Posting from Rotovegas

Rotorua has an alternative name… Rotovegas… I guess its kinda like Stokes Valley being Stokesvegas. hehe.

Yeah. Well, 7 hour busride up here yesterday, was okay, then we were going to go to this real cheap backpackers for $10 a night, then went and checked out this other place… so much better, plus there isn’t meant to be live, loud music all night.

I must point out tho that the radio right outside my room played till well after 1am.

Today we prayed… went shopping… and praying now, then we’re going out to dinner tonight with one of the people organising the camp.

Tiffany and I will be serving this weekend… somehow, not sure, maybe just in prayer… but staying at, and attending, the camp. Then on Sunday we’re getting a bus to Taupo and staying with Andy and Bek Hickman, some IHOP people living here now… gonna go pray for a couple of days (yay. i like ihop people.) and then go home Tuesday morning by bus again. woot woot.

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Off to the nations…

I got accepted for DTS. Now all I need is to find somewhere around $9000.

Let’s look at the maths for a minute shall we?

I work 12 hours a week @ $16 an hour… thats $192 a week, which after tax and tithe comes to about $135.

$85 goes on my rent (subsidised by my parents) power and phone costs, and then there’s another $50 which kind of is meant to cover trips… petrol… food… my cellphone… clothes… savings… did i mention petrol and food…? And right now theres another $19.50 out of that which pays for my gym membership each week which I think I’m going to stop when someone else buys my membership off me, hopefully soon.

Problem is… if I could get a fulltime job, 40 hours per week (ignoring the fact I do at least 40 a week with onething, and already work 12 hours a week) I could save approx $3500 after 10 weeks. So that’s my lecture fees covered… but I DON’T WANT TO DO THAT!

I don’t want to be one of these people who doesn’t do any work and gets all gutted when no money shows up… but at the same time, I don’t want to have to quit a commitment I made to the end of the year to be able to work fulltime (…:S) to do another ministry thing. I trust God, he’s my provider. So. Watch this space… anyone got a few thousand spare?

Hectic day…

Somewhere in today. I have to update my laptop with all my software, and my cds, since I didn’t bother to back those up.

And I have to fit in 2 hours here at work this morning, a trip to the mall to do banking and pay bills, onething office stuff for a few hours, my 2 hour prayer room supervision slot, another 2 hours hopefully with Rachelle to cover for Sarah, packing for my trip tomorrow, cleaning my room, and being in bed early enough to get up at 6!
oh yeah. i have to do washing, and get it dry. we have no dryer. and its cloudy outside.

Shocking at updating

I am pretty shocking at updating, or so I thought anyway. I keep planning to, but I’m never in the right place to do it… but then I figured, hang, may as well.

I’m at work, actually, technically, I’m in the prayer room. My laptop has finally bunged enough that I’ve let Arya (Arya= bus stop friend. 5 years of waiting at the same bus stop for a bus eventually forms connections.) reinstall Windows and other stuff for me. It was kinda crazy, actually… I hate not having it so I kept delaying and it kept getting worse… start up time was like 3 or 4 minutes or more… i couldn’t play music cos every time i opened itunes or media player it would just bounce or be corrupted or be jerky… haha and my mousepad, lets not go there. it wouldn’t work 2 out of 3 restarts! And I couldn’t burn cds or back up files or anything.. so now I have a bit of a job to reinstall everything. Particularly now that the church broadband has been limited to office stuff only, I’m going to have to do a whole lot of downloading tomorrow when I go into work for a couple of hours.

I still haven’t heard anything about DTS. It’s been a week, really, since my application was complete, but I sent all of it in a month ago, it wasn’t my fault the police check took 3 weeks. I. want. to. know.

Uh.. but yeah since I don’t have my laptop, I’m using the prayer room computer, which again I’m not sure is a total legit use of the broadband, but I figure its okay since doing this allows me to do what I do the rest of the time… so I get to work from home for 6 or 8 of my 12 hours a week from now until December. I’m just scanning photos in and entering data into a database, so Rose lets me take them home and do them whil elistening to music… and its good. means i have lots more flexibilty. Except I’m going away this week so its gonna be kinda tightpacked to get everything done I need to do this week as well as my onething stuff.

