Well its well into 2011… and it seems that I didn’t really write any posts in 2010. It just goes to show that habbits die quickly if their not worked at. One of the things I want to aim at doing in 2011 is keeping this blog active with regular posts. Its harder than I thought, and probably more of a discipline at first until I get used to sitting down and churning out a post or 2 every week.

I think what I’ll do is schedule blogging into my daily routine and that way it will be in the diary, and it will be easier to not forget…but just as easy to skip. 🙂 Anyway this will be a short post just to let the world I’m still alive and you’ll hear more from me soon as to the exciting things happening already in 2011.

I like to dabble in a bit of DIY and last week the vacuum cleaner head broke. The head is motorised, and the motor spins a roll of brushes and is used on carpet. It does a much better job than normal vacuum cleaners. However the design isn’t good. The system is belt driven and the driving wheel from the motor is just a plain steel axle from the motor, the band slips off and digs into the steel causing it to heat up and melt. It creates an awful smell when it happens. Last week it did this again and melted too much to salvage. I thought rather than buy a special belt for it I’d try and make my own.

I look around for some nice rubber or something like that and discovered some old racing bike tire tubes that I’d kept in case I wanted some rubber. Well I cut the right length and sewed it together with cotton, all I had on hand. Let say my sewing skills aren’t the best, but it was pretty strong when I’d finished. Well I thought it was anyway.

Turning on the vacuum and too my surprise it actually worked, flawlessly!! Just as good as the original band and I vacuumed a rug that was rather dirty. Although while vacuuming I ran over a large piece of cardboard and it got caught around the brush roller and eventually the added pressure on the rubber band cause it to pull apart at the join. But I did get the whole rug cleaned so that was good.

I’ll now start on Mark II of the rubber band, I’ll probably still use the bike tube as the rubber its self was great and worked well, but I’ll look for another way of joining it. It’s amazing how useful junk like this can be when recycled.

Its not often you come across things that shock you, or jolt you out of reality. Today I read this article on Tom’s, it has a link to the full news story. Its about a couple in Chine, who following the birth of their baby decided to sell it for a mobile phone.

Chinese Couple Sell Baby to Buy Cell Phone – Tom’s Guide.

Some people commented things like “Whats this world coming to!” With things like this it makes you wonder doesn’t it. I’m familiar with the book of Revelations in the bible and this seems to paint an interesting view of where its all headed. Often mis-understood I believe it points to the end point, where its all heading and its definately a great read and the end point of revelations is pretty spectacular.

I had an interesting experience today while at the shops. I had ducked down early in the morning to buy some Wheet Bix as we’d run out and I got a parking spot right at the front of the rows directly opposite the entrance. There were lots of spots empty as it was early, however as I was leave a lady was already waiting to get into my spot, even though there was a dozen spots only 1 car space down from me. But even as I was walking across to the car she was already waiting for my spot, it seem that she didn’t want to walk an extra 10m to her car… but she did wait, a rare thing to see.

I find it rare occurrence that people will wait for things. It seem more and more in society today that people aren’t willing to wait  for something and patience seems at times at a minimum. We all have had experiences of drivers who tailgate you just to gain a few seconds up the road until you pull along side them at the next lights.

I think in the future having patience and waiting will become the new “find thirty” campaign in coming years as the government will try and convince people to slow down and be more patient with their driving, or other things that require us to wait. But lets face it waiting can be tiring, stressful and frustrating, but the more we do it the better we get at it don’t we? Can we actually learn the art of waiting?

I reckon people of Israel learnt the art of waiting as they waited hundreds of years for their messiah to arrive. At Christmas we celebrate waiting, waiting for presents waiting to see family but more importantly I celebrate the waiting for the messiah to come, and in that moment when Mary gave birth to Jesus, the waiting was over. God had arrive in real-time to begin his journey in setting right this world and obviously it hasn’t been completed yet and again we wait until he comes back again at  the end of the world.

Waiting is a part of life and waiting reminds us of the Messiah, and waiting for his return. Next time you’re stuck in traffic waiting, we have the opportunity to  gain new perspective and remember our messiah, Jesus.

One of my interests has always been Lego and following on from that Technic. I love the problem solving associated with knowing what I want to create and then solving all the different design issues associated with building, making, and running the various machines I make. I I’m not very good at it, when I look round the net at some of the creations people make I certainly get inspired. This is one I found this week. Very good idea and execution!! Well done Mahj!

Yesterday my wife and I finished painting my mother-in-laws room in her house. It’s going to be a grandchildren’s room and we painted it a nice pale green colour, though not pastel colour! As Tuesday is my day off, we’ve been going round there for the last few weeks prepping the room, stripping wall paper off and scrubbing it down to get ready to paint and yesterday we were able to get the colour on. It’s nice to see the finished product of all our hard work. My mother-in-law is quite generous she has offered to pay as a small amount that will cover the replacement of our subwoofer that bit the dust several months ago. I’ll post more info on that when it arrives!

