bahhh!!! 3 days!!!

Where the heck did time go.

So its december 10th today. and I haven't posted a blog in ... too long. let's just say that. And I said I would, and I'm sorry. You must all hate me by now lol. But, seriously, in my defense its super hard to write a blog when you're having a blast in a different country doing something you love. Its weird. I thought I would have loads of time, and that I would be able to blog every week or month or whatever, but it doesn't end up like that. Maybe its because I'm not a big writer. I always suck at journaling and blogging and writing, and I never write whats in my head down on a piece of paper, and maybe that's what I need to do more, and believe me I'm trying, but I just haven't done it too much lately. Sorry.

None the less, the past few months have been crazy intense.

In September, there was Big Exo Day, which was a huge youth expo, 1 day only where there's tons of christian bands, venues, booths, organizations, etc in the day time, and then huge concert at night with Hillsong United and some other christian bands. It was pretty awesome, but my friend seth and I went just to attend while everyone else was serving, and we slowly began to realize that we were not in the age group that this is designed for. I mean, all the music and the bands and the skate parks and stuff were really cool, but literally everywhere you walked was high school students or younger lol. for once, it made us feel old. Weird. but anyway, it was still a great night, and a huge victory for God and for Hillsong. Apparently the Jonas Brothers are coming to big exo day next year?! weird as mate. lol :P So that happened, then Healing Seminar happened, and that is 4 sessions, spread across 2 days with 2 guest speakers who were Sy Rogers and Dr. Robi Sonderegger. If you don't know them, look em up. The healing seminar focused on emotional, mental, sexual healing and how to retrain our brains and such to not go down the same road that we always have but to change our ways for the better. It was really good, I believe it helped a lot of people. I attended both days, but then helped out in HMA after the service because we needed to make single sessions, and put CD's and DVD's into packs, and they all need to be available right after the conference or service is over. Crazy. So yeah, lots of fun. If anyone wants further information on this conference, I have it on DVD :)

Hokay so...

In october, we had what was called encounterfest, which is a youth conference that all age groups up to 25 go to, and its 2 days long I think. So Rich Wilkerson Jr who is a well known pastor in the states came over and spoke to us, and amongst that, we had what was called sunday visits friday, where they hold sunday night church on a friday night instead, so friday all day was encounter, then friday night church, then saturday all day encounter, then saturday night church, then sunday morning church. Pretty intense week if you ask me. So I served in encounter and I was involved with production, so I set up an outdoor sound system for acoustic sets during the breaks, and then I also did TD (if you remember from my last blog) for one of the main sessions indoors. so boom. encounter. awesome fun experience, tons of kids, tons of youth, tons of fun times.

Then...

We had October break, which is our mid semester break where we're off for one week. There was a conference held that week as well but it was up north more in a place called Port Macquarie. In Australia, the more north you go, the warmer it gets, its like opposite world because the equator is above us, not below (like in Canada). So yeah, some students volunteered to serve up there and expected a vacation on the hot sunny beaches but then realized they had to serve almost the entire time haha. Nah but I still heard it was awesome. I didn't go because I took advantage of that time and I worked more hours because I could (due to my visa conditions), so while everyone was out partying, I was raking in the dough haha. So it was a good break. If you want an idea of what my October looked like... and a little bit of evidence as to why I hadn't blogged in a while... take a look at my schedule lol.


...Then :P
ps it takes me like hours to write these things cause I get so distracted so easily, but then I just went through my pictures on my iphone and I think you'll all be pleased when you see them! haha there's some good ones :)

ok then in november, there was men's conference. Haha.. good times. So in september or october I made a deal with one my friends (seth) that him, nor I would shave until men's conference was over, just for the whole being a man thing and sporting the event fully. Plus I just wanted to see what it was like long. Andddd it was gross lol take a look. Hahaha that was 3 ish months of no shaving. Its probably the longest I've ever grown my facial hair, and some people loved it, and others hated it haha. People kept saying I looked like a mountain man or something it was great. So anyways, yeah I shaved it off after Men's Conference was over, which by the way was awesome. 5 sessions, guest speaker Dr. A.R Bernard, pretty sweet, I have the DVD's, and so on and so forth. So THEN, that sunday evening was the annual album recording for hillsong's yearly album! They are songwriting machines! They write an albums worth of songs (if not more) every year! and they are amazing! its crazy. So on Sunday night, they gather the whole church, every campus (Hills, City, Southwest and Brisbane) and tell everyone to pack out the Sydney Entertainment Centre, and they get everyone in there, film the whole night with tons of cool lights and music and stuff, and then they produce it for several months, and when july 2011 hits next year, it'll come out! its crazy. Lots of fun again, incredible experience to say the least, and its such an honour and priviledge to be a part of their church. Its just... insane.

THENNNNN...
just when you thought it couldn't get any better...

College Graduation Dinner and Ceremony.