But yeah, its so good, finally I feel like I’m travelling lots again. Tiffany and I are getting a bus to Rotorua – 7 hours and ten minutes of numb bum and its worse than an airplane cos there’s no movies, audio channels or tv… or toilets… but there are stops every couple of hours for that purpose so its okay.. we’ll find a backpackers when we get there, spend Wednesday evening and Thursday praying, Friday praying, maybe find our way out to the camp to help set up, going to the Every Nation Youth Camp this weekend, then Monday and Tuesday not sure yet. Hoping to come home via Taupo House of Prayer where Andy and Bek Hickman are, but I think they’re still in Australia so not sure if that’ll work. Taupo is where we have summer camp in December so we were gonna go pray for that…

I like this. Being a random prayer missionary in the literal sense of being sent out… I don’t do ‘missions’ anymore, I haven’t in like 2 years, and I don’t think I could go back to normal just-missions. Even on YWAM DTS it’ll be kinda funky… like there’ll have to be a big prayer component for it to ‘make sense’… to connect… to be right.

Because without prayer, nothing happens. So that’s why we do what we do – I mean, really, I do a tremendous amount of travelling. last year I spent 90 days away from Wellington, went to America, 17 flights, and I went to Christchurch twice, Tauranga twice, Auckland three times, Hamilton, went to the South Island as well for our intern trip… all of those were either prayer-related or prayer-conference-team-related… and then I went on a 3 day trip to Napier, and Mt Ruapehu, to see family… that was my sole ‘holiday’ since Dec 2004 and Sept 2006… holiday for me means not-ministry-related. This year I spent all of January in the States, in Kansas City, MO and Phoenix, AZ, came home and had a horrible 5 months of no travelling… but then I went to Auckland in July for the Imaginenations conference, which we went up to pray for, Invercargill for the United live conference in August, Christchurch for a 4 day holiday last week… what happens, is Kristen will go places to preach, and we can’t usually go with him overseas, but when he goes somewhere in NZ as long as there’s a couple of us we can go pray for the conference or whatever. So we go a few days early, go pray in the city and at the site, and also practically help serve.. keep an eye out for divine appointments etc, we had some cool ones in Invercargill, then go to the camp or conference and pray and serve. That’s what we’re doing this week

Yeah. This

is my salad. I made it for dinner, it had lettuce (mesculun salad stuff, $15.99 a kilo from the supermarket, but you only need like 20 grams.), carrots ($1.78 a kilo), capsicum ($9.99 a kilo), alfalfa sprouts ($2.20), cucumber (stolen from sarah with permission. aka i borrowed it.) and tomato (it cost 79c.)

Not that you needed to know all that. But I was very proud of myself… and I even have some left over to take to the office for lunch! And I went to the gym and biked for 30 minutes solid! and walked at 5k an hour for 10 minutes on the treadmill. and cross-trainer’d at 12k an hour for 7 minutes. I went to boxing group class and gave up after 10 minutes. I couldn’t do it.

Yeah. So that’s my day.

I miss you

The lyrics below come from a worship leader with 11.59 ministries, Louisville, Kentucky. Her name is Rebecca Bales (www.rebeccabales.com) and she’s an incredible woman… I say that having only ever known her online, but this song means something to me… the wilderness, the desert, the dark night of the soul… the moments when the Lord feels far away, and you’re struggling with what you thought was reality… when I’ve realised I’m not as zealous and connected as I thought I was… when my heart has broken because of the sheer longing for Jesus, and he doesn’t seem to come…

I hold you in my heart, but I can’t put a finger on you
It’s so close and so very far away.
And I see you in my mind’s eye,
But these dreams, they keep fading
Whenever I open my eyes, I am alone.

