Editor’s Notes

I’d like to open with a quote from Calvin and Hobbes (no not the two famous philosophers, the cartoon with the "little" boy and his imaginary tiger friend).

Hobbes: Aren’t you supposed to be doing your homework.

Calvin: Yes but I have to be in the right frame of mind first.

Hobbes: And what’s that?

Calvin: Last minute panic.

These last few months have been a "trying" time for me. I’ve been trying to get a project finished at work. Trying to get my travel arrangements for my U.S. trip in order. Trying NOT to play too much EverQuest (and believe me that’s a difficult one J ). Trying to learn to play the guitar better. Trying to do my pre-training studies (again for the U.S. trip). Trying not to get to bed too late. Trying to read my Bible at least once a day. Trying to remember to not forget important things like getting the newsletter done on time (errr doh!).

On a lighter note this year seems to be "Conqueror’s Abroad" year. Phil White (pictured on the cover) is in Hong Kong working with Crossroads and by the sound of his emails having a… well interesting time anyway J . Jon Bracht is in Canada working at a youth camp type place. Caroline and Rachel recently went to Tasmania… Ok ok it’s not "abroad" but technically it’s "over-seas". I also hear that Chris Charden visited Gallipoli… "Dulce et decorum…." my friend. And now I’m off to the U.S.A. tomorrow (hence the "Back in 55 days" in the picture) to help out with some youth ministry type work. So we really are a "well-travelled" bunch.

Once again to those of you who have contributed <salute>. To those of you who’ve sent stuff to me and still haven’t seen it appear… errr heh well I was kinda running out of time to try and squeeze things in, I’ll try and get it in the next issue.

Till next time GB, SS and TTYAL.

(that’s God Bless, Stay Safe and Talk To You All Later for those who don’t speak ‘Net)

Editor: Karl Rudd email: krudd@uow.edu.au

4 Moomin St ICQ: 32256111

Camp Conqueror Newsletter

Number 59 June 2001

Conqueror by Correspondence

Summer Camp 2001 Report

Winter Camp 2001 Information

Conqueror Crossword 59

Ok I’ll remember to give you a hint about what this crossword is about this time.

Hint: Last names

1. Well he’s not Eeeeeevil. <pinkie to mouth>

2. Sounds like they’re famous in Cricket.

3. All hail the retired… I mean returning cooks!

4. It’s an English fish!

5. The Golden Brothers.

6. "Blame Canada!"

7. "The Looooove God"

Across:

8. Almost sounds like a small truck.

9. The Web stole his initials.

10. Talk about hard to say fast.

11. Dang those American jokes are silly.

12. I’m told the word is "bai" in Mandarin.

13. Who? Wasn’t he in that thing about monkeys?

The Rocks in Your Life

I recently was forwarded the following email:

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A philosophy professor stood before his class and had some items in front of him. When class began, wordlessly he picked up a large empty mayonnaise jar and proceeded to fill it with rocks, rocks about 5cms in diameter. He then asked the students if the jar was full? They agreed that it was.

So the professor then picked up a box of pebbles and poured them into the jar. He shook the jar lightly. The pebbles, of course, rolled into the open areas between the rocks. He then asked the students again if the jar was full. They agreed it was. The students laughed.

The professor picked up a box of sand and poured it into the jar. Of course, the sand filled up everything else. "Now," said the professor, "I want you to recognise that this is your life. The rocks are the important things - your family, your partner, your health, your children - anything that is so important to you that if it were lost, you would be nearly destroyed. The pebbles are the other things that matter, like your job, your house, your car. The sand is everything else. The small stuff.

"If you put the sand into the jar first, there is no room for the pebbles or the rocks. The same goes for your life. If you spend all your energy and time on the small stuff, you will never have room for the things that are important to you. Pay attention to the things that are critical to your happiness.

Play with your children. Take time to get medical checkups. Take your partner out dancing. There will always be time to go to work, clean the house, give a dinner party and fix the disposal. Take care of the rocks first - the things that really matter. Set your priorities. The rest is just sand."

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Now this email obviously wasn’t written from a Christian perspective but much of what it says is applicable to Christians. It’s interesting that in the Bible Jesus is described as being a rock, a "foundation stone". If we fill our lives with "sand" how are we going to "fit Jesus in"?

Conqueror Crossword 58 Solution

4 down Ettrema | 9 across Mount Tarn

3 across & 1 down Canowie Brook | 6 down HRH

2 down & 6 across Pigeon House | 10 across & 8 across Oaky Creek

3 down & 5 down Corang Peak | 7 down Owen

Note: There was a bit of a mix up in the clues for the last crossword. 10 across and 3 across somehow got swapped. I also forgot to mention that the crossword was a cryptic crossword based on Budawang place names… Sorry about that.

