In case you wanted to know…

* Breakfast at McD’s with Ellie
* Meet with a guy I don’t know – a Seventh Day Adventist worker who has been reading stuff I’ve written
* Meet with Mike for coffee – a good friend and one of our mission team
* Chair Baptist Church planters task team meeting – some interesting developments afoot.
* Meet with Forge interns – discuss what’s been happening
* Brighton team meeting at our place tonight – beginning some teaching on key themes of mission.

Tomorrow I go surfing…

• we are marshall download free

Has rung and rung and rung tonight!

After getting home late I was hoping to veg quietly with Danelle. Several phone calls later that idea has evaporated.

It was great to chat with some good mates though.

Its quite bizarre to me just how ‘taken’ I am with my kids.

Prior to having children I had no great desire to be a dad, and I wasn’t overly enamoured with anyone else’s kids either. Children just weren’t something that captured my heart in any way.

Then Ellie came along.

I don’t know what happened, but all that changed almost instantly. Even on the week of the birth when people would ask me if I was excited I was fibbing ‘yeh can’t wait…’ (actually wasn’t really thinking about it!)

Then she was born. Kabooom! My world changed.

Instant adoration!

I was at Kings Park today with our family and some of Danelle’s tribe and the kids were playing on the playground. Ellie strolled off on her own as she often does and played alone. I spent maybe 15 minutes watching this little girl exploring her world and interacting with other kids she didn’t know. I saw her pushing herself to try new things, I saw her negotiating with with other kids, I saw her weighing up right and wrong. It was fun to watch.

In it all I was aware of how much I love her and how taken I am with her.

Who’d have thought it!?

As one who is somewhat disenchanted with my teaching work at present, I hover between just putting up with it and actively pursuing something I would enjoy more.

Sometimes I feel like I need to do it so I can empathise with everyone else who hates their jobs… but that just isn’t a good enough reason! I know what it feels like now. Perhaps I need to go get a job I enjoy. I really believe we have a significant amount of control over what we do, if we choose to exercise it. I have always said to people ‘if you don’t like what you are doing then QUIT and find something you do like – (or maybe the order should be find something you do like then

download down to you dvd

QUIT!)

Alternatively we can choose to put up with the frustration of spending our lives doing something we do not enjoy.

Tomorrow I am going to tee up a meeting here in the local community to try and see if I can ‘create’ a job for myself here in Brighton. I can’t say any more than that!

Its a long shot, but if it comes off it’ll be a really suitable role for me.

It might go nowhere… but I always believe you never know if you never ask…

Here’s hoping!

Lately I have been starting to feel the need for a bit of time away.

When life, ministry, work, fun and friendship all intersect so messily, the only way to really take a break is move out of the city for a short time. I feel the need for us as a family to have that kind of space at present after 8 months here in Brighton.

Some would say that my life is a complete breeze, and it may look that way to an onlooker, but there is a lot that goes on that is unseen – a hell of lot of thinking and reading and processing that will never show up on the ‘work’ radar!

So we’ll look at a week or two somewhere (cheap!) to relax and switch off the missionary antenna – to hang out, read novels and go surfing. (Hopefully I’ll get some leave without pay from teaching if needed)

We could use the stack of frequent flyers that are sitting there at present but then its find accomodation, hire a car etc etc.

Gets expensive!