Splash, dash and ponderings

Hurrah! Accountants the nation over unchain themselves from their calculators and throw off the shackles of tax returns, celebrating the end of the financial year, or as we say in accountant geek talk “06/07″, why hello 07/08, looking gooooood! Rumours of team breakfasts and spontaneous coffee outings soon darted through the plush carpeted hallways…emails fly back and forth, cheers of elation from spoilt teams scoring free breakfasts at the Mercure, disappointed collegues smile wanely and offer half hearted congratulations on scoring generous bosses. And soon, yes! JACKPOT, Amnesty scores a free lunch and an early Friday finish, life is oh so good (mainly because at this point, I have yet to pack for the Hillsong roadtrip which is a mere 15 hours away from departure. I now have the afternoon to pack, phew!)

Well paint me purple and call me a one eyed one horned flying people eater cause far out, I ate the equivalent of a toddler. A large toddler. Pre entrée, wine, entrée, more wine, main meal, dessert, coffee. After 2 hours of team building eating activities we waddled back to the office, high fived our gluttony and left for the day.

14 hours to departure….I should pack…

4 hours later having just spent the afternoon watching dvds with my housemate, I suddenly realise now would be the perfect time to catch up with my best mate Kristy to go over the latest interior design mags that have just arrived in the mail. The night is young and I still have plenty of time to pack.

10 hours to departure…hmm I should burn those new cds to my ipod…

So now I find myself having resolved with Kristy that mustard yellow and khaki green colour schemes should be left to military wannabes, I now have 7 hours until departure and yet to pack. The boys are out on the town and the house is cosy and quiet, time for some Buble tunes! I spend the rest of night randomly grabbing clothes, charging electronics and desperately trying to dry damp jumpers with high heat blast hairdryers and generally contributing 3 tonnes to global warming in the process. I finally crawl into bed a little after 11pm.

5:30 AM - And the Hillsong Trip begins…..

THE WEEKEND BEFORE…
- All-berry, Coo-da-moon-doo-rah, War-rack-nah-beel. According to our resident teacher Kelly-Anne, apparantely these are names of towns. Funny that, we all thought they were called Albury, Cootamundra and Warracknabeal….tsk tsk silly us! We would learn to regret missing the early warning signs of Kelly-Anne’s unique direction sense…
- ….and Tali’s biology knowledge. (No Tali, an alpaca is not a cross between a horse and sheep….it’s a cow and a sheep! Didn’t they cover that in home schooling?)
- Catch Phrase 1 of the trip is birthed “Lose Yourself In The Mist” (Literally….our apartment bathroom has no fan and less water pressure than my office water cooler). The hot water heater is the smaller than the washing machine, the tv doesn’t work, the heater is stuck on air con and there is a weird mouldy cheese smell. Tali and Leish have to push their beds together to make a mega super sized king bed in order to be able to actually open the wardrobe door.
- 4 girls and a stocktake sale. Why oh why did we take a hatchback with us??
- We caught a ferry down the Parramatta River through to Sydney Harbour and under the bridge. Welcome to Sydney Tali and Leish! First Timers are so snap happy.

THE BIG EVENT…

wow.

That’s it. No emphasis, no passion, no excitement, just…..wow. 5 night rallies later and I was ready to shove some new vocab down the throat of the woman behind me. She sounded as if she was from a Byron Bay hippy commune who had just smoked a little too much happy grass. She definetly was on a “whole nutha level” to be sure!

I loved Joseph Prince’s preaching (Can I have a good amen??) and Ed Young was of course extremely funny.

I’ve been reading back over my thought path throughout the conference week and its amazing stuff following how God moved so strongly in my life in such a short period of time. Don’t you love it when God speaks to you in your own language and fashion? Me, I’m a fan of the random blurted out sentences and ensuring babble, oblivious to the fact that no-one has been privy to the prior 5 minutes of debating banter inside my non stop mind. Turns out, God is too. Love ya for it God, you rock. Snaps to you for stopping me in my tracks outside Door 45, coffee in hand, major revelation in the other.

Thought process of Amnesty “I like Chris Tomlin’s hat…hmmm how will I describe it to Jacqueline….I need to charge my phone tonight….extra hot coffee is so good! Where’s Samantha? Do I want sugar in my coffee?”
God “Sure, you love sugar in your coffee, but only one…by the way have you realized that …..insert major revelation here“

Cue trumpet fanfare! Cut to camera one, zoom in on astounded look on Amnesty’s face, pan wide to show mini happy dance that she thinks no one saw and fade music as she insanely babbles to Ana and Jacqueline about what just happened (Subtitles may be needed to decipher actual audio).

Jon Bevere is da man! His teaching on the house of Zion was incredible and I loved watching his reactions to other preachers. He’s very physical in his expressions of praise and I swear I thought he was going to jump up on stage with T D Jakes at one point and just take to the floor with his own little happy praise dance. That dude smiles more than I do! He is just so joyful and happy, love the guy.

So to wrap things up, I know you’ve been waiting for it…..the list! YEEEEEWWWWWW….

Sad and blue things…
- Somehow scraping off the top three layers of skin on my forearms thanks to a new top with excessive tucks. How did I achieve this? Clapping. Yes, clapping…I am officially a doofus.

- INSANELY slow coffee makers. I swear Jacqueline was going to take over the coffee stand at one point and serve everyone herself. And don’t even try to ask for it extra hot! It doesn’t seem to compute and tends to cause mass communication break downs and major order stuff ups. Large skinny cuppaccinos metamorphose into small soy lattes in the blink of an eye!

- Getting locked out of the entire apartment building at 10:30pm at night and having to wake up a very not healthy Kelly-anne and pull her out of bed to let us in. Soooooorrrrrryyyy!!!!

Happy and yellow things…
- Israel Houghton and Chris Tomlin singing together on the one stage! Woot! I think I hyperventilated I was so excited.

- Official Crazy Eye Make-Up Day. Pink and aqua with purple eyeliner has never looked so good.

- Having a whole week of seeing my sis everyday and dancing our little hearts out.

- Acting classes on the road with Tali. She took road trip photos to a whole nutha level!

- Dancing in the car park during major traffic jams to get out. Love ya work Leish, only you can pull off a bonnet slide that classy!

- Coffee in the morning, coffee in the evening, coffee at supper time….and don’t forget the Byron Bay Cookies…..yuuuummmmm….Homer food!

- Queuing up for the final night rally and thankfully averting a near disaster of laughter and a bladder about to burst. Hopefully the guy in front of us didn’t think Ana and Jacqueline were tooooo mentally unstable. I swear the entire family tree of FRANK and his wife SHA-rOn was recited. Rivers of black mascara were pouring off my cheeks, such a classy look and SUCH a funny night.

So voila and adieu. That is the blog. Think of it what you will. Love you all.

Xooxox
Amnesty