I am here, and you are not.
When will you come for me?
There’s water, water everywhere, and there’s not a drop to drink.
I’m trying to find you, I can’t seem to find you
I’m drowning in a sea of fading dreams
And I miss you – I miss you

And your voice faintly lingers
Echoes of whispers of love
I’m beginning to think that I just gave the wind a voice
I’m tired of living in this desert
Where everything is a mirage
I just wanna know that I’m loving someone that’s real

I am here, and you are not.
When will you come for me?
There’s water, water everywhere, and there’s not a drop to drink.
I’m trying to find you, I can’t seem to find you
I’m drowning in a sea of fading dreams
And I miss you – I miss you

And I’ve never seen you, but I know what you look like,
And I’ve never touched you, but I know what you feel like
And I’ve never heard you, but I know what you sound like it

I miss you…

All complete…

My police clearance arrived yesterday, so I think Sarah faxed it to Perth about an hour ago for me… which means that my registration is complete, which in turn means that Quenton (YPDTS leader) can go ahead and start praying about it whenever he and some of the other leaders find the time to do that. Which means I’ll hear sometime next week (in a very positive world, I’d hear tonight, since its only just gone 1pm in Perth, so they have a whole more 4 hours to pray about it this afternoon… but I don’t know if they’ll let me know by email or by letter…)

Everyone is convinced I’m going to be accepted. I’m told that they’ll either be insane not to accept me, or that $1000 would be bet (if the person was a betting man) that I would be accepted. I don’t agree 100%, simply because I know that they PRAY about it. as in they ask Jesus. As in supposedly it’s not meant to be based upon human wisdom, it’s meant to be based upon what Jesus says. But I do want to hear soon…

Otherwise, based upon logic, I know that I probably would be accepted. My medicals are fine, I have pretty good references, I don’t think I demonstrated any major issues in my forms (except the insanity one…!) and yeah… but I’m trusting that God will show them. Because on my end, I’m all set to go. And I do think its likely I’ll be accepted… its nice that some of these people I really look up to believe in me that much…

I’ve been told that I’m not allowed to make any commitment for after DTS. So I’m going to get a one way ticket to Perth, likely. The key issue is that anything could happen… I could literally go anywhere, do anything, meet anyone, be in any relationship status (okay, excluding civil union, homosexuality and de facto parternship. staying with the safe ones, dating, engaged or married.), study anything, be on staff anywhere, be with any ministry.

So, this morning we went to savemart, and I bought a pink top and a pink poncho-ish thing. It’s kind of one of those ones from Glassons, that everyone has… its like a fishing net in design… as in its made with thread but its in a netting weave… i then went to christchurch city and i bought a larry boy tshirt (male size large. lol. i’ll sleep in it or wear it at the gym on my non-beautiful days.) and headphones and a couple of cds to burn stuff onto and a starbucks double chocolate chip extra-cream based venti frappuchino, and i took lots of photos. i’ll post some up when i’m back to my highspeed internet.

All for One, and One for All

I was thinking about this… I don’t even know where it came from, I was going to go do a prayer session on the whiteboard (I think well with a whiteboard pen and a whiteboard…) and that came out of nowhere so I wrote it down. But I realised… it’s the reality, the freaking undeniable reality of the Gospel. There’s a couple of ways you can look at it, but think about these.

All for One:
- Jesus died on the cross… he’d have done it for just one person… and I think that’s true, because I don’t think he did it just for ‘humanity in general’… I think he did it for the countless number of ‘ones’ that there would be throughout the millenniums… those that he KNEW before the world was created. Isn’t there a scripture about that somewhere… Jeremiah 1:5 – before I formed you in the womb, I knew you…

One for All:
- One Man… died for all humanity….

I give my all… for the One who gave His all for me… I guess this is still being processed, but you can kind of understand.

i don’t know why…

I know one thing for sure about the future… I’m going to spend at least 3 months at IHOP. Actually, I don’t know when, or what for, but I’m convinced that I will… I was thinking about it today, how crazy the whole thing is. Because, most of the time I was there, I was pretty miserable… I’d spent the six months before intensely locked into a journey of pursuit with a small group of interns, and for the first time in my life I’d found somewhere I seemed to fit… then suddenly I was 15,000 km from home, I knew two people in Kansas City: Junia, the sound guy, who had filmed a promo video for my dance team four years ago… and Wendy, the nightwatcher who had played keyboard at a couple of conferences I’d been to…so we didn’t really ‘know’ each other.

