I've procrastinated posting since after Schoolies, which was this past weekend, for reasons which will soon be known to you. For those of you wondering what the heck Schoolies is, continue reading. Schoolies is (see, told you I'd tell you what it is) a three day party put on by various local churches and an organization called Encounter Youth for the graduating class of 2008. Seeing as the month of November has been weekend to weekend at YWAM due to certain fundraisers, volunteer opportunities, and an onslaught of other things I figured I'd let you know how our most recent volunteer opportunity went.
Schoolies takes place at Victor Harbor which is located nearly two hours down the coast from our base. Victor Harbor is a town of roughly ten thousand people, most of them retirees. It is also a bit of a tourist town on most occasions, not so this past weekend. On the evening of Thursday, November 20, 2008 two vans left the YWAM SA base to make their way to Schoolies. I say evening generically because a small group of us left much later due to some trailer light difficulties (ask Ray Lind about that if you feel so inclined). Anyhow, we made it safely to Victor Harbor and got settled in our accommodation's fairly quickly. Our accommodations were a decent sized retreat-like center in a small caravan park. Yes, a caravan here is known as a trailer. Yes, we technically stayed in a trailer park; let me assure you that trailer parks here in Aus. are much different from the stereotype of North America. Friday was a slow sort of morning and by now we were all getting ready to adjust to working long nights and sleeping until noon. One minor thing, if you notice me refer to "Green Team" this is who we are. Green Team is a team of about 450 volunteers from various churches, camps, and christian organizations who help out in different ways at Schoolies. Anyhow, our first taste of being on the Green Team came on Friday afternoon when team YWAM made its way down to Victor for our traffic control training. Before we even made it across the square to get to the police trailer for our training we were stopped by a mother who had lost her two small children. Wow, who'd have thought we would start helping out before we were even required to. Two of the girls from our team managed to find the children after a quick search and Praise the Lord that they were alright. After a quick briefing on the dos and dont's of traffic directing we drove to the Lutheran church for dinner and made a pit stop at 'home' to change for the night's duties.
Really no reason for a new paragraph other than I felt like it. Most evenings had the same format using a three team rotation. Our teams were five or six people each and we rotated between road blocks, rubbish, and recovery/intercession. Apparently YWAM gets the roadblock and rubbish duties because nobody else wants them but we found that they were great opportunities to talk to the kids as well as spend time with one another. Anyhow, Friday evening. Friday night it rained, on and off, all night. A lot of the volunteers were cold and miserable because of the wind/rain combination but praise the Lord for rain anyway. After a double rubbish shift and sorting through rubbish and recycling we called it quits at about 4:30 am. The other nighs were not nearly as miserable and I think the stars even came out on sunday night. Many of the Schoolies were overwhelmingly accepting of the Green Team and most couldn't believe that we actually paid to volunteer for the weekend. We had many great conversations with so many different people and we trust in the Lord that He will continue to work in the lives that crossed our paths.
I could probably continue to tell stories about Schoolies but I will refrain from doing so. If you'd really like to hear something else or have questions about how it works than feel free to ask. The volunteering is definitely worth it but you have to be prepared to be lacking in the sleep department. Thank you again for all your prayers and I would love to know how I can be praying for you. Blessings and I'll talk to some of you soon.
P.S. We'll be leaving the YWAM base in roughly one week and would appreciate your prayers for safe transportation as well as a servant heart as we 'go out and make disciples'. Cheers.
Nov 26, 2008
Nov 19, 2008
Leap of Faith
What are the chances you're reading this again? Pretty good if you just read that I guess. What to talk about? Let's see, oh right, here it is.
