it just blows my mind hearing about the popularity of Twitter.
For those of you who have no clue what i am talking about, it is basically a program that makes watching your selected friends daily lives through short sentence updates so that you know and watch what each other are doing. It is basically just like the Facebook newsfeed.
I don't want to say i will never get on Twitter because someone might change my mind, but it seems like an absolutely absurd idea to me!
I don't want everyone to know what i do all day. I don't want to have to answer to the judgments and public eye of the masses. Plus, i just want to do my best to be present in my conversations and relationships that are physically right in front of me. Twitter seems like the next step to living our lives online.
I laughed at the fat lazy humans in Wall-E that lived in front of a digital screen, but the more i watch the world, the scarier this concept actually looks!!!
They have a commercial that may not be completely child friendly, but my favorite part is the short clip from this dancer
This anthem is now on youtube. it is HILARIOUS is you are from auckland, but i am not sure how much of it my friends in America will understand due to the local jokes.
Here is a quick picture tour of last week's retreat.
The main meeting hall for a night service. Wesley Groups were small breakout groups to get to know eachother. We had a mixture of Kiwis, Americans, Tongan, & Samoans. So much fun to hear the different backgrounds. These are my late night Rummikub and card playing buddies that i talked a lot of trash with! The worship team one morning, i helped by playing keys, but you can't see that. The group. here is a closer up shot to see some faces.
One of the things that is hard for me to explain are the colors/colours here in New Zealand on a Sunny day. The sky is just more blue and it contrasts the land so majestically. Here are some of the pictures i took last week.
I was handed a New Testament Bible at the conference last week and it brought back bad memories of a problem i ran into from speaking at the summer camp this year.
I was trying to teach the teenagers how to read through the Bible, but a few of the churces only had New Testament Bibles to give to their teens... "You mean i can't tell the teens to turn to Genesis?!"
I mean, just like i am a fan of someone reading one verse rather than zero verses, i am a fan of giving out a New Testament over no Bible and it probably costs a little bit less, but doesn't this kind of go against the idea that the Old AND New Testament are the Word of God.
It almost seems like New Testament Bibles are saying, "Here is the New Testament which is the Word of God and if you really are more interested we can get you an Old Testament which used to be the Word of God..." Is it right to prioritize the New and Old Testament this way?
I don't know, i could get in trouble with this post, i just found it quite odd when i really thought about it. Why would someone only give an interested person only the New Testament when they believe that the whole Bible is the Word of God and necessary for a person to know God's intent for their life?
LAST WEEK: Evangelism Conference: I spent the majority of the week at the Evangelism conference for the Wesleyan Methodist church. Very multicultural and fun. I sometimes wonder if i wasn't meant to be have a different colored skin. Youth Rally on Friday Night at a Samoan Methodist Church: The rest of the stories come from this rally. There were over a thousand people there! You can see a some of the performances below.
Can you give a greeting… and solo?!? Ozzie, the host came to me during the rally since the other “European” who was supposed to give a greeting didn’t show. Soon, I was wearing a t-shirt standing up on stage next to guys in a button up shirt and suit saying, “Greetings in the name of Jesus.” Then Oz called us back up and said, "Now they are each going to lead a hymn in their traditional language! Of course English came up first, It was “O for a thousand tongues” which I know some words to, but then I found out they sing it to a British melody which is different than how we sing it in America! talk about suffering for the gospel…
Kids sniffing powder… Crazy! This was mind boggling to me. At the youth rally I saw two boys playing on the floor with paper and dirt or candy powder or what ever they had. What I didn’t realize until they were bending down to sniff it was that they had been pounding the candy down into powder and using the paper to put it in a line to sniff like you would drugs. How in the world would they know how to do this unless they have seen it done before? When I asked them their age they said they were eight years old. I attached a picture.
“We are going to welcome back up the Tongans, Fijians, Samoans, Koreans, and Brent.” As Ozzie called us back up to the stage this was what he said. …apparently I became my own nationality this week. Wow... I know a Christian now! One of our most talented and evangelistic teens, Sela Sosoli, who played the keyboard and sang said that after the rally one of her old school friends found her and made the comment above. She said she was there because she had to be, but definitely wasn’t a Christian and shocked to know that she had a Christian friend... Sela!
