danny’s space

They’re up! Thanks to Chris for uploading them.

Find them here.

If you want to make comments, you will need to log in (because I don’t know how to enable this for guests and because it provides extra security) using the username chrisha - the password is the Taboo hint that Chris thought meant implants (in one word, i.e. ‘g***p******’). If you don’t know the password, contact me and I’ll get it to you.

Anyway, to make comments, in the album view (with many photos a page), under a particular photo use the dropdown Item Actions box to select Edit Photo, and then change (or add) text into the Summary box. This ‘comment’ will then display on the album view.

Wishing everyone a merry Christmas (I hope I can get this post done before midnight to make it legitimate… stupid WordPress bug making some posts with a particular combination of characters not post properly making me lose everything I had typed…)

What’s the reason for the season? What is Christmas all about? Contrary to popular belief it’s not about Santa or snowmen or reindeer or gifts, just like Easter isn’t about chocolate bunnies. Pastor Andrew has written something on his blog about this which I think is pretty useful. Christmas is all about the dude whose name gets abbreviated to the X in Xmas - that is, Christ. Christmas is about the most thoughtfun, necessary and undeserved gift that was ever given and ever will be given in human history. Christmas is Jesus Christ’s birthday - the day that God sent his only Son down to earth, setting in motion a 33-year course of events that would end in the execution of a Jewish carpenter, the miraculous, historically-documented resurrection of this man, and the salvation of humanity.

Pastor Andrew gave us a good sermon today about Christmas. Santa apparently knows if kids have been bad or good, and the good kids receive the presents. I reckon God also knows about this, but the difference between Santa and God (apart from the red costume) is that God gives presents to the bad kids. By this I mean that even though people are fundamentally godless and sometimes downright ‘bad’ (come on, admit it, you’ve known this all along), God loves us so much that he looks past our rejection of him, and sends his Son to deliver us from evil and to bring us back to him. It’s like Ground Force doing a garden makeover on a terrorist’s backyard. The undeserving (i.e. humanity) get the free gift (i.e. Christ). Do you know the reason for the season?

In other news, I’ve eaten way too much over the last few days. Chris’ Christmas party was, as usual with anything he hosts, full of tasty food and I basically had two servings (there was more than enough to go around). The food was great, the fellowship was fantastic, and I was beaten at effectively every game we played like poker, ping pong and SingStar.

And then last night Sara’s family got together with a few family friends from church (the Wu’s, Lai’s, Chu’s) to have a nice Christmas eve dinner at her place. I was invited as well which was nice of them. We had great food (again), which I can’t describe because my culinary vocabulary is severely lacking. Apart from the tasty sausages, the seaweed, oysters (which I normally don’t like but the ones they had were okay), sashimi, squid, etc, the best part of the night was undoubtedly the people. I never realised how great these family friend get-togethers really were. Even though I was the odd one out (being the only representative from my family), the vibe of the night was fantastic - parents chatting together over food, wine and some pool, and the kids hanging out playing foosball, mahjong, chatting and watching an interesting honkie romantic comedy about a sadistic girl. I re-learnt how to play mahjong, which must have been a frustrating experience for my tutor, Sara. But the whole night was great, such a good feel to it - I wonder if everyone being Christian had anything to do with it. It just felt like we were all one big family - and I guess we are. Thanks be to God for providing us with so much.

Today (Sunday) after church we wanted to go to Macquarie to watch a movie. But being Christmas, and being Sunday, we should have figured that everything was closed. Literally everything. Most of the entries/exits at Macquarie were securely sealed, including ramps to/from the carparks. This made for interesting driving because we went down the exit ramp to Waterloo Rd only to find out that it was shut, and had to reverse all the way back up, and drive into a few no-entry areas to get out again, passing a metal gate that looked like it had been rammed open. We ended up eating at Eastwood (which was alive with Asians, surprise surprise) and then bumming at Sara’s place. Another fun day.

Tomorrow need to do some preparation for biology olympiad teaching. I need to re-learn basic biology like what covalent bonds and cells are. Proves to be interesting. Looking forward to a day of ‘bludging’ at home though.

So to all, season’s greetings! Hope you’ve all had a safe, enjoyable and meaningful Christmas.

Okay finally beat my laziness and decided to actually post about the cool Terrigal roadtrip that a bunch of us had. Actually it’s still going on, the rest of the gang is probably heading back to Sydney as I type - Sara and I headed back a few days early.

Last Saturday arvo a bunch of us from church (Amy, Chap, Chris, Sara, myself) and a few friends headed up to Terrigal (well, Holgate actually) to stay at a beachhouse (which was actually in bushland, but semi-close to the beach, within driving distance at least) and just bum for a week. Marcus, Cheuk and a few others joined us on Sunday. The place was really nice - lots of rooms, full-sized snooker table, pool, big lounge and kitchen, our own ‘private lake’ (which was really just a mozzie-infested swamp but still nice anyway), and close to Erina Fair (which was good because we ate a lot).

