Livefire
Well, Livefire was last week, as I may have mentioned and I was intending to update a bit earlier but I have been busy. I've just come to the realisation that actually, there's only 2 weeks left of this trimester and we've reached the "oh my goodness how am I supposed to fit this all in?" part. Two tests this week, a few assignments, some orals to present - goodness, why did I decide to do foreign languages again?
Anyway, Livefire. We left last Friday morning bright and early, to get on a bus with roughly a third of the rest of our division... hooked up with the other buses around Bulls at about 9am for breakfast (coffee). Headed to Taupo for lunch, but en route we had the first rounds of what someone had so cleverly named "Bus Idol". I figured what the heck and had a go and sang something, as my guitar was on the bus with me... made it into the "finals" which were to be held after lunch with a guy from Palmy who REALLY wanted the prize (an MP3 player) and our cadet (trainee minister) who'd sung "Yellow Submarine" for a bit of a laugh... Mirjam and I split a pizza for lunch coz we were pretty hungry and got to hang out with Daniel who'd just got back from the States that week so yay. After lunch, Joel from Palmy was really anxious to do the "finals" of "Bus Idol" and was somewhat irritated that our illustrious judges really just wanted to sleep and I was busy doing my Spanish assignment. Anyway, we eventually did do our final round and I've got to say that my corps was very well represented, what with 2 of us in the finals.... I won. It's not a bad little MP3 player, actually. Joel bugged me about it the rest of the weekend, but that's okay.
Got to Livefire, settled into the cabin (me, Mirjam, Char, Candy, Kim, Laura and Tamsen - as in all the girls from my corps) and then had tea. The first session to kick off Livefire 2005 was brilliantly opened by Kapa Haka from Wangas and then by our very own Vatican boys, who did an absolutely stellar version of dc Talk's "Jesus Freak". The speaker for the weekend was this crazy Canadian dude named Michael Collins who was very, very good. I've got some notes sitting in front of me from what he said, and it's actually quite disjointed so I'm gonna try to some it up as cohesively as possible. He talked about hypocrisy, pointed out that a lot of Christians don't read the bible and since people tend to judge Christ by Christians, there are a lot of people who call themselves Christians out there who are disrespecting Jesus by their actions. He talked about the story in 2 Kings 6:8-17 - how we can't see the spiritual realm, but there's more than meets the eye. The earth will one day be gone - this is a scientific fact. The only thing that lasts forever is God, and He's calling us but we're not going! Michael issued a lot of challenges over the weekend, along the lines of (and I quote) "put up or shut up". Stop the excuses and if you're gonna say you're a Christian, actually do something about it.
Saturday morning it wasn't exactly the best weather (actually, it pretty much rained all weekend) but it did eventually clear up. We had a morning service where Michael talked about the armour of God (have a gander at Ephesians 6:10-18) Basically, if you don't march and fight you can't call yourself a soldier of God. Being in the Salvation Army, we call ourselves soldiers. Michael pointed out that talk is cheap, and when the fighting gets fierce you want to know your fellow soldiers won't run away. When you serve, you should be doing it according to your spiritual gifting - but you've got to actually do something. God will use the gifts He gave you but you actually have to get up and do something. It's gonna be one heck of a ride, and it's going to be awesome and rewarding but it's not going to be easy. Once you enter the fight, stand up and say "I'll fight", the devil is out to get you. Being a soldier of God isn't safe. But it's fun! If you don't want to fight, turn in your tunic or your Army teeshirt and go find somewhere else. If we stand up, lives are gonna change - our lives aren't for us alone, they're for God and for others. Fix your eyes on Jesus - the war has been won but there are still battles to fight.
Saturday afternoon was quite possibly the highlight of my weekend (probably a tie with Sunday morning, which I'll mention later). We went out on mission. We ended up doing door-knocking, which basically meant we went from door to door saying "Hi, we're from The Salvation Army, we were wondering if you had any odd jobs you'd like us to do - gardening, housework, anything." People have very varied reactions to this particular mission outreach. Some will just not answer their doors and hide when they see us coming. Some just don't get that we're actually doing this and ask "what's the catch?" Some are just plain rude! And then some are willing for us to come and do something. We ended up weeding a garden for an elderly couple. Their daughter was around and she answered the door, and seemed quite keen for us to do the garden. The elderly lady was absolutely lovely but you could tell it was too hard for her to do her own garden - we spent roughly an hour and a half on that one house (it was the only one we did). The man seemed a little grumpy - his first comment was "do you know the difference between flowers and weeds?". Luckily, Tamsen's a florist, so that solved that problem. (We spent a sizable amount of time checking with Tamsen before we got rid of anything, though). There was an orange tree that had tons of fallen oranges around it - I gathered up the ones that were alright (as in not rotten or inedible), gave them a wash and then gave them back to the lady to put in her fruit bowl. She insisted that we have them. I argued for a bit, but little old ladies can be very stubborn.
