Creativity and humour transcend cultural and linguistic barriers!

Had a really touching moment on the train to work this morning. I was sitting there playing the new Maxis game, Spore (made by the same people that did The Sims and Sim City in case you didn't know what it was), where you get to let your imagination go wild and build some wacky creatures. It currently being Wold Youth 'Day' and all, a whole bunch of pilgrims came into my carriage. I was working away at my latest oddity when this little girl leapt onto the lap of the guy next to me leaning right over the laptop and giggling.

"Hello" was my bemused response. They said hello in reply and I continued making my creature. The little girl was transfixed on the game and found the creature hilarious. I got to chatting with the guy and it turns out they are a group of Columbians (the girl was only six and didn't speak English). What followed was the most beautiful time of people from different ends of the globe, from totally different cultures getting to know eachother and creating creatures together, laughing over what we come up with.

It was so cool to see the universal human fascination trait of humour bringing us together through the common ground of a computer game!

I let the girl name her creation and she called it Father Gonzalez, after their priest that was with them haha. She then went away and came back and gave me this hand-made bracelet thing, to "remember them by". The guy was in year 11 and is learning HTML at school. He was also fascinated with Spore (as am I, I must admit!) and would translate to his friend what was going on.

They named the last creation 'Recuardo de Columbia' (Remember Columbia) and then we arrived at our destination of Town Hall and went our separate ways. It was just something small on an otherwise routine trip in the daily rat race commute, but profoundly touched me for some reason!

I guess it was the experience of instant connectedness and friendship across cultural barriers, the way God had originally designed humanity to act in, that really got to me. That brief glimpse of the joy and love that heaven will be. Bring it on! :)

Matt.

Wow i haven't written for a while. I can say that life in Cronulla is great. Matt and i are making good friendships with people from our church. We have had a few people over and stay and we love hosting people, so you can come vist any time just let us know when your comming. I must admit that i have been growing in my faith aswell it has been wonderful, i have been really encouraged by my new church friends. Bible study is great, it is bizzare in a way both matt and i agree that our new bible study is so much like our old one, it made the transition easier. I have been going to the gym (Curves) for the last month and have been really enjoying plus, i ahve been running alot thanks to Matty for encouraging me too, i have become quite the fittness fantic well not fanatic but it has been great to get out there and enjoy excerising, i have also been going for walks with a friend of mine who's house we go to bible study at and she is abouslutely beautiful. Her name is Lisa and she is 26, married to her husband Pete and has two children, we always chat about i guess what you would see as boring but when your a wife and a mum it is so helpful, so we have chats about food shopping, it is good to know where to get a bargin (it is so funny i actually enjoy doing what i think are my wife duties, it is not that Matt wont do the shopping it is just we are very old fashioned, he is the bread winner and i look after the house and shopping, trust me i enjoy it and chose to be that way, Matt loves it, i think there is something beautiful about being able to be a wife and prayfully i hope to be a mother one day) and where the best place to shop is, cleaning, children and then our husbands. we walk to the beach and hang out in the park in front of the beach whilst her two children play. She has a 4month old daughter called rosie and 1year old son Elliot who has down symdrom but is abosutely cute. I always feel blessed when Lisa lets me hold Rosie or play with Elliot. It is always great and i love i always am on coffee duty, not that that is to hard for me hehehe, i just go and order us our take away coffee's from which ever coffee house we choose. I am praying our friendship will become very strong. Work is going well, i had lunch with Owen my father in law last week as he was doing an audit course at Wesley and it was so good juct to chat with him about family things. Matt's work is going well too, we have been invited to play tennis nextSunday with his work mates, i can't play tennis so i am just going to watch and cheer Matt on and probably just chat to the other wives and woman that are there.

Oh yeah i am so excited that we have the net now, Matt installed stumble upon, which asks for your interests and it find s websites that are related to them and i found this awesome site called biblical woman.com it is great, you should check it out, it is all about well being a christian woman.

Well i guess that is it for now..I will write more soon.

Love you all.
Tash