cccb.org.au

not quite a LAN party, as looks might initially suggest :p

cccb now has a website! MC conducted a workshop to brief content managers on how to add content etc. hope to see it grow into a useful resource.

oddities

supersized grape i found while at bongoboy's surprise party.

it's been another weekend involving lots of hanging out with various people, some of whom i haven't seen or talked to for far too long, and all of sudden i'm crossing paths with perhaps multiple times in the last fortnight! it's been nice, but i doubt it will last. still feels like a bit of a holiday mood - that's certainly a literal truth for those who are students, but even as a worker i'm not feeling as bogged down with the old monday to friday routine. maybe that's thanks to my secondment being a lot less busy than my normal work area, and perhaps too the recent pattern of my weekends involving sleeping in, being out for most of the rest of the day and night, and eating later meals than i would typically eat - quite reminiscent of how i spent my recent overseas holiday.

unfortunately the sunday sleeping in thing ends today - will be away at qyc next weekend, and the sunday after that our church service returns to our usual bat-time and bat-channel, ie sunday mornings 9:30am. ah well... i still have my saturdays :)

anyways, something struck me as being a bit odd. church is having a dinner thing in feb, to celebrate chinese new year and to have a reunion thing involving current and past members + friends. i've been semi-keen on going along, but wanted to try to organise a table to sit with my friends so that i wouldn't have to be a nige/sit with people i don't really know. sadly, the response has been rather poor. the odd thing is that this is my own church, where i'm sure to know many of the people who will be there (at least by face/name, if not necessarily all in person), but i'm still not all that willing to attend unless i know i'll be sitting with friends/people i know. yet on my last trip, i was quite happy to

1. go to a wedding dinner where the only person i knew was the bride, and her i didn't actually meet in person till the day before the dinner. (and so i ended up sitting on a table where almost everyone else already knew each other from their uni days, and thus were having a mini-reunion of sorts)
2. attend another dinner in a neighbouring country with some 1400 other people, where i knew (of) a few more people but was nevertheless seated at a table where the only person i knew i met earlier that day, and where we were the only two single people amongst married couples either with a baby, or expecting one. [above pic shows the panoramic view from the stage... 138 tables (including those on the upper level) of 10 people each - that's huuuge!]
   

so why, when it comes to a dinner in my home country, in my home church, with that many more people i would know/recognise... why do i seem so much more reluctant to go? i'm not sure if the attempted comparisons are valid, but it does seem kinda odd. and i'm not sure what that says/signifies.

anyhow, it's kinda a moot point. mum has been after a decision from me for the last week, and as of this afternoon i'm locked in to going because she said that another person who's going asked for me to go as well, and because it solves the problem of filling a vacant spot on some singing quartet item thing. so now not only am i going, i'm also supposed to perform... and i think i'll have a friend but i don't know if it's my sparkling personality and dinner conversation that they're after, or simply because they couldn't find anyone else to sing :p

i hope the food will be good! cue image of homer simpson-esque figure munching on a mouth full of food and mumbling "can't worry about being a nige - eating!" ;)

a day of lasts

1. quite unexpectedly, today was the last day our church meetings will be held at the current place/time. we've been forced to move again, less than 18 months after our last move. thankfully this time isn't to do with politics and people issues, and i'm hoping the change will be good. the building we were renting has to have some repairs done, so it's unavailable for hire until early next year. funnily enough our temporary home will be the place where the southside congregation started out back in the day - i remember going there during my high school years!
   
   
2. it could also represent the last time i'll have to wake up early sunday mornings, seeing as we're moving to an afternoon timeslot which will mean i can sleep in. perhaps it's a sad indictment that the extra sleep is the first thing that i think of... :p however i think i'll actually take advantage of the opportunity to do a spot of visiting - it's something that came up in conversation with accc last week, and now i can do so without risking any guilt/conscience issues for skipping out on my regular church :)
   
   
3. the afternoon saw me attend the last bible study for the year for yf, and it struck me that it's shaping up to be my last one ever. was reminded of this by the fact that other people are leaving/won't be around next year... and i'm about to bow out as well, for the second time. it's not quite the same as 5 years ago, when i was about to enter my (semi-)retirement from yf... i'm a different person, at a different stage of life, yf itself is different now, and besides which i really can't remember how/what i was thinking/feeling about all this, half a decade ago! funnily enough i'm planning to return to clay next year (it's something i've tried to do this year but have been mostly unable to, due to clashing commitments), and 5 years ago i left yf to move to clay... did anyone just notice two identical black cats passing by??

it's been a strange sort of day because of the above realisations, and also because of what happened at church this morning. we had an evangelistic service with a guest speaker. i wasn't expecting much... mostly because some of the speakers in the past haven't really preached the gospel at all. there was good engagement with the congregation, and use of technology/multimedia to drive home the message, the actual details of which i struggle to recall. before i was done thinking "what did he actually say??" it was time to get back up to sing "you loved me" (quite appropriate/fitting lyrics). and as i stood there, after pastor made the altar call/invitation to respond, and sang this song, and saw people coming up with tears in their eyes, something hit me and i started getting a bit teary too. now i'm fairly certain i'm not a sympathetic crier, but honestly i have no idea what prompted my tears.

• was it because i was moved by the message? no, because i can't even remember much of its content...
  
• was it because i was moved by the people's response? (there were other people in the congregation crying as well) i don't think so, since i can't be sure whether they were responding to the gospel - if i had consciously registered that the good news had been faithfully preached, and that the Spirit had moved people to repentance and faith, then that would certainly be a cause for rejoicing... but since i can't remember much of what was actually said...
  
• was it because i was moved by the song? i don't know, i've liked the song since i first learnt it in kylc some years back, but it's never had this sort of impact... although this would not be the first time that singing a familiar song has produced an unexpected result.

i suppose emotions can't always be logically analysed and "explained", though there is still something niggly about the cause/trigger for my own tears... maybe it was just something that struck/affected me at a sub-conscious level. is that, too, a cause for concern??