Maybe miserable isn’t the right word. Maybe the word is out of my comfort zone. Kansas City, for me, was not the ’spiritual energy drink’ that it seems to be for so many people who go there for 2 weeks and encounter Jesus and come away loving Him so much more strongly… and even now I realise that there was so much more I could have ‘done’ while I was there – I could have locked into a proper study schedule, I could have found myself some kind of group or accountability, I’m sure, I could have set myself a schedule, I could have ‘done’ so much stuff. But I think it was okay the way it was, because as desperately as I fought to stop my heart from becoming planted at IHOP (I think the hardest time was when all the new FITN interns arrived… and my last night in the prayer room) I couldn’t stop it from becoming planted and so came home and spent the first months of this year plotting to steal away and move to IHOP… I’m more settled now… which is good. Except I have this paradox.

And I’ll always have it.

I’m called to nations… but I have a desire to settle down. I’m a community person, I need to belong to a tribe. And at the moment that’s reflected somewhat in my church, more so in onething than in the church… I was talking to Kristen about this a few months ago – and the type of community doesn’t really exist yet. It’s where you can come and go, and you know people everywhere, and you’re all in the same pursuit yet you do it in completely different ways. It’s a community where church isn’t about a Sunday or a Friday, it’s about pursuing the Lord together as a lifestyle, where ‘onething’ is above everything else, where missions and prayer are joined together in a beautiful simplicity, where people are about life, and reality, and connecting and prayer and the Word and missions and just being who we are and being together.

I only worked 4 hours today… spent the afternoon doing onething stuff which was much fun since usually I work a full day on Mondays. Kristen was back, so I went to get his computer which was playing up overseas, brought it back to the office and it worked perfectly… did some more website stuff, it really just needs to be redesigned… picked up the summer camp brochures, woohoo! Summer Camp is in 3 months…its going to be a fantastic weekend in Taupo, come if you’re around… and the brochures look rather good if I say so myself. Matt designed, I critiqued. So at least I feel I kind of have something to ’show’ for what I’ve done… it was really nice weather today.

I’m listening to IHOP, except my parents headphones are kinda crap so I’ve got them round my neck and I’m playing it loud, which defeats the purpose, since my sister Lisa informed me that its ‘bad music.’ And I have to admit, it doesn’t always sound fantastic online, but thats okay, because I was there and I know what its like.

Supposedly there’s “no way I won’t get accepted into DTS”… this coming from someone who is in contact with Quenton, the DTS leader… and I know that by human logic and my references etc, I’m all good… but they pray about it, so I’m trusting God to open/close as I said yesterday… and even if I get accepted I’m not 100% to go I need a final ‘yes’

‘Ah men,’ sigh lone church women

http://stuff.co.nz/stuff/0,2106,3791132a4560,00.html

09 September 2006
By ANNA CHALMERSA man drought has hit the church and could be pushing some single women away.
The shortage is so dire that Christian women are being forced outside the church or are getting into unsuitable relationships, Challenge Weekly warns this month.
The Christian publication says American research shows there are up to 13 million more “born-again” Christian women than men.
Christian dating agencies report having up to 70 per cent women on their books – a trend reflected in other dating agencies.
Central Baptist Church minister Jenny McIntosh said there were more single women than men in the Wellington congregation. She feared single women were feeling alienated and were being pushed away because the “norm” was to be in a family.
“Single women are finding it hard to be in churches. Often churches are very family-oriented. They talk families, they talk couples.”
Emma Green, 24, who attends Blueprint, a division of The Rock church in Wellington, said there was pressure to find a partner in the church. But though marrying a fellow Christian was “non-negotiable”, she did not think she faced a tougher challenge.
“It seems like there’s a man drought across the board.”
Statistically there are about 9 per cent to 11 per cent more women than men in the 30-to-34 age group.
A study by Victoria University this year found a shortage of bachelors – and an increase in the number of women with degrees – meant more highly educated women were staying single or “marrying down” by choosing a partner with poorer job prospects.
Another Wellington Christian said the men at her church were less educated and many more single, Christian women “had more going for them”.