The good news is” we’re not pregnant!

That might sound a bit odd, but if you’ve been following this blog for the last month you’d know why its good news.

There are 5 embryos left now.

A maximum of 7 little hamos”

Over the last 5 months I have been doing some coaching with a great guy from the Seventh Day Adventist churches.

He discovered some stuff I had written, we had a coffee and he asked me to do some coaching with him because he was feeling the desire to explore new expressions of church and mission.

We have met 5 times now and the last time we met it felt like we had lost focus. We had gravitated back to me coaching him in his present ministry position in an established church. While I like him, I found the meeting quite draining.

As I reflected on this it occurs to me that my calling is to ‘plant churches that plant churches and to work at developing leaders who will do that’. He is part of a large and fairly orderly system that requires him to spend a lot of time in the establishment – but I don’t have a passion for developing leaders in that system. (I’ll say again, its not that its bad – its just not my gig)

I raised it today with him. What are we doing together? What does he hope to get from this time? We put on the table that if we were going to continue to meet it will be because he is seeking to follow his own call which he articulated as ‘to connect with Australian people where they are at’ free gundam wing endless waltz and explore new paradigms of ministry.

He also mentioned paying $$ for coaching, so I took him up on that too. If we meet again I imagine it will be a very focused and productive time because we will know where we are headed and the presence of $$ will cause both of us to be prepared and expectant. Its interesting how $$ changes equations!

School is getting harder again.

I had been starting to enjoy it, but some different factors are combining now to make it increasingly difficult.

A simple issue is the very cold weather and the fact that we are outside doing netball and athletics. Most of the guys don’t get into these two sports – but the girls love their netball.

A second issue is the struggle I am feeling to do all things well. Forge is gathering steam and next year I expect to work between 2-2 …½ days as we seek to develop it more. And the need for more time invested in Brighton is very evident now, both in the community and with the team.

When 4 days of the week are already heavily committed with Forge and school it only leaves 2 for Brighton and it also means that Brighton tends to get the left over hours – the time when I don’t have to be doing other things.

That shouldn’t be.

Its not quite that cut and dried, but I am noticing some real frustration in my desire to do more both with team and community and the simple lack of available time.

Danelle and I have been talking it thru and it seems I might need to finish teaching at the end of the year if I am to be true to what I have been called to do. It means trusting God for some $$ again and it will probably mean living at a lower standard again. We were just enjoying having a few $$$ this year!free predator 2 movie download

Tomorrow I head to Melbourne for an overnight stay. I am on a national Baptist team called Crossover that is focused on evangelism and we meet four times to discuss strategies for ‘reaching Australia’. So far I am a little underwhelmed by the whole experience but I am hoping it will change in the future.

While there I’ll be having dinner with Phil and Dan and meeting up with one of their congregations.download 13th warrior the

Forge ends on Tuesday and then Wednesday is a flat our day taking Alan around to meetings, before Thursday and Friday when I return to school.

Then on Friday afternoon we head off for the weekend. Me, Mike from our team as well as two of our neighbours are all heading down to Mandurah for a fishing weekend.

I get back to a full day on Monday with Forge coaching before leaving for Melbourne on Tuesday and Wednesday and then back for two more days of teaching.

Saturday and Sunday have ‘VEG’ written in my diary!

Its after this that the craziness ends. I used to live life at breakneck pace, but I have mananged to back off from that over the last 5 years. So when it happens to crank up again I really notice it. If I were single it wouldn’t be such a concern, but with a family you just can’t live at the pace I used to go at. I don’t think I was even supposed to do it then…

It’ll be good to catch up with Phil & Dan in Melbourne. Phil asked me to share our story with their Tuesday congregation while I’m’ there, so that’ll be fun.

Just spent the evening catching up with Al Hirsch and chewing over all that’s been going down the last few months. Its always good to sense a kindred spirit and a person on a shared wavelength. Its nice when its not hard work to hang with someone.

Looking forward to the start of the Forge intensive tomorrow!

Today was one of those identity crisis days!

I spent some time this morning at the beach praying (that was nice) before heading off to Sorrento Quays to meet with ex blogger Bruce Stuart. Bruce and Sarah (who is Andrew Jones’ sister) came back from Prague last year and have started a new business here in Perth with a pastoral mission edge. We were catching up to hear how it was all progressing and to discuss the possibility of the Baptist denomination seeing them as church planters. It was great to catch Bruce and see someone who is doing what they love doing. While Bruce is a mate I was also wearing my denominational church planters hat during that meeting.

