Adjusting

What to say, what to say....

This past week has been a complete whirlwind; we have had an encounter day every day this week, ranging from year 7 to year 12 from leadership to sexuality and even a couple days of only boys. It has been challenging but also completely awesome to begin to get a taste of what my year will be like.

Every day this week I have woken up between 4.30am and 5.30am so to my friends and school don't even talk to me about getting up early! I actually don't mind getting up that much it's just a matter of adjusting. I also feel like people don't seem to understand why it is we get up so early so here is what is expected of us. Wake up do and to 45 minutes to 1 hour of personal prayer in the morning, obviously get dressed, eat etc. Get picked up and collect everyone which normally takes between 1-2 hours depending on traffic and then drive to our location, which we are expected to arrive at 1 hour before start time in order to set up, get organised and pray. Hopefully that helps people to understand our early mornings.

We have been very busy this week and I am pretty exhausted after only 1 week so this year shall certainly be interesting. Next week is slightly less busy as we have a couple of days in the office in order to practice dramas and skits and whatever else needs going over, as well as we have 3 encounter days, I think. I don't have a whole lot to report on my end but feel free to email or comment with questions if there's anything you'd like to know about my life because I really don’t know what to tell you.

Today was a day off so other than skyping as many people as I could in a short space of time, Dani and I went into Brisbane city and went to the science museum and the "GoMA" (Gallery of Modern Art). Perhaps I am not the best person to appreciate modern art, in fact I'm probably the worst but it was certainly entertaining and fun, even if I wouldn’t quite call the displays art.

Please pray for our upcoming encounter days and also for the local teams that they are settling into their new lives.

AMDG

Firsts and lasts

Over the past week we have run our first two encounter days (which is NET terminology for retreat days). The first was a group of grade 9's and it was on sexuality, the second was a group of grade 7's and it was on leadership. They were both very different and posed many different challenges. They both however have one thing in common; they went by very, very, quickly. It took us 6 weeks to become equipped for something that lasted 5 hours... Obviously training was a lot more than just learning about how to run encounter days, so don't think I'm putting down training, even for a second because it was quite possibly the most incredible time of my life. But it was just like wow; this is what we came here to do, especially as the National team as we will be running Encounter days nearly every day. The days were both exceptionally long we had to wake up at 5.15am and then 4am the next day, I'm beginning to think maybe this year won't be so easy, but the Encounter days were so worth it, anything is worth it for Christ's sake.

Today was our Commissioning Mass, so it is official I AM A NETTER! It also marked our last contact with the other teams. We are not supposed to remain in contact with anyone from other NET teams, they do have legitimate reasons for this but it doesn't make accepting the rule any easier. Saying goodbye was tough! For the people I'd already known well before coming to NET but also the people I've met while here, if any of my readership ever done NET or plan on doing so then you might understand otherwise it is impossible to explain just how close you can grow to people and how deep of a relationship you can form in 6 weeks. Tomorrow all the based teams will head off to their local areas, as for us we have a month in Brisbane so we shall be staying put and just changing host homes.

I am doing well, learning lots and eating more junk food than I ever have before. On a serious note I ask please for your prayers next week we dive head first into our ministry running 5 encounter days, without the assistance on NET staff, we are on our own. Please pray for our team and also for the youth we will meet.

AMDG

Back to Brisbane

We have just finished training at Peregian and are now back in host families in Brisbane city. We still have about 10 days of training, in which time we will run two (practice) Encounter days, which is just a NET term for retreat, they call them “Encounter Days” because they are a chance for the young people to encounter Christ.

So reflecting back, a day in the life of training thus far has consisted largely of getting up at 6.30am and going to bed at 10.30pm, a very similar time table to school. We have between 3 and 6 sessions a day, some of them FAR more entertaining than others but all super draining, so much more than school ever was and we haven’t even begun ministry yet, God help me, PLEASE. We did all sorts of things from lessons on how to mingle, to drama training, to child protection policy’s, how to write talks and EVERYTHING in between. We went to the beach A LOT and I think I’ve got a pretty good tan thus far, even if I do say so myself.

At the beginning of training the Executive Director, Shanelle Bennett stood before all us netters and said by the end of training you will be like family, you will all love each other and know each other intimately. I didn’t believe her. Nearing the end of training however I can see she was and is right. The people I’ve meet on NET I know well, so well, we are all one big family and I will be beside myself when we hit the road and I won’t get to see the other netters until mid-year. The friendships I’ve made on NET are hard to explain because we know little about the surface level of each other but know the desire and fears of each other’s hearts well. Even the staff are more like friends than anything else.

Below are just two pictures of me and my team sisters enjoy. Oh and let it be know today I am a woman, February 11^th 2012 I GOT MY EARS PIERCED! Pictures to come ;)