The lady went out with her daughter and it was just us with the man for the last half hour. We spent the last half hour debating whether we should ask the man if he wanted us to pray with him... I thought we should, but felt a little shamed out about asking and when we left I nearly didn't but as no one else was, I finally plunged right in and asked if he wanted us to pray with him. He said that would be lovely, so I said a (not particularly eloquent) prayer. He then nearly gave me a minor heart attack by saying that he wanted to pray for us, and he then went right ahead and prayed for us, too! I was really, really blessed. And once we met up with the rest of our group, the oranges were a huge hit with everyone - I didn't get one, but apparently they were absolutely beautiful. You can't really beat oranges from peoples own trees. They just taste nicer somehow.
That night, we had the big concert which pretty much completely rocked. Straightline, Moped and Mumsdollar meant for some pretty intense moshing (well, mostly from Moped on). I gotta admit I didn't stay for Mumsdollar but went to spend some time in the prayer room. I had a great time at the Moped set, though. We even had fireworks. It was flash.
Sunday mornings meeting was about the Holy Spirit. Basically, if your religion is external it's not going to work, you really need the power of the Holy Spirit to get you through the battles - as long as Jesus is just a concept, it's not going to work. Michael made a very good comment - Christians sometimes don't know when to shut up, but the Holy Spirit will teach you when it's appropriate to speak up and when you should just shush. The Holy Spirit is the fire part of the "Blood & Fire" on the Army flag, it's the power. The greek word for "power" is actually the root of the English word "dynamite" - so we're talking huge stuff! We had a huge amount of people at the front praying, and the coolest part for me was when the entire youth group got to pray together. The weekend went a long way towards strengthening links in our youth group and it was pretty cool. We finished off the weekend with one more session (it all kind of ran in together) where Michael did his last little bit on worship - he referred to a passage in Malachi where God called Israel up on not bringing the best to sacrifice. Worshipping God isn't about "what we can get out of it", it's about bringing glory to God and God would rather we didn't worship at all than not give our best.
Oh, and we got a little taste of Kaivata '07 - as in tri-territorial youth councils in Fiji! I've decided I'm going to learn Fijian before we go. And the youth group is going to learn at least a little bit of Fijian before we go. We have time. We'll be sweet. So that was Livefire. I thoroughly enjoyed it, and bring on Kaivata! I'd better get some sleep now, but Carol, that was mostly for your benefit, so hope you enjoy hearing about our big adventures! And sorry I'm not around much, I just don't seem to spend that much time online with all this work I have to do... hope to catch you online sooner rather than later.
Adios!
ALP,
Rosie
Anyway, Livefire. We left last Friday morning bright and early, to get on a bus with roughly a third of the rest of our division... hooked up with the other buses around Bulls at about 9am for breakfast (coffee). Headed to Taupo for lunch, but en route we had the first rounds of what someone had so cleverly named "Bus Idol". I figured what the heck and had a go and sang something, as my guitar was on the bus with me... made it into the "finals" which were to be held after lunch with a guy from Palmy who REALLY wanted the prize (an MP3 player) and our cadet (trainee minister) who'd sung "Yellow Submarine" for a bit of a laugh... Mirjam and I split a pizza for lunch coz we were pretty hungry and got to hang out with Daniel who'd just got back from the States that week so yay. After lunch, Joel from Palmy was really anxious to do the "finals" of "Bus Idol" and was somewhat irritated that our illustrious judges really just wanted to sleep and I was busy doing my Spanish assignment. Anyway, we eventually did do our final round and I've got to say that my corps was very well represented, what with 2 of us in the finals.... I won. It's not a bad little MP3 player, actually. Joel bugged me about it the rest of the weekend, but that's okay.
Got to Livefire, settled into the cabin (me, Mirjam, Char, Candy, Kim, Laura and Tamsen - as in all the girls from my corps) and then had tea. The first session to kick off Livefire 2005 was brilliantly opened by Kapa Haka from Wangas and then by our very own Vatican boys, who did an absolutely stellar version of dc Talk's "Jesus Freak". The speaker for the weekend was this crazy Canadian dude named Michael Collins who was very, very good. I've got some notes sitting in front of me from what he said, and it's actually quite disjointed so I'm gonna try to some it up as cohesively as possible. He talked about hypocrisy, pointed out that a lot of Christians don't read the bible and since people tend to judge Christ by Christians, there are a lot of people who call themselves Christians out there who are disrespecting Jesus by their actions. He talked about the story in 2 Kings 6:8-17 - how we can't see the spiritual realm, but there's more than meets the eye. The earth will one day be gone - this is a scientific fact. The only thing that lasts forever is God, and He's calling us but we're not going! Michael issued a lot of challenges over the weekend, along the lines of (and I quote) "put up or shut up". Stop the excuses and if you're gonna say you're a Christian, actually do something about it.
