This week marks the real beginning of my year. Though a lot has been happening so far, this week will be when everything starts to run ‘as normal’ for 2011. My work days will start to take on a bit of a rhythm, as much is possible anyway. On Wednesday one of our ministries for toddlers, called Toddler Jam kicks off. This runs twice a week and I help out one morning a week. I will start to have a regular gardening day/afternoon, with Wednesday afternoon being dedicated to servicing my regular and some new gardening clients.
This week also marks the beginning of Sync Youth for 2011. I am really excited for Sync Youth this year because it really will start to ‘look’ how I am wanting it to. We’ve made some fairly big structural changes after just 12 months and one can never really be sure how change on this scale is going to go until it happens, however I feel very positive about it. We’ll have a totally new group of youth at youth group and our older youth will be learning what it means to be youth leader apprentices. I’m very much looking forward to working with this older group, hoping to instill in them some skills that are worthwhile for life whilst also helping them discover their gifts and talents and equip them for service in those area’s.
The Hub really is starting to move now as we have begun to work with students at the ECU Student Village. On Saturday we took a group of students to Ikea so that they could furnish their units with little odds and ends that were not already provided. What was most amusing about this trip was that the majority of the students were from Sweden (the home of Ikea) and so it was quite fun learning what all the names of the furniture actually mean. Some made sense, some were quite ironic and some were just plain weird!
It felt great this last week to actually be out and about ‘doing stuff’ with people. I helped cook pancakes, helped about 10 students move in and met many more, discussing life and what courses they were studying. It is still very much early days but I sensed some really good connections and am feeling very positive about the prospect of this church plant really taking off at ECU Mt Lawley.
This week the rubber hits the road, let the journey of 2011 truly begin!