But isn’t it nice to see the finished product of so much hard work? As a pastor it’s not often that I get to see the finished products of my ministry. Working with young people often means long hours, not much immediate return, but the hope is that in 5 or 10 years time these young people will still be developing their faith and that’s my ultimate goal as a pastor. To see kids come to know Jesus, and continue to grow in their knowledge of him. As opposed to painting walls this spiritual growth is often hard to see, but it’s certainly the most rewarding job when you do see results of God working in the lives of people you’ve had the privilege of working with.

I’ve only recently starting blogging and although I’ve read a few friend’s blogs regularly I’ve never got into the habit of starting one. I did start one a while ago, but never really thought I had anything to write. This time I’m a little more determined to keep going. I realized the  other day why perhaps I struggle to think of things to write about.  I think its because I don’t  watch or read much news, if any. I find there’s more than enough stuff in my day to day life that can or could be depressing and sad without having to start my day finding about the latest bad (often) news coming through from around the world.

Growing up as a kid my parents watched the news 4pm, 5:30pm, 6pm and current affairs program at 7pm. Then in the morning it was the Today Show back when it was big. So growing up, the news always seem to be on TV. Perhaps nowadays I’ve just had enough of it, or maybe I just don’t bother with it. Maybe as a kid growing up not having watched the news I would now be watching all the time like my parents did, not that they do that as much as they did back then either.

Perhaps I’m niave, selfish or just not caring but I have to be honest in that I really just don’t enjoy watching news on TV and any good news on there is often so trivial that its hardly worth the time it took to watch it. I do try and keep a track of major world news like earth quakes and the like. The only news I may catch is the 11:30pm highlights on channel ten at night time if I’m still up. Because of this I think I will struggle to blog about meaningful stuff you will be interested in, but I hope there’s a few that will read this far into my posts 🙂

Am I alone in not watching news? Does anyone else choose not to watch the news on TV?

I have a son who turns 2 in a couple of months. He’s a great  kid, quite smart I reckon. He can count to 13 and knows his alphabet song. However  it was interesting the other watching him because I had him sitting in his high chair and he was eating breakfast watching his favourite TV show, Play School. That finished and the lawn bowls were on TV. To my surprise he loved the lawn bowls! So much so that he’s been bowling balls around the house every day since. Although technically he’s probably actually rolling them, he calls it bowling and he loves bowling the ball with daddy.

It surprises me sometimes how little things and think that I think can be quite boring to watch (lawn bowls) could acutally be interesting to my son who is just fancinating with the ball rolling over the ground. I guess it makes me wonder what other things I’m missing out on being an adult!

If I was to ask “Can you come and pray with me?” Who would think “Duck and Cover!” Praying out loud can be uncomfortable, difficult or downright scary. There’s many reasons why people are uncomfortable praying.

Some people find the spotlight that others are listening too intense. Others find that they don’t know what to pray about and have to mumble and jumble their way through a prayer trying to find the words to express what they want to pray about. Praying outloud could be uncomfortable because there’s an expectation that your prayer should be full of theological words and phrases.

I was reminded this week that when we pray we actually are having a conversation with God, our father. Rather than call it prayer we should really call it chatting with dad. “Hey do you want to have a chat with my dad?” This sounds a bit less scary and daunting doesn’t it? Instead of needing to use big words and complicated sentence we  just need to talk to our dad. Sometimes we can forget that God is our father, a perfect father. When my son is talking and learning new words and trying to tell me things I listen to every word, its the same with God isn’t it? We don’t need big words and theological ideas, God our father is pleased just with our simple ideas and everyday conversation with him. Next time your praying or asked to pray out loud just think, you heavenly father is listening and its time to talk to dad, your heavenly dad!

I”ve been organizing a car rally today. This is not your typical car rally, you still have to stick to the speed limits and you have to get out of the car at some points to collect information and items that will provide the way forward. The car rally is for the youth group that I help run on Friday nights with Beechboro Baptist Church. I’ve spent the day driving round finding clues, writing down information and looking closely at all the details so that its not a straight forward reading from a sheet.

Its been interesting driving slowly round the local neighborhood paying attention to what’s happening on each of the local road that we drove along. I guess I’ve been down many of these roads commuting to work but never stopped or took time see what I was driving past. I guess that’s like a lot of things in life where I’m too busy or too focused on the end result that I don’t notice the journey along the way, or appreciate it as much as I like. Certainly going slower has its benefits sometimes!