My Divine Romance

At this moment I’m sitting on the floor of the rec room with 25 Fijian rugby players talking in another language and laughing…I’m pretty sure it’s directed towards me because every time they look over here they giggle then their coach yells at them…
Earlier when a friend of mine was using skype to call her boyfriend they all looked at her like she was crazy for talking to her computer!:)

Anyways, today was the first official day of school!! Let me tell you ALL about it in schedule form!

6:45 – Wake up and stumble around the dark room to find my clothes. I’ve reached the point where I really don’t care too much about what I wear, so getting dressed in the dark is easy. Today I wore comfy jeans, toms, and Aaron’s t-shirt that I brought with me.

7:00 – Breakfast of, you guessed it, bran cereal and toast. This morning the Fijian boys at almost 6 loaves of bread JUST for breakfast!!!

7:30 – Devotion/quiet time. This week our devotions will be over the character and nature of God, so today was about God’s love. (Even though its not really a characteristic, its just who He is…but, don’t get me started) :) During my quiet time I just sat and listened to Phil Whickam and wrote God a love letter. On the plane to Sydney I was feeling pretty down but as I opened my window to look at the harbor I felt God tell me “This is where OUR love story begins…” And that’s what it really has been, a complete love story. God’s wooing me and it’s working – he’s pretty romantic :)

8:25 – Our daily work duties! I work in the kitchen which today consisted of buttering 5 loaves of bread to make sandwiches for the rugby team’s lunch.

9:00 – Worship. We had about an hour of worship which was AWESOME!! It’s SO different from Fellowship…in soooo many ways ☺ At first it was really hard for me (and still is sometimes) to get past the critique in me and to focus on the heart behind the worship but once I did (and do) it becomes amazing!!

10:00 – Morning tea. I’m telling you, they feed us all the time!! But, I didn’t eat this time, I just had tea b/c I’ve been feeling pretty sick lately.

11:00 – “chippin’ in”. This is the time when everyone goes to different sections of the base to help clean, mow the lawn, wash the cars, make the food, etc. I’m on “Dinning Room” duty which was finished in about a half an hour so I helped out with kitchen and hospitality. I really enjoyed this time because I got to put more Phil Whickam on and hang out with my friends while we vacuumed and made beds!

12:30 – we got finished with our cleaning early so LaChelle and I started our “skateboarding lessons”. She’s on the “Boarder’s DTS” where they skate and surf so she’s been teaching me how to skateboard. I almost did an Ollie today….but almost is kind of a personal interpretation. Once we were finished me and three other girls walked to McDonalds (they call it something weird like meccy’s) to get their free wifi. But, we also found out WHY it was free…it took the whole time I was there to load one e-mail!!

1:40 – we had to be back for our first lecture at 2:00 and it was at least a 20 minute walk from McDonalds to the base so we sprinted back as fast as we could and on the way passed some of our fellow schoolmates who told us that we missed the announcment saying they moved lectures back to 2:30! So, we enjoyed a nice leisurely walk back and then a quick power nap! It was SUCH a nice gift! Because, I have been really struggling with jetlag lately and was SO nervous about falling asleep during my lecture. But, my mom prayed against jetlag last night and that sweet nap God gave me was absolutely refreshing!

2:30 – Our base leader Etienne started off our first lecture of the whole DTS! This week we’re learning how to recognize the voice of God. He is SUCH a good speaker! He’s funny and gracious and open to so many things! I thought he was going to give us 5 easy steps to hear God but he really just explained how to fall in love with God and then from there we’ll start recognizing his voice. He emphasized that God is a FUN God! He told a story of this “bush” in Africa that has trees full of fruit that makes liquor. And once a year they all fall off the trees and onto the ground. Then all of the animals come and eat the fermented fruit and get completely wasted! He said that it is in the middle of no where and no one sees it. He thinks that God does it just because he enjoys a good laugh! He’s up in heaven rolling with the angels in laughter because of the drunk and hungover monkeys!:)

5:30 – After a three hour lecture (It FLEW by!) we had dinner!! There wasn’t really anything special about it, except that it was someones birthday so there was chocolate cake!!

6:50 – I’m now, like I said, in a room full of Fijians writing this blog! We have the continuation of today’s lecture in about 10 minutes. It’s scheduled to be another 2 hours…but, I hope it goes by quickly!

Can you tell that I’m a girl? It’s not even 7:00 and I’ve already written a novel! :) But, I just couldn’t leave ANYTHING out because it was all so good! I’m totally loving it here! Especially getting to know all of these people! Me and LaChelle are becoming really close (I hope she doesn’t read this blog…)! I even asked her to go on a date with me to our “Impartation” (basically a time of optional prayer and worship) tonight, she even checked the “yes” box!:)

Please keep me in your prayers because I still have some stuff I need prayer for that I would basically just prefer not to share with the whole world! Haha!

I love you all!!!

G’Day!