I had a great weekend (well I think I did, it went by in quite a blur) but I’m really struggling to get myself in gear today. I very nearly bounced out of bed this morning at 5.20am to read my bible and go for a walk (are you impressed?) but by 8.30am I was starting to go downhill. Such a shame I’m not meant to drink coffee, as I could really do with one right now. Well, I could drink coffee but then I’d start to behave like a 10 year old who’d been loaded with sugar and let loose at Disney. I am not kidding. And I talk quite fast under normal circumstances (and I’m from a country where we talk a bit faster than other nationalities, particularly Americans) so when I have caffiene I sound like someone hit the fast forward button. Not attractive!
The final night of the conference on Friday was pretty good – it seemed to be ‘ginger ninja’ preaching night with Casey Treat and John Cameron representing the pasty, ginga contingent. Both preached fantastic messages though and there was a lovely praise and worship time at the end of it where they ended up getting anyone from the crowd who was involved in leading worship up onto stage to sing the final song with the team. It looked a bit like an episode of the Muppets or something with everyone going crazy and dancing around – but was so funny to see!
I also caught up with a bunch of people from my old church which was nice too. The social theme continued on Saturday and I had coffees (well tea and hot chocolate for me, don’t worry) with so many people that I felt rather drained by the end of the day. Us Kiwis like a good coffee by the way, indeed a town is judged by whether you can get a ‘decent’ coffee or not. And by good, we thankfully don’t mean Starbucks. Though that chain is definitely present in parts of the country.
Sunday morning church was great too, I served on the welcome team for the first time and I enjoyed being back out there (I used to do this sort of stuff in my old church for years) and meeting more people. They really treat it as a ministry and you meet in the cafe at church and have a coffee (see I told you we like coffee) and share about the message etc after you finish your ’shift’. I really liked that. The funny thing is that after my first time I’ve been asked to be 2IC for one of the teams. I was a good girl and said I’d think about it, as my tendency in the past was to do anything anyone asked me to do. I’d like to and lets face it, I’m pretty bossy so I’ll probably start taking over anyway. But I need to be sure that I can do the commitment. My church are great at not letting you feel burdened and making sure you don’t burn out though, I really love it.
By the way, our message in the morning was about having faith, and how we need faith for the mole-hills (whatever they are, I have never even seen a mole) before we can have faith to move mountains. I think it’s interesting that we all seem to struggle for faith in the small things, when the big things seem easier sometimes (ie, Cancer we can believe for healing, but a cold not so much). Maybe we’re more desperate in the big issues and know we can’t do it in our own strength so we have no other option but to trust God.
I also almost stole a little boy from church! He was sooooo cute – a little four year old Rwandan boy who was with his lovely mum. They are refugees who escaped after the fighting, it’s a really interesting story. I earned major kudos too when I told her my boyfriend is from Jamaica originally – it’s a great thing for a blonde whitey like me to say you are going out with a black man! We then discussed the merits of little black babies…. seriously I think God is birthing (excuse the pun) something in me as everywhere I look at the moment I seem to be seeing cute little African babies. I’ll blog more about this sometime, but it’s really igniting the desire I have to adopt oneday. And I figure that my genes are really not useful in the hole in the ozone layer gets any bigger. Natural selection is a pig like that!
Speaking of Jamaicans… J has been away in Jamaica for the last few days, so I’ve had a chance to have a bit more quiet time than usual which has been nice, though it has felt a bit weird. I was missing him last night a lot. Is it strange to miss someone when you don’t even live in the same country? Actually, for the record he keeps telling me that he’s not really that Jamaican. That they moved around a lot and he left when he was 17 blah, blah blah. So I wouldn’t want to give the impression that I’m dating a Bob Marley-like rastafarian who says “Mon”. Even typing that makes me giggle when I think of J – he’s a huge ex-footballer. But, it does help he’s lived in a British colony as there are a lot of words that Americans just don’t understand that we use here in NZ. You’re probably nodding in agreement as you read this if you’re from the States and have been wondering what I’m on about half the time. Feel free to ask for translations and be grateful you can’t hear my atrocious kiwi accent!
Okay, well my procrastination needs to end now as I have things to do and food to eat. 
. I’m off to a Settlement services meeting in the capital today. Should be interesting to hear all about migrant and refugee research. Wish my luck for the presentation I have to do!
