God Made No Mistakes.

"At the heart of racism is the religious assertion that God made a creative mistake when he brought some people into being."

This statement was made by Friedrich Otto Hertz and I stumbled across it when I was looking for a tittle for this post. The quote struck me for a few reasons. Firstly it is no secret that I am a believer in God but even more so I am a believer that God has absolute and complete control over every tiny and enormous aspect of our lives. The quote backed me up in my already solid belief . All people are equal made and loved by God equally so who are we as mere men to decide that one race or nationality is inferior in any way shape or form. God made as all the way we are and mankind has the nerve to discriminate over such issues. That's why I liked the quote.
So I went looking for the quote because with most of my posts I have pre planned them and this time I planned to introduce to you two awesome people I met on road trip. These two guys were amazing people doing awesome stuff with their lives and I will value them as friends for years to come but the reason they are worthy of blogging is they helped me through an issue I have had in the back of my head for many years.
In my early high school years I had a small issue with racism and fortunately it never became a huge aspect of my life however I never found myself in a friendship with any one from a different race and always questioned myself as to weather I truly did rid myself of my racist streak.
Dilshan and Vishal are two guys from very visually different nationalities and I became good mates with both of them over Road trip. Looking back when I met both of these guys the colour of their skin and where they came from never raised an issue. I became friends with both these guys the same way I had befriended all my mates in the past. I guess a small amount of pride has come into play here, I am proud of who I have become come. I am proud that I gave these guys equal opportunity.
As for the complete uselessness of racism I am blessed to have met these two, they are truly brilliant guys and if racism stepped in it would have been me who lost out.
(top left: dilshan bottom right: Vishal with Robbie)

Second city of sights

The stop at Canberra resulted in most of the unpleasant experiences of road trip occurring in one place. At the top of this list was camping in temperatures that reached as low as -3.7 degrees followed by sharing showers with one thousand other people which resulted in semi regular hygiene practices. Canberra also tops the list for new and strange experiences. So many people sharing one camping ground resulted in the private act of going to the toilet was no longer so private. Blokes will blokes and so we just got too it. This meant that for the first time in my life whilst taking a crap i had an in depth conversation with the bloke in the cubical next to me. This is how I met Dilshan. (I will introduce Dilshan in a latter post)
Common belief is that Canberra is a hole and many people say that it is probably out of simple rivalry for another capital city rather then any actual educated opinion. Whilst its minimum temperature has something to be desired I did actually quite like Canberra and some of the sights we saw. So my opinion is canberra is not so bad. I did not get much time here only two days to be exact but what i saw and some of the places I saw were amazing. However on this trip i spent more time in Universities then all my years combined and I feel that of the ones I saw ANU (Canberra university) can not compete with Sydney universities when it comes to architecture and beauty. Sydney wins every time. Once again these photos are not mine but are borrowed with permission from Sonia Preisser.

Hip to be a Square

Road trip was full of events that pushed me out of my comfort zone. I have already discussed this a little in an early post where I talked about Terrigal beach and Camron but there were many more events that pushed me out of my comfort zones, chanting in Manly, running down a tunnel in central station making that huge scene I discussed earlier and leaping around Gosford dressed in pink are all things that I struggled to just "go with the flow" of but none of them matched up to the Martin place stunt. Planned to be a massive media stunt with both the New South Wales team and the Western Australia team resulted in over three hundred people trying to perform a choreographed dance we all learnt the night before. It looked like a disaster waiting to happen.
Three hundred young people filtered down into martin place in an attempt to look natural and not draw attention to ourselves. (I don't know how well that worked)
With every one in place two large speakers started to boom out a song through Sydney CBD and four of the team started the dance. The dance was a square dance with the same ten moves repeated over and over each time rotating to a different direction. As the starting four turned to face a new direction people joined the dance, and it continued with each time the dance changing direction more and more people joined until all three hundred of us were doing the dance. When it all finished all dancers fell to the ground to represent the dieing people across the globe, while an announcement was made about the Make Poverty History campaign. It all went like clockwork and I believe was highly effective.
Latter in the day we performed the dance again down in Circular Quay. The photo here shows the end of the dance.
I somehow got past my fear of worrying about how stupid I looked and I'm glad I did. I would hate to look back on the event ten years from now and say I did not have the courage to be part of something that changed the world. This photo is stolen with permission from Sonia Presser.

