Just for fun…

… thanks to the wonderful ladies (and some gents) who compile Church and Community Newsletters the world over. We thanks you for your ‘typos’. I had a good chuckle at these this morning – so I thought I’d ’share the love’.

The Fasting & Prayer Conference includes meals.

The sermon this morning: ‘Jesus Walks on the Water.’ The sermon tonight: ‘Searching for Jesus.

Ladies, don’t forget the rummage sale. It’s a chance to get rid of those things not worth keeping around the house. Bring your husbands.

Remember in prayer the many who are sick of our community. Smile at someone who is hard to love. Say ‘Hell’ to someone who doesn’t care much about you.

Don’t let worry kill you off – let the Church help.

Miss Charlene Mason sang ‘I will not pass this way again,’ giving obvious pleasure to the congregation.

For those of you who have children and don’t know it, we have a nursery downstairs.

Next Thursday there will be tryouts for the choir. They need all the help they can get.

Irving Benson and Jessie Carter were married on October 24 in the church. So ends a friendship that began in their school days.

A bean supper will be held on Tuesday evening in the church hall. Music will follow.

At the evening service tonight, the sermon topic will be ‘What Is Hell?’ Come early and listen to our choir practice.

Eight new choir robes are currently needed due to the addition of several new members and to the deterioration of some older ones.

Scouts are saving aluminum cans, bottles and other items to be recycled. Proceeds will be used to cripple children.

Please place your donation in the envelope along with the deceased person you want remembered.

The church will host an evening of fine dining, super entertainment and gracious hostility. Potluck supper Sunday at 5:00 PM – prayer and medication to follow.

The ladies of the Church have cast off clothing of every kind. They may be seen in the basement on Friday afternoon.

This evening at 7 PM there will be a hymn singing in the park across from the Church. Bring a blanket and come prepared to sin.

Ladies Bible Study will be held Thursday morning at 10 AM. All ladies are invited to lunch in the Fellowship Hall after the B. S. Is done.

The pastor would appreciate it if the ladies of the Congregation would lend him their electric girdles for the pancake breakfast next Sunday.

Low Self Esteem Support Group will meet Thursday at 7 PM. Please use the back door.

The eighth-graders will be presenting Shakespeare’s Hamlet in the Church basement Friday at 7 PM. The congregation is invited to attend this tragedy.

Weight Watchers will meet at 7 PM at the First Presbyterian Church. Please use large double door at the side entrance.

The Associate Minister unveiled the church’s new campaign slogan last Sunday: ‘I Upped My Pledge – Up Yours’.

Springing to mind of course a combination of both The Vicar of Dibley and Black Adder. Now wouldn’t that be deliciously funny…

Belongum – Out!

Do you know…

… what an IED is? It stands for an ‘Improvised Explosive Device’. this is a weapon of choice by insurgents in places like Iraq and Afghanistan – not to mention a whole swag of places where people fight a ‘dirty’ war against others (their own included) – for reasons mostly unknown to the vast majority of us Aussies.

Today I’m thinking of one person in particular, whom I know has been on the receiving end of one of these nasty bit’s of kit. An IED went BANG under or near the car he was traveling in and as a result – the past three years have seen him miss out on the joys of being in control of certain parts of his body once issued to him – his legs.

Over three years ago a horrific event robbed this man of one leg, wrecked the other, peppered his body with shrapnel and near on lost him his eyesight as well. It has seen him undertake more operations than I could care to think on and, sent his family on a roller-coaster ride I’m sure they felt they could never get off.

Last week he gave his fate over to others and underwent an operation aimed at giving him back the opportunity to walk again – under his own steam.

Soon after I received the following news:

“Xxxx walked 5 steps today. The first steps in three years.”

Mate, I can’t even begin to understand how deep you need to reach inside yourself, just so you can drag out that which you need, to make it through another bloody day.

I’m willing to bet though that it has a lot to do with that bloody amazing ’support team’ you’ve got surrounding ya – all of ‘em – ‘family’!

Bravo Zulu to you and yours mate… I’ll drop by and see you soon.

Belongum – Out!

Please note: If you happen to know of this person – please do not name him in this post nor make any personal reference to his family.