So they had the dinner in the city by Darling Harbour, which is beautiful, and it was all catered and round table and dance floor and dress up time and all that, and then on the following monday they had the ceremony where they name off all the names, give out certificates, diplomas, degrees, etc. And, let me say this, most of the time college grad ceremonies are boring, but this one was more entertaining then ever! They did a huge collaboration of performances at the end which pretty much blew everyone away. They did a multi cultural thing where they would do live performances from music styles and genres from every country represented at college, so like canada they did celine dion, for england they did the beatles, for usa they did the national anthem, and for australia they did AC/DC! haha it was pretty sick. And so they gave out yearbooks at the end, which is pretty sick because they give out DVD's with like a 10 minute re-cap video of 2010, and Im in it! haha. its so cool. Anyways, I am coming home in 3 days so if you guys want to know more just ask me lol and I'll show the video to you guys aswell.

So lastly,

when I booked my flight, I had chosen to stay back and enjoy the hot summer weather here for 2 weeks after school ends, but unfortunately, the weather has been anything but. So luckily, since I have my job, I could work full time cause Im not in school! so from college grad till now I've just been organising myself for things I have to do before I leave, things I have to prepare, things I have to take care of, etc. And yes, I am returning for a second year!!! muahahahaha. Sorry :) come on... I think you guys would do the same if you were in my shoes too. so I come home in 3 days! I am excited to see you all! and I can't wait to be in Canada once more and have tim hortons and poutine and be in cold snowy weather for a short period of time. I fly back on the 13th of january I think? somewhere around there, so hit me up back home and we'll see if we can meet up! Talk to you guys soon! PEACE HILLSONG COLLEGE 2010!! BRING ON 2011!!

love it.

have a good one!

I Suck at Blogging!!

haha HEY EVERYONE!! LONG TIME NO TALK lol oh geez I wonder why that is...

I just want to say a big I'M SORRY to everyone for not blogging in a million years it feels like lol. I know I've been keeping all of you in the dark as to whats going on in my life but trust me its not on purpose! most of the time I'm just having way too much fun here to even think about writing home. As you could probably tell, I'm not the greatest at long distance communication, I barely even talk to my own mother (she's gonna kill me one of these days) haha so I am sorry once again! But hopefully I can keep you up to date more often! I'll try really hard! lol ok where do I start? There's so much that has happened. I actually had to go back to my last blog and look at what happened in March lol to catch you guys up.

Ok, so. Here it goes. These past 3-4 months have been insane... they are your summer months, but my winter months haha. But winters not even winter here.. its like 10 degrees, and at night.. the coldest night touched like 0 degrees, and thats when I was camping haha so my toes froze off but besides that, no snow, no cold, etc. Its B E A Utiful. haha. (sort of). So... to pick up where I left off... after march hit... after Colour Conference 2010 (the womens conference that they have here) I actually got a car. Its a yellow toyota camry, from the same year that I was born haha. 1989. But it still works! Its in pretty good condition! and I'm beginning to feel like a mechanic sometimes because there's a couple little things that went wrong with it that I fixed myself, like a bursted radiator hose, some loose electronics, power steering fluid has a very slow leak, etc. But for the price I got it for, its a heck of a deal. Its all fixed now except for that slow leak. Love it. I also have the canadian flag on my hood right now haha. I used a lot of electrical tape, and made a hood-sized canadian flag thats taped to my hood for Canada Day in July. It was glorious on that day, we had pancakes, maple syrup, played NHL, had poutine, mmmm.. heaven. And so after Canada day, I was thinking about taking it off, but then everyone started to compliment it and told me to keep it.. (even the americans!!) and so thats what I did. and its on the hood my flag now, to this day haha. Its a good and a bad thing, Good for when I choose to be nice on the road, when I let people in, when I generally do a good deed on the road its like "yeah, I'm canadian. thats what we do". BUT, then the bad side is when I'm in a rush and I need to go somewhere, I can't be rude! because then I put a bad rep on Canadians! lol. Anyways, driving here was weird to get use to at first, but now its pretty easy. I'm just scared for what its gonna be like when I come home, That's gonna be weird. Which brings me to my next subject.

I'm coming home december 13th! haha. I booked it a couple weeks ago, and I'm excited to see all your lovely faces. The year ends on november 30th or something like that, so I have a good week of summer here, then its back to winter there :(. All I want is a white christmas, thats all. I'll take that one up with God lol.

