Flat3D

Dave Matthews - an acoustic evening

Last weekend the youth club went to Ganaway! It was great craic, climbing wall, beach walks and all that good stuff.

On the sunday I received a text message on the beach from one Andrew TJ Rossborough asking if I’d be interested in attending an upcoming concert in the Waterfront hall starring one Dave Matthews and his mate Tim Reynolds.
It was a great night with a lot of Dave’s greats and one solo from Tim.

Also tonight I am picking up Emily (エミリ) from the airport. She is coming to visit and is staying for two weeks. So I am going to get to show her around Northern Ireland!

Reasons…

I am just back from the OMF young people’s weekend. (under 35 is young in OMF!)
The topic for the weekend was holiness in missions. It was a great weekend with a good bunch of people and a lot of sharing from home assigned missionaries including the Orrs (from Chapel of Adoration in Japan), Peter Rowan and Linda McFerran and I learned many things and have lots of cause for thought.

However one thing struck me this morning as I was thinking about the weekend, and it took me back to the passage read on Friday night, Isaiah 6. Natania quoted the “send me” bit of it in her latest prayer letter. But the thing that struck me most was that Isaiah’s reason for offering his service. It was simply because he had just experienced the holiness of God. Sure he probably had a heart for the people, they were his own people after all! I have no doubt he liked the culture and area, it is afterall the one he grew up in. But Isaiah’s reason was foremost to serve God as he had experienced his holiness.

Further to that I learned something about callings. It also rung out of Graham Orr’s testimony on Saturday night, but not quite so loudly for me. God didn’t come and say “Isaiah, I want you to do this, will you do it for me?” Instead He said “I need someone to go, who should it be?” and Isaiah responded to God’s showing him a need. Isaiah didn’t get an Isaiah specific call as such, rather God needed someone to go and placed the desire in Isaiah’s heart through his revelation to him. And so Isaiah went.
Graham experienced something similar, he was given a desire for Japan by God and as he prayed about it and thought of how he could respond, he slowly realised that God needed (and needs) his people to go to Japan, and Graham responded to that need in line with his desire.

Interesting…

Canadaphiles rejoice!

I’m not what I would call a Canadaphile, but I’m not adverse to Canada and it’s paraphanalia. I’ve recently rediscovered an old liking of the tv show Due South (main guy is Fraser the mountie… remember it?) and have fond memories of my trip there and some great canadian friends too…
But today I made a discovery that had probably been staring me in the face for some time, and quite probably isn’t anything new to more observant people… But I found a Tim Horton’s in Belfast.
Now it’s not a fully fledged coffee shop or anything, but infact is a small take away section in the petrol station on the Malone road next to Queen’s Elms selling coffee and donuts (homer simpson style as opposed to doughnuts, which, to be honest I prefer…)

So if you are a canadaphile, go and enjoy!

On another note, I learned something interesting today in Greek class…
We were looking at the passage that says “In my father’s house are many rooms” and how the KJV translates the word for “dwellings” in the greek to “mansions” in english and how more modern translations opt for rooms. Derek wasn’t too sure about why and I offered a slight insight from Japanese (although I think everyone thought I was crazy) that in Japanese a Mansion (マンション) is like a condo is in the USA, a flat (apartment) that you own rather than rent. The idea that it was a small dwelling in a larger building or house seemed to me to be the idea the KJV was putting forward. So I thought I’d check it out and found that indeed an old meaning of the word “mansion” is a dwelling and another is a small dwelling within a large house or structure.

So it turns out that the Japanese have taken our word and preserved its older meaning and we have changed it rather than, as I supposed, using it to describe a flat in the hope to make it sound grander and make more cash!

Warning… This may end up as a bit of a rant…

It’s been a while since I updated Flat 3D. I am getting busier and busier these days with college. this semester is going to be a bit more intense than the last one as I have my greek and hebrew exams at the end of it, along with 2 other modules (New Testament and History of Christian Doctrine).

Work is continuing, I may be starting some development work on a small application soon, hopefully it won’t be overly demanding (usually development=overtime in my experience, but this is a fairly basic one and if it does I may have a chat with the bosses about it!).

The english classes still haven’t started yet. Adrian has met some people who are interested but he’s been ill and I don’t really have the time to organise things anymore. I still feel a responsibility to teach the classes though, but I really don’t have time for any more than that at the moment.

I lost my bank card! Last time I used it was on the way to work on Friday, I stopped to get petrol and was in a bit of a rush so I shoved it in my pocket with my wallet. Today I went to use it again and found it wasn’t there. So I reckon it fell out sometime between Friday and today when I took my wallet out, but I don’t know where! So I called my bank and had them cancel it and issue me a new one. It will be a pain in the butt as I’ll have to change all the stuff linked to that card. But it could be worse!
I am kind of expecting to arrive in work tomorrow and it be lying on the floor or something…

I bought a DVD writer for the media pc I’ve been making, but it isn’t playing ball. I have found a lot of people have had problems with the Sony AW-G170A drive that I got, but hopefully there is a solution out there somewhere.