We met up with Simon at Shuga where Dan works. Dan started his shift there at noon so we all had some time together when when we had eaten and Dan took time out from the kitchen to chat with us. We enjoyed our meals and felt that the timing of everything was wonderful. We were greatly encouraged.
This is a collection of images from the Gembrook Retreat just recently. Everywhere in Victoria the ground is pushing out new growth as fast as it can... and in all the greens imaginable.
Azaleas are in bloom and as fast as old ones fall there are new blooms coming. The life cycle of plants seem to have accelerated. Water has made the difference. There is an abundance of it. The ground is sodden and the water tables have risen. The remaining pictures may be titled: Azaleas, Chestnut blossom, tree fungi, lonely swing, and Green John Deere.
Our church is involved in two carol nights. The first one is public one led by our local Whittlesea City Council at Redleap Reserve. Our church has a presence there by way of a real live nativity and activities for kids, like paste the sheep on the Judean hills.
Last year a rain storm washed the event out. This year the weather was fine and only marginally cold. A good crowd came to share the night.
Friends, Andrew, Dave and Chris were magi for the night. Sorry we don't have a picture of the little baby Jesus, someone's newly born from the church. Lots of people were pretty excited to see a real baby with Steve and Brieley (Joseph and Mary for the night).
A week later was our church's turn to have its own carols. This year it was led by the youth group and they cast aside tradition and reworked many lyrics into new tunes or different keys. It was lighthearted and fun as the picture shows. This was no trouble for Peter but he did hear from one quarter that people were sorry there were none of the hoped for traditional carols. To be fair it was not really "carols" and more a big family sing song with songs like "Joy to the world, All the boys and girls, Joy to the people everywhere you see (instead of all the fishes in the deep blue sea), Joy to you and me." 
Peter made a brief visit to the Funks house, and pretty soon he was on the trampoline with the grandkids. Piper was also there but she proved to illusive for the camera's attempts at catching her (apart from her behind). So it was grandsons' day for the blog.
Jasper likes to climb on top of his Poppa. Jethro on the other hand enjoyed walking (yes, walking) about with the occasional investigation of Poppa's bulging pockets. Inspector Gadget is Peter with the number of things that Jethro finds. All the time, Jasper holds on and leans out like any monkey would.
Firstly, a very Happy Christmas to you all. We prefer to say Happy instead of Merry. We mean the same and more so. Sometimes Merry is connected to getting drunk so we like Happy better.
The Christmas celebration is about mystery. The Bible offers two quite conflicting birth narratives (Matthew and Luke) and that only adds more impossible to answer questions. But the more we delve into the stories of Jesus birth the better questions we will have to ask. We seek better questions, and never easy answers. It's like the picture above. Was it a random collection of objects that the camera happened to catch or was it carefully prepared to contrive a deeper meaning? Is God involved in the creation of these randoms? 
Here the light of a clear early morning is giving the illusion of Christmas tree decoration. How green and vibrant is that! This is a gift of God, experienced in the moment, and the camera freezes this moment for future reflection.
Stars feature at Christmas. They are often seen on Christmas cards and nearly every Christmas tree has one on top. We have found that we are even given a chocolate versions to have with our coffees. The shepherds were under the stars the night Jesus was born, and the Magi were guided a bright star right to the location of the baby some little time later. Mystery abounds and there always will be questions. 
And Christmas has become a production line of great proportion. We do our best to remember the true meaning of Jesus' birthday in amongst it all. It is all about God's giving to us a great and mighty gift of faith. When it is all said and done, it is very much about faith and how without faith we can't see our way to God. The gift of Jesus birth has a lot to do with faith and how to find it.
After so much recent rain we have both remarked on the lushness of our garden and our whole suburb for that matter. We have been amazed at the great variety of greens available to distinguish each plant or tree. This would be a tremendous challenge for an artist's palette to provide the same. We both agree that this is God showing off in areas we cannot hope to match.
Simon has indeed arrived safely. Simon really appreciated the GPS that his Uncle Phil passed on to him. He was actually very lucky to get through, travelling the inland route after all the recent rains. He trusted his Lexus through 45 cm deep water, and at one stage during a 25 M stretch of water, his car dipped briefly into even deeper water. He was lucky the car’s momentum carried him through! He told us that his Lexus’ electronic gadgets malfunctioned for quite a time following the “dunking”. Simon will be the only posh car driver crazy enough to go that route until the waters recede.
Simon had intended reaching our place 8 am of a morning but he stopped “somewhere along the route” and slept in the car for about 6 hours. This helped him as it turned out because it was in the daylight hours that he was later able to get advice for an alternative route past a submerged bridge.
