This week has been a pretty good one, though I should be saying that it has been great, given what day it is today.

Monday night’s growth group finale for the term was a social. We got together at the Carroll’s place for dinner. We had pizza from Crust with a range of different pizzas; entrée & mains, but no dessert. For dessert we enjoyed a great range: mini lemon meringue pies made by Emma, Cheesecake made by Hollie and 2 sorts of ice cream, bought by me; sesame & green tea. It was an enjoyable night of fun, food & drink.

Wednesday evening I got out to Newtown to see Geoff and Tiff. We had dinner together; Pumpkin Gnocchi with a burnt butter & sage sauce made by Tiff & Kim. Post dinner, Geoff and I looked through Romans 1.

Thursday was a quiet day at work, which was actually quite surreal, being the day before the Easter weekend. I even managed to get away from the office over lunch to fight the north-bound traffic as I made my way up to Thornleigh in order to have a flat tyre repaired at Jax tyres. By the time I was done there and heading back to Carlingford, the traffic was banked up from the F3 all the way down to the M4.

Friday morning, it was an early wakeup and final pack before heading up the mountain to Katoomba for Katoomba Easter Convention, this year on The Right Stuff Christian Character in an Age of Image featuring Bryan Chapell, Jonny Gibson and Justin Moffat. This year the talks have been pretty enjoyable, I’ll go into more detail of those over the next few days, or at least that’s the plan… The singing has been really great and enjoyable, with good leaders, fantastic arrangements and relevant song choices, including Garage Hymnal’s Sunday Came. There were plenty of familiar faces from CROSSWAY Anglican Churches across a number of congregations, and it was good to see them and catch up/chat to them. I always find that with such large conferences such as this, there’s a variety of Christians from a range of places and denominations, but I only really know a handful, and am not extroverted enough to run around introducing myself to them, but I think I’d like to…
Friday lunch we got out to eat at Leura Gourmet, a very popular little cafe on the main street. There was a good 10-20 minute wait for a seat. I had the slow cooked lamb shanks on a bed of mash, which was plentiful and delicious.
I have been giving out plenty of Cadbury Creme Eggs, and tonight was told that I always have a bag full of goodies, which I think is a good thing to be known for…
Another thing I’ve found really hard up here is spending time with my family. I mean it’s a great privilege to spend time away with my family, but as a single guy staying with 2 married couples, I do find it hard. It’s also difficult when church friends are doing things together and all serving and staying together, to not be able to hang out with them, or even be invited along to things…
So during the afternoons, I’ve been watching some AFL: Swans vs Dockers and Roos vs Giants, reading books & comics and playing iPad games. I had planned to catch up with Nic for our one-to-one this afternoon, but circumstances prevented that, so that was a little disappointing, but one of the (many) lessons from the talks this year was that no human relationship is truly dependable, but we have a relationship with God that gives us tears of joy, even amongst tears of pain, something that a good friend has also been trying to teach me…

This week ahead should be interesting as the week is shorter, meaning more work to be squeezed in, as well as reviewing KEC talks and somewhat preparing for KYCK.

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