Sapporo short-term mission blog up and running :)

The absence of blogs here and at Salteee are not a reflection on my busyness this time! Instead I've been working on getting another blog (yes...I know!) up and running to share more of our recent short-term missions trip to Sapporo.

So without further delay I present to you my 'Sapporo Short Term Mission (Dec 2007)' blog.

On this particular blog you will find:

• Unseen photos from the trip
• My daily journal entries with thoughts and reflections on our activities and the people we met

Drop by and leave a comment or two :)
Steven

Most embarrasing moments whilst chairing!

I recently read a blog competition requesting submissions for the most embarrassing moments of leading Sunday services. Some of the entries were pretty funny and as I reflected there have been a few moments I’m not overly proud of either:

• Once time I was chairing for Pastor Mun and as he finished I got up and thanked him for his message. I then attempted to summarise his message in a sentence or two to lead into the final song of response. I said something like, “Thanks Pastor for your message this morning. As Pastor has reminded us… umm… what did you say again Pastor?” I totally zoned out and forgot what he had just preached on!
• One time I gave the guitar intro for ‘No Other Name’. I started much too quickly but didn’t realise and also stuffed up the chord progression. To add further insult to injury it was a relatively new song and nobody sang :P It wasn’t my best musical moment.
• This one time, not whilst leading but whilst a musician, I was asked to do an intro for ‘How Deep The Father’s Love’ – my guitar had suffered greatly under the heat that morning and all of a sudden I was *incredibly* out of tune. Not only that but the pianist had not communicated to me earlier that he intended to play the song in a lower key – so I had an out of tune intro in the wrong key!

Thankfully things have been a lot smoother!

Finally!

After two and half weeks the coriander breaks through...

!!!

I love coriander :)

Picking up yet another hobby!

I was thinking recently that these blogs have been very neglected. This is in part due to our pretty busy schedule in the last few months and the growing tiredness which has crept upon us.

Next week we'll be flying down to Adelaide for a short break to visit my old home-town (first time back since I moved to Queensland!) as well as visit friends and...the Barossa Valley!

In the meantime I thought that I could update you on our newest hobby together - gardening!

Ever since moving into our new place in Kuraby we've been frequently encouraged/hassled by my in-laws to start up something in the garden. After the busy period of BLT finished we set ourselves to working the soil...and here are some of the results:

Pak Choy @ 2 weeks

Pak Choy @ 4 weeks

Rocket @ 2 weeks

Rocket @ 4 weeks

Roma Tomatoes @ 1 month

Roma Tomatoes @ 1 month and 3 weeks

As you can see, things are growing nicely! Praise God for all the rain we've had over the past few months. It's made this new venture more exciting than I originally anticipated!

We also have two types of basil growing nicely (English Basil and Thai Basil) as well as Vietnamese Coriander/Mint, Chives, Spring Onion, Cherry Tomatoes and Mint. We planted some Coriander seeds earlier this week but they have yet to sprout.

We've had one nice harvest of Basil so far which I turned into two types of pesto - Basil Pesto and a Sundried Tomato Pesto (with store bought sundried tomatoes). Recipes will be up shortly on my 'Wine, Food, Photos' blog! We also had a great first harvest of Rocket which intensely flavoursome. My mouth waters at the thought of our second harvest!

Oh, and one thing I noticed also - all sprouts look the same no matter what you've planted. They all come up with two rounded leaves and then spring into action afterwards. There's got to be a sermon illustration in that somewhere...