Happy New Year!!

so it's like the 5th day into the new year but i guess it's still pretty early in the new year to be wishing everyone a happy new year....anyway haven't blogged in a long long while so i guess it's time for some quickie updates.....

duno why, was really busy in december doing duno what....can't seem to remember now...hmm...all i remember was grace and ernest's wedding, going christmas shopping in the lead up to christmas, stressing over what to cook for christmas, going to gold coast for a week with doreen, xia and jo-lyn, coming back just for a couple of days for christmas then leaving for brisbane on boxing day just to come back in time for new year's eve....so all in all, it was kinda like a busy december....all went past so fast....

and now it's time to go back to work.....

but anyway if u still haven't heard....after much discussion with our parents, merrill and i are getting married and i guess here would be a good place to update you guys abt what's going on....after all sue asked if i could have like a wedding blog to keep everyone updated abt what's going on

anyway somehow because it was so close to christmas when we finally decided we were going to get married next year (or rather this year) we decided that we'd wait till the new year before starting to plan the wedding...which we were hoping to have on 27 May (if you don't know, Merrill's birthday is on 27 May....it's his way of never forgetting his wedding anniversary) but what we didn't expect was that church offices would be closed and that ministers would all be on holiday (yes, it's that time of the year where CMS summer school and beach missions are all happening, so that's why no one's around) was really panicking and stressed out yesterday coz we realised that settling on a date and booking a church wasnt as easy as we thought it would be. Last year, during december, we sent out emails to some churches asking abt whether we could get married there....so we've seen st martin's in kensington...the pastor, Jeremy Tonks is a really nice bloke and really prompt with his communication as well....we managed to view the church even before christmas so that was great...st martin's even has a pretty big hall, which would be great for the post-wedding morning/arvo tea, unfortunately, it's church can only fit abt 100 people so it's a bit too small.....

at the same time, we sent an email to st andrew's in the city and gave them a call too only to be told that the minister who is in charge of weddings and deciding whether pple can get married in the cathedral was on leave till this year....so we thought, ok, we'll wait till january to contact him....so merrill called the cathedral yesterday only to be told that the church was booked on 27 may....apparently they have a lot of criteria too....to be married in that church....u have to be anglican (which we are), you must be above 18, and you cannot have been married before, also u have to be interviewed by the minister, after which they will then make a decision on whether they would let you get married in the cathedral...on top of that, the cost of hiring the church is pretty exorbitant.....anyway merrill was pretty pissed yesterday coz he thought that it was pretty ridiculous to be asked to pay such a sum of money just to get married in that church...i guess it could be coz it's partly to go into maintaining the building, maybe it's going towards the ministry of that church...duno....but merrill had some pretty valid arguments or lines of reasoning too but i'm kinda too tired at the moment to go into them....so anyway, being desperate (read on to find out why we're kinda desperate now) we decided to call them back and ask if they had any other dates available for us to wed in that church....i spoke to the receptionist who said that she would pass on our details and our queries to the lady in charge of this, and said that the lady would call us back by the end of the week but so far she hasn't and i wonder if she will.....

ok...getting to the part on why we're getting so desperate....at the same time that we asked st martin's and st andrews abt getting married in their churches...we also sent an email to st judes in randwick abt getting married there too....they emailed back before christmas saying that they would send out a wedding info pack to us which we still haven't received, so yesterday i gave the church office a call only to find out that the church office re-opens on 23rd January...unfortunately it was stated quite explicitly that the church office is the one that deals with weddings and baptisms so we couldnt really call the pastor......(as an aside, merrill is going back to singapore for a couple of weeks on 22 Jan so we were hoping to have the wedding date settled by then, that's why having the church office re-opening on 23rd Jan sent us into a bit of a panic)

so by then we were both in a state of panic (or rather, i was) and we decided to call, good old st matthias, only to be told that that weekend was going to be mission week at st matthias so we might not be able to get married there on that weekend.....again, the lady said she would call us back but she still hasn't

so yes, at the moment, we're all in a bit of a limbo......no church...no wedding date.....and an ultra stressed out janet....ok lah....i'm not as stressed as i was yesterday.....basically now, if a church comes back with any date (hopefully late May or anytime before 29 June) we're just going to take it...i start my CA course on 29 june so i guess it's good to get married before then.....but yes, coming back to it, gotta leave it all in God's hands....after all He's the one that's in control over here....no point stressing out over it (although i cannot help it, but i'm really trying......)

i have this sinking feeling i might turn into bridezilla some time down the track.....somebody smack me if i do ok

but yah a lot of things to do between now and whenever the wedding date is.........stress stress....no no...cannot stress too much....haiz......

oh well....moving on to other thoughts now....am reading a book at the moment abt the christians in rwanda and how they're moving on and coping with the aftermath of the genocides in 1994. It's been a really great read so far...i guess when it was all happening, i was still in primary school and i didn't really understand what was going on...all i remember knowing was wathcing the news and seeing lots and lots of pple fleeing....they called them refugees and all i knew was that they were fleeing because some pple called the hutus and the tutsis were killing one another...i thought those were really cute names then...but the book has been sometimes a humbling read coz u read abt pple who had such great injustices done to them, who endured really terrible things and actually forgiving the perpetrators of these crimes because they understood God's mercy and grace....and what's amazing is that they do so without expecting that the pple they forgive to repent but it's also been a great reminder of what it means to forgive and the seriousness of sin...haven't finished reading the book yet, but so far it's been a good read...there's more thoughts on this book but since it's past my bed time, my brain's kinda not functioning now so it's time to bid all of you goodnight and go to bed!

p.s. nicky, time to update your blog!