Ballarat part 5

Monday 22 Feb to Sunday 28th Feb

Monday: The start of a new week. Things are rolling along quite nicely. In the morning I gave a guitar lesson to one of the musos from the Delacombe Uniting Church. In the afternoon I met with one of the pastors from York St Church of Christ to discus playing in the service on Sunday. In the evening I got in contact with the family I stayed with in Eden. They are living in Lakes Entrance now and are happy for us to stay with them for a little while. This means that we are definitely going to make Lakes Entrance our next destination. Beyond all this we are simply trying to recover from the camp over the weekend. It was fantastic but very tiring.

Tuesday: I went to do a radio interview this morning at Good News Radio. The interview was conducted by an amazing man named Jonathan Jones. He is both partially blind and deaf, as evidenced by our first meeting where he stood about a foot away from me to see who I was. He serves the radio station diligently and has a book about his journey which I am looking forward to reading. The interview went really well and I even played a few songs live on air.

Later in the day I spent some more time working on the water tank, we can get it to pump water but it still leaks. This has become a major frustration and we have tried a number of things to fix it. Today I got Adrian, who we are staying with to help me with it. We ended up threading a new brass piece with a bigger thread and surrounded even that with silicone. If that doesn't work I don't know what will. We will need to allow the silicone about 24 hours to dry so it will have to wait till tomorrow to see if it worked.

Wednesday: In case you are wondering what Sarah has been doing, she has been working hard at a job interview for a medical transcription company for the last three days. The interview is more like an exam and involves a number of different sections. Sarah must maintain a 95% or higher average. They take accuracy very seriously when dealing with the transcription of people's medical reports. Today Sarah has completed all of the tests and she is feeling confident that she will have passed. They have said it can take up to five business days to find out the results.

In other news for the day: THE TANK WORKS!!! It has finally stopped leaking!! This means that we can finally have running water in the camper. There are still plenty of other things to fix between the camper and the car but this was a big one and it feels great to have finally done it.

We went to Ballarat City Church at night to see more of the seminar "Laugh your way to a better marriage." Again it was very funny and insightful.

Thursday: Up to five business days my foot, Sarah got an email from the medical transcription company already offering her a job! She can start as soon as she has read through the paperwork. From there she will move into a mentored position. This is where she will be typing up real reports however a mentor will check over all of her work. Sarah can also ask her mentor any questions regarding the work. The work is unpaid however and they have said that this process can last between 1 - 3 months. Basically until Sarah's mentor decides that she is ready.

I got up early in the morning had some time of prayer, reflection and bible reading and in the midst of all of this a song began to form in my mind. I instantaneously had a concept, a few lyrics and a melody, however I proceeded to spend the following two hours of intense concentration trying to write all of the lyrics. It did not come easily. I was worried that it was going to be just as hard to put music to... five minutes later I had worked out all of the music. I am very proud of the song and it is the first one of the trip. The song is called "Without Excuse."

Today I bought a new pair of shoes. I'm sure this doesn't sound like much but for me it is a rare occasion. I only buy shoes about once every three years and that is only when my previous pair of shoes is so worn that they are on the verge of falling to pieces. I find that there is only one kind of shoe that is comfortable so I always buy the same ones. The lesson I learned today is that prices go up in the course of three years, significantly. In short the shoes were very expensive but hopefully they will last another three years. There you go you all now know one of the more strange facts about my personality.

Friday: Tonight we had been invited to play at Ballarat Christian Fellowship youth group for their "Godspot." We had a lot of fun watching them play a bunch of different messy, youthy kind of games. We even got included in a couple of the games. I am the "eating a donut off a piece of string without using your hands" king. Later in the night I got up and played for half an hour. It was difficult playing over a bunch of rowdy youth without a microphone or P.A. but I managed. I tried to get everyone into the songs with clapping along and singing along where possible. The reward of a free CD went a long way in holding everyone's attention. Victory Song went down the best. I also told a few stories and spoke some, hopefully, life imparting words. All in all it was a great night.

Saturday: Today I had the privilege of doing a photo shoot with a very talented photographer I have met up here named Buzz. We went mostly around the outskirts of town looking for good locations and we found a few. Unfortunately the weather was not ideal, showers and overcast made for really difficult conditions. Still we managed to get a number of great photos. Buzz will need some time to touch them up on that amazing program called Photoshop, you know, make me skinny and all that. Only kidding. I can't wait to see the end result.

That night Sarah and I went to Delacombe Uniting Church again. We shared some music and some fellowship. It was a good night and a great church, we will miss them lots. I also gave them the piece of artwork I had made from the log we cut off the branch that was overhanging the prayer labyrinth. It was a cross made out of slices of the oak log with three surrounding blocks of wood with "faith hope and love" carved into them and a small dove. They really appreciated it.

Sunday: Today was all about playing at York St Church of Christ, which is one of the biggest churches in Ballarat. It was also the last church I would play at in Ballarat, this time around anyway. I showed up in the morning to the church and they didn't have a bass player or guitarist so I ended up jumping in with the music team and playing guitar with the band for the morning service. Later in the service I got up and played "Hope in You." I spoke a little in the bridge, relating the song to the sermon. We got an excellent response, meeting a number of people after the service and selling a number of CD's. I will never cease to be amazed at the generosity of people towards what we are doing.

We came back for the evening service to play again. Concerned about time, it was a very full service, and being at the end of the service I tried to be much more brief in questions I was asked and I didn't talk throughout the bridge. I have learned a valuable lesson in this, as we didn't receive the same kind of response after that service as we did in the morning. It is so important to convey the heart of what we are doing as that is the thing people will most respond to. The service still went great and we met more people after the service.