Enter Nerdom

So, however big a nerd you think I am based on the last post about star trek...think bigger.

This is mostly for Aaron's benefit that I post this, but there are others of you who will get a kick out of it too. My teammate Deron and I were sitting around yesterday and I suggested cards. We were going back and forth on what to play so we just decided to make up a card game. And I had this brilliant thought. Why not try and make a card game that slighly resembles the fundamentals of the popular trading card game Magic The Gathering! So that's just what we did. Sky's the limit on this one Aaron. Whenever we're bored and don't have Magic Cards with us, we can fake it with normal playing cards. I won't post all the rules here, but it is actually passable. Here's the fundamentals in major geek speak. Cards can be used for Land, Creatures, or Spells. You assign a different specific spell to every number (like number 2 is swords to plowshares). You can place a card down and it gives you it's number in mana for that suit. You can then bring out a card or spell of the same suit. There is no mana burn. Creatures of the same suit can defend as one creature. Creatures with the same number value can band...and more.

I also went lawn bowling today. It's like bacci (is that how you spell that?) ball only you strictly roll the balls and they are weighted on one side so they curve. It's played on a flat surface. It was heaps cool.

I meant to tell you all that I shaved my full beard into some funny facial hair. It makes me look like gambit or wolverine or something. You'll have to wait for pics later.

We had a fun experience last night. Deron, Corey, myself, and our host Malcom went down to the beach for a nice twilight stroll when we came across about 70 youth. They were doing a Salvation Army camp that was nearby. They were on the beach split into teams, making sand sculptures of famous scenes from the Easter story. And we stopped and chatted with them. One of the girls asked Deron and I if we would be in her "The Lord's Supper" sculpture. So I played Jesus, because despite the short hair and wierd facial hair I have now I still look like the white Jesus. It was fun. I could have hung out with those kids. The girls were cute too :). Okay yeah they were like 18 (my sister's age...ewe) but I'll go with Malcom on this one when he says, "Makes me wish I was 18 again." Malcom's like 58 or something LOL.

Well that's it for now.

Oh...commenters. Sam, Cherry Coke is way better than Wild Cherry Pepsi end of story. And Jeff you are absolutely right. You have nothing going for you these days, I didn't know you realized it. I'm glad you've come to terms with your lift that ended after that fateful hand shake. Dood Dan, I can't wait to check out that trailer! I heard from others it was sweet too. In addition, I'm almost positive I have told you about that convention thing before and you totally made fun of me. Hey you guys need to buy me a 12:01 ticket and just give it to someone so I can pretend like I went this 3rd year in a row...how sad huh?! I miss you too dan...I miss you all. Love ya.

in Christ,
jason

p.s. My Aussie friend Viv tells me that some of the slang I posted is incorrect. Viv please post the corrections already. :).

Cherry Coke, Dr. Pepper, Almond Surfing, & Star Trek Voyager

What do these things have in common. They are things that totally rock, that I've been able to experience in the last couple of days. Let me disseminate my experiences with you now.

First off, my last host home just ruled. I stayed on an almond farm you guys. Yes almonds. I could walk outside not 20 meters (we are in the metric system now mind you) from the back door and have my belly full of almonds before you could say, "Fresh almonds taste better than your momma's coffee." But it gets even better. We had a "day off" this past Saturday. I say "day off" because it started at 9:00am. They (our contacts) were like, "yeah we'll give you all of saturday off after you come to a 6:30am community breakfast." Bugger (bug - ga). It was good though 'cause I had heaps time to call a heap of people (that would be an Aussie sentence perhaps). So among the activities on my saturday off was almond surfing/sledding. My host family had a giant mound of picked almonds in a shed. One of the things they like to do is sled down it. It works...sorta. It took awhile of going down it before we created a track of matted down almonds that would be conducive to fast sledding, but we did just that. Once it was matted down I was also able to board down it (like a snow-board). I wish I could post the video I took on my camera. Man I really need to take some time soon to transfer a bunch of those photos from my laptop to my iPod and then on to the internet. Then that night we watched the series premiere of Star Trek Voyager projected on the wall and blasted through some surround sound speakers. I have the first season on DVD. It was a beaut (beewt). It was so glorious. We watched the next two episodes the following night. If some of you didn't know I was a big star trek fan, know now. I went to a convention when I was like 12. Jeff, you remember that don't you?!

