first wednesday in Oz

The first week of school is kind of like aaah i have so much work to do this semester. But I am thrilled about my classes so far and here’s why:

this morning i had the first meeting for my class called contemporary christian music ensemble, which is a fancy way of saying chapel worship team, basically. Wesley has a chapel once a week called The Gathering, which is optional but most everyone comes because they want to (fancy that! people willingly going to chapel!) and it’s an amazing time. So this class that I’m taking involves preparing the worship for that service, including sound, set-up, and music. We got to class today and the teacher was this awesome guy named David. He was really really cool right off the bat, clearly with a heart after worship and said he was so excited that we enrolled in the class. He is going to teach us all sorts of things about how to be better worship leaders so I’m like – heck yeah sign me up for that! I have so much to learn still! Well he mentioned briefly at some point that he was a worship pastor, then at another point he alluded to the fact that he went to a large church, then at another point he made a bit of a joke about Joel Houston (the guy that sings salvation is here). I didn’t really put two and two together and after class during our lunch break as we were both at the counter buying a soda i asked what church he pastored at, just to make conversation. He goes, “oh, Hillsong – the hills”. You’re probably sitting there kind of impressed that he’s a pastor of hillsong. but let me clarify that hillsong the hills is the big church out of the two in sydney, where all of the music is produced from. Not only does this guy teach at the hillsong worship college, but after googling his name (yes i suppose that was borderline creepy) came to find out that he co-wrote Glorify Your Name with Darlene Zschech and produced her solo album! I mean… this guy is like a big kahoona at this church that i have looked up to in the aspect of worship for years and here he is teaching this class i’m in! and it’s a small group of maybe 12 people so I will have plenty of opportunities to pick his brain! It was just one of those.. “pinch me i’m in freaking Australia and this worship pastor from hillsong is going to mentor me in worship leading for 4 months” kind of moments. the kind that happen when you study abroad. did i mention you all should study abroad? In my personal opinion it’s the best thing since sliced bread.

Tonight my host mum had a bunch of friends over for dinner, and these are the people that are in her small group bible study. So they come over every week. They were awesome. There was a young couple included in the group with an adorable baby named Ella and the husband was a hysterical man, about 6’5 or something, that talked with his hands in the most exaggerated way i have ever seen. if you have ever seen someone who uses their hands a lot in conversation multiply that times 73 and you’ve pretty much got this bloke. They were all really sweet and genuinely interested in how our experience had been here so far. They all go to the same church that was hosting pilgrims from world youth day when their flights were delayed, so they all swapped pilgrim stories which was pretty entertaining. The conversation went something like this… *don’t forget to image the aussie accent or it will lose it’s effect. and picture everyone interrupting each other*

“Well, my taiwanese gehls (girls) were just taking pictures right and left of my house and i have no idear why”

-“I presume they haven’t traveled much, then”

-“Yes and they did rock paper scissors for the beds which was another story in itself”

-“Well, the nuns we had were simply lovely. Did you notice they never interrupted each other?

“Not once?”

“No, it ’twas very odd”

“Well my gehls wanted a blanket late at night and i thought oh dear haven’t i given them enough already but then they said they always cover up mirrors at night because they don’t want to wake up in the middle of a night and have a fright”

-“Well, I have a fright every morning when I look in the mirror”

“Well I know but I just said okay and gave ’em the sheet and went off on my merry way”

“They said it was a spiritual thing, though in their culture, dahling”

“Well the mexican pilgrims thought that ’twas quite strange we had kickboxing in our church..”

-“Yes, and do you remember when they announced that the gehls would be going to the homestays and the men would be staying at the church and that monk tried to go to a homestay under the qualification that he was wearing a skeht?!”

I could go on… but the dinner conversation was definitely amusing. I was content to be there… to soak it all in. And also content that I had found my way home, by myself, from school that day without any major transportation catastrophes (for which I deserve some sort of ribbon, believe me). Never a dull moment around here! haha.