Baby, I am BACK!!!!
I finally got the problems solved with connecting to the internet here at Dave’s so I am back in business at timgoldsmith.com!!!
OK, now the only problem might be that I have very little to write about, cause I am on holidays & that means achieving very little. This, of course, has been aided by my good mate Craig Geeve, who was so kind as to arrange to get me a second hand Playstation 2. Of course, couple this with a free copy of John Madden (American Football) 2004, and a VERY cheap EA Sports Rugby 2005 & my abundant spare time is very much less….. abundant!
Otherwise, things really are fairly slow. Doing a little reading, and some prep for first term youth group, watching a lot of cricket and too much tennis, and eating too many chocolate bullets!
I guess I will give you a picture or two to look at (more at Flickr) and go to bed so I can dream up something more interesting to fill in your precious internet minutes!

“Touching the Void”

Mum & Rog, powering through the afternoon on Christmas day…

“Always with the ladies!” You always have to make sure there is at least one good looking person in the photo!

OK, so there isn’t a great deal of things that are happening that are either exciting or new…
I’ve been house sitting for the week at Dave’s house in Kenthurst. Its been nice to have very little to do & to just relax a little. I finished “The Grapes of Wrath” and did some reading for the intensive subject that I do on the first week of college. In fact, I have had so much time that last night I even did an assignment for that subject! That bad boy has to be at least two weeks early!
I did have a fairly exciting Saturday last week, when I shot Cam & Louise’s wedding. It was the first wedding that I did all by myself & I have to admit that I didn’t enjoy it at all! It is just stressful & you never know how things are going to turn out. I have a couple more weddings to do & then I think I may retire from this profession, unless I can secure a great assistant who can make me look good….
One little frustration has been that I have a great signal from my hosts wifi computer, but it wont actually connect to the net, so unfortunately, I am without the ability to upload any photos or anything for you all.
OK, if you hadn’t guessed from this entry so far, I appear to be without any real direction and devoid of inspiration, so I might get back to doing some readings. 1 1/2 more hours & we have Shannyn’s celebration dinner, as she finishes up work as a DT & waits to start at St Jude’s as an MTS worker! Happy days ahead.

OK, so I know a lot of people have been waiting for some wedding pics from Tim & Christy’s. Well they are finally here!
I was ready to post them the other day, but my computer decided to play silly buggers.
Enjoy.

“The Money Shot”. It was a long time coming, so they got stuck into this kiss!!!

Singalong.

The look of love. It’s in his eyes…

The crew. Jacq, Prillz, Jodes, and Trace, each looking lovely at the wedding. Pick which one was the bridesmaid?

It’s just on 7:30 in the am, and it is already 25 degrees (that’s about 80f for your crazy North Americans), maybe a little warmer out here in Dural, and it will only go up. Somewhere around 42 they say (107f) which is getting up there.
Were I still home, I think I may have dragged myself out of bed already to turn on the air conditioning, but I am not home.
I get to kick off my new years preaching at our St. Columbs church in Arcadia. Initially, I was a little bummed that I would miss out on some of the New Years festivities because I know that I need to get some kind of sleep if I am going to preach effectively, but on consideration, I was quite happy for the opportunity.
Firstly, it has been my experience that New Years Eve parties are never quite what you hope they will be. The great view of the fireworks also means being cheek to jowl with a million other people crowding any half decent spot of land on the harbour. The chance to meet up with your mates in the city is frustrated by the fact that EVERYONE in Australia is on their mobiles at the same time, so you can never get through and Transport in and out of the city is a debacle!
Secondly, it is good to have a sense of focus as we come into the new year. To remember what it is all about & where we want to go. It’s a time of the year when people start making resolutions. They want to be wiser in the way that they live. They want to be more effective in what they do. With this in mind, it was appropriate (though not intentional when I picked it) that I preach on Psalm 1. It’s a psalm which is all about wisdom. Finding the right council. Here it is.

1 Blessed is the man
who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked
or stand in the way of sinners
or sit int he seat of mockers.
2 But his delight is in the law of the LORD,
and on his law he meditates day and night.
3 He is like a tree planted by streams of water,
which yields its fruit in season
and whose leaf does not wither.
Whatever he does prospers.
4 Not so the wicked!
They are like chaff
that the wind blows away.
5 Therefore the wicked will not stand in the judgment,
nor sinners in the assembly of the righteous.
6 For the LORD watches over the way of the righteous,
but the way of the wicked will perish.

If you want to hear the sermon, you could come back to St. Jude’s on the 22nd when I will be giving it again, or if that is a Geographic Impossibility, I could send you through the full text, otherwise, I will let you ponder over the Psalm yourself, but for this one thought.
As you get ready for the new year, and you resolve to make it better, or smarter, a “growth year”, where are you going to look for wisdom? What is going to be your focus? The focus on now, or the focus on Eternity?

It’s twenty past one in the morning, the dead of night. There is no moon, which suits be just fine, cause it means that the multitude of country stars are that much more visible. I find myself out on the pebbles of the rose garden contemplating. I’m not thinking anything that deep. There is no great profundity to be found here. It is just he cliche of another bloke out late at night trying to fathom the distance between himself and the stars. One of the stars, all of the stars, it boggles the mind!
I love my city life. I like being close to shops. I love being close to all kinds of restaurants, and I adore being close to all of my friendy
Why do these pin pricks of light play such an important role? There are a million light to be found in the city. A thousand differerent colours! standard, halogen, neon, all burning bright and shining 24 hours a day, yet somehow these tiny little dots speak to me in a way that no city can.
It’s distance, it’s time. It is realising that the light that is only a minute flicker in your eye is a gigantic ball of flame, mayby burning still, maybe dead for centuries, millenia… It is as close to infinite as I will ever be able to grasp.
Yet God made it all.
The farthest reaches of space. The greatest and the furthest of stars!
This same God sent his son. Jesus, the name which means saviour. Immanuel, “God with Us”, creator of all that is seen, and all that remains unseen, yet he came down as man.
The life we couldn’t live, the death we deserved to die.
Again, there is no profound thought to be had in this consideration. At such a time, all one can do is boggle. Boggle at the enormity of something that the human mind in unable to fathom. Yet one thing I understand. The God that cast the stars into space. I know that he loves me.
And that is more than enough.