Ok, sorry... back on track. After the car in march/april, I was just working at mcdonalds probably like 10 hours a week, and got paid everyweek. It was real nice. So basically in may/june I just focused on finishing the semester strong, with all the big assessments that are due at the end of the semester. There's no exams, there's just like... performance evaluations and then huge assessments that you have to hand in on a certain day. It was pretty sweet because for the performances I performed two songs. the first one was Sweet Thing by Keith Urban, I did back up vocals for that, and this Norwegian guy sang the lead part. Then, the second performance I did "I Shot The Sheriff" by Bob Marley lol, and I lead that one. It was a bit... out there for me, because obviously I'm not.... well... I'm white. lets just put it like that. So it was a little hard to grasp the feel and vibe of the song, but I worked on it and it came out well. So that semester ended in June, and then they have two weeks of what are called "Conference Intensives", and what happens is those are the weeks leading up to the church's biggest conference of the year... Hillsong Conference. Some of you may or may not have heard of it, its pretty big around the world, a ton of people come to attend every year from everywhere you can think of. Its THE place to be lol. So we had two weeks of conference intensives, and its basically just like getting ready for conference, because there's more than 4000 volunteers, you would assume that they need to do a little bit of organizing before the day actually hits lol. Hillsong Conference was held in the Acer Arena, which is the biggest arena in the Sydney area, its part of the Olympic Park which is where the Olympics were in 2000. So yeah, pretty big. around 20,000 people were there. It was really cool to be part of setting it up and being the backbone, behind the scenes of the conference. On the second week of intensives, on friday we did what was called "Bump In", and everyone was assigned to different bump in teams, and we'd all go over to the Acer Arena and "Bump In' or 'move in' all the expo stands, all production, everything. Anything and everything, all the students of the college were called to help move into the acer arena. It was crazy. SO, that was the 2 weeks before conference.

THEN...

Hillsong Conference 2010. July 5-9th. Wow. flippin' amazing. TD Jakes, Judah Smith, Andy Stanley, Ed Young, Nancy Beach, Tim Hughes, Hillsong Team, Israel Houghton, Kari Jobe, etc. EVERYBODY was there haha. It was ridiculously good. It was 5 days long, all week, for a delegate it was I think 9am to 8pm, and for volunteers it was insane... I'd get there at 6 or 7am, and leave well after 12am. I actually had a really great part to play in this conference... I was part of HMA with I think I told you guys earlier stands for Hillsong Music Australia. I served in session recordings where we record every session (all 80 of them) lol and edit them and burn them to CD and DVD, then mass produce them and sell them like immediately right after the service. I actually (myself) was in charge of all the audio recordings. So every session I was the one who was recording all the audio and edited it in Garageband and then made the master copy for all the other volunteers to start duplicating. It was incredible. So I did get to listen and watch every session, which was an incredible privilege and I probably will never forget it. So yeah, thats what my conference looked like.. and I'm sure if you ask any other volunteer, their conference story will look 10 times different, but thats whats so cool about it. Everybody has different parts to play in this overall big picture, and its a lot like the image of the Body of Christ, and how we all (as a church) have different roles to play... but together we function as the Body of Christ. It was the prime example of that analogy. I saw it first hand, and it was very... amazing. eye-opening. yes. lol

OK, so that was conference. then, we had another 2 weeks off for our actual 'break' where a bunch of people went home to visit their families etc, and if you were still in australia, then you'd make a vacation out of it, which is exactly what I did. I went on a HUGE, 10 day long road trip ALL up the east coast of Australia... all the way PAST Brisbane to about 3 hours north of it. Overall, 1 way it would take 15 hours to do it straight, but we obviously stopped places along the way, so that we reached our peak... the northest point (the warmest because this is australia and everything is flipped) on the 5th or 6th day. If you're asking where we stayed all along at all these places, yes... we tented. It was amazing. We would just look up camping parks on google all along the way, and we'd tent and campfire the night away under the million stars, it was actually incredible. There was 5 guys and 2 girls, so 7 of us in total. 3 Canadians, 3 Norwegians and 1 American. The Norwegians were family, and the one canadian guy I met felt like family right from the start haha. I think its part of our canadian blood. I loved it. So yeah, there's tons of pictures on facebook about it, if you're not friends with me on facebook, you should be. Its just the easiest way to post pictures in my life. So yeah, it was really good to get away and just relax and look at this beautiful country and how God created it all. The beaches are insanely beautiful, the mountains, the rainforests (yeah I know, rainforests in australia... who knew). And yeah, just an amazing time of my life trip. It's also possibly the most and hardest I've laughed in my life. no joke. OH, and I got to see and touch a kangaroo, a koala bear, a dingo, a wallaby, etc. So sweet. There's pictures on fb with that as well.

Hmm.. so what else. that was in the two weeks from July 11th-25th... OH.

