Holy Momentum Batman!

Friday morning in Queensland (day 5) Sarah and I left the Sunshine Coast and headed south to spend the day in/around Brisbane. We drove to The Big Pineapple which is at a pineapple farm somewhere in the area. It was cool to see the way that pineapples grow because I guess I'd always assumed they grow on trees. Wrong. They grow underground. The Big Pineapple is a tourist trap if I've ever seen one, but I had heard so much about it and everyone had said that I had to see it!

After we left The Big Pineapple, we went to this other tourist trap called "Aussie World." I'm still not sure what all they had there because it was so big, all I know is that one of the places had award winning meat pies. Meat Pies were another thing I had been told that I HAD to do (eat) while in Australia. At Beefy's, the pie shop, you can (and apparently should) get "mushy peas" on top of your pie. Sarah said she doesn't really like mushy peas, but while waiting in line we started talking to some of the people who were already eating and they said mushy peas were the way to go, so that is what I got. I'm not gonna lie, I was a little bit nervous when we sat down to eat. I also have to say that it was sooooo good!

From what I'm told, this meal could not get any more Australian.

After lunch we went into Brisbane and walked around in the South Bank area along the river.

That night, Sarah and I met up with some of her friends and went to Friday night church at Hillsong's Brisbane campus. Afterward, we went out for Mexican with everyone. Sarah's friends were really nice and we had a good time with lots of laughter at dinner! By the time we got back to Sarah's mom's house we had to go straight to bed because we were waking up to drive an hour to Byron Bay to watch the sunrise before we started the long drive home. Byron Bay was my favorite place on the whole Queensland trip! Oh my gosh, it was just a small surfing town on a peninsula and I loved it! It looked like it belonged on the coast of South Carolina. We drove up to the lighthouse and walked out to the very edge (literally) of Australia to watch the sunrise. It was by far my favorite thing that I did all week.

On the way home, we also stopped at this place called Red Rock. It is one of Sarah's favorite places in the world, and I can understand why. When you walk out to the beach, there is the mouth of a river on one side, an island in front of you, and the ocean on the other side. It looked like the place that they would go to film the deserted island scene in a movie. It was beautiful and I think I could have stayed there all day!

This is the river with the island on the other side... the ocean is behind me.

13 hours after pulling out of her mom's driveway, Sarah and I finally made it back to her house in Sydney! Renee came and picked me up so we could go meet some girls for dinner and a movie. We saw Inception and let me just say, go see it. It was amazing! The next day Renee and I went to church in the morning and Robert Ferguson spoke about our future. He said that people waste their money paying people to tell them the future, but if we really want a glimpse of our future, we should look at how we are living right now. He used Jeremiah 1:6-12 and said we had to ask ourselves some questions and the way we answered them would give us a glimpse at our future. If we didn't like what we saw, there was still time to change the way we answered them! He said we have to ask ourselves:

• What do you study? (1 Corinthians 10:11)
• What do you serve? (Jeremiah 1:6 "Ah, Sovereign Lord..." Jeremiah served the Lord, Matthew 6:24, Philippians 1:6)
• What do you say? (Jeremiah 1:9, Numbers 14:28)
• What do you put a stop to? (Jeremiah 1:10 - Jeremiah lived in a nation that wasn't stopping their backsliding, 1 Corinthians 15:33-34)
• What do you store up? (Matthew 6:20)
• What do you sow? (Jeremiah 1:10 "...to build and to plant", Isaiah 59:21)
• What do you see? (Jeremiah 1:11, Ephesians 1:18-19).

It was such a good sermon and it was so good to see the scripture that backed up everything that he was saying. That night, Brian Houston preached. He is just always good. He's been talking about "Holy Momentum" lately and Sunday night he talked about our momentum coming from the Lord and how the Lord is ALWAYS going to be with us and will never leave us. He said we had to get rid of our "Old Testament" perspective of God because God isn't hard to access anymore - he is in US... WE are the temple. It was a good Sunday and I am realizing more and more what an amazing opportunity I have had to get to be a part of this church.