This past Saturday we had a fund raising banquet take place at the base and so our weekend moved to Sunday/Monday (we raised $2500, praise the Lord). Sunday was kind of lazy, as Sunday's should be. Sunday evening we went down into the city to pick up some pizza, incidentally from Claude's Pizza, one of the brothers who happened to own the orchard that we picked cherries at. Laura knows him and his family well and gives riding lessons to a few of his children. Let's just say Claude is an extremely nice person, he ended up giving us an entire meal along with drinks and some delicious gelati. That would more or less sum up Sunday, now on to Monday. Mondays are usually sorta bum days, as I'm sure most of you can attest to. This past Monday was by no means an ordinary Monday, ok, so maybe I'm exaggerating, but it was lot's of fun. So much fun I think I'll start a new paragraph for it.
Monday afternoon we left the base and Laura, Caitlin, Graham, Leah, Darby (Matt's Great Dane), and myself all packed into a YWAM van and headed down into the city. After picking up Matt we then proceeded to find his oh so secret cliff jumping location. In fact, the location is so secret he couldn't even remember where it was. His GPS stayed at home and the last time he had been there was ten years ago. I have to say, I had my doubts we would find it at all. After just under an extra hour of driving around the hills of Onkaparinga we finally stumbled upon a small entrance to the park. We hiked down hill and through the bush for about 15 minutes. Caitlin and I kept mumbling to each other about how there probably wasn't any water left because of the drought, but nonetheless we kept on walking. I guess I should give some credit to Matt because we did eventually find it. The location is actually this random cliff right next to a small pond that looks like it is nowhere deep enough to even swim in. Ok, enough about our boring arrival, on to the cliff jumping. We first checked the depth of the water (you can breathe now mother) and than climbed up to the lowest point to test it out. I was really surprised that nobody ever came close to the bottom of the pond, it was definitely much deeper than it looked. The lower jump was about 15 feet off the water, and looked every bit as intimidating the first time we looked over the edge. After jumping off that one twice I decided to make my way up to the higher one. We only did two different jumps because we had our doubts about the ones above it. So the highest jump we ended up doing was about 25 feet, give or take a few. I guess it probably doesn't sound that high, and if we went again I'd try and go higher, but it was worth the drive.
The other leap of faith I meant to talk about is mine and Graham's potential transportation for the next three months. I'll be talking to Pablo about it in the next few days but organizing it should be no problem. The base has an old car that was previously used by some staffers and is no longer registered. The beauty about South Australia is that you don't have to have a car safetied before you register it. More about why this car is such a leap of faith though. It's 1984 Mazda 323 with over 350 000 km's on it. It currently has no working battery but does start when it's boosted. The kicker about this car is that the brakes do not work at the moment, praise the Lord for hand brakes. The fix should be simple though (again, mom, quit worrying). Our test run with this car will be the shortest of our potential road trip, an 8 hour drive from Adelaide to Cobden. I know there will be people at the base praying for our car :) but we're going in faith that things will work out alright.
As far as prayer requests go I'm feeling a little under the weather today. The cold has been going through the base and I woke up fairly stuffed with a huge headache this morning. The main reason I'd like it to go away is because schoolies is coming on this weekend. Schoolies is a huge event that we volunteer at and we'll be doing long days and short nights. Thanks so much for your prayers and I'd love to hear from some of you. Blessings and Prayers.
This past Saturday we had a fund raising banquet take place at the base and so our weekend moved to Sunday/Monday (we raised $2500, praise the Lord). Sunday was kind of lazy, as Sunday's should be. Sunday evening we went down into the city to pick up some pizza, incidentally from Claude's Pizza, one of the brothers who happened to own the orchard that we picked cherries at. Laura knows him and his family well and gives riding lessons to a few of his children. Let's just say Claude is an extremely nice person, he ended up giving us an entire meal along with drinks and some delicious gelati. That would more or less sum up Sunday, now on to Monday. Mondays are usually sorta bum days, as I'm sure most of you can attest to. This past Monday was by no means an ordinary Monday, ok, so maybe I'm exaggerating, but it was lot's of fun. So much fun I think I'll start a new paragraph for it.
