Today has been a mix of work and play.  I had the privilege of attending the funeral of a much loved long serving member of  St Oswalds this morning.  It was a requiem mass and very well led by members of the team here - much the same as we do back home but with some lovely prayers which I will certainly keep for future use. 

While I was at church Graham was out searching for a medical centre - he found one and got excellent service ( at a cost of 69 dollars - which we can claim from the travel insurance) He has a sore throat and a viral infection - but as you can see he is soldiering on regardless - it's a hard life

After lunch we caught the tram to Glenelg and indulged in some serious paddling - taking care to first check there was no shark warning. We've  had fantastic weather again - slightly windy at times but very warm.  I am not malingering you know - I was erm...pondering beach missions!

Back home in time to lock up the church and cook tea . Tomorrow I have a Deanery Chapter meeting at lunchtime (someone is calling for me which is a relief) and a liturgy planning meeting to observe  in the evening.  Here they meet every 2 weeks to plan Sunday services - I can't imagine any of us at Pips of Cuths having the time to meet so often! It will be interesting to see what they get up to.

Now here's a thought... could we cope with a pronoun free God?  Australia seems to be way ahead of us in the use of inclusive language in liturgy.  God is gender free and never referred to as 'he' - always as 'God'.  I totally agree with the principle ....but as I am not used to the loss of the pronoun it takes some fancy footwork, some very long winded sentences and much  repetitive use of the word God. I think on Sunday, when I lead, even I am destined to offend!

...and finally on a less complicated and controversial note... I now have a local sim card for my mobile phone...I have put the correct bins out in the correct places ( they are collected by machine not by humans so placement is everything) .. I can find the light switches in church in the dark and I have written my sermons for Thursday and Sunday.

Still to do...find the second church, Emanuel..it would be a good idea to do that in advance of leading worship there and back the car out of the drive..and drive it ( never driven an automatic before! ) I keep looking at the traffic and thinking..how hard can it be?  Time will tell.