We're all in this together

I am sure than none us have missed the phenomenon known as High School Musical (and lately High School Musical 2). One of the songs I enjoy the most is that "We're all in this together".

Of late I have become more and more aware of the fact that we are all in this together. Due to recent changes at the TSCF office (those who know me please don't laugh) I have been appointed acting finance administrator. I have had a lot to learn fairly quickly. I am very thankful for the way that people in the office have been patient with me and have picked up things that haven't been able to get to.

Because of picking up more responsibilities in the office I have not been as actively involved on campus as I would like. But because there is a team of us working in Wellington the other members of the team picked up all the things that I could no longer deliver on. I am very thankful for their understanding and patience too.

It has also helped me learn a little more about my control freak tendencies. Normally I would freak out about other people doing my jobs. But reaching the point where I couldn't do all that I wanted to forced me to let go. I am rebuked by how it has taken me getting to the point that I would let go of things. Seems obvious with hindsight.

I've since heard a friend preaching on Ephesians 4 and unity in the body in Christ. I think I now grasp that better than I did before. We are all in this together and we are most glorifying to God when we work together as a team. Being a control freak and needing to do things myself is sinful. I feel I have more to learn in this area.

But to end on a lighter note...

Sounds

Well this evening some friends work and I went to see Crowded House in concert.

They were amazing! They played for over two hours. They played a mixture of new stuff (some of much I have to admit was a bit weird) and a bunch of thier old hits. They were great!.

But my discovery for the evening was a Kiwi band called Supergroove. They were a seven piece band (including saxophone trumpet and harmonica). Apperently they split up about 6 or 7 years ago but have reformed for this tour with Crowded House. Supergroove were just so much fun to watch. You could tell that they were having fun too. Crowded House showed themselves to be a band who no what they are about and now how to perform and were great. But Supergroove were just more fund. From to rap to rock to rhythm and blues. They were great.

Click here to listen to an extract of one of my favourite tracks on iTunes (you made need to switch to the NZ site) called "Can't get enough".

There and back again... again

Well, this month I went back again to the UK for a whirl wind visit. It was planned before I even moved to New Zealand because this year is my parents ruby wedding anniversary. They invited the whole family and wanted me too. They had a renewal of their wedding vows ceremony with all their grandchildren as brides maids and page boys. All in all a lovely day.

I also did the usual run around the country thing catching up with friends and supporters which was great fun if a little tiring (I fear I am getting old! It didn't used to be as tiring travelling).

Anna and I also did the whole meeting each others family and friends thing. Anna did amazingly as she met literally my entire family (which is not small) at the ruby wedding and wasn't fazed by the experience. It was great for me to finally meet Anna's family and I am looking forward to getting to spend some more time with them.

The only downside was that I forgot again (I seem to forget every time really, see previous posts) that I find it difficult spending a small amount of time with people I care about deeply and then having to leave again. Everyone was doing well but the reality of life as we all now is that it is not always straight forward. And I still find it hard not being there any more and not being able to help. Anna reminded me that I can pray and that is more than doing something. I know that is true and that God is in control but I don't always live as if I believe this. I feel a little rebuked that I am being so slow to learn this lesson.

The surprise with this trip was that I felt foreign. It felt odd going shopping in Tesco rather than New World. It felt odd being in the UK. That is not a bad thing and I guess I should have expected it sooner or later but I hadn't really thought about it.

I now have a permanent returning residents visa. I can now come and go from New Zealand for the rest of my life (providing I don't break any laws I guess).

I now really live in New Zealand. For how long who knows, but for now I live here.

Wild life

Partly motivated out of a desire to get some exercise I went for a short walk yesterday. It turned into a long walk when I found a sign saying "seals"! So my short walk turned into a medium walk round the coast of Island bay and I literally fell over some seals! They are grey and kind of wet/sea weed like so they blend in with the rocks very well. I saw some from a distance and climbed onto the rocks for a closer look. At which point I realised they were all over the place!

I was less than 5 meters from the above two seals and only realised because they moved when I got closer. My first time seeing seasl in the wild! I then sat down to watch them for a bit. Once again I am reminded how beautiful New Zealand is. Behind me was a hill covered with trees, in front of me, a beach covered with 30 or 40 seals! You would not know it was the edge of the coast of the capital of New Zealand.

It started to get dark so I got up to head back. At which point the seal let out a kind of high pitched bark, and lurched away. It then emptied it's bladder and hopped off towards the sea stopping to bark at various seals along the way. I am not quite sure why it empted it's bladder but I then found a sign saying don't get within 20 meters of seals. Whoops! Wasn't really my fault though as the seals were within 10 metres of the path.

