Australia the AMAZING

I won’t lie as far as I was concerned Australia simply wasn’t beautiful. Perhaps I’m biased or have too much pride in my own country, every view we saw that made the Americans “ohh and ahhh” didn’t do anything for me, because New Zealand had it too as a matter of fact we had it better. However I was proved wrong, Australia is amazing. On Wednesday 28^th some of the team went on an adventure to Halls Gap, about 1½ hours out of Ballarat, but more specifically to Mackenzie Falls and The Balconies.

We went to a gorgeous waterfall, simply stunning, like the kind of nature I miss from home, I was happy and content. We climbed some rocks and even went for a swim at the base of the waterfall; we’d had a good day and were ready to leave. We started to drive home and on a whim we decided to take a turn off to The Balconies, to some protest, but it was so worth it.

Amazing, incredible, beautiful, words fail me, they do not seem adequate, and they simply do not do the view justice. With little to no doubt in my mind it was THE most breath-taking view I have ever seen. We stood on a cliff overlooking a valley covered in trees, completely untouched by humans, it felt like we were on the edge of the world. God’s immense beauty was magnified in his creation; you couldn’t see this and not praise him. Australia is beautiful and I am SO blessed to be able to see almost all of this incredible country, as the National team we will get to see beauty like this more often the all the local teams combined, I am blessed.

Below are just a few pictures, for more check out my Facebook page

That tiny pink dot in the picture above is me, sitting on the edge of the world.

AMDG

Bye Bye Brisbane

It feels right, official, just the way it should. We have finally left Brisbane, well actually we left last Friday, but none the less, it feels SO good to finally be out of Brisbane, it feels as though we are finally starting our life as the National Travelling team! Last Friday we drove 17 hours, yes that’s right, it was not a typo SEVENTEEN HOURS to Sydney, it was our first ever travel day and we went all out. We stayed overnight with the Sydney team, that is Sam’s team, which was so cool to get to see familiar faces, as we didn’t think we would get to see anyone till mid year. The next day we drove 2 ish hours to Goulburn and stayed with / celebrated St Patrick’s day with the Goulburn team which again was so good to get to see other netters, people I’d grown so close to over training and just talk with them and hang out. Then another long day, 9 hours of driving on Sunday I think and that took us to Ballarat, the town we are still in. We are here for two weeks and have currently been here just under one.

For our time here in Ballarat, which just to put that in perspective is 1½ hours out of Melbourne, we are at an all-boys school. For all of last week we ran the same Encounter day each day (for a different set of classes) which was for year 7 and the theme was leadership. Next week we will be doing year 10 and the theme, I’m fairly sure is self-image. At this point we have ministered to over 1600 young people, ministry life is crazy, AWESOME and often challenging but so blessed.

Ballarat is COLD!!! Like 6degrees cold getting up to maybe 12 at mid-day? So I do feel slightly lied to by Australia because I was not expecting this, especially after being in Queensland for 2 months where it ranges from 27-40, so my body is in a little bit of shock right now.

 I love it here, even though I’m challenged and forced to grow in so many ways, there is no place I would rather be at this point in my life, but it is hard and far different than I could have anticipated but it is good, because God is good.

We are currently on “Supe visit” which is where our Supervisors come out to meet with the team and talk to us, see how we’re going, etc. I am really loving it because we are getting the chance just to be, just hang out with each other and enjoy everyone’s company which is something we don’t get to do a whole lot of. So today we had “Hood time” which is where the guys and girls split up and us girls had a D’n’M with Sarah to get everyone caught up on each other’s lives (our female Supervisor) and then watched a movie and ate junk food. Tomorrow we get to go into Melbourne which will be really fun and I will hopefully be able to update you all on that soon!

For now I must go because internet is hard to come by and in high demand.

AMDG

NET says no to sleep.

NET says no to sleep has been the running joke for me and Alyssa this week, she is the sister I was hosted with this week and had the pleasure of telling her this every morning at 4am. Over the past week we have had an encounter day everyday with the expectation of only half the team running an E-day for 17 people and the other half filming a drama, which is performed to the song “Dare you to move” by Switchfoot which will be used by a Priest who is a great speaker. Today is our only day off and we have another E-day tomorrow on Sunday. This week we have had very little sleep, we are expected to fully invest in the lives of our host family, which is an awesome part of our ministry this year as the National team but it also means we generally have late nights and super early mornings, gotta love natty team. I have had such an awesome hose family this week we have literally been living across the road from the beach, it reminds me a bit of The Mount, it’s a place called Moreton Beach at Redcliffe.

My life on a personal level is good I miss home and my life and friends and family a lot so please pray for me about that. On a ministerial note it certainly is a mixed bag each school is TOTALLY different the kids are all disciplined differently and you never really know what to expect when you walk into a school. Over this week I have had my first chance to EDL (Encounter Day Lead). The EDL is the person who writes the schedule for the week and is pretty much the MC for the day in layman’s terms, you have to be approved by staff before you can do it and I was approved last Wednesday so it was pretty cool, I was EDL to a group of Grade 9’s and the theme was “Worth What” and that is self-image. I also gave my first talk on Thursday to a group of grade 6 and 7 on “Steppin Up’, Worth what and He said, she said” which is leadership, self-image and peer pressure. Normally we only have one them but a school can request as many as they want which makes life interesting some times but I really enjoy speaking, I don’t think I did a particularly good job but I’ll get better with time, I hope.

Below is our official NET photo as the National Team, enjoy. Also I will try and write more in detail and with less grammatical errors in my next update.

 L-R Adrew 19 from America, Kevin 18 from Brisabne but orginally El Salvador, Phil 22 our male Team Leader from America, Lyle 28 from Sydney, Big Mike 21 from NZ. Girls L-R Megan 21 from Melbourne, ME!!!!, Grace 19 from America, Danielle (Dani) 23 our female Team Leader from America and Alyssa 18 from Canada!

AMDG