One of Simon's first tasks was to wash his car of 3,000 Km of dust. After the wash he resolved to do it again a little better the next day. 
Dan's girlfriend Jess exhibited her graduation folio this week along with other students in their final year of graphic design at Victoria University city campus. It was a great relief and pleasure for Jess to reach this point. We drove into the city and met them at the exhibition. Each student designed an A1 sized panel (colour laser printed) which displayed their best work for the course. As well as this the course produced an attractive book displaying this work (and more) for prospective employees to remember them by, and Peter thought that made the exhibition ten times more effective. The simplicity and uniformity of the presentation made it a good student exhibition.
Peter remembers his own student exhibition which was a total non event for what it generated. There was no corporate visual structure. No real promotion. It was just a change of class room decor in the last week of the year and that was that. Who came to view the exhibition was anyone's guess because Peter doesn't remember if it had an opening. On the other hand, Jess's course staff have shown a supportive attitude as they attended to the needs of their graduating students for what is very much a cut-throat industry to get into. When every university in every state is offering a graphic design course, competition for a position in a good firm makes it tough. Peter was fortunate. He was at the right place at the right time to land the job with Michael Bryce.
Peter's men's Bible study group had its Christmas meal at Shuga Cafe-restaurant where Dan works. That was pretty neat. They booked for ten and twelve came and that was fine. A few of the group knew Dan and went to the griller to greet him. Everybody enjoyed the meal they ordered. Peter's Ratatouli (spelling!) risotto was super nice. Afterward the table became a meeting place to plan for a January event at the church. Everybody agreed that Tony was a natural leader and appreciated this gift that he has.
After church, we lunched with Joy, Craig and Abigail at our 'alternative' place, Azurea Cafe Restaurant. This event has become a sort of institution with us now. We even order much the same food each week. The table top game is often the same between Peter and Abigail. This time the focus was on Sudoku numbers mixed with drawing colourful shapes. It is always a nice time and we feel blessed by God to be able to fellowship in this way, in such a relaxed and fun way.
At Greensborough Plaza we dropped in at the Centreview Cafe for refreshments. The grandkids asked for hot chocolate and we had our usual coffees. Piper and Jasper had found a neat little toy to take home - a not too expensive item. Jethro also got a barrel of monkeys, the same as Jasper, and Piper a dinosaur egg that you have to soak in water.
Then with roughly perfect timing, Bec and Gord joined us when we had actually stopped for another snack at the other end of the Plaza, the playground end. We photographed the whole family in this playground at about the time we said our good-byes and went our different ways. It had surely been a really nice time all round. Bec and Gord had loved the U2 experience and we had a dream run with Piper, Jaz and Jet. 
We were delighted to have the three grandkids overnight. Bec and Gord dropped them off so that they could go to the U2 concert. The little ones were no trouble and in the morning we busied them with setting up our old Christmas tree that we get out each year. That was fun. Then, as planned, we took them to Greensborough Plaza for a treat of a time. It was there that we stopped for a while at the third scale Nativity Scene. We were glad that the Greensborough Plaza management thought it good to do this. The three little ones made links with our small Nativity Set and this much larger one. This was yet another piece in the big story that happened more than two thousand years ago.
Peter went to watch Sons of Korah playing in Mill Park Baptist Church. How good was that. This was one of his favourite bands. Sons of Korah are based in Geelong and were touring about Australia partly to promote World Vision, especially to promote the sponsoring of a child. Only 6% of Australians are involved in this way and World Vision enlisted the aid of Sons of Korah to create awareness. 
We try to catch up with Dan at least every second week. The venue is usually the Centreview Cafe in the Greensborough Plaza. And every now and again we update how we look there with the handy camera. Numerous past blogs will show something similar. Dan usually has a 'solid' bacon and egg breakfast with his coffee since he has more often just got up. He is enjoying his restaurant shift work at Shuga in Mill Park and often gets there on his bush bike.
Peter has been enjoying a mentoring time with a grade three boy called Jarrik. This weekly time falls under a World Vision school mentoring program for kids who will benefit from such a relationship. Peter is not sure whether he is really a good mentor in the official sense because the visits are usually unstructured fun, like playing UNO of drawing and doodling, and letting the ideas go anywhere. Just sometimes there is a bit more structure and he helped Jarrik make a pretend box of chocolates using brown felt. It looked so good that it was worth blogging about.
We have been close friends to a Werribee family and their eldest son Tyler has reached 18 years. He is becoming a fine and mature man with a passion for God and a strong career focus towards electrical engineering. We wish him well and congratulate him at reaching his milestone. 
Last month we attended Tyler's valedictory dinner at a posh joint dedicated for that kind of thing. He and his friends concluded their VCE year in style. Tyler scrubs up well in the grey suit.