Monday afternoon we left the base and Laura, Caitlin, Graham, Leah, Darby (Matt's Great Dane), and myself all packed into a YWAM van and headed down into the city. After picking up Matt we then proceeded to find his oh so secret cliff jumping location. In fact, the location is so secret he couldn't even remember where it was. His GPS stayed at home and the last time he had been there was ten years ago. I have to say, I had my doubts we would find it at all. After just under an extra hour of driving around the hills of Onkaparinga we finally stumbled upon a small entrance to the park. We hiked down hill and through the bush for about 15 minutes. Caitlin and I kept mumbling to each other about how there probably wasn't any water left because of the drought, but nonetheless we kept on walking. I guess I should give some credit to Matt because we did eventually find it. The location is actually this random cliff right next to a small pond that looks like it is nowhere deep enough to even swim in. Ok, enough about our boring arrival, on to the cliff jumping. We first checked the depth of the water (you can breathe now mother) and than climbed up to the lowest point to test it out. I was really surprised that nobody ever came close to the bottom of the pond, it was definitely much deeper than it looked. The lower jump was about 15 feet off the water, and looked every bit as intimidating the first time we looked over the edge. After jumping off that one twice I decided to make my way up to the higher one. We only did two different jumps because we had our doubts about the ones above it. So the highest jump we ended up doing was about 25 feet, give or take a few. I guess it probably doesn't sound that high, and if we went again I'd try and go higher, but it was worth the drive.
The other leap of faith I meant to talk about is mine and Graham's potential transportation for the next three months. I'll be talking to Pablo about it in the next few days but organizing it should be no problem. The base has an old car that was previously used by some staffers and is no longer registered. The beauty about South Australia is that you don't have to have a car safetied before you register it. More about why this car is such a leap of faith though. It's 1984 Mazda 323 with over 350 000 km's on it. It currently has no working battery but does start when it's boosted. The kicker about this car is that the brakes do not work at the moment, praise the Lord for hand brakes. The fix should be simple though (again, mom, quit worrying). Our test run with this car will be the shortest of our potential road trip, an 8 hour drive from Adelaide to Cobden. I know there will be people at the base praying for our car :) but we're going in faith that things will work out alright.
As far as prayer requests go I'm feeling a little under the weather today. The cold has been going through the base and I woke up fairly stuffed with a huge headache this morning. The main reason I'd like it to go away is because schoolies is coming on this weekend. Schoolies is a huge event that we volunteer at and we'll be doing long days and short nights. Thanks so much for your prayers and I'd love to hear from some of you. Blessings and Prayers.
Nov 14, 2008
Rockin' in the Orchard
Well, well, well... what do we have here? You are reading my blog, therefore you are either bored or genuinely interested in what I've been up to. I'll leave it up to you.
In the event that you're reading this because you are actually genuinely interested in what I have been up to I suppose I should at least write something. The last two days I've had the opportunity, along with a few other YWAMers, to pick cherries at an orchard down the road for a bit of extra cash. Ordinarily it'd be alright money but we're rookies when it comes to cherry picking. Five dollars a bucket at an average of four buckets an hour sounds pretty good, it's tricky to do four buckets in hour though. Much harder than it sounds. So we ended up making probably just over ten dollars an hour, which sounds alright to most Canadians, but in Australia that's about as low as it gets. I guess I do have the right to now say "I've picked cherries before".
One of the other things that's kept us busy this week at the base is preparation for a fund raising dinner this Saturday evening. The dinner is being put on for about 60 guests and we are hoping to raise funds to support the YWAM base as well as it's various ministries. Prep for the dinner includes decorations, cooking (which apparently involves me, somehow), mowing lawn and prettying up the gardens, and cleaning everything else more than usual. It seems like a big deal for a small amount of people, but we're trusting that God will move in marvelous ways to not only bring in support money for YWAM but to bring Youth With A Mission, and more so God, into the city of Adelaide.