Maiden Warrior

Day one of road trip training revealed to me that I was one of the older people involved. This is due to the Oak Tree Foundation having the policy that you must be under 26 years old to be involved. (This rule allows young people to get involved in world changing activities and lead them). For the first time in my life I answered to someone younger then me. It was not such an odd feeling and when I think about it everyone I answered to on road trip were younger then me.
One such person who made this experience feel so natural was my group leader Eleanor who was latter dubbed as "Boss". Other group leaders could hardly measure up when it came to how they handled their groups. They were either too controlling or too focused on themselves. Ele kept us inline without making the whole thing like school camp.

Several people lost their cool on road trip and the pressure from the administration roles they had taken on had clearly taken a toll on some of them. This is understandable but a few of the crew organising the trip, never raised the tone, never spoke out of anger and kept the frustrations to themselves. Elie was one such person she made it fun and the few times a hint of stress popped through it was tame and did not retract from the experience or the atmosphere.

The key aspect to Eleanor that stuck with me was that whilst we had only a limited time together she took the time to get to know each of her team members personally. In a week full of timetables and deadlines there was limited time to do this with any one so most road trippers only got to know one or two people really well. Eleanor had additional rolls to play in the campaign as well as a group leader and still managed to have all of her team call her friend.

Admittedly I had a soft spot for Eleanor for reasons i don't really know. She represents everything I stand for, a firm follower of Christ who acts on her words and gets out into the world to make a difference. She is achieving wonders with her life, both personally with travels across the globe and with her faith. I had the amazing experience of sitting in on a conversation where she shared her faith with other road trippers and I hope I was there to back her up with it. This conversation took its natural course and nothing was forced onto people, she shared my views on when its appropriate to discuss such issues and when its not. Whilst on the war path for Poverty she happily took up her sword and battled for Christ at the same time.

I pray that in years to come that our church will be filled with young people as active in their faith and as passionate about injustice as she is. What an awesome force they could be, our churches and the world need more maiden warriors like Elie. My road trip experience was something that will stick with me forever because of the people I now call my friends, none more so then Eleanor.

City of Sights

When you live in an area for an extended period of time you slowly grow numb to the awesomeness of the local sights. I feel i am no exception to this, growing up on Sydney's Northern Beaches the sights from North head, Manly or Palm beach are now the norm. Even the local shopping center Warringah Mall is fairly impressive for an open aired shopping mall. Seeing these things semi-regularly, you lose appreciation for the splendor of them which I am sure happens to everyone within their own communities and we are pleasantly reminded of how amazing some of our local sights are when a visitor pops in and reminds us of it. This also seems to apply with the spectacular sights of my home city which are known globally. Sights such as darling harbor, the opera house and the Harbor Bridge have also slipped into my field of everyday sights that I'm tired of. Departing from my home for a small period of time and returning again I thought I would possibly appreciate these sights more, however I did not. That is until I came across some photos from a fellow road tripper who was more then willing to share these photos with me. These are the photos I am sharing in this post and the photos were all taken by Sonia Preisser who does use her photos in competitions so I am thrilled to have been given permission to publish them in my blog. The photos caught me with the beauty of the locations shot just as much as some of the engineering involved in building some of these structures. As I'm sure you will agree I do have some awesome sights in my home city its a shame i have grown a little numb to them.

3 of 3 Highlights

The third highlight was a attention grabbing stunt the New South Wales team tried when walking through the tunnel under central train station in Sydney city. A large Congo line with a bongo drum i the middle was all that was planned. To describe the out of control chant and uproar that actually went down as epic would be a gross understatement. The stunt echoed across the streets of Sydney and drew all sorts of attention including police. How effective was it? who knows but it made everyone stop for 150 adolescents charging through a public walkway chanting and clapping. I pray someone filmed this as I would love to share it with the world. I am very proud of this photo as it not only captured the magnitude of what was happening (look how far back it goes) but it caught everything in one shot, the girl with the bongo drum in the right hand lower corner and the chant going up through the tunnel, in addition to this I was running backwards and holding the camera above my head. Not a bad effort if I do say so myself.

2 of 3 highlights

After bombarding uuniversities we were released for lunch just outside the gates of Sydney Uni. A quick glance at a few of my fellow team members and we knew we were all thinking of the same thing. We quickly scurried off towards the uni quietly praying that one of the other two with me knew where they were going. I already knew that one of my companions was from Newcastle so the chances of her having any idea where we were heading were slim. Once out of earshot we established that the third member of rebellious trio was a student at Sydney Uni and led us straight to the watering hole. Uni bar was a very impressive sight for what I imagined would be a grubby pub. Sneaking in lunch time beers was not the highlight, the highlight was returning to the group early whilst the rest of road trippers were still making sandwiches for lunch and having three of Sydneys homeless approach the trio.
The first two were men who politely asked if we could give them something to eat from the table set up to feed 150 people, it was a fair enough request. A few fellow road trippers happily set about making them several sandwiches and they were very grateful and were on their way. The third, a lady who wanted to sign the petition and eagerly reached out to sign. I noticed things my companions did not on the lady's arms and quickly realised that the person in front of us was a Ice addict with severely disfigured skin from picking and scratching at it. She stop mid way through writing, when the petition asked for her postcode (it did not require her full address) and announced "I don't have a postcode". I don't recall how I felt at that moment but I do recall her face and i think it will stick with me for ever.

