second part of summer

Second installment on my summer people!

So really the second installment spread over the period of 8 days where I was on Parachute crew. Parachute is a big Christian festival that runs over a weekend, arrive Friday, there all Saturday and Sunday and leave Monday. So I was on village crew from the Sunday beforehand to the Tuesday evening afterwards.
Village crew was by far the coolest crew on the whole set up team. We set up the “village” which is where all the stalls and food things went. People spent lots of their time in the village and it was a pretty cool place to set up. It mainly consisted to setting up many marquees and putting out chairs (only 1300 of them).
I think definitely a big highlight for me was getting to help on the waterslide construction. One of the bottled water companies, pump, sponsored a water slide to be built but not just any water slide… an awesome one. It was 32feet long, I think, down a hill and went into a big splash pool. It was really good fun and the village crew got to test it, so we all tried all the different positions we could think of… most of them hurt quite a lot.
So to the actual event, Parachute festival. Lots of bands were there like third day and other people like that, which was cool but kind of only highlighted to me that the general church youth only know how to “worship” to loud music and un theological words… I made me sad to watch some of the bands and how they communicated with the crowd. Parachute also had some speakers who I can’t give much more praise to because they did not really open the bible at all.
As much as all this stuff seems to be all bad I decided parachute was awesome not for the on stage stuff or even the water slide but for the meeting Christians aspect of it. I got to meet all the people who were on camp the two weeks previous and a chance to meet with new people and talk about anything and everything. It was so awesome to be able to share and listen to others about issues for a young Christian.
So overall parachute for me was about people not the “important people” up front who got the crowd to cheer but the people who are on genuine walks with God and willing to discuss there faith and what they believe.

Sorry it has been such a long time since I last posted but I have been ridiculously busy recently and unfortunately that is affecting my communication with you guys back home.

Bless Ya
Andrew

summer of sun!

Ok so I have not blogged for like ever but now the time of information is back… sort of.

So right now I am still recovering from my summer of intense work (you will get the pun if you read it out loud) where I was camping in tents (hah get it?), playing sport in ridiculous heat and putting up marquees it ridiculous heat. Much of what I did over the summer was in ridiculous heat, whether it was really blazing hot sun heat or lots of cloud cover humid heat it was generally hot. So now I will tell all of you about what I did over the summer in a tad more detail but first to get something out the way, I have had the worst rugby watching weekend ever!!! Scotland sevens lost to like everyone (there was IRB rugby sevens on in Wellington this weekend) Scotland 15s lost to England and the Waikato Chiefs lost to the Brumbies…. Not fun!

Ok so I will take it from Christmas time. I got back from the south island safely and the next day I had a birthday party to attend and it was so much fun… on a bouncy castle. I probably lost like 10kg just on that day alone because bouncing is such hard work. So I rested for like a day then I was away to the first camp of the summer on the 31st of December! That is New Years Eve! So we had the leaders only day on the 31st and then all the campers arrived on new years day. It was a sports camp and was awesome but absolutely blazing heat the whole week. I don’t think I have ever drunk so much water and put on so much sunscreen… and I didn’t get burnt! The camp was for 15 – 17 year olds so the sport was pretty intense and competitive. Second day in I sprained my finger pretty bad and I could not play guitar! I was gutted. But the rest of the camp there was barely any injuries at all. My team did not win in the end but I think we had the most fun… with out winning. Some of the sports we played were:
Cricket
Football
Ultimate Frisbee (on the biggest field ever)
Volleyball
Indoor football
Netball
Aussie rules football (awesome game)
Touch rugby
Hockey
Softball
Mattress softball (best game ever – instead of bases you have piles of mattresses and you are out if you are in-between bases when the bowler gets the ball but if you are in the air you are fine… i.e. diving for the base)
American netball (rules of netball on an American football field and American football ball)
There is probably more but I can’t remember. So yeah that was a cool camp and I made some pretty cool friends, one of them is training with the tall blacks (the basketball team of NZ).