I moved as well. By July 10th, the day after conference I chose to move into another house thats a little further away from church but has wayyy better internet, and its right beside a grocery store. It was nothing against the people at all, its just I wanted to have a bit of a change, and I've recently grown really close with some guys in this new house, and its just getting really good. Its really funny, because now I room with a guy named Tony, and he's from California.. and our room is honestly like a condo lol. We both have xbox's, we both have monitors to play them on, and there's a fridge sitting in between my desk and his haha. So literally, we could live in our room's if we needed to haha isn't that awesome?! it's like every little boys dream. But yes, we do get out of our rooms to socialize with the rest of humanity, but this way... we look forward to coming home and hanging out with each other. Its good times. So yeah, I pay the same rent here as I would the other house, better internet, closer friends, closer food, what else can a guy ask for. I have a car now as well so that little extra distance didn't matter too much. Oh, I guess I should tell you my new address incase you want to send me anything *cough cough anything canadian like Tim Hortons Coffee! I miss that!!* lol just kidding you don't HAVE to send anything, but you know... its always nice :). my address is 12 Lorikeet St, Glenwood, New South Wales, 2768, Australia. Same area, just different street. So yeah, thats my house! 7 guys live in it. 5 of them are american, and one is swiss. We are all musical too, which is really good. We could honestly form our own band with the people in our house, we have keys, drummer, bassist, guitarists, vocalists. Why don't we? I know, that's what I'm saying.

Ok, so after moving and after road trip, School started again! Second semester! It was so weird to see new people coming in and then my intake FINALLY not being the new people, it was awesome. I feel like a veteran or a pro, even though I'm one semester intake away from the newbies. haha. But yeah, it was really fun showing them around, helping them get set up with bank accounts, phones, etc. Basically what people did for us when we came here in January, I was able to do for others, and its awesome meeting all the new people from everywhere... AGAIN. every 6 months! its awesome! And so... school itself this semester is gonna rock. We have a songwriting course this semester that has been so good, we're required to write a praise/worship song, and then another song of our own choosing. And we have to perform it and everything, its pretty crazy. So the classes we have this semester are classes like Songwriting, Musicianship, Christian Doctrine, New Testament, Teamwork and Personal Evangelism. My schedule is basically the same as last semester, where I have monday's off and my fridays are jam packed with songwriting and musicianship workshop in the morning and teamwork, christian doctrine and personal evangelism in the afternoon. So yeah, this semester is gonna rock. It already does rock. I can't believe its already the end of August, time is flying by so quickly its insane.

Ok, so we're getting closer and closer to being up to date. Basically, from the start of second semester till now I've been living life and adjusting to the new house, etc. OH... my JOB situation. That's another blessing... so here's the sitch.. (situation for all you non-internet language speaking folk out there haha)... I quit mcdonalds back in... June! BECAUSE... I was told and expecting a job att... HILLSONG CHURCH! haha I got a job working in Session Recordings in HMA at church! It was my church life for the first semester right? you remember that? so in june, before conference was coming I quit mcdonalds because I knew this job was coming and conference was just gonna be too much for me to handle with that and work, so yes, I quit mcdonalds. so sad, I know lol. BUT, I didn't actually get the job until 2 weeks after conference, because of the time it takes for applications to go in and be approved and so forth, and I also went on the crazy awesome road trip, so basically I got the job when second semester started, but its awesome! I get a FULL 20 Hours a week! (that's my max due to my visa) and close to 20$ an hour! AND!!! I get to pick my own hours. Its insane.. like this is my dream job, working on a mac all day... for the church that I love.. anytime I want basically, its nuts. So yeah, its flipping crazy how God provides like that. He takes care of my needs and he provides for me like a father would a son. And I am so thankful to God for doing that. Its just... ugh. I am truly living in the blessing right now. I am living the life.

lol so thats pretty much, but just one other thing I want to mention that was a crazy experience for me. Powerhouse, which is the youth group from ages 18-25. I do Production for that, I've been doing FOH (front of house) for the past 2-3 weeks for it. Anyways, so I was rostered (scheduled) to do TD (Technical Director) for powerhouse on a wednesday night, and the closer I got to that date, I started to realize that it was a bigger event then usual. It was something called "The Gathering" where all the powerhouse youth from every other service that is on in the week, gets together and we have this one HUGE gathering. It broke the record for hillsong for having the most powerhousers at one night. it cleared 1,100 young adults, it was ridiculous. BUT...what I didn't realize till I walked in, was the band that was playing that night and that I technical directed for... was Hillsong United. It was flippin' ridiculous. Like... to be honest Hillsong United is so much more big everywhere else then it actually is in hillsong church and in australia, and I personally had to get over the fact of putting them on a pedestal, and just realize that they're like any other worship band. So it was a very... eye-opening, humbling experience for me... having to reset my view on hillsong united. Like.. they are still amazing, they deserve all the hype and credit that people give them, but at the end of the day they are just like any other normal human beings on this planet... So it was a fun time trying to find that balance. But... then I look at it from an outside perspective and I'm like ... holy crap. Did I just do that? It doesn't even hit you. It probably won't hit me until I come home and start telling these stories that I'll actually realize how lucky and blessed I am and how crazy that night was. And thats just one time, one example of the MANY amazing nights I've had at this place, God is all over this place, and it clearly shows. I love it. I am in love with God every day again and again, and its flippin awesome.

