Tag: Katoomba

One of the painful/frustrating things with my job is having to fix things that are broken, often with an expectation of now. This was what met me first thing Monday morning after picking up the mail, including a large box with about 6000 communion cups. I hadn’t even made it through the front door when I was met with people wanting to access our network, but the server had fallen over and frozen. After a reboot, things were up and running again. After work I didn’t get out to see Geoff as he was recovering from Moore College mission, so instead I played some Xbox, before getting out to buy some ingredients for dinner and cooking up a gigantic batch of fried rice (2 wok fulls) using some of the leftover rice from graceat6 dinner.

Tuesday morning felt really productive. Before work I did a load of washing and did a whole bunch of dishes as well as a general clean of the kitchen, man things get dirty with a little bit of neglect…

Wednesday was really really tough, despite being the one year anniversary of my employment at St Paul’s. Complaints came through about this and that, which felt like they stacked up, everyone was wanting my help now with this and that. I felt as if I’m not connected with people, but I’m needed, I’m a service rather than a relationship. This made it hard to continue to work well and efficiently, but as much as I felt down, people seemed to just continue on their merry way, going on with their business… I tend to take things too personally and need to learn to let things slide a bit more…
At our final growth group for the term, we finished off looking at Colossians 4 which encourages prayer, as the rest of Colossians does, with a slight variation in that Paul asks the Colossians to pray for them, that the word of God will go out. There is also encouragement to be wise, using time well and being gracious in out speech. A fairly big rebuke for me this week as I’ve not been wise and gracious in my speech and actions. The book closes out with the greetings and instructions, which can easily be overlooked, but there’s some great warnings and encouragements here. The one I was most struck by was Demas, who was with Paul, but as we read in 2 Timothy 4, is in love with the present world and falls away to Thessalonica.

Thursdays are fast becoming my favourite work day; they’re usually quiet for the most part, and Toni works, with few to no questions of me, which means that I can go ahead and get things done. As I have college at night, she covers my job towards the end of the day and allows me to get away to get ready and eat. Tonight at college we looked at Abraham and the way in which he influences much of the bible, with the covenant made to him by God and his faithfulness which is counted to him as righteousness. Peter explained that Abraham is mentioned over 70 times in the New Testament, which is huge!!! I also led my peer groups discussion time with an exposition of 2 Samuel 7, which details the Davidic Covenant. The discussion wasn’t great, but it felt a little more than the last couple that we had. I suppose that the people in my group don’t have a great familiarity with the text. I gave a copy for Peter to take a look at. He said that it was a good exposition and pointed out that the topic of rest could have been emphasised a bit more. After coming home, I had a slightly awkward conversation with Lairdy, but a fruitful one that will help our relationship as brothers in Christ and housemates.

Friday was a fairly relaxed day, which is pretty much what I needed, with the exception of leaving early to head to KYCK which meant that all the work I needed to do had to be cramped into shorter time, and I needed to filter out things that weren’t urgently needed. After I’d gotten up in the morning, I managed to pack some gear for the weekend, and burn some tunes for the car trip; an assortment of my most highly rated music. When I finally made it into work, after grabbing the mail, I was met with some server issues, which seemed to be a bit more stable after a number of updates were installed. I managed to make it out of the office around 3:30pm and headed off to Katoomba with my passengers: Nathan, Alex and Sam. The drive up was pretty quick, taking roughly an hour and 45 minutes, beating most of the Friday afternoon traffic. It would have been a bit quicker had the seemingly eternal roadworks been finished… After arriving at the KCC site office, I met with Mabel, the convention coordinator, and headed off to Katoomba High School for a quick rundown of the facilities, responsibilities and alarm info. Then it was onto the task of blocking areas off, taking photos of and allocating rooms to groups and year/genders, and setting up shower tents for the guys. I wasn’t able to make it to the 1st session because I had to wait for our cooks to arrive, unload and pick up our Coles order.. I haven’t really organised my thoughts around KYCK yet… When I’ve managed to look over my notes and had a good think through them, I’ll post a summary up. Other things that happened on KYCK were plenty of photos which should turn out nicely, some funny videos, and a good game of soccer on the Saturday afternoon between the year 10 guys and the year 9 guys. As the overseeing site host, I think things went pretty well this year. The cleanup went well, especially with some great leaders actively working hard to get things done and encouraging their kids to get in on the action.
With a pretty quick trip back down the mountain, we stormed McDonalds on the M4 to overload them with business, which they didn’t cope with particularly well… before heading back to church to drop kids off.

I dropped the Camry back to my parents place, grabbing a bite, some mail and some food whilst I was there, before heading back to the flat to unload my stuff and then it was off to graceat6. The service was significantly smaller, though some youth and leaders managed to make it along. Bruce preached on the mission of Jesus from Acts 13, but I was pretty out of it, so I don’t have a good summary or recollection of what was said. After church, Jase and I ended up back at the flat to play some NBA Jam which was fun, before I crashed into bed for some much needed sleep….. I’ll be back at KYCK next weekend for a different voluntary role: cooking at speakers lodge, and muscle team. Hopefully it’ll be a more restful and relaxing role, and I’ll get to meet some Christians outside of the St Paul’s bubble which I’m strongly enveloped in at the moment.