From there I sat by the beach and wrote some emails while the surf pounded in – big swell today! The first was to our local residents asociation regarding the youth work around here. I have recently got involved with the key players to try and help the youth group get itself better established. Its not a church gig, but just a bunch of people wanting to make something good happen. That was my Brighton mission hat

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There were also emails to those who have signed up for the Forge Intensive with all the final details. (WA Forge director’s hat)

From there it was off to Karrinyup shops to grab some lunch. While eating lunch I was reading over some netball lesson plans. I am currently trying to teach netball and know very little about it. Yep – Phys Ed teachers hat!

The afternoon started with a ‘Baptist Church Growth Meeting’, a team I sit on which oversees mission type stuff in the denomination. I am the church planting rep so I changed hats again.

Getting home I made phone calls to our community development officer and a team member. Then I spoke to someone who wanted me to come and preach at their church later this year.

I intentionally made all the calls so that after dinner I could chill and be a dad, husband and couch potato. That said I have just got back from a 4 km run!

Its not often I analyse the day quite like that, but it is fairly typical of what happens in a normal day for me. Sometimes I love the variety and other times it feels like I am spreading myself thin and not acomplishing as much.

But… that’s my life!

We have 6 embryos on ice… Sound weird?

We start our next round of IVF soon.

People often ask me “what happens if all 6 turn into little people?”

“Ummm… we have 8 kids?”

When you decide that conception is the start of life then you don’t have an option to dispose of the embryos, so we need to give each of them a shot.

It may mean we have 8 kids (a bridge I will cross when I come to it) but more likely we will have at best one more.

Embryos have a 70% chance of unfreezing ‘live’ (4 of the 6 will survive the thaw) and then only a 20% chance of successful implantation so only 1 of those 4 is likely to make the cut on a good day.

I am really content with two kids. and that would be my idea number. I reckon I could also be happy with 3 or 4 or even 8 if it came to that.

I guess we’ll know soon!

Its been 13 months now since we left Lesmurdie – 13 months of very little routine and lots of chaos.

As a result my well oiled personal disciplines have shot out the window and I haven’t been able to retrieve them at all. I have stopped running and pushing weights, I have been eating more than ever and spiritual disciplines are feeling more like spiritual options.

When I am out of control I actually feel lousy because for me it generally equates to laziness or (surprise surprise) undisciplined living. It has been genuinely hard to get into an exercise routine because every time I start to run again my back plays up, or my knees hurt (scary!) and food is probably my greatest weakness. If you can lust after pizza then that’d be me!

I have made a few lame attempts to re-order my life over the last 6 months. They have started poorly and finished quickly. At last though we seem to have established some kind of order to our lives.

So… it really is time to say ‘enough’s enough’. Danelle and I spoke about it on our holiday and decided to make personal health and fitness a really high priority from now until Christmas to see if we can both get back on track.

It means some other things won’t get done and we will have to choose to forgo some of the other pleasures we are fond of, but things have got fairly critical.

At the end of the day its all about the choices we make and we have made some bad ones. Its time to stop…

I was reading Timothy this morning and that familiar verse struck me again ‘God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power, love and self control’ I reckon I could do with a bit more of that self control.battle of long tan divx movie online

Holidays are over…

They were great, and I am even ready to come back – but the next few weeks are looking hellish in the diary department. Makes me want to run away at the thought of it!

Some holiday highlights

* Hanging with Danelle, Ellie and Sam – really nice to spend the time and just have fun together away from the rest of life.

* Reading – I finished the Da Vinci Code and I’m not sure what all the fuss was about. It wasn’t a bad novel, but it was just a novel! I also read Good to Great by Jim Collins. What an excellent book for churches to read. I’ll have more to say on that one soon! As well as that I read two books on fishing – I need all the help I can get.

* Eating way too much good food and drinking lots of good wine. Funnily enough the lousiest wine of the entire time was the most expensive…

* Spending the last 3 nights in luxury after 10 days of very basic accomodation – very nice!

* Watching all 16 Kath and Kim episodes – what a hoot! But a bit scary when your three year old starts asking if she can watch Kath and Kim in her rest time rather than Bananas in Pajamas!

* Catching up with Graeme and Sharron Mason and fam – two good friends we love sharing life with. Its always nice to be with people you don’t need to impress in any way.

Unfortunately I didn’t get a surf the whole time I was there – not because of the shark concerns (I reckon if you don’t surf because there are sharks then you shouldn’t drive a car – much greater chance of getting killed!) but because I couldn’t get the board in the car…

Probably just as well as the swell was humungous for the first week or so and I could well have done myself some damage out there!

We got back Saturday arvo and this morning we headed up to our home church Lesmurdie where we got to share some of the Brighton story.

Today I am clearing the email backlog…

Tomorrow – first day back at work – Mark and I are going fishing… Nice work if you can get it hey!?