1 of 3 Highlights

Road Trip day three was a much needed boost in many of the road trippers confidence including my own. After day two at Manly the team set out to hit the universities in the Sydney area to raise awareness of our campaign. We were received far more positively here compared to other areas in both Terrigal and Manly. The general consensus from most road trippers was we were received far more graciously by university students for two reasons. One: we were similar in age to most of them so they seemed more willing to listen to what we were saying. Its always easier to discuss this with your own generation. Two: University students are generally open minded and at a point in their life where they are willing to listen to rational argument or are already thinking of such things. This was was the first of three Highlights and this is visually displayed by five road trippers including myself up a tree.

Thank You Mr Philip

Captain Arthur Philip named Manly Cove after witnessing the masculine behaviour of the local aboriginals in 1770.
Day two of Make Poverty History Road Trip was filled with an assortment of things all taken in very quickly and rushed through. Thankfully the second stop of the road trip was close enough to home for me to refer to it as my home town. Manly Corso was the destination for us and i felt a small amount of pride when i stepped off the bus and took in an area i had spent many hours of my youth in. This feeling of pride quickly diminished when reports came back from fellow road trippers of verbal abuse and in one case physical abuse towards ambassadors on the road trip who were on a mission to raise awareness about poverty.
I was troubled by these reports as i had only had positive experiences of the place both on the day and in the years past. A high income end of town seemed to lack the compassion for fellow human beings in dire need of help. Fortunately latter in the day some more positive feed back came back to me, yet in hindsight Manly was at the top of everyone's list for the most negative stop on the road trip.

Latter in the afternoon I wondered off to the beach and sat on the cold concrete steps and thought through the days scrambled events. Why was I so proud of this place? Why did it let me down so much to the point that many fellow road trippers now despised the place. The people of Manly had let me down and I felt a little hint of shame creep into my mind. I concluded that I am not responsible for peoples attitude and behavior, I am responsible for myself and my behavior, I represented those people on road trip and weather they liked it or not I feel I did them proud. People can change and my home tribe so to speak needs a lot of work but those with the most need to change are those who need the most attention. People who are self absorbed and selfish are those who most needed to hear our message. So I concluded that whilst Many may have become the most negative stop on the road trip it was possibly the most important.
I still love Manly if for no other reason then it is Beautiful. Give the people time I will change their minds.

Diamond in the Rough

One trip, one week and one thousand people and at the top of my list one small stature little girl who fought harder then any other on the Make Poverty History campaign. Whilst she may be short and was often treated like the child on road trip she is in fact twenty years old and currently studding at the University of Sydney. I surprised myself when i wrote out the lists of positive and negative things that happened on road trip when Robbie Diamond was the first thing i wrote down on my positive list. I made some friends for life on that trip and whilst i felt Robbie was probably one of them i did not think she would have topped my list but she did. Robbie kept our team sane and sticks in my memory for two reasons.
The first is that she called it how it was. If a team member was out of line they were politely told and the matter dropped but just as frequently she would praise others for things that most would not bother to mention. She treated all her team members with love and gave them all an equal chance, i never once heard a negative word from her mouth and she raised the spirit of the group, she was fun and bubbly and made the entire experience that much better for everyone who came in contact with her. A valued team member that took the time to get to know each of us. I had the opportunity to spend some time getting to know Robbie and watching her fire up for the cause.
This is the second reason she sticks in my memory, She was easily the driving force behind our group when it came to approaching strangers and talking about what we were doing. She had so much courage and showed the rest of the state how it was done. She even raised the questions surrounding my faith and my Tattoo which opened up a lengthy talk.
Road Trip was that much better because of the contribution Robbie Diamond made.

