Tuesday, 8 March 2011

Clean Up Down Under

Morgan ready to pick


I've always thought that Australia was a freakishly tidy place and I didn't know if this was because they hire more great people to clean up after everyone else or because everyone here just has an awesome attitude towards their surroundings. Well I think it must be a combo cos Sunday was national Clean Up Australia Day and the fact they have this day every year is wicked cool. The church I go to organises the congregation into groups to go out into allocated areas of the community to pick up rubbish instead of having a 9am service. God gave us the world to take care of so why would we sit in a service whilst the rest of the country tidies it up?


My gang was working on an area near a highway turn off so there were rich pickings tossed from cars. One super person even threw a can out to Isaac as they passed him. So helpful! After the mass pickup everyone met back at church to put their rubbish in the skips, wash their hands, eat a snag and exchange stories of the things they found (nappies, underwear, someone once found a fridge with an animal head in it, delightful).

Isaac stoked on his find

At our local skatepark last week I was sitting down surrounded by empty cans, bottles and food packets. I realised that often I only thought of litter picking if we were doing a Pure Parks visit and when I was just hanging out there it was easy not to see the rubbish lying around. So I started picking up stuff and straight away the other guys joined in. I think it's a really important part of showing that we love the skatepark and the people that use it. So I am challenging myself not to walk past litter when I go there and asking God to open my eyes to it and realise that I'm never too busy to pick something up and put it in the bin. SAY YES TO LITTER PICKING!



Monday, 7 March 2011

Munners



This is Paul Munro aka Munners. The Jesus Boardstore deck? He designed that. And the rainbow one. And our website. He's an all round talented dude with vision for making people's lives better. Enter his newest venture: The ThreeSixy Project. Check out his sweet new video below and then head over to the website to buy a steezy feel good deck or just straight up donate to the good stuff he's orchestrating. 360 wut wut!


Wednesday, 9 February 2011

Pure Parks Tassie



Des, Derek, Wolfie and Taylor took a month long trip down to Tasmania in January to hit up all the skateparks there with the Pure Parks project. They visited 50-something parks, gave out 175 skaters bibles, 200 Foolishness DVDs and picked up countless bags of trash. Check out Derek's blog about it here:

Derek's Aus'ome Adventures




They've also put together a sweet video so I'll put that up when it's online. Please pray for all the kids they met!

Tuesday, 8 February 2011

Luc Bugman



This is Luc.
He is english (all the best people are).



Luc came to the sunny coast base last year as a mission builder to help out wherever help was needed. So he made lunches for the DTS and, being a skater, he became involved with One Friday, having a regular day in the shop. In the run up to Christmas one of our other shop staff left for home to spend time with his family, Luc was due to go on to Sydney to see some of his family and it was looking like I would be working 7 days a week to keep things going as Christmas is the busiest time in the shops. I wasn't relishing the idea but sometimes you've just got to go full throttle and I knew it was for a limited time. But the idea of it make me want to sleep for a week.

The day before Luc was due to leave he told me, all casual, that he could stay longer if we could do with the help. And I'm not too proud to say it rained on my face a bit. He ended up working in the shop most days of the week, staying til the evening of Christmas day and it made the world of difference to my schedule and my ability to cope. It reminded me again that I can trust God to bring the right people at the right time.

Luc has an awesome positivity about him. He started doing community dinners on Saturdays, cooking up a storm and inviting everyone and anyone to join. He made me feel like fam. He's now in Cambodia and just sent me an email about maybe opening a skateshop there in the future. Please put him in your prayers as he tries to listen to God's leading for him.



Luc, I salute you. Snazzy Hammers.

Sunday, 28 November 2010

Stop. Start. Carry on.

Happy Birthday Upright Gen (Oct - Nov) from Des Shannon on Vimeo.

Scurvy

And by-the-by you should head over to Derek's blog:


to see some amusing photos from when we commandeered a boat last weekend.

Note the awesome Movember stylings. And please excuse Luc's appreciation of banoffee pie. He's from Plymouth.