The 3 days that Sara and I stayed for were heaps fun. Lots of aimless bumming, board games, Mario Kart, dips in the pool, poolside cricket, eating heaps of nice food prepared by resident iron chefs Amy and Marcus etc, watching random episodes and movies thanks to Chris’ collection, playing Kris Kringle, walks on the beach - what a great few days!

Taboo gets boring after a while, especially if some people play it so much that they basically memorise the words. Playing Taboo in couples teams helps a bit I reckon, especially since some clues were like, “The name of the teddy bear I gave you!”. Lightning charades was also fun, although you need to read the words properly - acting out a bridge when the actual word was ‘bride’ gets lots of weird looks. The photo above is of Amy and Sara acting out ‘birth’. Mario Kart was great, but Chap ended up caning all of us anyway. He also wasted us in Texas Hold’em.

Poolside cricket was mad fun, with fielders in the pool and Marcus and Chap playing with a pool floaty that twisted them into compromising positions. You couldn’t run at all on the wet tiles which made fielding fun - all you could do was waddle around. The girls stayed inside to watch The Notebook while the guys (plus Helen) played cricket.

The food was another highlight. Luckily we had the great cook Amy and fantastic BBQer Marcus there to feed us. Mealtimes were slightly delayed (we were really operating on Hong Kong time thanks to the lazy laid-back feeling of the whole place) but so tasty! From simple lunches of melted cheese on ham and tomato and toast to the BBQ dinners with lots of meat, salads and mash, we ate like kings.

Kris Kringle was interesting. I never knew it was actually a ‘game’ you could ‘play’. I thought it was just okay everyone bring a present and everyone pick a present - who would have thought that it involved stealing? *Gasp* Anyway, presents ranged from a LED light keyring to edible underwear (*cough cough* Champsman) and candles to handcuffs. Lots of fun!

Avoca Beach was a nice 10 minute drive through unsealed backroads which the GPS thankfully navigated us through successfully. By the time we went (6pm ish) on the last day it was nearly deserted, but the sun was still up so Sara and I were able to go for a nice stroll along the shore, getting my jeans totally soaked and the car heaps sandy in the process. After making a makeshift tripod (out of lots of sand, see picture) we took a few nice OC-looking shots and kept walking, heading back to the house at around 8:30 (by which time dinner prep had just started).

New catch phrases to come out of the few days included “making pasta”, “playing taboo”, “champagne showers”, and “aromatherapy”. Really, you don’t want to know.

And now, for a photo that just has to be shared:

More photos can be found in my Gallery. Chris promises to upload photos from other peoples’ cameras soon.

Thanks to Chris and Amy for organising such a great holiday! We want more!

After an encouraging and highly stimulating NTE and mission, and meeting so many people with such varied gifts and such great knowledge of God’s word and such passion to serve, I’ve been challenged to further develop my own knowledge and understanding. I seem to always do things in hindsight, like installing an alarm system after your house is broken in to.

I want to learn gospel Mandarin. At least some basic words which I can use to explain the gospel and to challenge people to investigate Christianity. That would have been useful in Ashfield.

I want to read more. Talking with Catholics through the mission, I don’t think I have a solid enough foundation to meet them where they’re at and to discuss things with them with appropriate historical and biblical arguments to support the Evangelical view. Katay suggested a book called ‘Evangelicals and Catholics’ which I want to go and buy.

I want to find out about other religions. Ashfield was a greatly multicultural and spiritually diverse place, and being able to understand other religions will definitely help me in talking to others about their faith and my faith.

I want to know the Bible better and be able to pull verses out of my head on the spot. My strand group leader raised the interesting idea of reading 5 chapters a day to get through the whole Bible in one year, and repeating this for 5 years - apparently your wholistic understanding and ability to apply the Bible can be significanty improved. I aim to at least try to do this, maybe starting with the New Testament.

Of course, I can’t do this by myself. I’ll be relying on God’s power to help me through. And of course, ultimately when it comes to evangelism, it is God who gives the growth (1 Cor 3:7). I want to spend time learning so that I can be better equipped to serve his purposes for me.

For his glory.

Sunday was a pretty short day, sadly concluding our stint with St John’s Ashfield.

We awoke early to make it to the ‘classic’ or ‘traditional’ 8am service, which was run using AAPB (An Australian Prayer Book). It was vastly different to the church services at ND that I’m used to, especially the way communion was run. Communion was taken at the front of the hall, and bread was distributed by Katay to parishoners kneeling on a bench. Thankfully there were cushions. The ‘wine’ of communion was actual real red wine, so I pretended to drink it when it was passed around. Yes, one cup was shared amongst everyone (well, two to be precise to make the whole deal more efficient), with the ministers wiping the mouth of the cup after every sip. Not my cup of tea. I wonder what P-plate drivers do, if they need to drive away afterwards? Old hymns were sung from the hymn book accompanied by moving organ music, and Dan gave his testimony. A musically-talented bunch from our team sand In Christ Alone during communion and escaped the shared cup. I met a lady called Joyce who turned out to be one of the exam supervisors at USyd, and she recounted a few interesting stories from her time invigilating exams.