Out of the Zone

Road trip was only eight days of a seemingly unscheduled existence yet will be eight days that will stick with me for the rest of my life. Upon returning home I sat down and wrote out everything I could remember from the week. I created columns and listed my positive experiences of the week followed by my negative experiences. The positive outweighed the negative ones tenfold. So much has occurred that I had no idea how to document it and do the events and the people the justice they deserve.
Stepping onto Terrigal Beach from a twelve seater minivan dressed in florescent pink super hero costumes was a little unnerving yet in hindsight was possibly one of the easier things asked of me over the road trip. All road trippers were dressed up in many different colours and let loose on Terrigal to unleash the awareness campaign. Bight colours zipped up and down the beaches, across the parks, through the coffee shops and down side streets asking strangers for their support whilst dressed up brightly and with their underpants on the outside of their costume. The young people were passionate and full of energy and I was suddenly faced with it.
A huge hick up from my child hood is the worry of what people would think of me. Why am I so caught up in judgement from other people? I’m not sure but the comfort of not pushing that issue too much was thrown to the wind when I signed up for road trip. I knew it was coming but here I was faced with it and I don’t think I was prepared.
The exact same issue of having others judge me forced me to refrain from informing my team members I was worried about it. The brave face on out I went. That day was a stepping-stone for me when it came to breaking through problem firstly as I had little choice other then to get into it. But more so because I saw people who I knew battled with the same issue man up and take it on and come out successful. One of my team mates, Carmon was a little shy and kept to himself for the first few days of the trip he latter demonstrated to the entire New South Wales team that he was a nervous person and that he had massive courage. Cam was an inspiration to suck it up and face your fears.

Operation Red Fox

Stupidly I choose to wear my fathers old military issue pants over the top of my thermals this morning. Multiple nights camping in temperatures around the minus three mark meant that for three days I was wearing thermals under my normal clothing. This was highly effective at keeping my body temperature up with the exception of toes and fingers. Returning home I failed to add up that the close to freezing temperatures in Canberra in the early morning were somewhat opposite to the crisp autumn day Sydney was experiencing. I stepped of the bus into Sydney central station, said my goodbyes and carried out the line up of required tasks to get a heavy pack and myself on a train. It was here I realized that the heat of thermals and a lack of necessity for them was causing my body to shed liquid very rapidly and made the train ride somewhat uncomfortable for both myself and the Chinese lady sitting next to me. Someone did tell me this past week I was rubbish in the forward planning department.

Saturday afternoon I wrapped up a massive, massive week on the Make Poverty History Road Trip hosted by the Oak Tree Foundation which has taught me many things. I have yet to sit down on my own and really pull apart the week in my own mind. I still have to look at the events, what I learnt, who I met, what mistakes I made and what the campaign achieved but felt the need to get something up on the blog quickly and to give you a heads up there will be many posts to come in relation to The Road Trip.

Whilst I do still have to have a serious look at the past weeks happenings I am certain that one thing I truly value out of any style of event like this is the networking of people with common interests. This was no different, I seemed to bond very well with one particular individual who had an equally relevant common interest in bourbon. This event was intended to be alcohol free so the term red fox was developed between us when ever discussing the sneaky off to a pub for a quick drink. Before long others on the trip seemed to have the same idea and by the end there were an assortment of colored animals spending money in pubs in Canberra.

Peter Harris

Primary school was a painful experience for me, for reasons unknown to me i became the kid they all bullied, i can't work out why as my self assessment says i was pretty awesome but none the less i coped it in primary school. Fortunately my family moved from Canberra to Sydney and a new start was in order at my new high School Covenant Christian School.

I have very specific memory's of a few of the early days at Covie and one that stands out more than any other was the day these new kids in my life tested the waters when it came to seeing if i was potentially the picked on kid. This is just the rigmarole we all went through when starting at a new school and Covie was no different.

Day three at the new school stands out for me, an olive skinned kid by the name of Peter Harris repetitively lined me up with harmless fun at my expense. He sat behind me and flicked things at my ear for what felt like hours. Why not? it seems humorous. I had lived with much worse in years past and remember trying to ignore it but as a child i struggled with my temper and remember hitting the snapping point. I had an apple in my entourage of food for the day, a very large apple (i don't know why, as i was not overly fond of apples)

I may be playing this up a little in my mind and Pete may tell the story differently, if he even remembers the event, but I distinctly remember the stunned look on Peters face when he relised he had just been taken out by a flying apple. I had taken enough and clicked. Not exactly lining up to join the Schools baseball team but on that day i had good aim and threw my apple square at Petes head and it found its mark. From that day on i never had another bullying problem at School.

Later in high school Peter and i became good friends and got sucked into some of the undesirables of life. Skipping Business studies to smoke cones was a semi regular occurrence and if you assessed us and our attitudes at the time you would be forgiven for predicting we would both end up in prison.

We are rapidly approaching ten years since i left high school and almost as many since i have seen Pete but i ran into him with a few other guys from high school earlier this week and was severely encouraged by his story.

