My first holiday!

Well, my first in this job at least. I went to Perth for a friends wedding, and while I was there caught up with work and church friends, and spent a few days watching movies with my sister. I even touristed a bit, going into the underwater observatory at the end of Busselton jetty. All in all pretty good mix of fun and rest. 

The water was a bit murky but there were huge shoals of whitebait, which is apparently a bit uncommon. I didn't take my camera to the wedding, so I have to wait for Facebook to come up with nice ones. 

I did everything on public transport! I caught 3 trains, 2 planes and 9 buses! 7 different people were nice enough to offer lifts as well, some of them more than once.

I got home on Tuesday night, and have been struggling to get work done since then, but today I put on a big load of washing and started writing a bible study on singleness, and there are bread rolls in the oven for lunch! 

The coin toss

Some decisions are really hard. I'm not all that fast at making decisions at the best of times, but sometimes there are two really good options and it doesn't matter which one I go with. In these cases, the coin comes out. Heads is the green one, tails is the blue one. Flip coin, decision made.

But whenever this has happened to me, I tend to toss the coin and then choose the option which goes against the results of the toss. My housemate considers this dreadful. He can't understand why, having decided that it's too close to call, I can't stick with the coin toss. It took me ages to work out the reason for it, but I think I've got it now.

I reckon it's because I resent being told what to do by a bit of metal. Or perhaps more accurately, I don't like not being able to have something that is good, even if I have a different good thing, when I didn't choose to not have it. The coin tells me 'you can't have the green' to which I respond 'but I really like the green' but if the coin had said I couldn't have the blue, I would probably go for the blue, because I like the blue as well.

This explains why I didn't toss a coin for my decisions about MTS. Other than the fact that they are probably too big to make with twenty cents, obviously. The thing is, I always wanted to work in Newcastle. It's home. But I wanted to make sure I didn't choose based entirely in what I fell like but also on how I can serve others, and how I can grow as well, so I decided to check out Perth unis.

Anyway, I could have decided in the thoroughly blibical method of drawing lots,which would have definitely put me where God wants me to be, but then if the coin had said

Did I get the job?

Short answer: no. I didn't fail, but rather the whole conversation led me to the conclusion that I don't want to train in Perth. Hooray, a decision is made! And! The other major decision, 'When?' is also pretty much made. I am to begin at the start of 2014. This is less than certain, but it's heading that way. Next step is to inform important people of my decisions.

There were heaps of useful things I got out of the conversation with Rosemary though, other than 'I don't want to stay here.' We had a game of Who Do We Both Know, starting with my parents (who know everybody). We talked about long term plans, trainer/trainee relationships, what is available in Perth, lots of other things which I forget. The thing I hadn't thought of was that I should try to raise support for MTS and keep my savings for if I go to Bible college. There you go.

Coming up: why I don't make decisions with coins!

Feeling nervous

So the email thread has resulted in a meeting, I won't bore you with the ins and outs. It's in half an hour. I'm nervous because I need to go to bed in three hours and worry about how much time I will spend there, and also because I now realise I have nothing to say. I can't think of any questions, and don't really have any intelligent, easily shareable thoughts as far as I can see. There are lots of things I want to say (rant about), but since I have never met Rosemary before, I don't know if I will actually say them. But I'm essentially going to an interview, without a hint of preparation. I did spend a bit of time picking my outfit and worrying about my fringe. I wanted to imply "I'm a cool, modest, frugal uni-student type, who can hide an overly long fringe when required." we shall see how successful I will be. Stay tuned...

Ash Wednesday Part 2

The last post on this topic was extremely long, so I decided to cut it in two. Hopefully this one will be shorter, although I can't promise anything.

Last time I talked about the church service itself, but now I'd like to consider the content. The catholic church teaches all sorts of things that, as a protestant, I don't believe. Things like Mary being perfect, the pope having the same authority as the bible, their understanding of the Holy Communion. I have problems with all of these, but I didn't encounter that many things I didn't agree with. Bear in mind that I was sitting a fair way back, and couldn't see or hear everything, but as far as I could tell most of the content was pretty similar to the book of common prayer used by a lot of Anglican churches. I participated with most things, although at least once I chose not to say amen because I didn't agree with part of what they said. I think they only mentioned Mary once, and the pope never.

There were two readings, one was Psalm 51, I don't remember what the other one was, but it was a sizeable chunk, probably predetermined and used every year in the Ash Wednesday service. The message was brief and a bit airy-fairy as far as I could tell, but I don't remember anything particularly unbiblical (or, frankly, at all). I've heard worse in Protestant churches.

Although I was told I couldn't take Holy Communion, I think that if I had seriously thought about it (which I didn't at the time, although maybe I would have if I had had the opportunity to decide) I would have chosen not to participate. I think that sharing in communion in any church implies a certain alignment of view, and there is far much that I object to in the teachings of the catholic church, even if it didn't come up in the actual service I went to.

I look forward to having more discussions about Catholocism with my friend. I plan to give her a copy of Nothing in My Hand I Bring, which I found very helpful. It will be interesting to hear her reactions to it.

There's no place like home...

At some point I'll have to decide where I want to do my traineeship. I want to work at a university, but there are plenty of unis, all around Australia and the world where I could conceivably complete MTS. So how do I decide where to go?

The first place I think of is Newcastle uni, where I studied. I have a historyther, already know the staff, the culture, the geography, some of the students, that sort of thing. On top of all this, mosquitoes notwithstanding, I miss Newcastle. So that is an option.

I could stay where I am and work in a uni in Perth. I only know one staffworker in all of the unis here, so I would most likely be with a trainer I have not known for a long time. That could be an issue. My current home is not really that close to any unis. All that being the case, there is a very strong argument that there is a greater need in Perth. There are just less Christians here. Also there are bunch of unis, some of which are quite small, an option I rather like.

Along with these options is the fact that I could go anywhere, providing it has some sort of uni ministry for me to join. I am not restricted to where I have already been. This seems to me like making a difficult road even hard, so I will probably not follow it, but God may have other plans.

My next jobs are then to talk to the people who work here in Perth as well as in Newy to work out what... to do...