So yeah, that's about it. There's a few other bits and pieces of things that has happened, but I'll tell them later and such, seeing as this blog is already super long and my fingers are about to fall off from typing so much, but I knew that this blog had to be done. So here it is! I hope you enjoyed it! Check out my facebook pics, and add me on skype if you want! I think my username is howell.15 so yeah. Hope everyone in Canada is doing well! Hope Mountain Park is doing well! Hope my family and friends are loving life! Sorry for not being in touch for so long! Thanks for all your support and prayers! Love you all! talk to you later!

Andrew.

(ps I'll blog more often, these next couple of months will be pretty epic)

Blog? Whats that?

OK! so. I apologize for not blogging for so long! I guess sometimes you just get so caught up in whats going on around you that you sometimes forget whats going on in the outside picture! So I apologize, but here I go. I am gonna type anything and everything that comes to my head when I think about the past month.

This experience has been a once in a lifetime kind of thing, its insane. We just finished colour conference here, and that is when a TON of women get together for one conference and praise and worship God and listen to famous preachers and pastors from all around the world speak. Im pretty sure Conference was so big this year, that they decided to have 2. Colour 1 (for short) was at the sydney entertainment centre, which held something like 8-10 thousand people (or women in this case) and then Colour 2 was held at the CC (Convention Centre) back at hillsong church. Their auditorium holds between 3,500-4,500 people. For each conference they make all the students serve in different areas they are assigned to. In Colour 1, I was on a team called 'Be The Change', and what we did was we stayed back at hillsong church and prepped it up to make it look good for conference 2. So I was put on the painting team, and now I can literally say 'I Painted the walls of Hillsong Church'. haha. Its a good feeling. But yeah, if you go on my facebook, theres some pictures of what I painted, its a really cool "FAITH HOPE LOVE" sign, and I had to cut around it and make it look nice. Very fun. So we did that for 3 days while all the rest of the girls and women were at the sydney entertainment centre serving there. That was 2 weeks ago, 1 week ago, as in this last thursday friday saturday, we had conference 2 at hillsong church. I was part of a team called 'Refresh' lol. What that basically is, is cleaning the church. It's a fancy name to make a dirty job sound cool or good. I was in charge of all the garbage (or rubbish bins as they call it over here) bins in the outside area where they had catering, different food stands, gloria jeans coffee carts, merch desks, help desks, etc. ALL those garbages were mine. So for 3 days, it was really beautiful weather, I was outside getting a sunburn/tan, loving life serving women haha. But yeah it was an awesome experience. I was also put on a team called Car Park, and what they do is they direct the traffic that comes inside the church, direct people where to park, or where they can't park haha, and its very ... umm... interesting. I learned that thousands of women trying to get into one place, parking a ways away trying to parallel park, is NOT a good idea haha. But yeah, you catch my drift. Some of my friends got flipped the bird a couple times (by business people, not delegates) ahah, so it was alllll good. Fun times. So that was my conference experience. Serving times a billion. Oh yeah I was there from 7:30am to 8:30pm. crazy hours. And yeah. love it.

Besides that, I don't know if you've heard or not, but yes... I did get a job at mcdonalds here. I know I know, out of all the places I could of chosen in australia, I chose mcdonalds. BUT, in my defense, it was the easiest one to get because all I had to do was tell them that I worked in North America for 3 years and they basically signed me up on the spot lol. AND...I get paid like double my wage I did back home. It doesn't even make sense... I get something like 19$ an hour, I'm not totally sure yet cause I haven't got my paycheck, but it will be up there. insane. So yeah, had my first shift there last night, everything is pretty much the same except for little things like procedures and slightly different toppings. But yeah, love it. Its not too far from where I live either so its great. God provides.

OH, I got my OSAP. incase ya'll were wondering (i've been around too many americans). So It's amazing how God provides and comes through for you when you are obedient and faithful. Thank you to all who have supported me, it really does help a lot. I haven't even begun to touch my OSAP funds because I've been able to live off of other sources of income for quite some time now! 2 months! So thank you! It means a lot, really. These are 2 months, and this whole year, is a time that I wouldn't trade for the world. Its so precious to me and jam packed with so much to learn from and to gain its crazy. I love it. so thank you.

Hmm... what else. FIELDWORK/CHURCH LIFE! Ok so every week the college makes you serve in an area of church for your fieldwork and church life. its part of our schooling. So during the week, I help out on tuesdays from 1-5pm with HMA (Hillsong Music Australia) in Session Recordings. So I get to go downstairs and burn off different session times and dates that people have ordered, burn multiple copies, label them, package them and ship them off to where ever they go, and its awesome! Like today I burned 10 different DVD sessions of colour, 60 DVD's per session, and labelled every single one, and packaged them in a 9-disc set for the whole colour conference DVD. I felt like I was producing like TV Series DVD's or something cause it was one of those DVD cases that folds out like 5 times haha. and so yeah, it was awesome. And other times like if you're actually recording the session as its happening, they actually have to burn the recording onto a DVD or CD and make multiple copies for people to buy the NIGHT OF. So you can LITERALLY go to the resource centre store after a service and say hey I really liked what was said tonight, can I buy a recording of it? and they can literally sell it to you on the spot. I personally find that so amazing, that the church has so much dedication for the people who enter and leave that place, that they want to make sure people don't miss a thing. It's nuts. So THATS my church life that I do every week for 4 hours.

