ironically accurate...?

I hope Jamie doesn't mind that I stole this from his blog, but I thought it was funny, esp in light of the nature of that tragic and infamous last penalty that saw our Socceroo boys out of the cup...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j5TswjQDLf8&search=soccer

can I say the Lord's Prayer?

Here's a thing that I came across in an great old family devotional book thing Mum and Dad put together when we were kids. I like it. Gets straight to the point! These words aren't light words to say and carry life changing meaning along with them. Full on!

" I cannot say "our" if I live in a watertight spiritual compartment; if I think a special place in Heaven is reserved for my denomination.

I cannot say "Father", if I do not demonstrate the relationship in my daily life.

I cannot say "in Heaven", if I am so occupied in the earth that I am laying up not treasure there.

I cannot say "Your Kingdom come", if I am not doing all in my power to hasten its coming.

I cannot say "Your will be done", if I am questioning, resentful of, or disobedient to His will for me.

I cannot say "On earth as it is in Heaven", if I am not prepared to devote my life here to His service.

I cannot say "Give me this day our daily bread", if I am living on past experience.

I cannot say "Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us", if I harbour a grudge against anyone.

I cannot say "Lead us not into temptation", if I deliberately place myself, or remain in a position where I am likely to be tempted.

I cannot say "Deliver us from evil", if I am not prepared to fight in the spiritual realm with the weapon on prayer.

I cannot say "Your is the Kingdom", if I do not accord the King the disclipined obedience of a loyal subject.

I cannot say "Yours is the power", if I fear what men may do, or what my neighbours may think.

I cannot say "The glory is Yours", if I am seeking glory for myself.

I cannot say "Forever and ever", if my horizon is bounded by the things of time.

I cannot say "Amen", if I do not also add 'cost what is may, for to say this prayer honestly will cost everything. "

a tribute

Sorry if this is a bit mushy, but here's a random tribute to all my wonderful friends and family. I thank God each day for each of you! Actually I take back that apology, here's to unbridled mushiness! *in no partic order of fav's ;)

the countdown is on

Only the final quarter of my exams to go tomorrow arvo - Classics (philosophy, latin and anc. greek - tick, tick, tick), and I realise I'm being very naughty by blogging instead of studying right now! I'm disturbingly understressed about exams - I do want to do well, and I actually kind of enjoy studying once I get into it, but at the moment lacking in motivation ... is it the closeness to yr 12, or... my African adventure beginning in 6 sleeps?!

I'm getting so excited - I can't believe that I'm going on this amazing and challenging trip in the first place, and that I'm leaving so soon ... this time next week I may well be in Nairobi!! It's so much fun being at this stage as well, it's the best conversation starter with strangers - today going with Mum to Norwood to get some things for the trip I ended up speaking to a very helpful and interested woman in the pharmacy who brought out a whole armful of insect bite sprays, creams and gels so I could get the best one and proceeded to ask all about the trip (as Mum said, she almost asked for the list of stuff I have to take the Mum was holding!), the woman at the counter in the pharmacy (who also has dreams of going to Africa), the woman in the organic shop (who went to south America last year, and who we pondered with on the fact that the people and the scenery are the highlights of trips), as well as three people from church we also saw there! And then there was the blood test woman last week (who around my age went to Egypt and other places which completely opened her eyes), as well as our doctor and physio, and the physio receptionist!

Yesterday at church was great as well - Brad, Joh and I were interviewed by James about the trip at each of the services, and it was such a great and 'gripping' (mind the pun) commissioning - especially having people come up and lay hands on us as we were prayed for, it was really special. At the morning service I had all these older people coming up and clutching me by the arm, wishing me well and saying they were going to pray for me/us - they were so heartfelt, I felt a bit feeble in reply just saying 'thanks, I will!'

Although I have various little fears and worries about the trip, I'm just so glad I'm going on it. I'm excited not just because it's going to be fun, because it's not going to be the whole time. We're going to be facing really confronting things that will probably shock us, and challenge us in ways we may not have been challenged before, I know that. Even just logistically travelling in a group like that, there are going to be grumpy moods and tiredness and (altho hopefully not!) sickness. But that's what I'm looking forward to - being shaken up, and woken up out of my comfort zone. I've got no idea how I'm going to cope, but as someone I was talking to last night said, when you go somewhere like that you kick into survival mode and can be pushed further than you thought - hopefully that'll happen! We're going to be having reflection/Bible study times as a group each night which I think is a good idea, and a relief to know we'll have that time to collect our thoughts and bring what we're thinking and feeling back to God. I want to get to know God more on this trip thru meeting His people, and getting seeing just how similar or different we are, and learning from them! OK, enough talk, I just want to go on the trip now!

