Toongabbie Anglican has just seen their ‘Christmas in Winter’ women’s event sell out, with 25 per cent of the tickets going to visitors. Rector of Toongabbie, Raj Gupta says the key to running a successful event which reaches your community is not coming up with the best idea, or even clever marketing, but the process of giving lay people ownership.

In a quantum leap forward compared to what has provided in previous years, every church will receive a unique Community Social Profile with coloured maps, pictures and tables. The profiles show the social make-up of a community, how it is distinctive and how it has changed, in an easy to understand format.

Deborah Lovely is making history as the first female weightlifter to represent Australia at two Olympic Games. But the committed Christian is adamant she is not there “to win medals for myself”.

Welcome home to the freezing Sydney weather! It definitely is a stark change from the warm 30 degree days and the balmy nights we experienced in Fiji. But the weather isn’t the only thing that has changed since we’ve been away. Dare I say it, but everyone on the Year 13 Fiji 08 team has changed in one way or another.

Friday began just as many days had begun for our trip in Fiji: many of the guys (including myself) slept in, breakfast just wasn’t the same without real milk, ‘the Gunn’ (Pete Gunning) injured himself (ok that wasn’t a very common occurrence, but unfortunate nonetheless), and God answered prayer.

With a topic like 'Resurrection', this year’s Mid Year Conference was always going to drag lethargic uni students out of holiday-hibernation and force them into restarting their brains. And being one of those students, I can confidently say it did.

Larry Warton, the Village Manager at Donald Robinson Village Kirrawee, is clearly passionate about ‘his village’ and is impressed by the way residents go out of their way to care for each other when in need.

With more people retiring early and with life expectancy continuing to rise, Australians are now spending more than a quarter of their life in retirement.

The final event of WYD08 was dramatic! About 200,000 pilgrims from around the city converged on Randwick Racecourse to spend the night sleeping out, while thousands of Sydney-siders came in the morning to join them for the final Mass.

Navua, where to start? Friendly faces, scorching sun by day and strong storms by night; Aeroguard as our new deodorant; sunscreen as our new moisturiser; and the backs of Utes as our new “pimping” ride – Navua was an experience we will never forget.

When you ask a religious person if they trust Jesus most will say 'yes', or they 'try to', but when you ask them are they certain where they will be spending eternity, it shows you where their trust really lies.

It was difficult to hear but I think the Pope's logic went – God created the world good – we sin – with the help of the sacrament of Baptism we can and should restore God’s good world. Jesus becoming human shows us how important humanity is.

The day began at St Andrews' [Anglican] Cathedral which has become an open house for the youth of the world, and a lot of other people too. There seemed to be even more people through today, including an Italian Roman Catholic group who conducted their own Morning Prayer in Italian – a first I believe for the Cathedral!

If you are frustrated with the traffic and up for a bit of evangelism, why not take the day off with a couple of your friends, come into the city at mid-day, talk to people around the Cathedral, stay for the talk at 1pm, then hang around for a bit more evangelism in the afternoon– Truly, it has never been easer to talk about Jesus in Sydney!