So it's now Friday night and I feel sort of lame for sitting here and blogging instead of doing something exciting, but I was up early to cherry pick and I'll probably end up going to bed early as well. Cheers and blessings and I'll talk to some of you at an undisclosed and later date.
In the event that you're reading this because you are actually genuinely interested in what I have been up to I suppose I should at least write something. The last two days I've had the opportunity, along with a few other YWAMers, to pick cherries at an orchard down the road for a bit of extra cash. Ordinarily it'd be alright money but we're rookies when it comes to cherry picking. Five dollars a bucket at an average of four buckets an hour sounds pretty good, it's tricky to do four buckets in hour though. Much harder than it sounds. So we ended up making probably just over ten dollars an hour, which sounds alright to most Canadians, but in Australia that's about as low as it gets. I guess I do have the right to now say "I've picked cherries before".
One of the other things that's kept us busy this week at the base is preparation for a fund raising dinner this Saturday evening. The dinner is being put on for about 60 guests and we are hoping to raise funds to support the YWAM base as well as it's various ministries. Prep for the dinner includes decorations, cooking (which apparently involves me, somehow), mowing lawn and prettying up the gardens, and cleaning everything else more than usual. It seems like a big deal for a small amount of people, but we're trusting that God will move in marvelous ways to not only bring in support money for YWAM but to bring Youth With A Mission, and more so God, into the city of Adelaide.
So it's now Friday night and I feel sort of lame for sitting here and blogging instead of doing something exciting, but I was up early to cherry pick and I'll probably end up going to bed early as well. Cheers and blessings and I'll talk to some of you at an undisclosed and later date.
Nov 8, 2008
Odd Week
Yep, another week is gone. Finished. Done. It seems that's how a lot of the weeks here have felt. Time has seemingly sped up and in a few more short weeks we'll be done at YWAM SA. Let's not dwell on the sadness of it all though.
This week was a bit of a funny one, not actually funny as in worth laughing about but funny as in odd. A majority of the people on base were absent this past week as they were attending the National Leaders Meeting (NLM) in Melbourne. So not everybody that went is a leader per say, but I'm sure they all learned heaps of stuff and formed tighter relationships with one another as well as with Jesus. Although most of the people who are normally on base were gone this week I would dare say that it was a combination of things that made the week a bit odd. With the base being so quiet there wasn't the same motivation to be doing work at all times; I admit it, not nearly as much work got done this week compared to weeks gone by. Although we did cut a wall and put in a door, paint the door/frame, burn an old tree stump, herd some sheep, gash my toe (which is healing up surprisingly nicely), mow part of the lawn, and paint some signs. Now, to the fun stuff.
When everybody left for NLM Laura and I promised ourselves that we'd do as many fun things as we could while they were gone. We may have broken that promise to some extent, but we did keep part of it. On Wednesday evening Laura, myself, and Leah had the privilege of going to play bingo with Paulette. Of course, what is bingo without a little costume action. When I say action my friends, I mean action. Let's just say we got the twice and even three times over from several different people. We didn't win any money but it was definitely worth it just to be out for the evening and enjoy the crazy environment of some seniors hall bingo. Bingo was probably the highlight outing for the week but little things like bread run and home surgery on my toe definitely made it enjoyable as well. We got rain this week! So that's not a big deal to any of you at home, in fact you're probably getting rain/snow right now. To South Australia that is a fairly big deal to be getting rain. Again 5 millimeters probably sounds like nothing for one night but it's something here. I was told this morning that South Australia has had below average rainfall every month for the last 37 months, that's over three years! It's not even summer yet and the grass is almost entirely brown. I've found myself continually praying for rain, both physically and spiritually over the last month or so. Anyhow, that's about all I have to say about that. If you've got any questions, comments, or even a loving word I'd love to hear from you. I tried (5 times) to post some pictures this week but our internet is just too slow, so you'll have to wait until December.