Back to study... but the question still remains... do I remain patriotic and stay up (the night before my exam...) to watch the Socceroos take on (and trounce!) Italy? Seeing as it's 10 now I'd say there's a fairly good chance. On ya Socceroos :D!!!! Let's hope we have a vaguely decent umpire this time! :S

for the birthday boy...

HAPPY 18TH BIRTHDAY DAVE!!!!

and now for some charming photos of the photogenic one himself ... (poser? never!)

I won't go all mushy on you, but have a great day (despite working for like 10 hrs of it!)... and I love you lots!

It's moments like these I'm proud to be an Aussie

Well I see that Anna's already beaten me to an enthused recreation of the game, but GO THE SOCCEROO'S!!!! After the most frustrating game of hundreds of near misses, the Japanese continually tripping over and cradling their ankles when they'd been 'fouled' (granted, some of the falls looked painful, but still, THAT many?), a clearly dodgy call on Japan's goal (all this coming from a complete Soccer novice) ... I must admit I was starting to get sleepy and thought all was lost, but then we (I use 'we' because clearly we the viewers did so much work from watching on our couches, (or baby mattresses, whatever the case may be!) ;) scored not one, not two, but 3 brilliant goals in the last 8 minutes!! Go Cahill and Aloisi!!

Now onto Croatia and Brazil

I'm glad I stayed up...

late nite mania and chocolate ecstasy

I know, I know, I've been terrible and not updated my blog with new and entertaining things for a WHOLE WEEK.... BUT I'm BACK! And you know why? Because I have no more essays to write - that's right, none, nada, zip! At the moment I'm going on, oh, roughly 3 1/2 hours sleep ...
Who ever said that a 2500 work essay couldn't be written in a day? Especially when you've only written the introduction and it's 10pm... Well, not me (well maybe the thought flashed across my mind briefly, once or twice...) I stayed up till 4am, surviving on powernaps* (* not actually helpful, surprisingly just made me more tired... funny that), but I DID IT!

And then to top it off today I enjoyed my newfound freedom (you always apprectiate the days when you don't have to do anything after handing in an essay...) with my two good friends Emma and Richo - it happened to be the Indian spread (or something...) day at the vego cafe on Rundle Street (just what we were feeling like ... just ask about the 'legendary' butter chicken, lol...) where we had a quality lunch... and we even had a brief brush with celebrity seeing the guys from All Saints (Mitch? Mick? Longish hair, reminds me of Russell Crowe) there with his wife who was the Sandra from Always Greener - they were both in The Alice I think. Hopefully that description gives u enough to go on :P We contemplated asking them for their autograph, but settled instead for 'subtle'-pinching-and-pointing-out-to-each-other of them, combined with embarrassingly-giggly-giggling-and-not-so-subtle-mentionings-of-the-quality-of-their-past-shows-as-they-hovered-nearby. We even gave up our table for them, aren't we nice? (we were on the way out anyway, haha... I mean *cough* sacrifice, yep) So that was a bit of a thrill, they looked like nice ppl... from the 2 seconds we saw of them!

AND THEN we made our way to the oh so talked about Chocolate Bean off Rundle St - oh. my. goodness. Before we even got to the chocolate, we were seated in this fantastically decorated little room upstairs - funky purple walls, dangly shelly light shades (they look better than I'm describing them!), draped fabric drifting in the breeze, coming through the sunny open French windows ... quite blissful. I could've fallen asleep there even if I hadn't got to sleep at 4 last night. After much deliberation and weighing up the pros and cons of each menu choice, we decided on chocolate soup (that's right, soup!) and the martini chocolate mousse - which, as Emma cleverly discovered (quite possibly the 'best thing she's ever done') taste delectible together. The chocolate was possibly up to the standards of Anna's mud cake last night at Tranny's! So several hours later we drifted home on full stomachs, after much laughter (perhaps a little too hysterical after handing in those essays...?) and frivolity...

I was going to put a couple of random but cool photos up, but the photo thing's decided not to work today... shame.

good ol Reverendfun ... I couldn't resist!