Amanda’s Musings

I’ve just come from a day’s work entereing data into a new database and now I’m here staring at my computer screen (entering info in!). Why do I do this to myself? I think I’ll go and watch teli.

I’ve been reading the book of Jonah and seeing just how much I can learn from each verse lately. It’s been a really enjoyable exersise. So far I’ve learn’t;
1. No matter what we do, we can’t put distance between ourselves and God
2. There’s no such thing as luck (Jonah got the short straw - what a ‘coincidence’)
3. The human solution will never work (the fishermen couldn’t row to shore)
4. When God asks us to do things that seem illogical or stupid (and we’re sure it’s Him telling us), he always provides a safety net. (in Jonah’s case the marine variety).

GREAT TRUTHS ABOUT LIFE THAT LITTLE CHILDREN HAVE LEARNED:
1) No matter how hard you try, you can’t baptize cats.
2) When your Mum is mad at your Dad, don’t let her brush your hair.
3) If your sister hits you, don’t hit her back. They always catch the second person.
4) Never ask your year old brother to hold a tomato.
5) You can’t trust dogs to watch your food.
6) Don’t sneeze when someone is cutting your hair.
7) Never hold a Dust-Buster and a cat at the same time. You can’t hide a piece of broccoli in a glass of milk.

Today I met with a mentor for the first time and she wanted to know all about me. In an hour I was able to tell my life story and it went a bit like this:

4 Christian Schools
2 Years at Bible College (in Sydney)
2 Years at TAFE (Secretarial and Art)
3 Years working (Chuck in a world trip and short-term missions trip to Belgium)
6 Months in the UK
1 Year in Africa
3 Years at Uni (BA Arts - vis Art)

Other stats included:
9 Years Married (but 13yrs together)
6 Years of Leading Youth Groups
5 Years of Leading Girls Brigade
14 Countries visited

Amazing when you look at it like that. Not trying to blow my own horn btw, I think it’s valuable to see where the time has gone. Anyone worked out how old I am yet?

So, as I said previously I will be running a camp for the mission SIM in October here in WA. Well, actually I’m organising the camp for SIM, not running it (I’ll have a newborn by then). This camp is for anyone who already feels the challenge to missions but has a lot of questions. I’ve organised workshops covering subjects such as ‘Can I take my kids with me?’ and ‘What is Culture Shock?’ etc….as well as a few cultural experiences. Should be an informative and interesting weekend! It’s called:

I just had a nice weekend at Perth’s Cornerstone Camp. Well, I didn’t actually camp seeing as I live only 25 mins away but I went down for some of the meetings. I must say, it’s so encouraging to see that there are that many 20 something (and 30 something) young adults who are Christians and enthusiastic about their Bibles! I represented SIM too and got interviewed on stage which was a fantastic opportunity to advertise a camp I’m running in October (might write about that in another post!) for Missions. Anyway, PTL it was great!

This past week we celebrated our 9th Wedding Anniversary. We decided to do something a little different so instead of spending the money on a fancy meal we went to the circus. The circus doesn’t come to WA that often so we really enjoyed the show. It was the Joseph Ashton Circus and came complete with a lot of acrobatics and a flying trapeze so it was very entertaining. One thing they mentioned is that local councils in WA aren’t allowing circuses into thier areas because of animal liberationists. Any circus that has animals in it is not allowed. This seemed very unfair considering that these people are a family business who work very hard. What animals do they have? Miniature ponies and two geese! Ridiculous laws. They treat their animals so well too, you can’t tell me they are any different to what’s done at a pony show or even a dog show for that matter! Anyway, we enjoyed it, a 2 hour show well worth the money.