Obvious

A short term mission team from UCCF (the equivalent of TSCF in the UK) departed yesterday for Lincoln University having spent 12 days with us here in Wellington. They did some orientation for the team and helped the Victoria University students with a range of evangelistic activities that the students had planned for the first week of semester.

The team from UCCF's involvement has reminded me of how people from outside a context are able to see things from a different perspective and more importantly spur on and encourage those within the context. It has shown me again how people from within a context are more open to talking to people from outside the context. For us that means that kiwi's can be more open to talking about Jesus with those from outside New Zealand (but this does not excuse kiwi's from talking to kiwi's) which is something I need to think about some more.

The week itself was hugely encouraging! It has been a joy to see and be involved as Christian students at Vic and from UCCF come together and studied the bible everyday and served side by side in the work of spreading the good news about Jesus.

One of the things we did was a survey among students based upon the question "If you could ask God one question what would it be and why would you ask it?". It was a real surprise to me how open and honest people were, even though they were talking to complete strangers.

I have read many articles that say that the people today are different to the people of yesterday. That postmoderns have different questions to those that were previously being asked and that we need to change the way we do evangelism as a result.

Are today's students really all that different? Based upon the survey we did last week they are still asking the same sorts of questions: why does God allow suffering, hasn't science disproved God? Why does God hate people who are homosexual?

But yet I wonder if they are looking for a fuller answer. They want a reasoned answer to their question but might it be helped if connected with experience/story? One of my reflections of the past week (which may seem obvious) is that we need to hear Peter's call to "give a reason for the hope that we have" but we also need to be able to tell stories (or testimonies which is the other word that Christians sometimes use instead of the word "story": when I use the word story I don't mean fiction), particularly our own story, in a way that is firmly connected to illustrating/applying the truth.

The week has also been a rebuke for me. I have to be honest in that I did not think that surveying would work. I thought that no one would be interested. But many of them were. It may sound obvious but is has reminded me that, though it may not always be as visible on the surface (as I would prefer!), God is at work at Victoria university.

I am also thinking through how I can use questions more effectively in evangelism, someone has recommended a book called Questioning Evangelism by Randy Newman which I will try and get hold of a copy of.

I am thankful to God and to the team and for all involved last week for all that was done and for all we have learnt together. One of the joys of being involved in IFES (both TSCF and UCCF are founder members of IFES) is that we can partner in evangelism all over the planet. Long may it continue!

The challenge now is where do we go from here in terms of evangelism on campus? How do we keep last week from being the high point of our evangelism? How do we keeping pressing on? What is the next step for the Christian students and how can we help the those with questions find answers? We have already setup a blog as an online way for people to interact around the questions that they have and are planning lunch time talks on the most popular questions that people have. Please join with us in giving thanks for last week and in praying about the way ahead.

Titles

So I've had a few discussions of late as to what a person should call their girlfriend or boyfriend. I have a friend who thinks that the title "girlfriend" sounds a bit teenagery. I think some of the other titles that were suggested were "significant other", "lady-friend", and "object of my affection". To be honest I am note sure that any of the other suggested titles have any less complications than the first. For that matter I don't have that much of an issue with the titles boyfriend and girlfriend.

Anyway, for those of you who on the other side of the planet, here is a picture of Anna and I.

Preach the word

So I've recently completed a course at Carey bible college on preaching. I learnt lots of really helpful stuff and had the opportunity to write and deliver sermons with feedback, and enjoyed interacting with other students from across New Zealand as we came together to become better handlers of the bible. Completing the course has helped me write better talks and taught me some new tools and reminded of refocused my view of the importance of handling the bible well.

Paul Windsor taught us 15 helpful steps that he uses when preparing a sermon. Not that he was teaching some sort of golden formula where a person could plug in a bible passage and a sermon would come out the other end, rather he was giving us a framework to help us write sermons and helping us make sure that sure that our convictions and motivations about preaching were right.

Some of the steps I was familiar with from writing bible studies (understanding the context of a passage, utilising a number of translation etc.) but I also learnt a lot of news things in terms of structuring a sermon, the use of illustrations, the importance of bearing in mind those who you will be speaking to as your prepare and different forms of preaching (narrative preaching was new to me). I also learnt a bit about myself and how I shape how I speak and prepare. It is in my nature to try to observe, interpret and apply what is going in a passage all at once which gets me in a muddle because something I observe later in a passage changes how I interpreted something earlier in the passage. I probably do this out of a mixture of over-excitement (because I have come to love studying the bible), and impatience (I want it to take less time than it should to prepare a talk or bible study). I have to fight to stick to observe, interpret, apply as seperrate stages of preparation.