Camp Conqueror Summer Camp Report 2001

or - something old, something new...

Camp Conqueror 2001 was an amazing year .. but don’t take my word for it - just listen to what these people said about it -

"As a part of the leadership team, Conqueror 2001 was a real lesson for me in serving the Lord. I learned a great deal about seeking unity among a team of Christian leaders, both in our goals and in our methods. I learned that serving God does not always come naturally, but requires much prayer and thought. I was really encouraged to be part of a team that discovered so much over our 13 days of set up and camp. We grew closer as brothers and sisters in Christ, and we learned how to trust God more in the everyday things. Some of the most exciting times were the unplanned debriefing and prayer meetings at night. These meetings helped us to keep our focus on God's mission, and we were witnesses to some awesome answers to prayer. Personally, I also learned about my spiritual gifts and weaknesses. I thank God for Conqueror 2001 and look forward to the growth of the leadership team as we seek to serve God together at Conqueror next year." - Harriet Lorrimer

"Camp Conqueror 2001, I laughed till I stopped!" - Jon Bracht

"Happy Little Campers!" - The Frugals

"Camp? What camp?"- Brad Pitt

Camp Conqueror 2001 was a new experience in camping! It had something old - the old canoes, something new - a new House of Lords - plus new enthusiastic leaders! Something borrowed - the 24-seater bus, something blue ... hmmm something blue ... well my car is blue.

Camp this year was 10 days long, so we could spend 4 days in the bush and have 2 activity days - this was rather exhausting for the leaders but a great success and well worth it. There were 19 campers this year - consisting of 3 girls and the rest were boys (well der!). We had 13 leaders and two cooks - the return tour of the Bensons! We had 6 female leaders this year - so suffice to say this year was different!

The activities days were great this year - we had the options of going abseiling, canoeing or on a day walk. Abseiling was lead by Nat and Jon and was a great success - just ask cliff! The canoeing required more pushing through rapids rather than shooting them - but was great fun anyway - despite the low water level. War games were, as usual, a great challenge in teamwork - but I think a lot of people were thankful that it only went for half a day! (Exhausting!)

We had four contingents this year so we had 2 cross over walks - 2 doing the Castle - Wog-Wog and 2 from Wog-Wog to Endrick. This was maybe a little long and taxing on some days but, in all, were great walks to do, with a lot of the Budawangs covered.

The Bible studies were put together this year by Caroline, Jen, Harriet and Kirsten and were entitled "The Never-ending story". For this reason the contingents were named after characters from the book - a fact that a lot of people did not get (I think) til it was explained to them. The studies were placed in a book that we could take home and were based on the first chapter of Mark. This was followed up with a panel night - in which the crowd could ask the panel any question they wanted about faith, etc. This was a great success with it carrying on long after the actual panel closed! Finally we had a guest speaker in the form of Dean Rerekura who gave a great and amusing talk to wrap it all up!

The camp concert, as usual, was another highlight of camp with some very funny and some very strange acts. Two of the funniest - I feel - were the RockBiters song and Joni B and Caroline’s rendition of Philip the Hyper-hypo! I’m still singing we will rock you - bite you, rock you - bite you! Mr Goode can be very amusing when he tries! And I think the memory of Joni B. running toward the audience at full tilt and just stopping in mid air will be a sight that will stay and amuse me for a long time - my only regret was that we didn’t film it! "You have a lot of positive support".

All in all, C.C. 2001 was a great and unexpected camp! I really was amazed at how different this year was to previous years - everyone had a great time and we had so many more quality moments instead of just bein’ stupid for the whole camp - not that there’s anything wrong with stupidity - "Stupid is as stupid does" ya know! But I really put this down to the leaders focussing more on how God would want us to run the camp and our prayer sessions at the end of each day in order to hand all our worries over to the big man for the next day!

Anywho, that’s all I’m going to say on the matter. This report may not have been as amusing as previous years, but it certainly had a lot more love (don’t you think). I’d just like to leave you with a little story of my trip home from camp. As some of you might know, it was quite eventful - what with my car breaking down, gale force winds and Mat getting a flat on the trailer - but that was nothing compared to the sage advice from "The Love God" himself - Chris East on "What’s wrong with Ralph". On the way home Easty proceeded to tell us "The problem with Chris Charden is you see, is he tells all these American jokes - which aren’t funny - and every one laughs - but they aren’t funny!" - deep eh? So deep in fact - he earned the title "The Love God" - which he proved immediately by denying that he was (only the true "Love God" will deny his existence)!