THIS WEEK:
Heavy week of Master's homework
Dinner with a young fringe couple in the church
Schedule prep for the IWU mission’s team coming in 2 weeks
Organizing an All Youth Leaders meeting across the Wesleyan churches this Saturday
Inviting nonChristian neighbors to dinner tomorrow night.
I was emailing my friend Dan Eggenschwiler and decided to pass on my final thought... I wrote to him
...Life and time just seems pressed right now all the way leading up to this July/August when life will undergo some big changes for my living situation here in New Zealand, so kinda stressed at the moment, but i had a really good moment of revelation yesterday:
God made me to love challenges... why should this be any different. I would do it to myself in other ways if i didn't have these challenges, and although they may stress me out and seem too much to handle, solving these problems and pressing through is exactly what makes good men great and the triumph that much more sweet.
Like so many war movies or the Pursuit of Happiness or whatever you want to compare it to... I am tackling my challenge with God and although my body wants to run away, this is exactly what i desire and have been waiting for, although it is never how i pictured it or would've chosen it for myself.
Therefore, my dear brothers, stand firm. Let nothing move you. Always give yourselves fully to the work of the Lord, because you know that your labor in the Lord is not in vain.
Here is me in my Easter Suit! yeah, i was the only one wearing anything close to an easter suit this last Sunday, although people thoroughly enjoy that i still wore brown sandals (called jandals here) with the outfit.
i Last Week: We had our interactive stations of the cross exhibit running all easter weekend. This was a good opportunity for a few people to visit our church that wouldn't otherwise come. Stations included things such as weaving as an act of committing to help with poverty in the world, observing art, watching a video on suffering, collecting blankets for the city mission, etc. At cell group we had one person discuss how they were trying to reclaim their faith. The solution wasn't as easy as asking them to say a prayer of confession, but you can help me to prayer for a reassurance with this individual in their heart and mind of the truth of God and Christianity. This Week: Students are on 2 week holiday so this is a good time to connect with teens, and this will also be a big week for easter followup. One of my big responsibilities is supporting the church plant at cession|community and creating a system for contacts and followup to really target and value newcomers will be one of my crowning achievements over the next couple months.
1. Their Godly Example 2. Their healthy marriage 3. Not forcing church on me 4. Imparting their love for people to me 5. Encouraging me to work hard and follow through 6. They taught me to be aware of how my choices affect others 7. The self worth and confidence that have come from our loving encouraging family 8. The value of sacrificing for family and living in the present 9. Creating a conducive environment for us children to pursue our dreams despite obstacles 10. Showing us what it means to love, lead, and invest in others.
But not two weeks later!!!
I have arrived! I have a place in this virtual Rugby world!!!
The main meeting hall for a night service.
Wesley Groups were small breakout groups to get to know eachother. We had a mixture of Kiwis, Americans, Tongan, & Samoans. So much fun to hear the different backgrounds.
These are my late night Rummikub and card playing buddies that i talked a lot of trash with!
The worship team one morning, i helped by playing keys, but you can't see that.
The group.
here is a closer up shot to see some faces.
I was handed a New Testament Bible at the conference last week and it brought back bad memories of a problem i ran into from speaking at the summer camp this year. 
Very multicultural and fun. I sometimes wonder if i wasn't meant to be have a different colored skin.
You can see a some of the performances below.
What I didn’t realize until they were bending down to sniff it was that they had been pounding the candy down into powder and using the paper to put it in a line to sniff like you would drugs. How in the world would they know how to do this unless they have seen it done before? When I asked them their age they said they were eight years old. I attached a picture.
I wrote to him
Last Week: We had our interactive stations of the cross exhibit running all easter weekend. This was a good opportunity for a few people to visit our church that wouldn't otherwise come. Stations included things such as weaving as an act of committing to help with poverty in the world, observing art, watching a video on suffering, collecting blankets for the city mission, etc. At cell group we had one person discuss how they were trying to reclaim their faith. The solution wasn't as easy as asking them to say a prayer of confession, but you can help me to prayer for a reassurance with this individual in their heart and mind of the truth of God and Christianity.
This Week: Students are on 2 week holiday so this is a good time to connect with teens, and this will also be a big week for easter followup. One of my big responsibilities is supporting the church plant at cession|community and creating a system for contacts and followup to really target and value newcomers will be one of my crowning achievements over the next couple months.
1. Their Godly Example
