Thai Potong

I realised looking back through posts that I had promised pictures of our night out on king street, but not delivered. Well here they are.

We ended up at "Thai Potong" quite an impressive place! the restaurant was so big, for example, that it had it's own gift shop!!! There was some system of earning tokens to use in the shop with the meals that you bought, but we couldn't work it out...

Jodie got an incredible flaming seafood hot pot creation. The slightly embarrassing thing was that the waiter couldn't make the flames go out! Chef was a bit trigger happy with the alcohol evidently!

I ordered snapper, which came out whole covered with tasty Thai goodness. and teeth...

All in all, it was a great night out - thanks Jill (Jodie's mum) for shouting us dinner!

Fight Club

Church has been unexpectedly enjoyable... that might sound strange (or may be not!) let me explain.

Looking through the job description in deciding to work at St. John's, I was keen on the sermon preaching, keen on the occasional service leading, being around to meet and greet at sunday service and so on...I was a little less enthusiastic about 'Fight Club', which is what they call their sunday school for y3-6 boys.

so yes, the name sounds cool, but it is still a group of hyperactive boys around 10 years old who have an extreme reaction to the suggestion that they have a girlfriend.

I've never done kids church, i dont particuarly have any skills in dealing with (read: controlling) kids, and on a whole I just dont like them that much! (sorry to be so brutally honest, but they pick their nose, can scream at ultrasonic pitches, and have the attention span of a goldfish)

But that has been the surprise - Fight Club has been a real highlight of Sunday for me! The other two guy leaders are sensational and have made it very easy for me with all my inability to slot in. They are fantastic with the kids and I've been really impressed with the work they done at making kids church work for this particular demographic.

The background is that Fight Club was created to try to address the problem of guys in this age group almost without fail leaving Sunday school because the program missed the mark. mostly it was too much about making craft and felt pretty girly.

So they came up with a format which seems to work really well: We start by kicking a soccer ball around for 15min (=run them into the ground and wear them out early) followed by one of the leaders reading a small chunk of the Bible. We're working through Colossians at the moment...this gets followed with a really short talk about the passage, a few questions then praying. This takes around 10min of the program...which just about works given aforementioned goldfish-esq attention span.

following the talk we've been praying around the world: someone gets to spin the oversized globe of the world and pick a country, they then have the job of researching that country during the week to pray for it next time.

Then we've been doing what every young Sydneysider should: build a replica of the harbour bridge out of paddle pop sticks.

I think what works is that it is realistic about what interests guys that age, chasing a ball constructing stuff. and realistic about how much space they have to engage with information and Christian stuff. I think they like the name and like having a group of their own with no girls too. It has been exciting to see these young guys really engage with the Bible though. It was brilliant to hear them questioning and throwing around what it mean for Jesus to be the image of the invisible God for example last Sunday.

Good stuff. Fight Club, by the way was chosen in reference to 1 Timothy 6:12:

"Fight the good fight of the faith. Take hold of the eternal life to which you were called when you made your good confession in the presence of many witnesses."

We use it as a memory verse for them each week.

Still alive

wow! it's been almost a month since last post!! sorry if that has been a disappointment to any of you :-)

So lots has happened. we've both been bombarded with high intensity ancient Greek for example. for the first three weeks, that was all we were studying! ugh! so it's been great that last week the whole range of other subjects started. Has added some much needed variety to the week!

Top lectures for me (so far) are New Testament, and Doctrine. In NT, we've started with Mark's gospel which we'll study for a third of the year I think. I read a book on Mark before coming to college written by the lecturer and loved it! (P. Bolt, "The Cross from a distance) So it will be great to learn more from him I reckon. The icing on the cake is he looks like Merv Hughes. see left...

Doctrine has been brilliant. John Woodhouse, the principal is lecturing...we haven't covered too much material yet, but flicking ahead I think this is going to be the kind of subject to create stimulating discussion around the lunch table.

Not sure if I've mentioned already, but cooked lunch is provided by college every day! It's built in to the course fees and sometimes the food is deep fried, so I'm a very happy boy! That's generally been the last thing in the day so has been a good chance to sit around and chat about stuff with other people in the course. Sometimes it's just exhausting and I'd very much like to crawl up in a hole and have lunch (deep fried of course!)by myself.

To counteract the effects of a cooked lunch each day, we've been walking home each day - A tidy 30min walk down King Street and some backstreets to our humble abode. King Street is great. College is No1. King Street and we walk most of the way down past a huge number of Thai restaurants, cafes, bars it really is a cultural extravaganza and is always abuzz with activity!

ok. more posts to come soon.