Okay, now to the Dr.Pepper/Cherry Coke part. So we played in this town tonight called Birdtown. We played a FNP (Family Night Program) for them. It was cool. Our teammate Deron has not been feeling well lately so if you could keep him in your prayers that would be great. But besides that, it was a normal program. So afterward, our contact said, "We have a special gift we'd like to give you. Now earlier during your tour I asked you, 'What do you miss most from the states?'...Well I got it for you" and she gave us two twenty-four packs of Cherry Coke and two twenty-four packs of Dr. Pepper. You guys should have seen our reaction. I had no idea how much I missed the states until I saw those 24 packs. I hugged them for a long while :). I think it very well might be impossible for those who haven't been in another culture for a long while to understand just how great it felt. The people in the audience were almost wierded out by our strong reaction to these two common american drinks. It was the fact that they were familiar things from home. You can't find them in australia anywhere despite what the locals may tell you :). These 24 packs were actually brought by someone from the states specifically for us!

So that's my short little update...here are some cities we've been in since my last list: Berri, Loxton, Brown's Well, Waikerie, Barmera.

In Christ,
jason

Hey Cow!

Hey Cow! is just a game we sometimes play on the road. Ready...it's so extreme. While driving past a herd of cattle you roll down your window and all yell...wait for it..."Hey Cow!" and count (quickly) how many heads you get to turn. That's your score. We usually forgo the scoring part and settle for the laughs that come from seeing a bunch of cows, sheep, or pigs turn and look at or scurry away from us.

Now to field the comments left by my three or four faithful readers. Jenny you crack me up and made my day with your m-dub comment. I don't think people would want m-dub, though. Plus we are talking mucho dinero. I miss and love you too. Also, I'm a little confused jenn. We've argued forever with you about the Jenny vs. Jennie thing. If I remember correctly you claimed "always Jenny"...but wha...what's this. Your blog name is Jennie. Unless I got the two confused just now, in which case I don't know why after knowing you for 22 years I can't ever remember which spelling you use for your name. It's embarrassing...I'm ashamed. Sam, thx for the word up! I will try and call soon, and check my email. Mom, I couldn't agree with you more!!! I'll run it by Marcus. I think he might be up for it, but people are so lame these days and just wanna do the typical "lots-of-people-i-marginally-care-about-getting-together-to-drink-and-make-fun-of-the-groom-instead-of-a-close-group-of-friends-going-to-some-charished-place-like-door-county-and-having-some-quality-time" type bachelor parties.

So are you ready for a big tall ade of blog?! Here's the short version of what's happened in the last two weeks or so. I got crook (sick), was on the news, gave a couple of sunday sermons, led games for some youth groups, played drums (eek or eegats if you prefer) in some public high school programs because corey was crook, got better, got crook again, stayed for a week with some fantastic people, created and led an awesome workshop on Youth Ministry and discovered, "Hey, I kinda feel passionately about the church not caring about Youth Ministry", sang in some caves, saw a giant lobster statue, played golf finally, went off-roading / kangaroo siting, and so much more. Read on if you care. This is going to a big one guys. So go on indulge yourself. That's right, kick of your shoes, put your feet up. Lean back and just enjoy the blogetry. After all, catching up with your friend down under soothes even the savage beast. (Wow that last line just sounds dirty. It was unintentional I assure you, but funny, so I will leave it (as an inner parenthetical I hope you all caught what I was quoting)).