Pete has, sometime in the last seven years turned his life around and has a new found inner fire for God. What an awesome God. Two guys walking a thin line between citizen and delinquent in mid high school have hardly seen each other for seven years, yet both discovered the calling of Christ in their lives and are passionately fired up for him and his callings in our lives. Pete represents the men of Faith we need. Real, down to earth, level headed Christian men who will change the world for God. He inspires me to keep fighting for my Faith and battle through the crappy times.We need more Peters.

Something to Ponder

Recently Soph and I went to the cinemas and as usual I had minimal input in this as things tend to be organised by the girls whilst I'm out and about and upon returning home, I am informed of the plans for the rest of the evening. This is something that I am starting to accept more willingly as it forces me to go places I would not normally go on my own accord, it forces me to interact with people that if left to me I would steer clear of and it forces me to sit through movies I would not have selected.

Admittedly this has forced me through some dribble like New Moon when I'd rather line up for Robbin hood, 300 and Avatar. However sitting through films I have not chosen has even been as powerful as seeing friends come to Faith after watching Paranormal Activity.

This particular time was Sandra Bullocks latest The Blind Side. Not complaining to loudly as I am a fan of Bullock however I doubt if left to my own choices I would have bothered with the film. I now highly recomend it. Its a fantastic film, based on a true story and real people, it pulls at heart strings and displays the love the human race is supposed to have.

A large black boy has no home, no family and no friends. He does not ask for help but a wealthy woman and her family offer him a couch to sleep on. She invites him into her home and eventually into her family and assist him through school until he gets to play football for one of the big universities in the USA.

In recent times my immediate group of friends have raised some amazing discussions after some of these movies and this was no different. The question came up "If it were you, would you do the same?". If we were the Mum in this story (Leigh Anne Tuohy) would we offer the same love to Michael?.

Every one was so quick to say yes. We all believe that at our core we are good people, we all believe that given the same opportunity we would do the same for any other human in need. But would we?. Say we really were there, we had a huge house, secure job, every material item we ever wanted. We had a ten year old son and a fourteen year old daughter and we stumble across an enormous African American man, we don't know a thing about him, his motives his morals his past. Would you invite him into your house and family at this risk of him abusing the love you showed. The question even came up in the conversation, "does the fact that the person in need is a colored man change anything?" again a chorus of no. I believe it does. At our core humans have no difficulty falling into the trap of racism. Someone is different, there fore how easy is it to discriminate. So be honest with yourself and ask the question given the same chance would you do the same for this boy?

The conversation still echoed Yes. Why? because we are good people at heart. We love to see those less fortunate get a break from their hard life We all want to see people get out of hardship we don't want to see homeless on our streets, we don't want to see a family fall apart, or kids drop out of school to become nothing. In our hearts most people want to see a positive change in our world .

We then blow if off with comments like "I wish I had the chance to help someone" or "I can't do anything its not a problem around here". Both of these are comments that arose in our discussion. Michael Oher is a symbol and is a symbol in our life, if we claim to really want to make a difference, if we answered yes when asked would we have given Michael Oher the same chance Leigh Anne Tuohy did, then we need to act on it.

World vision, The Oak Tree Foundation, Baptist World Aid, Amnesty International, Anglicare and Mission Australia are all organisations that operate out of our local area to help those in need both overseas and here in Sydney. One objection to these groups is "its not personal". Time to question your motives who are you really doing this for. Its Bloody personal for the people at the other end receiving the much needed aid. We can be a Leigh Anne Tuohy for someone. We can be their hero.

Kepping it upbeat

Recently sitting on the front lawn on a crisp Autumns day re reading through my Blog. By Blog is true and honest on events and emotions i have felt however i don't believe it is a balanced account of my life, and the re reading it made me feel that i come across a little depressive, i hope it has not done this. Re reading the past few months worth of entries there seems to be a common thread of raising negative issues that i am encountering. It does not seem very bright and upbeat. Whilst these negative things have occurred and do effect me, my blog reflects only half of what happens to me. There are more positive experiences then negative in my life yet for what ever reason i don't seem to document the positive ones as frequently. So today i will focus on a positive You can't beat genuine friendship. My best mate happens to be a female which may have proven to be a problem in the past but that's behind us now and Bree is probably the one person i can truly rely on. The first person to pull me up when Im out of line. She has no issues getting angry at me when it's needed and i know she has stood at the receiving end of my blow ups. She seems to be the most faithful friend i have and has stood by me for many years now though thick and thin. Our relationship is not our tolerance of one another but rather our acceptance of one another. We all need mates like Bree.