Christmas is nearly here....

This is the last week at college until I return home for Christmas so I thought I would update my blog.

This has been a busy month and among other things, we were involved in running a Christmas Concert for our Upper Hutt primary kids.

Here I am below getting them excited and dancing to Superhero... (the kids at the front with me are my Bible in School kids)

We performed a play which was based on 'Sticky TV's Sticky I' solving the mystery of where the baby King was - below is Shaun who fell out of the time machine...
Here I am again, pretending to be the star who kept running away from the Sticky I presenters...
And finally, we have just finished Commissioning weekend and it was a real privilege to watch Kylie and Stu get commissioned...

So this is me signing out for the year so my next blog update will probably be in the new year - it's been a great year and I have enjoyed every moment of it - although it has gone too fast...

I wish you all a merry Christmas and a safe new year....

SCHOOLS OUT FOR SUMMER

I have finished all my assignments and exams for the rest of the year - yay!

The next 4 weeks is going to be filled with cleaning houses for next year's intake, Christmas concerts & celebrations and preparation for preaching in January...

Last Thursday we ventured out to Laserstrike to celebrate a year well done...

We had a great lunch there and great fun....

Some of us a little more serious about laserstrike than others...

But we had a lot of fun... especially Sammy!

Upper Hutt Mission Weekend

We had a mission weekend last weekend and my leadership role for the whole weekend was really looking after the kids. I took 15 kids to the pools on the Saturday morning and we all had a great time.

Then on Sunday morning, I was involved in the leadership of the Sunday kids church at Upper Hutt Salvation Army which was also a lot of fun - we had a great time grooving to Jesus you're my superhero!
Then on Sunday afternoon, we all had to get dolled up for Andrew & Rochelle's wedding, which was a really good wedding...
As you can see at the reception - the chocolate fountain was flowing...
My job after the reception was to clean this fountain, which was not easy but I found that pouring hot water into it made really good hot chocolate...

TIME OUT WITH THE KIDS

It's been first year review this week so all the kids from last year are staying on campus as well as the Tongs and the Toganivalus'.

All the girls put on a show by the flag pole, dancing to High School Musical on their MP3 player so they invited me to dance with them...
It was great to let my hair down and have some fun with the kids...
It's been great having kids on campus again and I'm looking forward to next year when the new cadets move into college with all their kids - it will be a noisy, fun place!

FURTHER UPDATES

I'm running out of pictures to use because all I'm doing at the moment is studying so I'll use some random ones...

Twice a month we share a community meal at Booth College of Mission and we get the privilege of doing all the dishes after it but I'm not complaining because it was a free meal...
Last week, Upper Hutt had it's Spring Festival so all the streets were blocked with markets and rides and all sorts of fun...
This is the Hutt River, which is just 5 minutes down the road from where I live - isn't it beautiful...
I love the Upper Hutt City Logo because I really do think it's a great place to live...

So there are my random pictures - life is going so fast down here - it's already September and not far to Christmas.

Study is going well and sermonising is going well - there is going to be another mission weekend at the beginning of October so will have more pictures then...

Even though Upper Hutt is a great place to live, I still miss West Auckland and everyone up there...

Life in the past few weeks

I had a great time out at Masterton a few weeks ago, helping to paint the house that Stu & Kylie want to turn into a community ministries and corps. It's always good catching up with the Tongs.

I've had a busy time down here in the last few weeks with organising leads, preaches & assignments but it was great to catch up with some of the Faith Factory family last week when they attended the Leadership Jesus way conference. Upper Hutt even put snow on the mountains for them...

Amanda's little holiday

Kidz Matter 2 us rainbow disco - the kids were having a great time dancing.

My first look at Ano & Falute's new baby boy - Victory!
I had a great time playing with my nephew Taj and will miss him heaps...
I will especially miss my cuddles with my cat 'sooty'...




I'm back at college after a 2 week break, which seemed to fly past too fast!

I had a great time catching up with family and friends when I was in Auckland but it wasn't long enough.

It was great coming back to the Faith Factory for Sunday services and seeing good changes and lots of new people.

I look forward to coming back at Christmas time to see how different it is then too.

On the friday, before I left, I went along to Kidz Matter 2 Us kindy rainbow disco, which was a lot of fun and I have included some of those pictures up above.

Taranaki Mission Weekend

This photo was taken from my host's kitchen window - spectacular.
This is the marae that we beautified
This was the Corps Social - a lot of fun...
This was the Sunday service drama
This is all of us and our friends from Stratford Corps

We had an awesome time in Taranaki at Stratford Corps... we had great fun on the drive up and back and we had a great time with our hosts, where we were billeted out to, although they hardly saw us because we were on the go...

We started at the Marae early on Saturday morning with the powhiri and then got straight into beautifying the marae and getting to know the marae folk.

On Saturday night we ran a social for the Corps folk and had great fun with game shows such as "Are you smarter than an officer?", "the big quiz" and "the generation game" and of course, my team won.

On Sunday, we ran the meeting and had a very powerful drama with monologues of Salvationists from 100 years ago to today and then the corps put on a great feed for us.

Then it was time for us to go home...

But we got to know the Stratford folk and they are a great bunch of passionate people, young and old with a fantastic corps officer who visited the Faith Factory a few weeks ago - Major Maureen Ashton.

It was a blast and none of us will ever forget the people there and their loving hospitality...

Brrrrrrh!!!

I say brrrrrh! it's cold down here...

there must be some snow in the atmosphere

I say oh-e-o-e-o ice, ice, ice, ice....

(that's my little cheer from "Bring it on")

It's only May and it's freezing!!!!

I'm an Aucklander and I need to harden up!!!

BOOTH COLLEGE OF MISSION SPORTS FLOP

BCM made it to Taupo to compete in the North Island Salvation Army's Sports day.

We managed to get together 2 teams, who both played in the amateur league. Our teams were called the "All Booths" and "Booth's Army" - I was in Booth's Army.

We played Netball...
We played soccer...
We played touch rugby and volley ball too...
But my team, Booth's Army came very last out of 41 teams and we won the wooden spoon.
Oh well, at least we brought home a trophy!

Freedom Congress in Dunedin

Well, all us cadets went to Dunedin last weekend to celebrate 125 years since the Salvation Army was established in NZ and it was a very fun weekend...

We all got to know each other very well and had some great laughs - my fijian friend Pati carried one of the motel's flanels with him wherever he went as his handkerchief, which I thought was very funny so I managed to sneak a few photos of him with his flanel...

As you can see below, he gave me a wave with the flanel during the march...

Another laugh all weekend was the fact the men had to wear their caps so I decided to wear a cap too and I must say, the girls look better in the caps than the guys do....

During the weekend, we had the chance to wave our flags but I decided it looked better as headgear - could be a new uniform look...
Below are some photos taken during our march in the main street of Dunedin - of course BCM and cadets are at the back of the march with the double decker bus...

I got to catch up with Neil & Gill and also Nigel, Christine & Joseph and Craig & Amie while I was down in Dunedin so that was great...

Isn't Joseph cute....

It was a lot of fun and I managed to stay awake and even make it to the Youth meetings at night which were a blast...

However, this week I am very tired and finding myself taking nana naps in the afternoon when I should be studying....