Carisbrook

The deciding match of the Tri Nations 2005. All Blacks vs Spring Boks at the House of Pain.
Chris was there with Tim and Duncan, great match, amazing atmosphere, good times had by all. From the outset the new Haka, despite being drowned out by the proud South African supporters behind us blowing thier trumpets, was hair raising and awesome!! Now we three are not fanatical rugby fans, even though Tim did come all the way from Sydney for the game, but we couldn't help ourselves. The 'brook' fever took control and propeled us to new heights of patriotism and rugby madness and left us all a bit horse.Hope my voice recovers by tomorrow for preaching. Now it's been 20 years and I still don't like the French yet despite the ref a good win to the AB's and lots of fun had by all. Thank you Tim making it all happen. Chris.

Verbatims, verbatims...

One of the ways to improve your pastoral skills is to think about the converstions you have with people. A structured way of doing that is to write down the conversation, as near as you can remember it. I have to take these "verbatims" to a number of people so we can talk about them and hopefully I can learn from them.
So, at the start of the week I was feeling a little worried because I was wondering how I was going to have significant conversations with people. But today blew me away! God has brought 3 people into my day who needed to talk about important things and I "happened" to be there. I also had the opportunity to do some informal training with the Student Soul team which went really well - finally, some good music in this city!!! And helped run a leadership training student group today. And having some upfront time at Student Soul on Sunday.
As the saying down here is, good times!
Blessings
MJ

Always leave a gap...

Just when things seemed to be settling down... my tutor reminded me that perhaps I ought to be doing some work on my synthesis. This was a little disconcerting as I was concentrating on my field work. Which is going very nicely, thank you. What a treat to have the time to go and visit with people, and various other bits and pieces. I was just thinking the week was filling up.

We are enjoying the lovely, warm sunny days and of course, each one has a little more daylight in it than the one before.

As I write, Janine is at the Dunedin Children's Choir practise - she joined with a friend at the start of the term and is loving it. Zachary is at soccer practise with Chris, Katarina is doing some homework and Hannah? Well, wee Hannah has fallen asleep on the couch, again. Poor wee darling, it is still a long day for her but she loves it.

Janine cooked tea for us last night, she is a big help. Oddly enough, Katarina always has something else urgent that needs to be done. She is working on a wearable arts project at the moment and is looking for things to collect.

There is no such thing as coincidence...

For Christians, there is no such thing as coincidences. Sometimes God moves in mysterious ways.
Weird things keep happening. I’ve been going to visit a senior minister this semester as part of my course and we were talking about my music stuff. He asked to see what I’d written and I just happened to have a copy of “You are the Rock” in my bag as I am introducing it to Leith Valley. He looked at it and looked at me and looked back at the music and said – did you write this? Yup. Playing on Southern Star, yeah, yeah, me singing, blah, blah, blah.

Turns out he’d been trying to buy it, cos he wanted to use it for something.

Without success, oddly enough.

Until the composer turned up in his office.

Cool eh!

I spent part of this weekend at Student Soul camp and Helen, their minister, introduced me as a ministry student who'd be spending some time with them this semester and mentioned in an off hand way that I also wrote music. So I made a bit of a joke about that, as they have some AWESOME musicians, very cool, groovy, funky kind of people and my stuff is very middle of the road etc. So I mentioned that, yeah, I wrote the sort of stuff they played on Southern Star. Nice, but not really what the young adults are into.

Well, Sunday night and this guy was the speaker at Student Soul, back at the university. At the end of his talk, a talk about the way that matter and the soul are all interrelated, he began to talk about hearing a song on Southern Star, looking for this particular piece of music, not finding it and then having the composer walk into his office. And then starts playing "You are the Rock".At the end, he dragged me up the front (eek!).

So, instant street credibility for me with the Student Soul crowd. I mean, it's one thing to hear that someone's song is on the radio, it is entirely another when the guest speaker likes it so much he uses it in his presentation.

So, exciting times.

It's Thursday...

Changing routines can be challenging and the trouble with Field Education is that there isn't much of routine AND we are juggling Chris and I in different locations. Richard Dawson has lent us his car while away travelling so the first month or so will be OK; hopefully we can sort out some rides etc for ourselves for the rest of the time.

This week I've been researching, going to meetings and setting up pastoral visits. Chris, likewise.

Katarina has stopped ballet; the class was going en pointe which I don't think she is ready for and the teacher didn't want her to sit the exam. Katarina has a lot on her plate with School Council, netball and various leadership things she is going on so we decided to have a break for a while. Katarina was on a Mathletics team this week; she still isn't very fast on her mental arithmatic but was chosen for her problem solving ability. Cool!
Zach is devouring books of all shapes and sizes now that he has discovered he can read other things besides the books that come home from school.
Hannah's artistic ability continues to astoun and amaze her teachers and I; she did an incredibily neat colouring in exercise this week. "Monster Story" school is a really positive part of her week.
And Janine seems to be earning "the cushion" every week. This is a daily class reward for excellence in behaviour or work so you get some idea of how diligent she is.

Field Education and other things

This week marks the beginning of our Field Education placements. I am at Leith Valley, preaching, pastoral visiting and working with the music teams. Chris is at Kaikorai Valley, preaching and working on some video stuff along with other bits and pieces.

I preached for the first time at Leith Valley on Sunday which went well, I think. Numbers were well down as there were 30 away on the Youth Group ski-trip, including Katarina. It felt very odd to be the parentd staying at home, waving good-bye.

Zachary has turned a corner in his reading. He wasn't very enthusiastic about the chapter book he received as a birthday present but about a week later, he finally sat down and looked at it. Much to his amazement, he discovered he COULD read it. In fact, he devoured it in 2 days! A whole new world has opened up for him, it's so exciting. Now he knows he can read more than the books sent home from school, he can read library books, books from home, books, books, books. Wow!

We've really enjoyed the spring like weather for the last 2 weeks but today has turned cold again, must be snowing somewhere...