Let's play catch up.

Where to begin.... I think the best place to start is with sorry for being so awol over the past little while, I haven't had proper internet in over a month. Since leaving Brisbane we have travelled through Sydney, Goulburn, stayed in Ballarat for 2 weeks, then to Port Peirie, Port Lincoln, Adelaide (we were there for a week over Easter) then the team drove up through the centre of the country onto Katherine, then Darwin for 1 week, then 8 days of travel passing through places like Turkey Creek, Kurratha, Cununbarra, stayed in Broome for 2 nights and then some more travel and now we have been in Bunbury for 1 week and today we are going to Perth for 3 weeks. So far my favourite places have probably been Broome and Bunbury and Ballarat - I guess all the 'B' places.

Some fun lil bits of information to share with you all, we had one girl faint on us at an Eday of like 95 girls, we have seen a buch of road kill kangaroos, seen fossilised ferns that are supposed to be as old as the dinosdaurs, had Alyssa (the 19 year old Canadian girl) run into a small metal bench at night and make a HUGE dent in her shin which resulted in a trip to the hospital and her being on crutches (she's okish now). We stayed on a drama stage for like a week and had to hunt out a possum which had been stealing our food during our stay there. Got to hang out with a large group of aboriginal students in Darwin. Went surfing in Adelaide, Seen the most BEAUTIFUL views of an incredible country. Feel free to check of photos on facebook.

I'm not really sure what else to tell you all, I am doing well, I love my team to death, I am continuing to come to know Jesus in new and exciting ways, becoming more confortable with speaking to adults and youth alike (though I'm still pretty socially awkward). I love sharing talks on Edays and EDLing, I love seeing the young people accross Australia allowing Jesus into their lives and having the chance to pray with them, I love getting to share in the lives of the young people and hearing their stories as well as sharing my own, hearing the response of the youth and teacher. I may have given up a year of my life to do NET but what I'm recieving in return can never be fully measured by any amount of time, I am so blessed, I seriously get SO much out of what I do. I don't know what else to say... I'm just loving life right now, God is good and I am privileged enough to see that on a daily basis.

Please continue to pray for me, the National Team and our ministry and the youth we are still to encounter. I love you all and am praying for you.

AMDG

you are good enough.

In life there are so many restriction placed on us, so much pressure to conform, to be a certain way. Ultimately we are constantly bombarded with the message that you are not good enough, you need to be someone other than who you are in order to be good. Often we buy into this; I know I’ve certainly been guilty of it. But when we believe this lie we deny ourselves so much and we tell God he’s not good enough because God created us in HIS image and HIS likeness, when we are dissatisfied with ourselves we must also be dissatisfied with God, in whose image we were created. Our God is perfect in every way, that means you too are perfect, don’t let the lies of society bring you down, don’t place those restrictions on yourself, of trying to be someone you’re not or believing you’re not good enough because God, the source of all that it good, believes you are good enough.

AMDG

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

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