Schoolies 2008

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.