables, fish and lobster tail.
It’s probably a little premature, but I’d like to wish everyone Gong Hei Fat Choi!! Sun Lien Fai Luk! which is the traditional greeting for the new year.

This week should be a pretty normal week, I hope…. Most of the staff are back to work and the January lull starts to wind down…