Age is No Barrier

Twenty plus people jammed into the sheering quarters for more then a week and you are bound to get all sorts of rubbish going on. People farting in confined spaces, inappropriate comments and of course walking in on someone of the opposite sex is bound to happen. The South Australia trip was no different, people saw and said things they probably should not have, and all the while we laugh and giggle and just get on with what has to be done.
I stopped for a moment and cast my thoughts back to one particular incident on the farm involving a Young teenager in our church community and a young woman who is relatively new to our Church community. Dylan a fourteen year old boy happens to walk in on Bree in the shower. Any other combination of people involved in this innocent accident could have resuled in shame full and embarrassed people feeling awkward for the rest of the week.
Care free Bree is not even slightly bothered by the incident and laughs it off. You would think this would have been to Dylan's relief but again another person who lives life by the whatever goes, goes motto.
The rest of the team laugh and joke about the incident around the camp fire that night and both parties get involved in the joke recounting their own humours rendition of the event.
Dylan just fourteen years old is easily mistaken for a young adult and handles the whole thing better then some adults would. Sometimes I wish I was more like Dylan, I can already see the Warrior for Christ he is becoming and at just fourteen I can see this guy will change the world. I am proud to say that I am part of this kids life and can't wait to see the awesome things that will come from him.
The image shows Dylan (on the right) with Chris (a 19 year old Cube member) in on a hysterical joke out on the farm.

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.

Today was a new day

For the first time in my life i have fallen to my knees to beg to my God. I was never critical of anyone who prayed like that but i never felt comfortable about praying that way. I spent the past weekend at a Church camp which had all of our young adults group there. Up to twenty young people who have come to the Cube for some time now. A massive scandal ripped through the group this past week in a similar manner to what we see on our soapies these days. People upset, uncomfortable with other members of the cube and a whole heap of conflict. We went to camp ready for peoples lives to be changed, what we got were days of hard hard emotional work trying to help some of these people with their issues. Saturday night i had lost almost all hope of seeing any positive change in anyone's life over the weekend. I went to bed with the words of encouragement from Greg (a fellow Cube leader) "tomorrow is another day" was all he said to me.
It had been such a massive exercise to Get a friend of mine to camp. She was having troubles with her relationship ship with her boyfriend. she was planning on coming to camp, then not, then she was coming and so on. Looking back its so obvious that other forces had no intention of letting her get to camp. She had expressed some interest in Christianity and wanted to learn more, finally getting her to camp convinced me massive things would happen in her life at camp, it just had to be. But by Saturday night we only had a few hours remaining and i was loosing hope.

"Tomorrow is another day" well it had better be because the past one ended in pure shit. no other word described it.
Sunday was a new day. As if someone just clicked their fingers the next morning all of the problems of the day before were so distant. A serious and lengthy heart to heart with my friend led me to believe that if she has not already made a commitment to Jesus she is unbelievably close and told me she wishes to be baptised. It was a new day as she was the second Cube member to tell me that in one day. Camp did change lives but it happened in Gods time not in mine.

Paranormal Activity

Opps guys another heavy post on God issues.
I find it awesome looking back sometimes at how God works, how he has absolute control, and how awesome some of the stuff he does is. Several months ago a few friends of mine organised a night out, dinner and a movie scheduled and as per usual i was told last minute and thus had no say in what we were eating, where we were eating or what dribble i was going to be forced to sit through. Sure enough when Bree is involved we were going to see some ridiculous film that safely lands within the Horror category. Not a fan of Horror films by any stretch of the imagination and here i was ill informed and unimpressed. The film was "Paranormal activity".

Basically the film was deliberately low budget and made to look like it was filmed on a home camera. The plot is a couple are dealing with a demon who is out to get them and they have set up a camera to try and catch the demon making the film very believable as your told as the viewer that what you are seeing is real footage. At the end of the day the film is surprisingly scary.

When leaving the cinema a lengthy conversation went down with a few of my friends which started with "why are you not scared Dannie, do you not believe in the supernatural" on the contrary "I believe in more supernatural than you can dream of, i just have no need to fear demons as i know I'm on the right side" as you can imagine this sparked lots more questions and hours of discussion on God, Jesus and faith matters whilst sitting on a curb in the middle of the night. In the end the final question asked of me came from a close friend of mine and she asked something along the lines of "what if i want a sign to prove to me God is real and he wants me to explore this Christianity stuff, and how will i know if its a sign?" i answered just ask for one and you will know it when you see it.

......On her way home she saw a shooting star.