God Bless all of you and I pray He will continue to strengthen you in the fruits of His spirit as you daily live out His will for your life. Blessings and Prayers.
This week was a bit of a funny one, not actually funny as in worth laughing about but funny as in odd. A majority of the people on base were absent this past week as they were attending the National Leaders Meeting (NLM) in Melbourne. So not everybody that went is a leader per say, but I'm sure they all learned heaps of stuff and formed tighter relationships with one another as well as with Jesus. Although most of the people who are normally on base were gone this week I would dare say that it was a combination of things that made the week a bit odd. With the base being so quiet there wasn't the same motivation to be doing work at all times; I admit it, not nearly as much work got done this week compared to weeks gone by. Although we did cut a wall and put in a door, paint the door/frame, burn an old tree stump, herd some sheep, gash my toe (which is healing up surprisingly nicely), mow part of the lawn, and paint some signs. Now, to the fun stuff.
When everybody left for NLM Laura and I promised ourselves that we'd do as many fun things as we could while they were gone. We may have broken that promise to some extent, but we did keep part of it. On Wednesday evening Laura, myself, and Leah had the privilege of going to play bingo with Paulette. Of course, what is bingo without a little costume action. When I say action my friends, I mean action. Let's just say we got the twice and even three times over from several different people. We didn't win any money but it was definitely worth it just to be out for the evening and enjoy the crazy environment of some seniors hall bingo. Bingo was probably the highlight outing for the week but little things like bread run and home surgery on my toe definitely made it enjoyable as well. We got rain this week! So that's not a big deal to any of you at home, in fact you're probably getting rain/snow right now. To South Australia that is a fairly big deal to be getting rain. Again 5 millimeters probably sounds like nothing for one night but it's something here. I was told this morning that South Australia has had below average rainfall every month for the last 37 months, that's over three years! It's not even summer yet and the grass is almost entirely brown. I've found myself continually praying for rain, both physically and spiritually over the last month or so. Anyhow, that's about all I have to say about that. If you've got any questions, comments, or even a loving word I'd love to hear from you. I tried (5 times) to post some pictures this week but our internet is just too slow, so you'll have to wait until December.
God Bless all of you and I pray He will continue to strengthen you in the fruits of His spirit as you daily live out His will for your life. Blessings and Prayers.
Nov 3, 2008
High Flying and Four Wheel Driving
What a Saturday, I must say it was quite something. This past Saturday we had the opportunity to drive down to Kapunda in the Barossa Valley to have a day full of food, fellowship, and fun. Saturday, which was originally supposed to be 19 degrees and cloudy, turned out to be a beautiful day for flying. We were hosted by the Jaeschke family who's daughter, Hannah, has been involved with YWAM in the past. Hannah's boyfriend happens to have his pilot's license as well as his aerobatics license, and it just so happened that he had an available airplane kickin' around. I'll cut to the chase, it was Awesome!! Experiencing crazy G forces, or lack there of, doing nose dives, steep climbs, and flying right over the heads of the other enthusiastic YWAMers was really neat. The Jaeschke's were kind enough to have us over for a bbq at lunch and opened up their house to us. Hannah's parents shared some neat stories with us about raising orphaned roo's; I had almost started to doubt the existence of kangaroos since I haven't even seen one since being here. This now brings me to the second part of the day.