So I guess we'll just start with Mt. Gambier. We were there for a week and it was marvelous. You can't know exactly how refreshing it is to stay with a family for a week when you normally get 2 nights with the families you meet. My family was so perfect for how I was feeling when we arrived. Sharon, Spencer, Liarna, Marika, and Jeremy Buck. I can only describe them here as simultaneously respectful of the stresses that they forethought might be the case for a person of my lifestyle while maintaining a fervant desire to get to know me. I played tennis with them. That was lovely. The girls were so nice and thought I was hilarious for being American. OMG people, aussie kids freak out when they hear that I can beat box. And my beat boxing has gotten pretty dang passable these days. These girls kept asking me to do that. They would also be so astonished when I didn't know some sort of Aussie place, tv show, music, etc. I finally said while delicately cupping her left hand in both of mine in a clam like configuration, "Marika, darling, I hate to break this to you...again...But I'm from a completely different country. It's on the other side of the world, and we get no Aussie culture where I am from." (aside from completely inaccurate culture references like Crocodile Dundee, and the Crocodile hunter). I had them rolling in laughter. The girls stayed up one evening with me and looked at photos on my laptop of my family and friends. It felt soooo good. Normally that kind of interest goes the other way since I'm in the position of being a minister.

That weekend in Mt. Gambier was eventful. On Friday I was on their news station, which is broadcast all around that part of South Australia. People in other towns since have said, "I saw you on the news!" I was that guy that they pulled aside away from the group and asked more direct questions while I stared just off camera. Sarah got a copy of it, lol, whatevs. Then that night I led the entire youth group in games and things, not really that unusual, but fun and here's why. So I tried to teach them ultimate frisbee. Hopefully everyone reading knows this game. But I learned some valuable cultural lessons after a short period of trying to play this game with Aussies. The lesson was this: when you're in another culture never assume they will infer ANY rules. I gave the rules that would have allowed any american, coming from an american football culture, to play the game with ease. But their football (known as footy) is quite different from our football (known as grid-iron). In their version of football, play doesn't really stop when the ball is dropped, it's like mad-house to get the football instead. Secondly, you don't have to carry the ball across the goal line, you kick it or hit it across. Thirdly, it is fairly violent :). So I basically said, "You have to get the frisbee over the goal line to score and when you catch the frisbee you have to stop moving, you can't run with it...okay?" And chaos ensued. They were stuffing each other, scrambling for the frisbee whenever it dropped, elbowing each other and then they got close to the goal and just chucked it over the line. It was hilarious. After some re-explaining they really began to like it.

Then that Sunday I gave a sermon in church. Both morning services and a night time service. I used all three of the scripture readings. The first reading was the passage in Exodus dealing with the thirsty Israelites crying out to God saying, "Did you free us from Egypt only to die of thirst in the desert? Are you among us or not?" They were almost ready to stone Moses. The gospel reading was the passage where Jesus talks to the Samaritan women by the well and tells her about worshiping in Spirit and Truth. She mentions that someday the Christ will come and explain all things to the people. Jesus says, "I am he"(basically) and she gets so excited, she leaves her water jug and goes to tell people that someone claiming to be the Christ is in the town. I contrasted those two stories by talking about how the difference in attitude was hope. The Israelites had no hope. After all God had done for them they had no hope that he was watching out for them. The Samaritan women had hope that the Christ would come someday. So much so, that when the possibility came she was so excited she dropped her water jug to go tell people. Who are we more like? Who am I more like? Am I like the Israelites, focussing on what I feel God isn't doing for me right now. Or am I like the Samaritan woman, anxiously awaiting God's next big thing. And how different would life look if we could have that attitude. Then I wrapped it up with the other NT reading in Romans 5:1-5 (check it out). That was it in a nutshell. People really dug it, though. My teammates told me I should be a pastor...I said, "hell no." :).

Then my day off on monday was glorious...gloriously packed. Sorry I couldn't call all of you family. My day off filled up. I went golfing, which I haven't done since August. Shot a 49...meh I have some excuses. Went site-seeing for most of the day. My host-dad Spencer took me all over. Down to the coast, across the stateline, back into some logging roads where he drove like a mad man looking for some kangaroos (I have some pics), to a beautiful river forest, etc. It took most of the day till dinner (tea time). Hung out with the kids some. Ate dinner, and went and saw Spanglish. Pretty decent. I really need to see again to say how I felt about it.