One way that this course was a rebuke to me was that if I am honest I was dismayed there were fifteen steps. I was hoping for five! But this was a rebuke for me because one of the reasons that I wanted to do this course is that I am convinced that God works by spirit through the teaching of His word and that I believe 1 Timothy 3:16 to be true. Also James 3:1 say that those who teach will be judged differently. God places a priority on us teaching the bible well.

If I believe these things then I should be willing to do the hard work of understanding and applying the bible well. And that isn't going to be achieved by cutting corners in preparation. In my defense it is not that I had stopped believing these things; rather that I had let myself fall into the trap of saying yes to talks that I didn't have enough time to prepare for adequately so wanted a quick way of churning out sermons where as I should have learnt to say yes to less.

Please don't take any of this to mean that I think that understanding and applying the bible is only possible for or only the task of those who "officially" teach or have been "officially" taught. I am simply talking about some things that I have learnt and been reminded of in my pursuit of handling the bible well.

It is not good for man (or woman) to be alone

I like people. I like spending time with people. I like getting to know people.

I have spent the last week holed up in my flat working on an essay. Because it is the Easter break there are less students around so I have not been working any evenings. I was enjoying having time to myself, doing what I wanted, when I wanted and not having to think about anyone else. Because I have had a busy few weeks I convinced myself that I had earned this time to myself. I wanted some more time to myself.

I close friend asked me if I was okay, said that I seemed different. I replied that I was okay, just a little tired.

Part of this mornings sermon was on the importance of relationships and community. I was convicted. I had stopped caring about others and was emphasising what I wanted as being the most important thing. I knew it in my heart. This was not my conscience being hard on me.

Not that I am saying that it is wrong to spend some time on our own from time to time but when it leads to wanting still more time away from people the motivation may need checking.

I guess that since the fall one if the reasons that it is not good for people to be alone is that it allows our already selfish hearts to become all the more selfish.

I am thankful for my friend, for the guy who preached this morning, for the spirits conviction and for the chance to spend some time with people after church.

Stages of departure

I may have mentioned it before but I moved to Leicester from London when I finished university. It never crossed my mind that moving two or so hours up from London to a place where I knew very few people very well and had no family might be hard. Needless to say in the months that followed I learnt that moving and starting again is not straight forward and is at points really hard work.

Learning from that experience and made a few choices before I moved to New Zealand and got the some friends from my old home to help while I got settled.

I have fallen into the trap of thinking that at the end of my first year it would all be sorted. Now don't get me wrong. God has been very gracious in so many ways and I know that He will continue to be. I know that this is where I am supposed to be. I have a job that I love (most of the time at least). I have some great people who have become my friends and I care for them a great deal and am very grateful for them.

But I had forgotten to think past the first twelve months and the lessons learnt during my last move. Back then I reached the point where I knew some people well but it became more difficult to get to know more people. I was no longer new so people understandably didn't think that I needed supporting in that kind of way any longer. But I was too British to admit that I wasn't as settled as I people thought I was. But I was more settled within another 6 months or so. I also spent some time away from Leicester catching up with family (with a large family every month is someones birthday!) and friends around the country. This I was committed to doing because they are important to me but it also helped me come to feel settled wherever I was.

Skip forward to now I have gotten to know a small group of people quite well which is a blessing. But it is hard trying to get to know more people. Add into that there is the awareness of being less and less involved in life back home. Not that I have stopped caring or that friends or family have stopped caring. It is just more seperate. You miss little things that happen with family. Life moves on. Friends get married and you can't really be involved. It is just more seperate.

Not that life is all bad by any means. It is great getting to know more people and sharing life with them. But it is not easy. I now remember what I had forgotten and I am thankful that my first move was to a place where friends and family were still near(ish). I remember God's provision and faithfulness from then and it makes now hopeful. I am beginning to understand more of the importance that the bible places on remembering.

Spam, spam, spam and spam

A stupid glitch in a Microsoft wizard has left me with major headaches with our smtp server. So please skip over if you are not interested while I slip into geek mode.