So then I had a three-day break (not long enough) and it was off to the second camp called Ponui Island Senior (original as). It was on an island on the east coast of Auckland. We took this big barge across and the place was awesome! It was basically a big beach where the main stuff happened. We were in tents but there was a hall and a kitchen and stuff… no real toilets. This camp was for 15-18 year olds and was really cool; it was just a really cool bunch of people. It was kind of hard being a leader when I was so close to the age of the campers but turned out alright, I just talked with a deeper voice (hah, hah someone asked if I was 26). The music was awesome at this camp and really loved the singing and stuff, but for the first few days I could not play guitar because of finger. We did loads of cool things and went on ‘tramps’ (walks) then camped out in random places, which was cool. The forecast all week was rain and not just hazy stuff like, rain of the drowning type but God must have been like “nah, not for that week” and he just let our bay (not the island) our bay be protected from bad weather and He gave us awesome weather. I was a leader in the team ‘operation cobra’ and we had the coolest little things we did and chants and stuff. On the second day we did synchronized swimming and our team won that. When I get pictures I will show you all our fabulous routine. Anyway in the end the cobras won and we were chuffed.

Ok so this is a long post so I will finish it off later. Next episode is about parachute… the biggest Christian music festival on the southern hemisphere (not that hard to achieve as there is nothing down here).

God Bless
Andrew

Christmas Down Under!

Some pictures of travels in Queenstown over Christmas...











Queenstown Harbour

Jetboating just outside Queenstown!

This is a

jetboat like the
one I was in!

Me, back in Hamilton with my car, 'Tommy' - ready for work again!

Queenstown... rocks!

ok so short post cause i am paying for my time here...

i just bought myself a All Blacks top, old style not the ugly new things that are so tight they basically show your internal organs. i am so pleased with it.

Queenstown (where i am right now) is awesome and so picturesque, but i have not been takign that many photos due to my lack of orginisation and time. there are mountains in every direction and an awesome lake, jet boats all over the place spinning round with lots of screaming tourists, and generally cool shops and lots to do. i have not been doing that much because i am here for a rest and a break from non stop work... loving it!!! christmas is fast approaching and i have just finished all my christmas shopping. so all that it leaves to say is merry christmas and a happy new year.

God Bless

Andrew

ch...ch...ch...changing

Hello once again, I am so sorry for the mega long time in between this post and my last one, I feel really bad but now I have lots to tell you about.
Well since I last spoke to you all I have been doing all these different things:
Organising a helping run a Scripture Union Training event
Helping at a new Youth Group in a place called Huntly
Watching the rugby … all the games that were on
Getting into a fight… I will explain

With Warwick, one of the people who I work with, we ran a training weekend at one of the horse camp venues. So for like two weeks running up to it I was basically flat out trying to sort out programmes, menus, songs… all that kind of stuff but it was all really good fun. So the weekend was the one just past I think and I am still pretty tired after it all, just trying to take it a bit easier now but it is hard when I enjoy the work so much I just want to be doing something all the time.
Like 2 or 3 weeks ago, Judy and I went along to the youth group in Huntly, which is like 30min from Hamilton. It was pretty awesome there and they were really welcoming and cool. Huntly is not the nicest place to live, there is a lot of gang stuff that goes on and the youth there basically roam the streets at night and be “bad” but they are really just miss guided. So on a Wednesday night one of the churches runs a fun sort of youth group with a short message and stuff. It is pretty awesome and I heard the phrase “the gospel is caught not taught”. I was thinking how right that was, sure it is good to get some decent teaching on the gospel and how it works but the gospel message should be displayed in our lives. So they asked me along to be a regular leader which I was stoked about and go along ever week now. I also heard the phrase there (which is used quite a lot when talking about Huntly) “oh don’t fall in, it’s a bit of a hole”, I laughed.
Ok so we all know New Zealand have been tearing through west Europe and destroying any team they want and I have been forced (I am actually quite happy to) to watch all these matches. This means sometimes getting up at like 5am to see a match before people start work or school and cheer on the All Blacks. Then the other day when we were watching the league final between NZ and Auzzies there was an advert for Scotland Versus Australia in union. Some friends and I watched that and we all supported Scotland and I was so chuffed we scored first but pretty sad we lost. Aw well I was glad they supported Scotland.
Lastly in my list was that last Thursday night I was renting a video so I could just chill and relax before the training weekend and went to the local mall called Chartwell. On the way in there were some people shouting at each other and I just skirted round them with out looking at them, I got my money from the machine and then on my way out two Maori guys grabbed this white guy and threw him to the floor and started kicking him really hard, like in the face and stuff. The security guard came out and tried to tackle one of the guys but he kind of bounced off so I thought I better do something being the only other guy around. I said something really stupid like “oh please don’t do that, you might hurt him” and then got punched in the face (it really hurt and still does) and then that guy went back to kicking the guy, so I did the only thing I could, I rugby tackled him (being in NZ you think that he could take a tackle) turns out he wasn’t ready and went flying, same time the security guard had got up and had tackled the other guy properly this time and fight was over, white guy ran away and Maori guys ran after, police were called and security guard thanked me and I went and rented ‘she’s the man’ and we watched it and laughed.

