On Friday 16 April I visited the Rockhampton Mosque.  It doesn’t have minarets and some of the fancy features of Mosques in Islamic countries like Pakistan and the like, but the word Masjid means place of worship in Arabic, so it's still a mosque. 

Last year as you know we changed our church services to Friday nights.  This is a much more relevant time to have church in today’s culture.  Who wants to wake up on a weekend morning and get dressed up for a meeting?  So anyway, it has left us free on Sunday mornings to do other things.  Most of the time we actually attend church in Rockhampton because we value the community of believers there and love being a part of them – and they really are community.

However last week I went to the Mt Morgan Markets and set up a stand to sell books, cds and give away some Christian dvds.  It is all in the name of the Lord.  I was pleasantly surpised to give away 15 dvds and to have many good conversations with the unchurched.  It was a good morning. 

Recently I did some webdesign work for a friend Ivan Richardson. Ivan is a a fabulous organist who has a business playing live accompaniment to silent movies. He is popular, good at what he does and his shows are entertaining.

Ivan compiles all His own scores and adds in sound effects to time in with the movies.  He plays to Buster Keaton, Charlie Chaplin and others. 

Just for fun,  I enjoy reading about Search Engine Optimisation and doing a little tinkering with my site to see if I can improve it’s listing on Google and the like.  My site is new and since Christmas I have seen it go from Zero on Google pagerank to One.  I’m hoping to go to Two at the next update.  Here is my handy dandy chart that will help you calculate how to get the page rank you desire. 

This picture is free of copyright use – you may reproduce it, but only so long as you link to this site and acknowledge my authorship. 

When my son Xavier was born (named after St Francis Xavier) a friend lent me this book on Heroic Leadership (available at Amazon) in which Francis was outlined on several occasions as an illustration of a Heroic Leader.  I read the book more to learn about the historical person of Francis Xavier, however in doing so, have enjoyed this book and had my whole view of the Jesuits, Catholic Orders and similar things totally changed. 

As a follower of Christ having grown up in a Protestant environment we develop many ideas about Catholics.  Fortunately I was blessed to have attended a Catholic High School (Emmaus College) and was able to have realised what a blessing the Catholic System is.  However I had developed some ideas about the Jesuits from books I had read.  This book changed all of that for me and gave me a very high regard for the Jesuit Society.  I realise in fact that without the Jesuit Society (and similar Catholic Orders), the world today would not be what it is. 

Last Thursday, the Queensland Tourism Minister visited Mt Morgan to open the new section of the Dinosaur Caves.  Mt Morgan is blessed to have some large fireclay caverns made in the early 1900’s when they were mining the clay to make bricks for the smelters in the mine.  As the excavated they tunnelled under sandstone and many years later footprints were seen in the sandstone from the underneath. 

The Kids and I competed in a Mini Olympics at our place today.  It was designed to be a fair and even competition.  Proof of this is that our dog Captain actually won the discus event. (throwing a pot plant base)  A lot of fun was had by all, and the winning medals were mint patties wrapped in aluminium foil.  Well done to all who participated. 

When we were kids our Dad used to take us to Corio Bay regularly and we always went to Fishing Creek.  Our friends used to go also, but always went to Kelly’s landing.  Last week for the first time in my life I got to fish from Kelly’s landing with my friend Darren Shepherd. 

In his YMIS lecture on Sexuality and Young People, Paul Wegner made the comment that for young people their sexuality is like wet concrete.  The experiences they have as young people and young adults shape how their sexuality forms.  So a person can become gay under certain circumstances, and they can become just about anything sexually under the wrong circumstances.  Once their sexual concrete sets, then it is very difficult to change.