Another year gone

Well another year has come and gone and yes that means sports fans that it's once again my Birthday. So I'm now up to the big 27 which means I have three more years to leave YSA 'voluntarily' before I'm kicked out.

Anyway, I got a Ipod nano, A CD, a game for my DS lite, a History book and strangly enough a pair of slippers from the Dog complete with Birthday card as well. Well stranger things have happened round it before and no doubt will continue to do so :-)

I went to Lunch with Tap Dance to Frankie and Bennies and then to play a couple of games of ten pin bowling. Which I'm afraid to say didn't go as well as I hoped as Tap Dance beat me on Both games, the first wasn't so bad as she only won by three points but in the second game she resoundly trounched me by nearly 40 points!

Grumpy is taking me out to Lunch tomorrow which will be nice as I don't get to go out to eat that often so twice in one week is good going!

I was also surprised to get a email from the conference organisers today. They seem to have learnt from last year by making some adjustments such as moving scripture study from 6am to 7am ( I still think most YSA will not be getting up for it mind you), but one of the main things which put people off last year was the for want of a better term 'strictness' of the new leaders which seemed to be more on par with a youth camp rather then YSA. For example the leaders buzz phrase of " To some obidence is still an irritant" did get very annoying, and the use of scripture to get people to go straight back to there rooms after the ball on Saturday are two of the worst examples. Engineseer and I were talking this week and we hoped that the leaders would adopt a more softer approach this year as their more experienced and would realise that YSA are not youth and we don't (most of the time) need such heavy handedness. Because it did seem to put a lot of people off and too much bad word of mouth would kill an activity like that. YSA want a fun weekend with their friends.

However based on this email it seems that rather the relaxing they might be tightening up even more. The email initially says
"I've been asked by the organisers of the YSA convention to inform you that there is no provision for YSA to attend part of the convention. You either pay for the whole thing or you cannot attend. "

which is fair and I can understand it. However he then gives a quote from an email he recieved regarding the subject
"The reason for this is that we owe a duty to those YSA who have paid. Remember, the Lord's Church is a church of order. We would ask you to remember that we all took a covenant with the Lord, when we were baptised, to be honest in our dealings. Any YSA who try to get into Conference without paying or any YSA that tries to help a YSA sneak in is behaving in a manner that is in contrary to that sacred covenant."

now before anyone jumps down my throat in no way am I disagreeing with this statement in it's 'truthfulness' for want of a better term. The writer is correct. However in terms of subtleness it's probably on a par with having a large piano dropped from a very great height.

Oh well,

I guess we'll see how things go when I get there.

later folks