Orientation at Trinity

We had orientation today at Trinity. Was kind of a surreal experience waking up for my first day of school. Felt like a kid with my backpack and my packed lunch (didn't actually need it as Trinity provided this yummy buffet lunch).


As you can see the grounds at Trinity are like something out of a postcard, with grey leafless trees dusted with snow like icing sugar. I'm still getting used to the cold and thermals have become a part of my daily wardrobe - thanks to all the ICC guys who gave us thermals! They are predicting that the end of this week will be even colder with temps going down to -25C!!!


It has really hit me over the last few days that I'm in bible college ...... I think it was trying to read "to Know and Love God" which really brought it home. As a good friend (who shall remain nameless) of ours commented "who knew loving God was so complicated!". But I definitely think that this will definitely be a growth year for me ..... an extremely steep learning curve.


This is me with Chris and May Yen in the Trinity Chapel. Speaking of church we have been catching the ICC morning sunday service via the live stream. So we have been experiencing a taste of home every Saturday night. And we have been praying for all you guys. The wonders of skype has been that we have been able to pray with everyone in the ICC midnight prayer meetings. Keep up the good work guys!

God rescues

We bought a second hand car (a green 96 Toyota Corolla) last Thursday. Since we still had the rental car (a Chrysler PT Cruiser) and had not arranged for our car insurance we kept driving the cruiser until Saturday when we had to return it.

So we go out on Saturday morning ..... and it had snowed the night before! Nice fluffy snow that was about 30cm (about a foot - have to start thinking in American measurements) deep. Our cars were covered in snow and there was snow all around our cars. So we go out and start digging our cars out - we had to borrow a neighbour's shovel because we had only bought an ice scraper and brush. Snow is really nice when you are inside in a heated apartment, drinking your hot chocolate with marshmallows - not so great when you have got it seeping into your boots, still falling down around as you try to shovel your car out.

We then started heading down the road back to the rental car place with me in the Cruiser leading the way, as I had the GPS, and Jono in the "new" Toyota. It was the first time we had both driven in snow. As I looked in my rear vision mirror to check that Jono was following me I see the back of his car start to fishtail wildly and suddenly he drove off the road into a snow covered ditch! It was a scary experience as I pulled over and ran back to his car. We had to get a towtruck to pull him out of the snow but Praise God, neither him nor the car were hurt or damaged!! We thank Him for being our protector.

90% off guitar

It's been awhile since my last post and soooo much has happened.

Interruption:JOnO here:
Korean Airlines wanted to charge me $180 AUD to bring my beloved MARTIN guitar as check-in luggage... so I said for that price I would just go and buy a guitar in the USA. So thats what I did... I was looking for a guitar that would be cheap but good. (A very difficult request). Well,guess what - the first music store I walked into I found this yamaha guitar - reduced from $499 USD to $100 USD... I played it and it sounds great... then I noticed it had a huge crack in the body - a fatal crack... so I bargained with the store guy and after about 15 minutes they reduced it to $50USD - thats a REDUCTION OF 90% OFF the original price - yes folks 90%!!!

Praise GOd... Now I have a great sounding guitar worth about $750 aussie - as long as it lasts me this year - I'll be happy. Praise God - I've never seen a deal like that in all my 20 years of visiting music stores. God is so Good...and yes I got a free strap thrown in plus some picks and a pen from the music store!

Our home away from home

We just moved into our cosy 1 bedroom apartment on the Trinity University grounds. Praise God for Chris' people mover. All the seats fold into the floor of the car so we were able to transport all the big furniture items in his car. Our rental car (a cute Chrysler PT Cruiser) was also quite a good car to move our belongings; we were able to fold down the seats as well and made several trips back and forth with all the smaller items. We moved on Saturday and we are pretty much settled in. We have been so blessed .....most of our apartment is furnished with free furniture! We even got some appliances for free (an analog tv, a rice cooker, a coffee maker).



It just snowed last night (the first time we have seen fresh snow! - we have seen snow on the ground, from the last snow storm about 2 weeks ago, which is generally a yucky grey colour). All the ground, our rental car and the trees are covered in snow. It is really beautiful - all white and clean. The snow flakes are really amazing .... they are little miracles in themselves ..... so intricately formed, it's really wonderful to see God's amazing creation.



We have been really busy getting everything set up - from our phones, to electricity, to getting a car, to enrolling in our subjects, to getting settled, to setting up the internet. The university has internet but we have been finding that we can't really skype or VOIP back to Australia with it. So we have had to get our own internet connected, which won't happen until next week.

Classes also begin next week and we have orientation starting on Monday. It is kind of strange to go back to University, after working for so many years. I'm taking 5 subjects this semester and Jono is going to be doing 6 subjects (but Jono's doing about 1.5 times more work than what I'm doing). Pray that we will get great lecturers and that we not only do well but that we really get to know God's heart better.

We went to the "Living Word Christian Center", which is about 40 minutes away from our place, on Sunday (thanks Doug for the recommendation). It is a huge church with about 18,000 members! There was a real freedom in the worship and in the true style of an African-American church there was a lot of audience participation with people just getting into the preaching of God's word. I think we definitely will be going back to this church.

Overflow of blessings

We have been soooo blessed. God really is our provider. Thanks everyone for your prayers! He has blessed us in so many ways:

house we have gotten a one-bedroom apartment on campus. Which we only applied for a week before we left Australia. Apparently the on-campus housing is in high demand. We asked if there were any two bedroom apartments available but all were taken.

furniture At Trinity University they have a furniture room (which holds past students' furniture) that is available free of charge for international students. We visited the furniture room on Tuesday and two families had just left so there was a lot of nice furniture to choose from. We got most of the furniture (futon/sofa, dining table and 4 chairs, 3 lamps, crockery, cutlery, pots and pans, coffee maker, chest of drawers, coffee table, 2 study desks) for our apartment for FREE! We only needed to buy a bed which we got for about 60% off the original price!

It is amazing to know that God can really do immeasurably more than we can ask or imagine!!