Merry Christmas to all my dear readers!!!
So far my Christmas has been OK. I went to three Church services tonight, at 5pm, 7pm, then 10:30, and I preached at the last one. Thanks to all those who prayed for me during my preparation & stuff. It went pretty well I though, and I was encouraged by some positive feedback afterward, as well as really enjoying the experience myself during the sermon (always a good sign)
I love getting presents from my youth kids & their families at Christmas, not because they give good presents (though they often do), but because it is great to know that the kids have thought of you and want to express their appreciation. I have enough chocolate to make sure I can get out of bed & make it to the 9:30am service at church tomorrow on what is going to be an absolute minimum of sleep.
Speaking of which, I might head in that direction.
Here is another couple of pictures for you to enjoy from NZ.
Tim.>.

The view at 8am on the lake at Glenorchy.

Sipping the amber nectar! We tried a number of beers throughout NZ (in moderation), of which Speights was one of the best.

On and On…. It was a twisty, but lovely road from Wanaka to Cooktown. This was at the top of a very dangerous looking hill!

Once I removed 49 GIG of photos from my computer it was running much better! Of course, now I need to go & sort over 6000 photos… dang… that is going to take a while…
It’s good to be back. I stopped at church on Sunday night, though I was too late for the service. I still got to catch up with Shannyn & Geever for their birthdays, hung out at Burger King with a bunch of kids & played football (American) out on the grass infront of the BK. Good times!
Since then, it is hanging at church doing a little work & hanging at my Brother & Sis-in-Law’s place. Also good times thanks to a wee little one called Charlotte. Ahhh, sweet quality time!
OK, here are a couple of pics from NZ. The parade begins!

I wish I could give you a 360 degree pic of this. This is the view you want when you wake, having parked randomly in the middle of nowhere. Good choice!

The Devil’s Punchbowl in Arthurs Pass. Very cool. I was tired after the half hour walk to this place, which worried me, though it turned out that the fact that I had 3 hours sleep the night before had something to do with it.

All that ice & me with no cocktail to have with it!

Left to right, Steve, Dave, Matt & I. Good times on the ice, though, we should have just worn t-shirts & shorts. Oh well, better safe than sorry…

The wedding went well. My speech went OK, my travel back to Australia was good, but my attempts to get my laptop to work have been a spectactular failure. My pictures wont seem to download properly, my email wont update properly, and it is kicking up a general fit too!
I think I might give up and go to bed! I hope leaving it off for a day will help it out.
TCG.>.

We made it to our flight to Aukland on time, we managed to get a car when we got to Aukland too (Bigger than our first, though only slightly)! We managed to find Christy’s place without a problem, and we managed to make it out of Aukland and up the coast with Tim Dallimore to spend the night celebrating his impending marriage.
North Island so far has been fairly fun. It is very different to South Island, being flatter, more densly populated and (thankfully) having less sandflies.
So the night before last, saw the 4 boys become 5, heading north on a little adventure. We stopped for dinner at a restaurant called the “ship and anchor”, where we learned that “Black and Tan” doesn’t separate well in the antipedes, and that inflatable chickens receive strange looks from waitresses….
We continued North to a place whose name escapes me. We found a comfortable motel that had beds for 5, we found a comfortable bottle of Port that had enough contents for 5 (almost) and we found a comfortable game of “Emperor and Scum” (the official sponsor of “Boys Tour 2005”) to keep us entertained for the night!
The next morning we headed out to Goat Island, famous for their snorkling. We wouldn’t be put off by rain clouds and wind, and continued on. Despite the miserable weather, and small issues with visability underwater, the snorkeling was awesome! I got to see a Stingray that was as big as me, and I watched some colourful fish that would have been about 10kg eating an octopus who was making his (last) feelings known by spurting out all of his ink! It was really a pretty cool time.
We dropped Tim back off home, then headed back out in the direction of the Bay of Islands. I would love to chat more about our Kayaking today (in the end only a day trip) that included paddling right up under the lip of a waterfall, but my time is just about out on this machine.
Look forward to the next, and final installment (God willing) entitled “The reason for the season” as the wedding, and actual purpose for our being here, draws near!!!!

Actually we can, dinner last night was pretty awesome.
Dinner last night was also held in a little shelter, huddled around a portable camping stove. Pasta in a cream sauce with tuna, followed by chicken soup (entree & main course were back to front because we forgot about the soup) with Chocolate & peaches for desert & then a rye whisky and ginger ale as a digestive!
I guess the title should really say “We can’t SEE Mt. Cook”. We arrived in the afternoon, set up the tents, the boys went for a short walk & then the rain set in.
I found the public shelter, so we all swung over there, cooked dinner, had a couple of casual drinks & spent the night playing “Emperor and Scum”. It really was an awesome time!
I’m a little bummed that we couldn’t see Mt. Cook, the tallest mountain in New Zealand. I was also bummed that I missed out on photographing the famous turqoise lakes that surround, but I’m over it. I have many good photos from the last week anyway, and it is OK to give up a couple of photos if it means spending quality time with three mates, a small fire making impliment & duty free liqour!
This evenings blog was brought to you from a public library in Christchurch! Tomorrow it is a flight to Aukland! Things are only going to get more exciting!
TCG.>.