Tribute to Sooty

R.I.P. - Sooty

September 1993 - 24th October 2009

Sooty was full of character -

affectionate and loving,

playful (he loved boxes),
cute and loved (and he knew it!),

mischievious and funny...

But most of all,

he was my allie when the world was against me,

everywhere I went he would follow,

and I will never forget him...

and I will always love him....

Goodbye Sooty... sleep well until we meet again...

Australia vs New Zealand

I had the privilege of going to an international rugby game at the cake tin on

Saturday, 19th September...

It was All Blacks vs Wallabies and it was an exciting game...

Our seats were really good and we got to enjoy Corey Jane scoring a try

right in front of us...
There was quite a few of us that went together - the atmosphere was good
until people drank too much...

but over all the drinking, we had an awesome time and

I would go again if there was another game...

Parachute roadshow

I had an exciting night out the other night at the Parachute roadshow, featuring

Rapture Ruckus, Julia Grace and the Parachute band...

Below is me, some of the cadets and some of BCM youth waiting for

the fire truck to give us the all clear to go back inside...

yes, you got it.... the good old smoke machine does it again...

This is me and Juanita chilling out at the concert...
It was a great night and Rapture Ruckus was awesome - he is so much better live!!!

The Down hill slide

I'm now halfway through year 2 of officership training, which means it's a downhill slide from here - this year is going really fast!

Anyways, I thought I'd share some photos from our mission weekend we had at Levin a month or so ago...

This is me showing the Levin kids on Sunday morning how to fit

your whole body through an A4 piece of paper....

Mission impossible kids story...

This is the second photo Sarah has taken of me eating 2 cheeseburgers together.... We all enjoyed some lunch at Maccas....

When we weren't doing mission, we mucked around in the Levin playground - some of us adults had just as much fun as the kids....
This is the youth event we ran at Levin on Saturday night - we played old school youth group games and the youth loved it - I drove home a van load of youth on Saturday night who were just so buzzing over the night they had....

My new Nephew

Well, it's been a few weeks since I updated my blog so I thought I would

renew my blog with pictures of my new nephew "Caden"...

Caden is my brother, Matthew's son and he looks like his father too....
I had the privilege of having quite a few cuddles with Caden
and he is really cute...

Below is a photo of our whole family together which doesn't happen often...

This photo was taken at Taj's birthday party on 2nd May....

In the photo from the left is:

Deonie (my sister) and her husband Conrad,

me & my 3 month old nephew Caden,

my nephew Taj (Conrad & Deonie's son), mum & Dad,

Matthew (my brother) and his girlfriend, Nicole (Caden's mum)

EASTER CAMP WAS AWESOME!!!

A few of us cadets had the privilege of going to Easter Camp last weekend and we had an awesome time...

This is Kylie, Sarah and myself at Rotorua airport
This is all of us at Wellington Airport getting ready to board our flight to RotoVegas...

This is Kylie and myself at Maccas...

This is self explanatory as is the next photo...

We had a great time and the laughter was never ending....

Here are some hi-lights below:

Amanda gets married....

Are you in a state of shock????

Don't worry, we didn't actually get married - we had ceremonies class and Geoffrey and myself were the unlucky ones that got picked to practise a marriage ceremony on...

So meet Amanda Hugandkiss and Jack anjil Hill...

This is my bridesmaid, Lusi Intheskywithdiamonds and the bestman was Pati toomuch...

and meet Amanda Hugandkiss's mother Roberta Hugandkiss - isn't she beautiful...

Our officiating minister was Commissioner Van Van...

This was a lot of fun and it was hilarious... we wrote our own vows and had the congregation in fits of laughter....

CHURCH AT THE BEACH...

My mission placement for 2009 is Miramar and so my first day at Miramar Corps was church at the beach - Worser Bay...

I took Nilla and Olwin with me so they could get a feel of how different NZ Corps are and also a chance for them to have a swim at a NZ beach...

But as you can see, although it was a scorching hot day, the water was freezing but we did go swimming...

I am joined by Hana (below), a first year cadet, at my mission placement this year and she has two boys, James (below) and Ashley...
The kids had a treasure hunt in the ocean, which was a lot of fun and the adults had great fellowship and a time of worship on the beach...

January 2009 activities

Even though we've all been working very hard, we have still found time to have some fun!

Phillipa and myself had the awesome opportunity to take our new friends out sightseeing in Wellington this week...

Our new friends are Olwin and Nilla from Indonesia and they will be studying with us this year...

We went sightseeing and then we took them tenpin bowling, which they had never done before and they enjoyed it alot - along with Shawna and Talei...

Back at College for 2009

Well Christmas and new years is over and it's back to college life - it's pretty quiet down here though and I've been suffering from the flu but I had a great holiday...

It was a fun Christmas day with my family and I enjoyed watching my nephew Taj open his presents...
My parents and myself had the great privilege of visiting Tiri tiri matangi island, which is a bird sanctuary and got to enjoy the flourishing Saddleback that were everywhere in the bush...
We got to meet Greg, the Takahe, who is huge and likes to steal your lunch - naughty boy!

And we also got to enjoy the Hihi (stitchbird), which was also flourishing on the island and everywhere in the bush.

I had a great and relaxing holiday and look forward to seeing what God has in store for me this year...

I'll keep you all posted...