Thanks Ann!

Heh, afterwards my mum said she was very proud of me for saying what I did. I think I have changed quite a lot ever since both coming out to my parents and being water baptised, in fact if someone were to say I would of had the confidence to even speak to ANYONE I knew 4-6 years ago, I would say they must have the wrong person.

The other day I was watching this dvd called 'Waiting for superman', which is an amazing documentary about schools in America. It talks about many bad teachers who are making future generations of children dumber by refusing to teach with some stupid law in place which, after 2 years, secures their jobs, and therefore becomes very hard to/cannot (I forget which one) be fired, and the students resort to crime and other bad things because they aren't taught properly. Below's the trailer for it if anyone's interested:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZKTfaro96dg

I am very grateful that this teacher was NOT one of the many bad teachers at my school (I had some teachers telling me I would never amount to anything, that I'd never be the next Jamie Oliver – you name it, there are some really cruel teachers out there).

So to then hear about the sermon and the power of the tongue, and then see the best teacher I ever had today, well, it was sort of like a 'I must tell her this' sort of moment, because I don't know when I'll ever see her again, and I felt I had to tell her because life is too short to not say good things that you want to tell people, but are too afraid of doing for whatever reason (learnt that lesson when I procrastinated about phoning my brother's friend, Tim, to thank him for a pokemon toy he gave me when I was 10 or 12, as he knew I was feeling down at school, then he died the next day and I never got to thank him, but I can't live my life in regret, and the game that I was playing instead of phoning him quite literally saved my life, so I can't think too much about the what if's).

Aww thanks so much Sophia! <3333

Thanks Steve!

When I wrote the email to the 50 churches of New Zealand I had this mindset that they would all immediately understand where I'm coming from – and in hindsight I was ignorant of the fact that I simply could not change people's minds about homosexuality overnight, especially churches. Like you say though, hopefully it has planted a seed so much so that they re-read their bibles to find the truth in the full context, and maybe, just maybe, we'll see churches change in time!

Thanks again for your reply 🙂

Such stories are unfortunately not uncommon when death separates Same sex partners. I came across a similar story here in australia only a few months ago. A friend of mine's partner died after a long term illness. Despite having cared for his partner for over a decade through debilitating illness – he and the guys friends were excluded from the funeral. The relatives cleared out the apartment – thowing out things that belonged to others (and had been told that) with no care or respect to those others.

In this case a group crashed the fineral (after they were told they werent welcome) and they spoke publicly about the evil treatment of the deceased and them by the family.

Still the hurt remains. What should have been a time of closure just opened horrible wounds which will never heal.

Its one of MAY reasons why marriage is needed.