For those of you who follow “Sea Patrol”…

… I apologise! I had no idea so much ‘drama’ can take place on an RAN vessel.  It would seem it ALL happens aboard ‘HMAS Hammersley’.  Sheesh – why wasn’t I posted to Boats (Nickname for Patrol Boats in the RAN – Attack Class, Fremantle Class and now Armidale Class) eh?

Channel Nines - "Sea Patrol"

Relax Sea Patrol fans – I’m not going to bag your taste in TV drama – I promise! It’s just that this is where I’ve come to see the new sea going uniform for RAN personnel now and for the life of me I can’t help cracking up when I think on it. Once – a long time ago – I wore a RAN uniform.  Sea going time then had you wearing blue King Gee overalls (sleeves cut-off, down or rolled up) or you wore your 8’s (General Purpose work shirt and pants).  All your working kit was a shade of blue.  If you worked above decks – you could also wear King Gee shorts – especially when operating in the tropics.

If you worked below – there wasn’t a single thing you didn’t do without your overalls on.  It made sense to have some sort of general wear uniform that protected you from every day sea-going jobs and also gave good protection against those other hazards – fire and gas.

They were easy to get hold of, they made them for other general purpose type roles that you often found out on Civvie Street and were relatively cost effective. It wouldn’t have cost the Australian tax payer much to keep Australia’s sea going fleet (which frankly isn’t a lot on the scale of things) clothed and relatively safe.

In through the victualing door walks someone who know better and out through their Stores window goes the KISS Principal.  Again! Would someone please tell me WHY there’s a need now for every sailor – serving on a sea going vessel in the middle of the ogin – to wear CAMOUFLAGE?

Image from Sea-Patrol.com - the unofficial guide to Channel Nine's "Sea Patrol".

I was playing army games in this country when they ditched the old jungle greens and changed over to the ‘new’ lightweight DPCU camouflage uniforms.  They were funny things in the early days; touted as being fire ‘retardant’ , they were allowed a set number of washes before they lost their ability to ‘retard’ fire.  It was a funny time.  However, despite all the noise surrounding the intro of this new uniform – you at least understood it: good camouflage was a key factor worth considering in a country’s army!  You have a particular need to hide from people wanting to shoot at you when you’re trying to keep your head down, so it makes very good sense.  But a navy?  Go figure!

Most personnel are closed up in a ship at sea – especially in Action Stations.  You only see key personnel outside the superstructure and if the shape of the particular bit of kit they happen to be standing on at the time doesn’t give the game away, than there’s clearly a problem with your educational process – that or where you come from there isn’t a pressing need to know what a SHIP actually looks like! Do we REALLY need to hide these sailor’s from someone else’s eye so badly?

So we create a grey camouflage pattern – for whatever reason – and we make our sea going sailors wear it. They must have fair cracked themselves up with all sorts of silly-bugger jokes when it happened:

“Any of you buggers seen my overalls anywhere – I can’t find ‘em?”

“Nah mate – that’s the point!”

It fair bamboozles me!  Some bean-counter has approved a Dept of Defence ‘Initiative’ and Hey-presto – our proud RAN personnel now get themselves a brand-new piece of kit!  Wonders will never cease to amaze me!  You wouldn’t believe the amount of funding that went into developing the disruptive pattern camouflage. It’d fair boggle your mind! That was just for the Army – way back when – and then what happens is some pillock get’s it in his head (I used the word ‘HIS’ deliberately) to run this new set of overalls out to the fleet.  What a great idea!

To top it off – it’s a walking oxymoron.  Who spends hundreds of thousands of dollars to develop a new ‘camouflage’ uniform for our Royal Australian Navy and THEN, puts HIGH VISIBILITY tape all over it?  I have to tell you – the sailors I know (who still serve at sea) can’t help but laugh really loudly at this.  Once again the Dept of Defence Logic Team are hard at work undoing the KISS principals of us mere mortals.  It’s such a bloody shame they use so much of our tax dollars to do it though – don’t you ‘think’?

Geez… bring back “Patrol Boat” willya?  At least THAT was believable!

Belongum – Out!