What the Small Business Server 2003 Internet connection wizard did was reset the permissions on relaying via our smtp (simple mail transfer protocol) server. Our server became an open relay. It is generally how spam email senders operate. They cannot generate large numbers of emails off of there own Internet Service provider so they look for insecure smtp servers and use them to send their spam. The internet connection wizard set out smtp server to allow connections from users with accounts on the server and from the servers own IP address. What seemed to be happening is that mail being relayed seemed to be hitting the server before being relayed and therefore when the emails got to be relayed they came from the server IP address and were therefore allowed. 750,000 emails were generated off our server in 3 days using this method. Thankfully our spam protection caught them all. Our server is now set to only relay email from authorised and authenticated users.

What a useful feature of the internet connection wizard. For my part I did not change any email settings so didn't think to check them. I will in future

Geek episodeover. One positive is that I have been able to work at full capacity again. so hopefully the worst of this virus is over. Yay! Thanks for your prayers.

I'm sick of this

Well I am still ill. My spots have gone away but I am still struggling to work a full day. I get tired very easy and my glands swell up. I am finding this very frustrating!

But it is a helpful reminder that things don't depend upon me. God is working. Sometimes through us and other times around us. But His plans do not hinge upon us. They hinge upon His being God. Thanks be to Him for that.

Virus outbreak

Well I am ill. My doctor reckons I have a virus called pityriasis rosea. I have the stupid rash and feel a but of a leper. Most annoyingly it has left me feeling rather unwell generally. I have no TV, telephone or internet and am stuck at home. On the upside it is giving me time to read.

Happy New Year

A friend very kindly invited me round to celebrate Chinese new year which lasts for 15 days and starts this weekend. I had a great time trying lots of amazing new food and making some new friends. So happy new year!

Home is where the rump rests

So who can tell me where that title of this post comes from?

I spent three and half weeks back in England. I had a wonderful time over Christmas with family and then two weeks of travelling the land catching up with friends and supporters which was again wonderful (accept for the day where I spent 6 hours on the hard shoulder of the M2). It was great to be able to spend time with my family over Christmas and just enjoy their company and be part of their day by day lives again (although I do have to confess that the sound track to High School musical is very much stuck in my head. But in my defense it does have some very catchy tunes!).

It was great to be able to thank people face to face for their support and also catch up with them face to face as great as skype and MSN are they are not the same as being in the same room. I am extremely grateful for peoples generosity from loaning me vehicles to me appearing and asking if I could use their toilet when driving long distances to letting me use their homes as a base. It was just great to be with people again. Before I left back in January 05 some people told me that relationships won't die just because I am on the other side of the world but I was worried that the practise may turn out to be different. After a year I can say that it really is okay which was a joy and a relief.

As for returning to New Zealand it was vastly different to when I flew out in January 06. It was relief to find that I was looking forward to returning to New Zealand. I am sure that this was in part due to confirming that relationships don't die but it was also due to the fact that I have a life in New Zealand now and do love it here.

But my understanding of home has changed. It has very little to do with places or geography. Thailand, NZ and the UK are all places that I am (to some degree) familiar with. But this time in Thailand I was in a place that I had not been before but it felt familiar as the people I know in Thailand were there. Where as the places I had been before felt strange because the people I associated with that place were no longer there. The same goes for the UK as on this visit I went to places that I had never been before but because I knew the people in each place I went to it felt familiar; like home.

I friend mentioned somewhere in his blog that here in earth is not our home but that heaven is (see Hebrews for more). One of things I have been thinking about over the past year is heaven. I think the bible describes heaven in tangible ways but for many of us it feels foreign, unreal and intangible at best we know it is going to be shiny. As a result we become more focused on life here and now which is not our real home. One of the books I read described heaven as "Eden plus" which is not saying that Eden was not good but the heaven will be like Eden in that we will be restored into the relationship with God we were made for but we will have even more than Adam and Eve because Jesus will be involved in a way that He wasn't before. I still have very much to learn and grasp about heaven but I have now realised how having our relationship with God fully restored will be part of what makes heaven a Christians' home.

Unpausing my blog

Okay. I need to get my blog up and running again. So I am going to create a few posts and back date them so that they appear in the right months.

So, to hear my concluding thoughts on the mission trip to Thailand have a look at http://www.gocu06.blogspot.com/

Blog again

For the next few weeks I am leading team of students on a short term mission trip to Thailand. You can follow how things go at www.gocu06.blogspot.com

Thanks!