Just prior to leaving Kapunda to head back into Adelaide Mr. Jaeschke asked us if we were in a hurry to get back. We all figured we weren't in too much of a hurry and so he suggested we take the scenic back roads instead of the main highway. What a suggestion. The back roads weren't in real bad condition but they didn't look like they got a lot of use either. We were in Matt's four wheel drive Pajero with six people, and we were on a mission. The plan was mainly to have fun exploring back country roads at top speeds, but we encountered so much more. After driving up a few country roads, down a small hill with a 60 degree angle, and through some fairly big pot holes we came across our first bit of wildlife. Matt noticed the lizard just in time and we skidded to a halt, they're pretty serious about preserving wildlife out here actually. I can't remember the exact name of the lizard but it's a fairly stubby lizard that's a cousin of the blue-tongued lizard. It has incredibly sharp teeth but seemed quite docile at the time. We pointed him on his way and not five minutes later we came across his friend, the blue-tongued lizard. These guys really have never heard of a cross-walk. Anyhow, we narrowly missed this guy and had to slam it in to reverse before he could get back off the road. Matt and his younger brother Sabastian hopped out and grabbed and we all had a close up look. The blue-tongued lizard is even more dangerous than his cousin and has a surprisingly strong grip with his tail. Alright, enough is enough, I'd seen lizards before. Where are all the kangaroos?
Probably the most fun part of our four wheel drive adventure happened when we came across and old set of railway tracks that ran perpendicular to the back road we were driving down. We decided to drive down the tracks to see where we'd end up. Not even a few minutes off the road we saw two roo's bounding through the tall grass between the tracks and the nearest field. So, as you do, we parted ways with the tracks and took off through the grass and around the trees to try and catch the roo's. Let me tell you something about kangaroos, they can be darn sneaky if they try. One second we saw them and the next second they were over the fence and lost in the vastness of the field; I guess you can't say we didn't try. Well, that would about sum up the exciting part of Saturday. Sunday we went wine tasting right next door and took it easy for most of the day, which was good, because it was Sunday. I reckon that's about all I have to say, so goodbye. If you haven't stopped reading at this point you probably should, go, do something that's a lot more fun. Get outside, ride a bike, rake some leaves. Blessings.
Just prior to leaving Kapunda to head back into Adelaide Mr. Jaeschke asked us if we were in a hurry to get back. We all figured we weren't in too much of a hurry and so he suggested we take the scenic back roads instead of the main highway. What a suggestion. The back roads weren't in real bad condition but they didn't look like they got a lot of use either. We were in Matt's four wheel drive Pajero with six people, and we were on a mission. The plan was mainly to have fun exploring back country roads at top speeds, but we encountered so much more. After driving up a few country roads, down a small hill with a 60 degree angle, and through some fairly big pot holes we came across our first bit of wildlife. Matt noticed the lizard just in time and we skidded to a halt, they're pretty serious about preserving wildlife out here actually. I can't remember the exact name of the lizard but it's a fairly stubby lizard that's a cousin of the blue-tongued lizard. It has incredibly sharp teeth but seemed quite docile at the time. We pointed him on his way and not five minutes later we came across his friend, the blue-tongued lizard. These guys really have never heard of a cross-walk. Anyhow, we narrowly missed this guy and had to slam it in to reverse before he could get back off the road. Matt and his younger brother Sabastian hopped out and grabbed and we all had a close up look. The blue-tongued lizard is even more dangerous than his cousin and has a surprisingly strong grip with his tail. Alright, enough is enough, I'd seen lizards before. Where are all the kangaroos?
Probably the most fun part of our four wheel drive adventure happened when we came across and old set of railway tracks that ran perpendicular to the back road we were driving down. We decided to drive down the tracks to see where we'd end up. Not even a few minutes off the road we saw two roo's bounding through the tall grass between the tracks and the nearest field. So, as you do, we parted ways with the tracks and took off through the grass and around the trees to try and catch the roo's. Let me tell you something about kangaroos, they can be darn sneaky if they try. One second we saw them and the next second they were over the fence and lost in the vastness of the field; I guess you can't say we didn't try. Well, that would about sum up the exciting part of Saturday. Sunday we went wine tasting right next door and took it easy for most of the day, which was good, because it was Sunday. I reckon that's about all I have to say, so goodbye. If you haven't stopped reading at this point you probably should, go, do something that's a lot more fun. Get outside, ride a bike, rake some leaves. Blessings.
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