Katay gave a talk about Christmas, that it was better to receive than to give. Basically, Christ came to serve and not to be served (Mark 10:45), and so instead of trying to serve God to get his favour, Christ has already done the ultimate service for us so that we can get to God. We just need to accept and receive this.

(Read on …)

Saturday was a less full-on day. We had community markets set up on the church grounds through the day, and a stall outside Ashfield mall selling girly things. A few of the team manned each place from 9-3.

I was at the markets in the morning. By the time I got there, Larissa was deeply involved in a conversation with a dude questioning Christianity. Face painting and balloon sculpting was going. I joined in the festivities, and the kids activities were used to invite kids and parents to the Narnia kids club that was still going on in the afternoon. The kids loved the face painting and balloon animals, although one cried when the swan made for her popped. I made another one but that fell on the ground and was popped by the blades of grass as well. Plenty of kids were lining up for the face painting and balloons, confounded by the fact that every kid wanted at least 2 balloons.

(Read on …)

This morning, a bunch of us again went to Ashfield train station in the morning to hand out those Christmas quizzes. I had thankfully rested enough to go this time, and it was an interesting experience indeed. The public were generally more receptive to leaflets than the typical university student who tends to avoid any piece of paper pointed at them within a 10m radius. We tooted expressions like “Test your Christmas knowledge” and “Would you like a Christmas quiz?”. The words ‘Christmas quiz’ will never have the same meaning again - and they’re actually quite a mouthful, especially if there’s a whole crowd of people walking towards the station entrance trying to get to work on time.

A couple of Jehovah’s Witnesses were there as well handing out copies of their Watchtower booklet things in Chinese. They moved around a bit but hopefully we got to more people than they did - unfortunately their material was in Chinese which worked better for the ethnicitiy of Ashfield.

Early in the morning of leafletting, this couple walked up and did the quiz on the spot. The guy got 9/10, and it turned out that he was a devout Catholic. We ended up having an extended semi-heated discussion on the Catholic belief that works and faith together were necessary to be saved, and that the only true church was the Catholic church. Of course as an Evangelical, I argued that the Bible said that only faith was necessary to be right with God, and that we didn’t follow the spooky bells and smells sacraments that Catholics follow. Unfortunately it was a pretty one-sided debate as I wasn’t quick enough on my Bible application to be able to rebutt his arguments, and both of us were quite unmovable from our own beliefs. If only I pulled out Ephesians 2:8-9, which Rachel reminded me of afterwards. It was encouraging though to hear that Sabrina was praying for the conversation as it was happening. This event also spurred me to want to read more on Catholics vs Evangelicals to be able to argue more effectively for the Evangelical beliefs.

(Read on …)

A few of us went to Ashfield station in the morning to hand out leaflets containing a short Christmas quiz, with the idea of getting people to see how little they actually knew about Christmas. I was unfortunately too tired to go but heard encouraging reports from the people that did - about how people were genuinely interested and how for some it seemed to be the highlight of an otherwise routine day.

After a quick debrief and team meeting, the doorknocking started. We went around in guy/girl pairs to the parish around St John’s Ashfield, letting people know about the Christmas events that the church was holding. Doorknocking was obviously a pretty scary thing to do, but after the first few houses it got slightly easier. Quite a valuable suggestion came from Katay in our morning briefing, which was to use the question “So, have you had much to do with church things in the past?” to let people talk about their experiences after the initial pamphlet plug.

(Read on …)

Half our strand group presented talks on the resurrection on Wednesday morning. The other half (which included me) were either too tired or too confused to write a talk and so shared what interesting or confused things we learnt. Good illustrations that were used included paralleling our seats in Heaven with tickets to a game, and looking at Jesus’ resurrection as the coolest thing any superhero could do. The strand group leader also left us with some parting words, about the fact that death undercuts everything that we do in life (cf Ecclesiastes) but that the work in the Lord will not end up in futility (1 Cor 15:58). People fear death, and this fear is overcome by Christ. Our life is safeguarded in Christ, so we have our life to give to him and those around us.

Then a very short morning tea which involved walking across the ANU campus to the main hall for the last talk from Chin about how God always knew that people could not obey all his Laws, and how he provided a way out through blood sacrifices - this is truly the meeting of justice and mercy. Thanks to Christ, who is the sacrifice to end all sacrifices, we can now come to God. We were challenged to analyse our lives and be convicted in the areas we were still struggling with.

(Read on …)

Tuesday was a pretty challenging day.

In the morning, Gibbo spoke about God’s household and the mutual, genuine love that all Christians should have for each other. As Romans 12 says, love between people of God’s family should be genuine, mutual, practical, deeply felt, humble, and forgiving. We were created to be like God, and his goal for us is to become more like his Son each day (Romans 8). I think all of us were highly rebuked in terms of having feigned love for those around us. We are called to be like Christ and so we should love like he loved. This needs to be practiced at church and beyond church - we should relate with tenderness, compassion and other-centerdness, sharing our time and taking the initiative to love others.

(Read on …)