Remember Remember

I have always really enjoyed Guy Fawkes' night. It is nothing to do with wanting to blow up the houses of parliament or anything like that. There is just something about fireworks that connects with my inner boy. There are this big explosions in the sky and you can't help but go 'ooooo!' and 'aaaaah!' and want to set of some fireworks yourself!

Anyway, I am very excited that they celebrate it here in New Zealand. Come to think of it is is a strange thing to celebrate or more specifically we celebrate it in a strange way. Guy Fawkes' was stopped from blowing up the houses of parliament and how do we remember it? With big explosions. It is a little odd.

Anyway, tonight I got to stand in the street with some friends (having just gotten second place in a quiz night arranged to raise funds for a local charity. We got a free movie/cinema pass each. Yay!) watching the firework display in Wellington harbour and it was great!

Guy Fawkes' night is a little more complicated here in that it is spring time so it is dry and windy (remember, the name windy Wellington is well deserved) and fireworks get blown into the hills and tend to set them on fire. So they are thinking of banning the public sale of fireworks here next year but thankfully they will still have the public displays.

It was great to experience one of my favourite times from home here in my new home. Wasn't quite the same as being in my brother's garden and setting off fireworks with him for the rest of my family to enjoy but it was a lot of fun to watch and ooh and aah.

Remember remember the 5th of November. Gun powder, treason and plot.

Holiday!

Last week I went on amazing tour of the west coast of the south island's west coast and central Otago region with friends Tim and Lizzy Hodge and their friend Anna. The scenery is breathtaking! We had an amazing time! On the first evening of our journey we took a wander up to the Franz Josef glacier:

The glacier was much dirtier than I expected. Apparently it looks darker because of the rocks that it picks up as it slides down the mountain. The following day we went for a walk actually on the Fox glacier:
I had been warned that the west coast we wet bit it surpassed even my expectations! Wetness aside it was amazing to walk out of a rain forest onto a glacier and go for a wander around! Later that day we headed across the mountains into central Otago before coming to a stop in Wanaka. We headed off to Queenstown to ride up the hills on the gondola and had lots of fun on the luge. We also found some time for some Lord of Rinds site spotting. Below is a picture of where Arwen uses the river to wash the dark riders away when she is carrying Frodo in the Fellowship of the Ring:
Back at Wanaka we found time to climb mount iron:

We also went for a jet boat ride on lake wanaka, enjoyed the end of season sales at the ski shops, enjoyed the stunning scenery driving over mountains via arthur's pass then back over the lindis pass. We also found time for an entertaining sport known as geocaching. All in all it was a great holiday and I am very very thankful to Tim, Lizzy, and Anna for inviting me and for all the fun we had together!

oh and we saw a rare parrot called a Kea (I think it is the world's only mountain parrot) on the first day.

Your mission should you chose to accept it part 2

I work on a campus where the majority of students are commuters and there are no students are on campus in the evening so there are no options for doing evening evangelistic events. There is no set lunch hour and students are having lunch breaks anytime between 12 and 2pm and are not always keen to spend their lunch time at another lecture type event. This makes doing lunch time events not impossible but not straight forward. Add in to that a scepticism from people to people that they do not know very well and an (at best) cynicism towards people whom are perceived to be telling them what to do and you have yet more difficulties in doing speaker focused evangelistic events. You can understand why I have been thinking a lot about what evangelism looks like here. Now before I continue let me state for the record that I am committed to the public proclamation of the gospel. I am very aware that faith comes though hearing (Romans 10 v 17) but I am beginning to wonder if we focus too heavily on getting Christians to bring their non-Christian friends to an event where someone else speaks.

I have to admit that part of my thinking has been shaped by a book I have just finished (The Radical Reformation by Mark Driscoll) which has been a very interesting and challenging read. The author walks the line between being faithful to the biblical gospel whilst understanding and engaging with the culture around him and recognises and points out the perils we fall into if we seek to live outside the culture we find ourselves in (unbiblical fundamentalism/legalism) or if we embrace the culture that we live in at the expense of faithful bible teaching (liberalism). The book makes many helpful, honest and challenging observations and suggestions and is intermingled with testimonies from Christians seeking to be witnesses to Christ in all kinds of places. I'd recommend the book very highly.