Later that week we offered some workshops for the community. We had a good turn out. We gave workshops on puppetry, personal sharings, worship, and youth ministry. I was involved in the worship one and the youth ministry one (Youth Ministry will now be abreviated YM). The worship one was old hat. Nat, Corey, and I have done it on numerous occasions now. We share our philosophies behind leading worship, practical advice on contemporary worship, etc. But the YM workshop was new and exciting. We decided to frame the whole workshop in a youthful context. So as people walked in they heard good youthful music playing (I think I used Armor for Sleep actualy) and saw some media on the screen we had (via our projector and laptop). We then had them introduce themselves and played a short name game that involved hitting and fun youthful things like that. We then had some discussion and watched a movie clip from Back to the Future to entertain the question Why does YM have to be different then other kinds of ministry? Well, I'm not gonna give the YM workshop here like I did with the sermon. It would be way too long. But we used two more movie clips throughout. One from Empire Records and one from Donnie Darko to illustrate various points about how to do effective YM. It just went so gosh darn well. I feel I've developed a passion, through doing this workshop several times now, for getting churches to realize the importance of YM and how to go about it. Three or four active youth stayed after to just pick our brains for awhile about various stuff and we ended up talking to them forever.

We moved on to Naracoorte (after some other stops that are totally worth mentioning but I lack the time to devulge. However, it is important to note the giant lobster story within these parenthesis. In Kingston there was this giant lobster statue. Just huge, like 50 feet tall or so. Anyway. So apparently this guy built his seafood restaurant to look like a lobster catching cage. But when he ordered the lobster that would go on top of this cage-looking building, the sculptors interpretted his blueprint to be in meters when he intended the dimensions to be in feet. LOL. Isn't that great!!! It's like the stone henge dibocal in Spinal Tap. So he just set it up in front of his restaurant). One of the cool things we did was sing in a cave. Natural acoustics were lovely and two of our good friends from Adelaide showed up to say hi. Viv and Kirby from Adelaide have become good friends of the team by now. Their like groupies and stuff. They drove up from Adelaide (not a short stint) and paid $30 a piece to stay at a caravan park just to see us for about 24 hours. They are great. And it is so rejuvinating when they surprise us like that.

So I gradually got more and more crook. However, Corey got even more crook. He collapsed and we took him to the hospital. He's got some major bronchitis they think, and he's on all sorts of meds now. So guess what?! I played drums today in our high-school programs. It was pretty crazy. It was refreshing to being doing something different, but frustrating at times when I knew we didn't sound nearly as good as we did when we were all there on our proper instruments. But I enjoyed it. The high school program presented it's own challenges apart from the music though. Some of the kids were just down right disrespectful (go fig.) During a really slow song we were playing one kid in the front row starting singing, not-so-softly, Sweet Home Alabama. Yeah, I know it sounds funny, but it's really unnerving when you are up there sharing something you think is important. But a lot of good came out of them too. Good conversations before and after with the kids. And a lot of them were very appreciative. Did I mention this was a secular school? It was. So it was an interesting feeling to be so boldly, openly, outwardly mocked for being a Christian. I thought about the verse that talks about the Christians being happy to experience persecution because it meant they were partaking somewhat in the sufferrings of Christ. Interesting.

God's really been giving me blessings like the Buck Family, Viv, Kirby, and amazing contacts in the places we've been. I can't explain it completely, but God is definitely the force that is keeping me going. I would have had a break-down about three weeks ago if this was all on my own strength. But He is refreshing me through people and experiences just when I need them. It's amazing to be so dependant on Him. It's been awhile since I've felt that way.

Finally a list of some places for you map lookers. Golden Grove, Tea Tree Gully (both in Adelaide area), Murray Bridge, Mt. Gambier, Millicent, Kingston, Lucindale, Naracoorte, Padthaway, Bordertown, and Keith.

Okay totally it for now,
Hope you enjoyed our time together,
Copy that trip. sev. / 511 over and out,
in Christ,
jason