A Good Friday

It was Good Friday today, the day we commemorate the death of Jesus Christ!

The day started off with a service in the morning. Our church choir was to perform, so we had to meet up earlier at church for a final rehearsal. When I walked in, I thought I saw Stephanie (a youth group friend) at the water cooler, and called out

"Good morning Steph.."

As she turned around, I realised it was her mum! Woops...

After we got into our gowns, we rehearsed a few parts of the song 'No Greater Love' before the bell rang and the service started.

The service started with a hymn, and the choir sang the first part of 'No Greater Love'. After, the pastor gave a sermon.

The choir sang the second part of the song, followed by the communion, and then the last part of the song.

We finished the service with some prayer. I was quite surprised at how there was quite a bit of English translation at the service today, and attendance seemed to be up on past years!

There were quite a few photographers taking photos around the place today. I think it's a sign the photography group at church are onto it!

I hope the choir sounded good though! I have to commend Ruth for playing the piano very well! The song is quite long and there's a lot to play! The soloists and Yangzi, the narrator were quite good too!

After the service, we all went to the hall for some hot cross buns. Our fellowship and a few members of the Jeshuan fellowship stayed behind for shared lunch before fellowship. Quite a few people forgot to bring food though, so those people who didn't bring anything contributed money to some extra food that Tim bought.

Aonghas, Grace and I (aka OFB) left early to do a quick practice with Joylynn and Gabrielle, who were leading worship for the combined fellowship. Aonghas was on piano, Grace on acoustic guitar and me on bass. I used over six plasters just to protect my fingers this time!

We did two songs, 'In Christ Alone' and 'Because He Lives', and we didn't actually sound too bad! Well...I hope we didn't. It did sound like everyone was singing though!

We then watched this documentary called Mama Heidi, about a lady called Heidi who had been doing missionary work in Mozambique. It was quite touching, seeing the difference she was making over there. It kinda inspires me to do something like that, but I sometimes wonder if I'd be strong enough!

Andrew, one of the guys at our church who spent three years in Taiwan and two months in Cambodia, then shared his experience with us, showing some pictures of his time in Cambodia. It was quite fascinating! He taught English there along with doing missionary work.

We finished the afternoon by sharing what we thought was the thing that caught our attention the most, and then writing a letter to Jesus/God and laying it by the large cross on stage.

This evening we've just been chilling out in front of the TV. For the first time in a long time, the whole family sat down and watched Police Academy together! Usually our dad hardly ever watches movies! It was quite nice just to do something together, as simple as that (even though my mum fell asleep halfway through it!).

To end our Good Friday, we made a late dash to Wendy's for dinner! Now that is a good Friday.

(Some photos courtesy of Anni Zhou)

Preparing for the Big One

That big weekend for Christians is coming up...Easter! It'll be extra special for us Anderson brothers, as we will finally be getting baptised! It certainly has been a long time coming!

It'll start off tomorrow morning with a Good Friday service. Our choir will be performing this pretty long song, called No Greater Love. It's over 50 pages long, and we're singing the abridged version! I think it describes Jesus's life and death? It's all in Chinese so I'm not quite too sure! I should probably study its meaning before we perform it tomorrow!

I joined the choir a few weeks ago, and have to admit I've only been able to attend a few rehearsals prior to tonight because of other events popping up, so I've had to get help writing down the pinyin under the characters to help me sing them. Thanks Jenny's dad and Rebeca's dad! (As you can tell, I sit at the back with the dads) I'm fine with singing in tune, it's just being able to pronounce the Chinese properly!

Tonight we had our final rehearsal. I think we only managed to go through the whole song once in the time we rehearsed! It sounds really good though, so hopefully all goes well tomorrow!

A Good Friday to Garden

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!

(http://youtu.be/fVMwTRH64b8)

A Very Good Friday

On the first day of my five day weekend, I had to wake up early to go to church for the Good Friday service! My brothers, Jenny and I were playing as a string quartet for the service!

The service was sombre, and I suppose that's how it's meant to be when it's about the death of Jesus Christ.

After the service some of us from our youth group hung out while Aonghas and a few others went out to buy lunch for us.

They eventually came back with KFC and takeaways! Yum yum! We all ate for a while before we packed up and headed to the main hall for youth group. Because this week was film study, we were going to watch...Tangled! It's the movie we've all been looking forward to!

Once again Tangled didn't disappoint!

We had movie discussion afterwards and when each of us were asked what our dream was, people answered mine for me before I could, saying my dream was to get a girlfriend! What is this!!

Sadly youth group had to end, but before we went home we helped Ben clean the church (he gets paid to do it) so he'd be free to join us on an outing to the Waitakere Ranges tomorrow.

What a good way to start the long Easter weekend!