my FIELDWORK is something totally different. Every sunday morning I serve in whats called an extension service at a place called Villawood Detention Centre. Villawood is a place where illegal immigrants are detained and either are sent back home where they came from or they work on getting them proper or renewed visas. So, there's 2 ways to get in this detention centre. Swim or illegally hop on a boat and sneak into the country and get caught, or let your visa expire without renewing it lol. There's your two ways. Anyways, its like a little mini service we put on every sunday, there's on average like 50 people and most of them are Chinese so the message is translated, but what I do is I either sing and play acoustic guitar, or I run FOH. FOH stands for Front Of House and its basically you're working the sound board, EQ-ing everyone and making sure their levels are where they're suppose to be and so forth. Its a pretty small sound board, only like 12 channels, but thats all thats needed when you have 4 vocalists, 2 speakers, 1 keys and 1 acoustic lol. Its pretty low key, but I often find that in a smaller setting and environment, it creates a more intimate setting to enter in to the presence of God, although for some it is still hard with the language barrier. But still, Its great. It reminds me of what I did in Montreal with SOAR. Just a couple little speakers, a guitar and a mic outside lol. Similar to that. But yeah, its awesome, so I do that every sunday morning, and that counts as my fieldwork.

FOH and TD for Chapel - I also volunteer for college in our daily chapels. Someone I met here hooked me up with getting involved with FOH (which is what I said earlier, Front of House) and TD (Technical Director). A 'TD' is someone who communicates between the band and the FOH guy to make sure things are running smoothly and on time, so he usually stays on stage making sure people are getting ready, making sure all the connections and leads and cords are all set up, and making sure the sound check goes smoothly. And FOH I already explained to you, its mastering the sound board. BUT, the difference with Chapel is its a much bigger setting. Its in the Hub Auditorium so there's room for like 1000 college students there, so their sound board is amazing, with a built in touch screen and like 40 or 50 different channels I think, its nuts. Worship leaders get RX Mics, which are wireless microphones and all other vocalists get wired mics. So yeah, I volunteer with that like once every week or two, and its awesome to get to learn how to do this stuff properly and in a bigger setting.

hmm... what else.

My bike has a flat tire, it stinks. and the nearest store that has an inner tube for sale is like a half hour BIKE ride away. so imagine walking. Im gonna need to take a bus haha. Oh and I also rode my longboard into a pool, and it was a salt water pool, so my bearings are really rusted and now I can barely right THAT anywhere EITHER! haha. I need a car, but for that, I need money. So I'll be saving haha. I probably won't get one, but one can dream right?! haha.

OH, YWAM. haha my friends from YWAM and from back home came to sydney for a week! and that was cool! The one girl I knew I actually met years ago from the second YWAM team that came to niagara falls, her name is Hannah. And yeah, I met up with her like years later here in sydney and it was insane! AND! on her team was another girl who I went to high school with, so it was insane to see and meet people who I knew from previous times in my life and it was awesome to catch up and stuff. I also went to go see Alice in Wonderland in 3D at the WORLDS LARGEST IMAX THEATRE in the world haha. It was better then I thought it was gonna be, I liked it to be honest. Good flick. but yeah. Good times spend at Darling Harbour (one of the biggest tourist spots in the city of Sydney, the Opera House is really close to there). But yeah, good times.

Ummmmm... School starts up this week again. it was on hold due to the conferences, but we just resumed classes again today, and it was good to get back in the rhythm of things. haha for my music class we have to perform a song of our choice based from this list of like 7 songs, and they perform half way through the semester, and then we pick another 7 for the second half. And I'm not lead vocalist on any song yet, I will in the next set of 7, but I am doing backup vocals for this guy named Kinut lol Its pronounced Kinoot. and he's from norway I think, or somewhere up there, and its funny cause he chose 'Sweet Thing' by Keith Urban and I'm doing back up vocals for it! Its gonna be sweet, but yeah, we practice performances every friday, so yeah, its real fun to sing and play with our class which is like a full band. Everybody plays different instruments, and we plug them in wherever they're needed, its awesome. Other classes are sick too, like Personal Leadership we talk about our own personal devotion with God and how we should live it out in our own daily lives, and then Old Testament, in which we are going through every book of the old testament starting with Genesis which is sick, and then we have just like communications in ministry and stuff, and basically our whole friday is spent in what we call our Tutorial class. our tutorial class consists of 20-ish students that are in a group for the rest of the semester, so I go through daily life, daily classes, everything with these 20 some odd students and its awesome because it creates more of an intimate setting and you can actually grow close and create some great relationships with people that could last you your whole life, its awesome. So yeah, thats my school life.

