It's been too long!

Hello everyone!!

Well, it has been a while since I last updated, hasn’t it? I think it's been too long...but, there are a few reasons for that: number one, I have been INSANELY busy!!! We’ve had a very full week of lectures, talks, prayers, and very little time for sleep. I have barely even had time to check my e-mail!

And the second reason that I haven’t updated all week is because the teaching has been very hard. Most of it did not sit very well at all with my spirit and I found that I didn’t want to blog about it because it weighed me down so much. It was awful! This whole week I felt bound and weighted down, it honestly was really miserable! But, I talked to my mom the other day and she helped a LOT! It was nice to hear that I wasn’t crazy and I wasn’t the only one in the world that didn’t agree with the teaching!

It wasn’t necessarily the actual teaching that I didn’t agree with, but the way it was taught, the language that was used, the spirit behind it was sooooo not of love but more of a spirit of power and not of humility. Honestly, it was quite annoying!! :)

BUT, today was the last day of lectures and it was actually quite awesome! It was like I walked into the room with a different spirit! Instead of being weighed down and angry at all of the things he said that I didn’t agree with, I just let everything that he said slide off of me if it didn’t sit well with me. Even in my notes I just wrote down the stuff that sat well with me and let everything else slide off if it wasn’t truth. And, oh my goodness it made all the difference in the world!!!

I am absolutely exhausted right now and it is SUCH a struggle to keep my eyes open! I haven’t been getting to bed before 12 in a while and have been waking up about 6’something every morning! Actually, yesterday morning LaChelle and I both turned off our alarms thinking we’d just take a quick rest in the morning and ended up sleeping through breakfast, devotionals, quiet time, and they had to call for us on the loud-speaker for work duties!! Oops! :)

And tomorrow night is definitely not going to be much better…I’m not going surfing in the morning, which is good because I’ll at least get to sleep in until 7. BUT, after youth street my team is staying up all night…yeah, I said it, all night…UGH! We’re making burritos and going to downtown Sydney at 1:30 in the morning to stand outside of the nightclubs as they let out and sell burritos to raise money for outreach. And, guess what, Sunday morning at 5AM we leave for a 12 hour bus ride to Fingal.

I’m sure you’re confused…let me explain. I don’t know if I have mentioned this before but, we are going on a camping trip! We will be in a place called Fingal (aboriginal territory) for the next two weeks sleeping on the beach, surfing like crazy, spear-fishing and kangaroo hunting (YIKES!), having bon-fires, and bonding together!! How fun! And can I just add that I have never been camping before in my life! I used to try and sleep out on the trampoline sometimes but I couldn’t even make it past midnight… so I’m pretty sure that the indigenous territory of Australia is kind of like throwing me in the deep end without floaties… but, we’ll see how it goes!
However, Fingal is 12 hours north of Sydney, which means all 30 of us are going to squish into little 10 seat-er buses and drive for 12 hours straight…and that will be after the night of selling burritos so we’ll have no sleep… yikes! AND, we’re not going to have internet access while we’re there so I won’t be able to update for the next two weeks!!! You’ll just have to imagine what I’m doing while I’m out there!

But, we don’t leave until day after tomorrow so I’ll be able to probably have one last update tomorrow! :)

This week has really made me miss my home! I can’t believe I’ve already been here for 6 weeks, they have FLOWN by…but at the same time whenever I think that I still have 18 weeks left it kind of makes me cringe a little. To be completely honest I would be totally happy if I was in my own bed right now, with my dog cuddled up at my feet and my mom and dad downstairs in the office. Or at lunch with Haven and Aaron and Kevin talking about what songs we’re going to play next at FC. Or at rehearsal for a weekend service…yeah, that one I really miss. Or at my grandmother’s lake house floating in the lake on a canoe! I would love ALLLLL of that, and I CAN’T WAIT to do all of those things in February!

However, I’m trying to keep on reminding myself that even though I’d like to be doing all of those things that I am here for a reason. And, that I am having some major life change that will be a great foundation for the rest of my life. And that all of those things will still be there in February and they will only be that much more sweet when I can actually do them all! :)

Well, I have to head upstairs for dinner now! We’re having fried fish and steamed vegetables! (We have a new kitchen manager which means that all of the food is soooo much better and we’re not just eating yucky fat chicken and rice…thank you Jesus!)

Oh, hey, so this is probably weird but I have a prayer request! I have some sort of rash on my chest and neck and back and LaChelle has something similar on her arms. We don’t know what it is, but could you all pray for it to either go away or for us to find out what it is so we can deal with it? Sorry if that was gross… :) But thank you for your prayers!!! :)

I LOVE YOU ALL! Seriously, I do, I can’t wait to see most of you soon! Did you know that this week marks the half-way point of my lecture phase?! How crazy!!!

I’ll update again soon!

G’NIGHT!