But back to the point of this post. I have reached the conclusion that we need to spend more time encouraging and equipping people to be evangelists (as well as doing it ourselves obviously). Now I recognise that this is no revelation or ground breaking idea but my question is are we really equipping folk to be evangelists and evangelists in a grace filled way? Because all to often I think we are equipping folk to be evangelists by getting them to invite their non-Christian friends to an event where someone who we feel has an exciting testimony or has a good answer to a question we think non-Christians are asking. We do encourage people to talk about Jesus with their friends but all too often they don’t get round to it because they are either embarrassed (fearful of what their friends will think of them) about being a Christian or feel that shouldn't talk about anything till they can answer every question imaginable for fear of getting something wrong and thereby failing God in some way or don't know how to talk about the gospel to someone who isn't a Christian. The used the phrase "grace filled" because I have come to think that providing we are faithful to the message of the gospel and not using shameful or deceitful means we can try something and see what happens. If it doesn’t work out we rejoice, learn from it and keep going. All too often our evangelistic efforts are not grace filled or motivated. If no-one comes to an event or responds to a survey or question in conversation then we assume that we have got it wrong and beat ourselves up about it. Which all too often leads to a temptation to mess with the message rather than rejoicing that the message of the gospel has been made known and review/adaptation of the method/approach we used.

Somehow for some people evangelism is defined as something we do at specific events or when we are doing specific things. In his letter Peter calls us to be "making the most of every opportunity" and I know for myself that is neither how I think or operate. There is almost a switch in my head that I flick on during mission weeks, evangelistic talks etc. and off again after. The truth is that I should always be looking for, praying for and taking opportunities to talk to the people I meet about Jesus. Something that I think can help with this is actively vocalising and bringing our faith to bear in the decisions we make and our general thought process. Rather than just saying what we think about a subject or issue (I had an interesting conversation a few months back as to whether classical music can be racist and how we should respond if it is) we should include we think this way because we are Christians which then gives the possibility to explain why we think what we do as Christians. I'd be the first to admit that trying to do this in my life is a slow process but I am getting better at it. Having talked about this with a few people they have said that talking in this feels awkward so therefore isn't authentic so we shouldn't do it. But just because something feels awkward does not mean it isn't authentic. It can just mean we aren't used to something. A friend of mine got married recently and it felt weird at first introducing his wife as his wife. But he did not stop doing it just because it felt weird. He kept doing it and after a while it became normal.

The Christian union that I work with has just moved from a lunch time meeting to an evening meeting and have decided that part of the extended time that evening meetings make available will be dedicated to thinking about how the people in Christian Union can talk about Jesus with their friends. They have been doing this for two weeks and already it is bearing fruit. The first week they thought about general opportunities and then prayed that they would have them and that they as Christians would take those opportunities. Two days later one of the members was travelling to a concert with a friend and they talked about the Christian faith and that friends questions. That person later agreed to come to an evangelistic service. The friend still has some way to go but they talked, some of her questions were answered, some of them weren't, but they will likely talk some more in the future.

Again, I am still convinced that the Bible calls us to be doing events where the gospel is publicly proclaimed, but I have realised we need to out meeting people where they are as well as inviting them onto out turf to do things with us.

This is something I am still working through so any feedback would be gladly received.

Skiing

Well, I finally got to visit the South Island! I made one major error in that I flew down at night and so couldn't see any of the views that I was looking forward to seeing. When I flew back on Sunday we flew over the sea so again didn't see anything (but it was my first time flying in a airplane that had propellers rather than jet engines!).


I did however get to go skiing for the first time ever! It was kind of fun but I think I moved to from the started slope to the beginners slope a little too quickly in that I always felt I was going too fast so would fall over in panic. This combined with how I woke up the night several times panicking that I was going downhill too fast in my sleep demonstrates that I have control-freak type issues going on!

I did develop my own method of turning as I couldn't get the hang of the way I was taught. My method basically involved shoving my sticks as deep into the snow as I could and using them as a pivot to turn my body. This worked but I have never been in as much pain as I was that night, and this from one days skiing!

My legs ached from trying to snowplough so hard my arms ached from my unique turning method. I ached! And this after 4 hours, how do people do this for a week? Add in to this a depressing array of small children who it seemed could ski with their eyes closed and probably do backflips. I guess it is good to be humbled from time to time.

Now at this point I want to make a brief aside about sport. Why is it that at a certain point in our lives it is how much we hurt after doing something that defines how good something is rather than how much fun it was? Example would be going to the gym and coming home in agony but feeling good because as some level we hope that because it hurts so much it most have done some good to our bodies somewhere along the line.

Rants aside I did kind of enjoy skiing and I would gladly go again (and probably will next year). I will endeavor to be a bit more laid back about it. And I am going on a tour of parts of the south island in October so more on there then.