Bye for now, hope to see you on Summer Camp 2002 - cause its going to be bigger and better than ever! Watch this space as well for details for the C.C. fundraiser - Conqstock!

Your Brother in Christ

Wild Woolly Wootton

Conqueror by Correspondence

I made my first visit to a Canadian McDonalds last week. It was exciting! For years I'd heard whispers of foreign Maccas being different, different foods, different drinks, different atmosphere. I was sort of surprised to find it mostly the same as its Australian cousins. Obviously there were some differences, the root beer, the dipping sauces for the fries, but at its core, it could have been in Newcastle, North Sydney, Wollongong or Condobolin. I did some research and came up with a brief history of the chain that has become a second home to some.

A gentleman named Ray once upon a time invented a milkshake-maker, "The Multimixer". An extraordinary contraption, it used 6 blades to mix your shake and took most of Ray's savings and belongings to get off the ground. Ray heard of a small hamburger stand in Chicago that had bought 8 of his "Multimixers" and had hordes of people purchasing their shakes and burgers. The dollar signs flashing before his eyes as the sole owner of the Multimixer patent, Ray convinced the McDonald brothers, owners of the hamburger stand, to sell him the rights to open a new, larger store. This store turned into a chain and well, the rest is history. McDonald’s now operates in over 120 countries. At their core they are all McDonalds, but each country has developed its own style to make it their own. The Shamrock shake in Ireland, the Curry Potato Pie and Red Bean Sundae in China, and of course the McOz.

Why on earth is Conqueror getting a history of McDonalds?? Well, because it reminds me of church (yep, I'm serious). You see church as we know it today also has its beginnings quite a while ago with one man. From there it spread to nearly every corner of the globe. Along the way it also developed its own styles and traditions. We've named them Anglican, Baptist, Catholic and so on and so on. At their core, most of these styles preach the same gospel, they just express it differently. I think that as Christians we can discriminate and judge according to a label that someone has, a style of worship or service structure that they participate in. What I want to encourage is for all of us to shift our viewpoint. We should stop looking from our Earth bound perspective of a bunch of people with walls in between them, separating things as small as clappers and non-clappers, and look at it from above, from God's perspective. From there, the walls between us are just thin lines in the sand. They sit in the peripheral vision of a God looking down, seeing the people looking up at Him.

Let’s stop looking at the walls and look up at our Creator. If you don't know Him yet, then I'd encourage you to look past the traditions and the robes and the music that we have built up over time and instead discover what it's all about, a personal relationship with God. A God that didn't just create the world and stop caring, but that sent his Son to die for you so that you might live forever with him. (Romans 6:23)

Jon Bracht

(Live from Canada… well it was live when he wrote it…)

Greetings from Winter Conqueror 2001!

Well the snow is falling - at least somewhere in the world - and we're getting ready to run yet another incredible Conqueror experience. All we really need to know is 'Are you coming?'

Drop us a line if you'd like us to hold you a place. Better still, fill in the form at the bottom of this and drop it in the post as soon as possible. Feel free to copy this off to a friend you think could benefit from just the sort of winter experience a Conqueror camp can provide.

As always, spaces are limited and filling up fast, so get back to us quickly. After all, if you don't come back, who's going to convince James he shouldn't wear that nasty red jump suit?

Yours as always,

Mark & Maia

Winter Conqueror 2001

FOR: Co-eds in Years 7-12

LOCATION: Anglican Youthworks Campsite, Jindabyne

WHEN: Sunday July 15^th to Saturday July 21^st, 2001

COST: $275 (for assistance with fees, contact the secretary)

DIRECTOR: Mark Hadley

SECRETARY: Maia Hadley

Please direct all inquiries and applications to Maia Hadley at 6 Burrandong Crescent, Baulkham Hills, NSW 2153, along with your deposit or the full amount of fees.

When you send this form to the secretary, we will send you transport details, a medical form and a list of things to bring. Please make cheques payable to 'Scripture Union Camp Conqueror'. Space on this camp is limited, so please complete this form and mail it promptly. We look forward to meeting you Winter Conqueror 2001.

Winter Camp Conqueror 2001 Application Form

NAME: __________________________________ DATE OF BIRTH: _________

ADDRESS: __________________________________________________________

TELEPHONE NUMBER: ____________________________________

SCHOOL: _________________________________________ YEAR 2001: ____

HEIGHT: ______________________ SHOE SIZE: __________________

I ENCLOSE $ _________________ ($80 deposit or full fees $275)

SIGNED: __________________________________ (PARENT / GUARDIAN)