Powerhouse is sick, best youth I've ever gone too. Its for ages 18-25 and its awesome. We start it off by having a huge worship session with full band and everything, and then they speak a message and then end off in a song or so, its pretty much like a service, but its way cooler cause its people your own age, and its super fun. I love it.

But yeah, I'm getting tired and I have to get up at 5am tomorrow for FOH Chapel so should be fun! lovin life! haha. I love the commitment here, seriously. No matter what your call time is, its crucial that you get there and people respect that and always come with a servant heart and attitude to serve the church, to help build God's house and God's kingdom, and its just awesome the emphasis they put on volunteering and servanthood. Amazing. I love having a servant heart. I love Jesus. He is my lover, brother and friend. Amen? Amen.

Talk to you later guys, check out my facebook again for some pictures, oh and here's a video of a little tour of hillsong church incase you guys were wondering what it looked like haha. Here it is,

Bye! Love you all.

Andrew.

Tour of Hillsong Church from Andrew Howell on Vimeo.

This Church is Amazing.

Hey guys, so I just have this incredible urge to tell you how amazing this church is. The presence of God is so in this place its insane. They have 4 services a weekend, Saturday Night, 2 Sunday morning and 1 Sunday night. Sunday night is THE service to go to because the worship is just way more intense then ever. It's such a crazy experience being here because I am beginning to see the reason behind what they do, behind the scenes, behind the actions and the words and now instead of seeing it as a service or nice performance or fancy lights or fancy videos, I am beginning to see the Glory of God. It just blows my mind, because the reason they put these events and videos and performances on is 100% for God, and none of it for their own glory which is the way it should be.

This past sunday, I felt completely welcomed and at home because I got assigned to be on the choir team and so I had to show up sunday morning for 7am. That was super early, but so rewarding. We rehearsed, and then before each service went into the green room, prayed, chatted, ate food, and then we would all go out on stage and sing and worship God in every service. And it was incredible because as I was on stage looking out I was like "how the heck did I get here?" and I'm standing beside a whole bunch of other musicians who I have looked up to forever, and it totally blows my mind. But then, I began to grasp the concept of the fact that these people all around me, along with myself, are here for one sole purpose. They don't care who they are standing beside, they don't care who is sitting in the front rows, all they care about is worshipping God and Thanking Jesus Christ for what he's done. And thats the attitude in every single department of a single church service. The lighting crews, the sound crews, the TV crews, the choir, the musicians, the hosts/ushers, the resource centre, the welcome team, EVERYTHING flows and EVERYONE has the same goal and same purpose in mind, and that is that God loves humanity, and God loves people. So if we love God, we love people. I constantly am blown away with the upmost amounts of effort that go into every service, and the HUGE amount of reward from God as soon as you commit and/or sacrifice yourself to God's kingdom and God's house and what he wants to do with that day, in that service. I am blown away.

Vision sunday rocked, last sunday was called Vision Sunday and that was where Pastor Brian took the church on this little journey about what he feels God has called his church, the body of Christ to do this year and that is to always move forward, press further into the kingdom and the glory of Christ, and so today, to demonstrate that they made an incredible touching video, along with huge announcements like how they are bringing Hillsong Church to NEW YORK CITY. I am so excited about that, and can't wait for everything to unfold. And so its just so crazy, every weekend is a new and exciting and challenging and uplifting weekend where you just can't get enough of it, and that I think is what church is suppose to be. Something that you can't wait to find out what happens next, and the more I think of it, the more I realize that its more the excitement of Christ and what he's gonna do, rather then the church itself. Because if you open yourself up to him completely, and give EVERYTHING you are to him, he will ALWAYS reward you ten fold, and he's already done that in my time here, and it BLOWS my MIND. So yeah, its just nuts how Hillsong is so global, so huge with several different satellite churches around the world, but they still maintain the same focus, the same goal. Hillsong Churches vision statement goes like this: To reach and influence the world by building a large, Christ-centered, bible-based church, changing mindsets, and empowering people to lead and impact in every sphere of life. And so its just nuts how, if you have a healthy Church according to what God wants from his bride, then why not strive for a large church? Does something that is healthy not grow in the spirit? It does, and thats what Hillsong is doing and so yeah.

My mind = poof.
My heart = broken and remolded. again and again.
My Spirit = reflourished. renewed. overflowing.

its nuts. :) I am in love with God, and you should be too. He's amazing.

and I'm done. (for now) :)

BYE!

Second Video Blog in Australia!

Second Blog in Australia! from Andrew Howell on Vimeo.

Haha FINALLY I know! I'm sorry it took so long, but it was a very busy couple of weeks and so here it is. Hope you enjoy. Again, its pretty budget, just rough cuts and rough quality seeing as its coming from my iphone and then compressed to fit on the web, but still. Its good. So take a look!

Here are the photos from my Australia album on facebook!