Anyway I better get on this other things so I will update the Blog soon

God Bless
Andrew

Couch steal

Ok people of the world, new information on the inner workings of the youth group I am part of – chapel hill, radiator youth.

So the youth group I help out at and am part of is awesome and has some really awesome people at it. it has about 20 regular attendees and 30 on a Saturday night. It runs a bible study type thing on a Sunday night instead of an evening service and it has Saturday night fun activity. Sunday also includes dinner, which is awesome. The Saturday just past I ran a Scottish night with highland games and haggis and irn-bru!!! We tossed the cabers, had a strong man event and even a battle or Culloden but the week before that we did something more fun than being Scottish… almost.
So basically the activity couch steal is about a team of people, like 5 or 6, getting a couch from one point to another by carrying it. Sounds easy, well then there are ‘spotters’ in cars and on bikes going around the area and if they see you with your couch and you are not sitting on it then they take one of your 10 lives away. Oh but there’s more, the distance we took ours was like 3km and we had a 4 person couch and 6 of us with 4 girls 2 guys. Furthermore (nice conjunction word) on the way back to the point (the church) we had to collect or buy stuff with the money we had paid at the start, which included; supper for the team, something with the Waikato colours on it (red, black and yellow – McDonalds box), a rugby shirt or ball (I was wearing my Scotland top), a pair of baby socks or gloves, a can of food for an offering, a raw egg… and so on. Each team got points for each item retrieved and points for being first or second or third back. All in all it was awesome fun and we basically had a ball carrying a couch around for 2 hours. Anyway now I must go and do some real work as much as I would like to say this is work it is not. So good day to you all.

God bless
Andrew

Busy week at the top

Hello, long time no Blog and for that I am truly sorry. I do have a good reason though.
Ok so last weekend (started on Friday the 20th) I went on a camp with a church in Hamilton (not the church I regularly attend). The camp was called “Fuel” and was for kids aged 13 – 15. It was a cool camp for many reasons; it was in a big field (or paddock) in tents, it was not too bad weather the whole weekend, we had some awesome talks and devotions and I got the chance to teach everyone the Scottish national anthem. I was asked to do a devotion on Job which was really cool because I had just finished reading it so had all these little notes about it, its cool how God works like that. I was pretty nervous though because the church we went with is called “the reformed church” so they are pretty old school and do very well pick hymns with very theological words even if there is a chord change every second beat. They have like this old school teaching style that I had heard about that was like uber theological and deep so I was really worried I would say something that was totally contradictory to what they believe. So in the end the camp was awesome, we did lots of stupid games and sang lots of stupid songs and lots of things like that. It was all really tiring and I was looking forward to my own bed but alas not to be.
So we all drove home from camp to the place we left off in Hamilton then immediately I had to be dropped off home and have a shower (muddy boy I was) so spent about 30 minuets in my house then drove to Auckland, so like an hour and a half to pick up the new intern and then drove another hour to go on another camp thing. I don’t know if I have ever been so tired in my life. This other camp was really a meeting for the directors of Scripture Unions of the pacific region (long title I know but it is the guys who run SU around the pacific). What was I doing there you might ask …?
I was a human dishwasher … hooray. It was actually pretty good fun. 3 times a day I washed or dried lots of dishes of the important people so that they could go and have important talks and discussions. So from Monday to Friday that was my life. But as well as dish washing I got to talk with lots of the SU people about the bible and stuff. It was awesome fun and many late nights talking to people about the different issues a Christian will face in life.
So on Friday when we had cleaned up and sorted everything out I was ready to die of exhaustion but still had to drive back to Auckland and I decided to visit the bible college there because I know some people there. That was cool but then I drove back to Hamilton ready to drop but alas I had a prayer meeting (that is a good thing but it had to be open eye prayer or I may have fallen asleep). Then I finally got home about 12:30am!!!! To go to bed and sleep. I slept till like 10 and got up and did all the stuff I needed to do.
Anyway this has been a long rambling Blog but you guys haven’t heard from me in ages.
God bless
Andrew

P.S. I will write in the next couple of days about the youth group activity of “couch steal”