Saturday morning it wasn't exactly the best weather (actually, it pretty much rained all weekend) but it did eventually clear up. We had a morning service where Michael talked about the armour of God (have a gander at Ephesians 6:10-18) Basically, if you don't march and fight you can't call yourself a soldier of God. Being in the Salvation Army, we call ourselves soldiers. Michael pointed out that talk is cheap, and when the fighting gets fierce you want to know your fellow soldiers won't run away. When you serve, you should be doing it according to your spiritual gifting - but you've got to actually do something. God will use the gifts He gave you but you actually have to get up and do something. It's gonna be one heck of a ride, and it's going to be awesome and rewarding but it's not going to be easy. Once you enter the fight, stand up and say "I'll fight", the devil is out to get you. Being a soldier of God isn't safe. But it's fun! If you don't want to fight, turn in your tunic or your Army teeshirt and go find somewhere else. If we stand up, lives are gonna change - our lives aren't for us alone, they're for God and for others. Fix your eyes on Jesus - the war has been won but there are still battles to fight.
Saturday afternoon was quite possibly the highlight of my weekend (probably a tie with Sunday morning, which I'll mention later). We went out on mission. We ended up doing door-knocking, which basically meant we went from door to door saying "Hi, we're from The Salvation Army, we were wondering if you had any odd jobs you'd like us to do - gardening, housework, anything." People have very varied reactions to this particular mission outreach. Some will just not answer their doors and hide when they see us coming. Some just don't get that we're actually doing this and ask "what's the catch?" Some are just plain rude! And then some are willing for us to come and do something. We ended up weeding a garden for an elderly couple. Their daughter was around and she answered the door, and seemed quite keen for us to do the garden. The elderly lady was absolutely lovely but you could tell it was too hard for her to do her own garden - we spent roughly an hour and a half on that one house (it was the only one we did). The man seemed a little grumpy - his first comment was "do you know the difference between flowers and weeds?". Luckily, Tamsen's a florist, so that solved that problem. (We spent a sizable amount of time checking with Tamsen before we got rid of anything, though). There was an orange tree that had tons of fallen oranges around it - I gathered up the ones that were alright (as in not rotten or inedible), gave them a wash and then gave them back to the lady to put in her fruit bowl. She insisted that we have them. I argued for a bit, but little old ladies can be very stubborn.
The lady went out with her daughter and it was just us with the man for the last half hour. We spent the last half hour debating whether we should ask the man if he wanted us to pray with him... I thought we should, but felt a little shamed out about asking and when we left I nearly didn't but as no one else was, I finally plunged right in and asked if he wanted us to pray with him. He said that would be lovely, so I said a (not particularly eloquent) prayer. He then nearly gave me a minor heart attack by saying that he wanted to pray for us, and he then went right ahead and prayed for us, too! I was really, really blessed. And once we met up with the rest of our group, the oranges were a huge hit with everyone - I didn't get one, but apparently they were absolutely beautiful. You can't really beat oranges from peoples own trees. They just taste nicer somehow.
That night, we had the big concert which pretty much completely rocked. Straightline, Moped and Mumsdollar meant for some pretty intense moshing (well, mostly from Moped on). I gotta admit I didn't stay for Mumsdollar but went to spend some time in the prayer room. I had a great time at the Moped set, though. We even had fireworks. It was flash.
Sunday mornings meeting was about the Holy Spirit. Basically, if your religion is external it's not going to work, you really need the power of the Holy Spirit to get you through the battles - as long as Jesus is just a concept, it's not going to work. Michael made a very good comment - Christians sometimes don't know when to shut up, but the Holy Spirit will teach you when it's appropriate to speak up and when you should just shush. The Holy Spirit is the fire part of the "Blood & Fire" on the Army flag, it's the power. The greek word for "power" is actually the root of the English word "dynamite" - so we're talking huge stuff! We had a huge amount of people at the front praying, and the coolest part for me was when the entire youth group got to pray together. The weekend went a long way towards strengthening links in our youth group and it was pretty cool. We finished off the weekend with one more session (it all kind of ran in together) where Michael did his last little bit on worship - he referred to a passage in Malachi where God called Israel up on not bringing the best to sacrifice. Worshipping God isn't about "what we can get out of it", it's about bringing glory to God and God would rather we didn't worship at all than not give our best.
Oh, and we got a little taste of Kaivata '07 - as in tri-territorial youth councils in Fiji! I've decided I'm going to learn Fijian before we go. And the youth group is going to learn at least a little bit of Fijian before we go. We have time. We'll be sweet. So that was Livefire. I thoroughly enjoyed it, and bring on Kaivata! I'd better get some sleep now, but Carol, that was mostly for your benefit, so hope you enjoy hearing about our big adventures! And sorry I'm not around much, I just don't seem to spend that much time online with all this work I have to do... hope to catch you online sooner rather than later.
Adios!
ALP,
Rosie
posted by Rosie @ 8:38 pm
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