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=383892&id=510380440&l=ff63cbb7d8

Here's the link to my profile to add me:

http://www.facebook.com/howell15

First Video Blog

Hey guys, so heres my budget-cut blog video of my first couple days here, and its not through Youtube, its through Vimeo. Youtube won't let me post videos of that size on their site so.. they lose. Just take a look at the vid and check it out! See you guys!

My First Video Blog in Australia from Andrew Howell on Vimeo.

Arriving in Sydney Australia :)

Hey guys! this a quick update to let you all know how I'm doing. I arrived on thursday Jan. 14th around 11am and when I got here it was awesome. All comfortable warm weather, tons of aussies waiting to meet and greet you and tons of new people to meet every single day. The first day was really just getting settled in, filling out paperwork and finding where I live, and it was very tiring since I was jet lagged and did not sleep that much on the plane, but I stuck it out until the evening because I knew I would get a much better sleep. The second day, and today were similar in the fact that what all of the new students are doing are going to do all your other essential needs like getting bank accounts, getting phones, getting groceries, etc. So I got hooked up with a bank, got a couple groceries and I am currently looking into getting a phone aswell. Friday was mainly just chill hang out and meet people day again. Today, saturday, was more exciting aswell. We all took a day trip and traveled to the city of sydney which is a decent amount of time away, I think around 45 mins. And when we got there we realized how HUGE and beautiful it was so a ton of us took pictures and went places and just enjoyed ourselves yet again. I visited the Opera House (the outside of it anyway), the bridge in Sydney harbour, and we also took a ferry to a different location to find a huge mall, with the largest IMAX theatre in the world. It was insane. And so since it was also the first day the sun was out, we all got burnt lol. So that was our day in a nutshell, and in the evening they had a saturday night evening service at the church. There's 2 sections to the church, there's the Main conference building in which most of the sunday services are held, and then theres the Hillsong College building right beside it, and we all call it the HUB. I have no idea why we call it this, but it is 'the hub'. And they have a smaller sanctuary type conference room there, which was where the saturday night service was held. It was really cool because we listened to a message that was televised or broadcasted from the city campus in Sydney, So it streamed live from the City to Hills and we were both listening in on the same teaching. Also, it was a guy named Mark Crow from Oklahoma and he was a great speaker.

This whole experience so far has just been so fun and exciting and mind blowing that I am finding myself not having enough time to catch people up back home with what Im doing, its just too exciting, but trust me I am trying my best. I've met sooo many cool people from different countries and different backgrounds with ALL different accents and its really great. Half the time we just spend making fun of each others accents lol, its great times. But yeah, OH YEAH, cockroaches. TONS of them, there hasn't been a day go by yet where I haven't killed or seen a cockroach. Its retarded lol. Some are huge, some are tiny, but none the less, they seem to love us, and we hate them, so they lose everytime. I just hope I don't wake up with one crawling right on my face one night. Creepy.

I live with 4 other Aussies at the moment, and there is 1 Norwegian guy coming next week, and Im rooming with him basically, so there are 6 guys in total in my house. Its really great cause most of the guys are local and have been here for a couple of years already, so they know all the ropes, they've already got wireless internet set up, food, dishes, everything. I kinda just hopped on board and they welcomed me with open arms. Its great. Oh and all the houses here are like realllllly nice. Its like beverly hills over here. seriously. Our shuttle bus driver explained to us the value of the houses around this local area, and they range from 500 G's to a million dollars per house. Thats how much you'd have to pay if you wanted to live here. insane. And so yeah, I'm about a 20-30 minute walk from my house to the school, so me and my new friends are looking into buying long boards and/or bikes. I have a feeling they will come in handy a lot.

I didn't actually expect to write this much in this blog, because really this blog was suppose to be an "apology-blog" for not posting sooner, but I do have bad news. My camera that I recently bought is retarded (thanks kjens lol). Or maybe its just my memory card, but it keeps on screwing up and saying theres a format error, and each time that happens I re-format it and it works for a bit and then poops out on me the next time. THEREFORE, I have lost all of my footage.... twice. Its really lame and sucky I know, but I am looking into getting an iPhone next week and luckily iPhones are amazing and they do everything including filming so I will be making videos like I promised. My only regret is losing my footage of todays trip to Sydney, it was B-E-A-Utiful.

Ok so tomorrow is Sunday and I am going to all 3 services, 2 in the morning and 1 at night, and apparently the night service on Sunday is where its at so I'm really excited for that, and besides that, I'm just hanging out all week and meeting crazy new people. I've met people from USA, Italy, Indonesia, Switzerland, Sweden, Norway, France, Germany, and the list goes on and on, its insane. Its kind of hard to remember names, but you get use to it. So yeah, this place is incredible, this is just a starter blog to let you know videos will be on the way as soon as I get this stuff figured out, and then you guys can really see what I'm up to and how great this place is. Until then,

G'DAY MATE. ;)