Carrying on where I left off. The speaker on Sunday morning was Wayne Alcorn from Brisbane City church, who was speaking about knowing who we are and who Jesus is and what place he takes in our life.
Then we went to a political forum hosted by the Maxim institute featuring politicians from most major parties (Notably Bill English and Nandor Tanczos) The first half of it was between most of the major parties (Labour, National, Greens, Act and NZfirst) on a number of issues like The Civil Unions Bill, Education (Discussing government’s decision to turn down UN doha declaration (google it) section on education about parents having the right to choose how their children are educated – focusing on funding for integrated schools) and 1 or 2 other issues. I thought the most interesting thing said in the whole debate was Nandor mentioning that the issues being discussed were issues important to the maxim institute, which is quite right wing and conservative and that that wasn’t the way Jesus was. (Food for thought, which I did agree with to an extent)
The second half was with 4 “emerging parties” (United Future, Christian Heritage Party, Destiny NZ and the Maori party.) All except United Future did a good job of losing my vote (not that they had it in the first place). That common sense thing is still good for the worm (You may have to be a kiwi to get that reference). The Maori party guy was just a clown (trying to be funny and really had nothing to say), and the other 2 were too anti the current government. While I have to agree that some of the policies implemented by the current government are not exactly what one would call Christian policies, they have been doing pretty well in most other areas. Most of the policies in question have come down to a conscience vote anyway. Destiny NZ appear to be campaigning quite strongly to decrease the seperation between church and state, which is not something I agree with.
Anyway, enough politics (might start some discussion)… Next was lunch and a relaxing afternoon of not doing a whole lot that I can remember.
5pm we went to the Parachute band live recording for a couple of hours and then had tea. I went to the hip hop showcase at the Palladium at about 8:20 and saw EPR and Rapture Ruckus again, who had some B-boys and B-girls up on stage doing some impressive breakdancing. Then went from there to the mainstage and caught most of Jeff Deyo. Next up was Third Day – one of my favourite bands. One notable happening was someone on stage yelling “Are you ready to… (can’t remember)” and a random girl behind me saying “Ready like a fox” – kind of made my day. Most of you probably won’t get that, but it is a bit of a running joke at work. (Everything is like a fox and all the way to the bank). Following Third Day was Shawn Mcdonald, who I hadn’t heard before and also really liked – I ended up buying his CD.
Then more hanging out in the village, donuts and chips and trying to eat biscuits off our foreheads – which I think I have mastered.
Monday Christine Caine spoke, then we packed, shopped and saw a bit more of Grits. Then we went back to my place for another swim and then Tony dropped me off at the airport and I flew back to Christchurch.
The first leg (Hamiltron to Wellington) most of the people were from Parachute (including one of the guys from Rapture Ruckus, although the plane was only about half full. I kind of missed takeoff – fell asleep right after the safety demonstration and woke up in the air. (This was after drinking a 600ml coke at the airport.) The lady next to me said she was quite impressed and was wondering if she should have woken me up in case I was embarassed about snoring in public. The second leg I had a row of 3 seats to myself and fell asleep while we still had to have the seat backss in the upright position and woke up in time to recline it, stretch out across the seats and be told that I had to put it back up again because we were about to land.
Emily picked me up and then we talked lots about our respective weekends. Then bed because I was tired, which was why there was no update Monday night.
I’ll skip a day now and jump to the present, where I am posting this using our freshly connected bitstream internet connection. Sweet sweet broadband.
That’s all for this post.