Yesterday while we were at church, Bronwyn, our cousin Martyn's wife gave birth to Daniel David Anderson, our first-cousin-once-removed!
We didn't get to visit them at Middlemore Hospital till today. Bronwyn is still in hospital with her own room, while Daniel is in a little incubator being closely watched.
Martyn had to take each of us one at a time to visit him.
When I came in to visit Daniel, I think we must've upset him a little as he started to cry a little!
He was so small though! I don't think I've seen a baby this young before, except for when I was down in Christchurch visiting the hospital a few years ago!
Today was the first day of my five-day Easter weekend! As usual it started with the usual Good Friday service.
In the morning I was preparing a worship video I had recorded of Jireh on Skype for Oddfellows later in the day, but it hadn't finished rendering by the time I had to leave for church! Aonghas was also working on a wedding video for someone and wouldn't be able to attend at all! He didn't sleep at all last night and was on a tight deadline so he was going to have to drive to the airport to deliver the DVD to the people, with my mum in the passenger seat of course!
I ended up bringing my laptop to church and just sat outside waiting for the video to finish rendering while Hamish went in. The service itself wasn't too long. There was a performance by the church choir and an animated short film of Jesus's death was played.
Once the service ended, there were hot cross buns for everyone and fizzy drinks. All of us Oddfellows sat around waiting for our lunch before we'd leave for Tommy and Harris's house, as we would be helping them out with the gardening.
I was originally going to burn the worship video onto a DVD but then realised I didn't have any DVD burning software! I'd just have to put it on my USB stick and hope they had a laptop!
We had KFC and pizza (Pizza Hut or Domino's can't remember!) for lunch, with each of us getting a bit of chicken! I got the last one because no one wanted it, and so I had to eat that really fast as everyone began to leave for Tommy and Harris's house!
Their garden didn't look too bad, but there were some weeds here and there, and a few overgrown trees. Tim got on the blower thingy, Karvin had the lawnmower, Uncle John the chainsaw and the other saw, the girls were picking weeds and Andrew and I were given the clippers to chop off some branches.
Unfortunately Uncle John got cut in the hands and Tim had to take him to the A&E, but luckily he only required some stitches.
There was also some screeching and shouting by girls as they were confronted by little insects, but eventually we got the garden done!
We all headed inside to kick off the youth group programme for the day. We had to leave early as we were going to the Easter Show with Winston and his family, so I left them with Jireh's worship video, which they played on a laptop. Hopefully it all went well!
I know I've kind of neglected this blog for the past couple of months, and haven't blogged about quite a few things, like our trip to Hong Kong!
Things are getting a little busy with youth group camp coming up and my pharmacy registration exam next month, but I'm going to try not fall too far behind or else I might end up forgetting about this blog and giving up!
We were caught out a little last week when we were told by Phillip that he would be moving to Perth to live tomorrow! He was only going to be up in Auckland for a couple of days before then, so there was not much time to catch up with him one more time before he left. Because Aonghas would be working in the night, and I would be working during the day, the only time we could all meet up together was for breakfast this morning.
We picked him up early in the morning. We drove our new car, and so when we stopped beside him on the side of the road, he just stood there looking for us as he didn't recognise our car!
We got stuck in a long traffic jam along Lincoln Road, but somehow managed to make it onto the motorway in about ten minutes!
When we got to the city we walked down Queen Street looking for somewhere to have breakfast, but most places seemed to be closed at 7am in the morning except for the fast food joints! We eventually settled for Burger King.
I had this omelette burger combo that came with hash brown bites and a coffee which seemed to fill me up and made me quite wide awake for the morning at work which is a first!
I soon had to go to work, so I had to farewell Phillip with a few hugs and photos. :(
Fortunately work wasn't too bad and my preceptor made us cupcakes, and I was told I get Tuesday off work next week which means FIVE day weekend! Woohoo!
Take care Phillip, you've now given me a reason to visit Perth! Hopefully we'll continue to stay in touch!
Tonight a group of us from our church decided to attend another church's service just to see how things are done elsewhere.
We decided to attend Church Unlimited's evening service at 6pm. We were each welcomed as we entered, with them shaking our hands. There were three large projection screens in the hall, video cameras everywhere, including a crane upstairs, and a countdown clock to the start of the service!
There was quite a big band on stage playing with a lot of energy. They had a live feed on the screens with the lyrics to the songs as they sung. Everyone in the congregation was standing, singing with passion.
After a few songs, there were a few videos on the projection screen about a recent conference they had, some people gave testimonies and the pastor gave a little talk about the significance of the conference.
The service ended and everyone went outside for a free sausage sizzle. By then it had started raining lightly but that was OK!
We went to McDonald's after to have some food and discuss what we had seen and how we could learn from what we had seen. We've got to keep it real though, and realise our church is more traditional and we don't have as many people.
It is really interesting to experience how other churches do things though, and just to see how they praise God. I might just attend another one of their services!
It was not only April Fools' Day today, but also the end of Daylight Saving! That meant we all got an extra hour of sleep. I woke up so early though and couldn't get back to sleep, so instead I managed to watch What Now! for the first time since attending church!
Despite waking up and being ready for church so early though, we still didn't manage to get to church on time as our mum went to the flea market and didn't come home till church started!
As for April Fools' Day, I was sitting in the service for most of the half day so I didn't get a chance to fool anyone!
I did get this email in my inbox from firstin.co.nz and I have to admit that when I first saw it I had a few ??? over the top of my head!
