Phew what a hectic week!

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Hey guys!

Thanks for joining me again to read about my weekly experiences! I really appreciate it!

So it has been a pretty hectic week so this blog definitely has the potential to be long but i am going to try my best to keep things short and sweet so you guys can continue to have a life and can make it all the way through!

Friday night: we usually have a meeting on Friday night as a base so staff and students come together (as well as people who they invite from outreach and friends/family who may be visiting) and worship God and learn a bit more about Him. It's a bit like a church service on a friday night. I haven't really mentioned the friday night meeting before in a blog because everything else seems to stick out in my mind so much more but this week the worship which we had after the meeting ended was just so fun and unlike anything i had experienced before. I'm sure everyone of you has a different impression of what worship is like depending on the background you've had and different people have different preferences...well my preference is lively, dancing, jumping, clapping etc...in fact that is the thing i'm looking forward to the most about going to South Africa...African worship...they usually really go to town with worship and are very loud and free with the whole thing and i can't wait to really get to experience that! Anyhoo I just wanted to share about how fantastic the worship was here...people were dancing...and not in the 'i'm going to stand in the same spot and sway' kind of dance but the 'i'm going to move like there is no tomorrow/like i've heard the greatest news ever/like the ground is on fire' kind of dance which i thought was GREAT. I loved it. Bring on more of that!

Saturday most of the DTS got up early to go to the beach as one of the DTS students got baptised in the ocean. Pretty cool eh...making your commitment to God public by getting dunked in a calm blue warmish sea with the sun beaming down on you! After that the group broke up and some of us went to the town near the beach (called Freemantle) and the others stayed on the beach. I went to the town which was beautiful. We just wondered around for a bit and got a drink and had a good old chat and chilled out. It was so nice.
Got back to base, had a nap because i was sooooo shattered and then got woken up as i had to do dinner dishes. Every other weekend you get given a chore to do and i was so not in the mood for it, especially since i had never done it before so had no idea what i was doing, but because of the Bush Dance event happening in the evening, it was actually the easiest it could have been as we used plastic plates so the dance could start asap.
By the time i had finished the dishes I was so shattered and pretty moody I just didnt want to know about the Bush Dance. Every event we have on the base is compulsory...you have to attend whether you're in the right frame of mind or not...which was something i resented but i am so glad that i was forced because it was hilarious. It was a bit like a celigh and since everyone was there there wasn't exactly a whole lot of room but everyone just seemed to have so much fun and it was just so funny watching people dance successfully and poorly. Definitely would have missed out on a treat if i wasn't 'forced' to go!

So friday night and sat night both ended pretty late so at this point i was still shattered. So sunday...sleep in right...NOPE. We were volunteering at a kids (*shudders*) event called the Try-athlon which is basically a triathlon (swim-bike-run) but everyone wins, it's all about the taking part. What time did we have to leave for this? 5:30am! We go there, they gave us breakfast (weet-bix...also know as weet-a-bix) + a rather dashing looking cap and t-shirt (bright orange goes with everything) and then we were put in teams. My name happened to come first in the team i was in so i was assigned leader to a task i didnt understand which wasn't all that fun but because the event was so big and there were so many kids and helpers and very little communication most of us just drifted around until we found things to do/were given things to do. I wrote the kids numbers on their arms and legs for the 1st 2 hours, led the 13yr boys over to the water and then did crowd control for the rest of the event. I really enjoyed the event for the first 2 hours but then for the next 4ish hours it was not fun at all. The kids were all really sweet and were a pleasure to work with...some of the older volunteers and the kid's parents on the otherhand! Was so relieved when that was over. My legs were so tired after all the kneeling down and standing up i did in the first 2 hours and then the following 4 hours of standing up that they kept giving way so in order for me to walk back i had to postition them in a really weird way which obviously isn't natural to my legs as when i woke up from my nap they were so tight i could barely move...and they still are now! So for whole of this week i have been waddling around the base as the back of my legs are so week and the front so tight that i can't go down stairs normally and i can't adjust speed. Fun times!

So injury and crazy kid event aside the weekend was very tiring but definitely had some really fun elements to it.

As you all know this monday was valentines day. Well what would a Young Person's DTS be without pranks and what better day to do pranks than valentines day??? I was walking to get icecream with 2 of my roomies and asked them if they were going to play any pranks as i had been thinking about it all week and that was when a plan was born. Hopefully no YPs will be reading this right now otherwise the poor confused guys will turn on me but we just basically wrote some rather amusing notes declaring our love for them through poetry and rhymes and then we put them in their encouragement cups (we have cups with our names on them in our classroom so people can encourage us through our lecture phase). It was going to be good too as we come across as the people who are quiet and innocent and changed the hand-writting for each one so the only give away was going to be how much and how quickly we laughed about it all. To be honest I thought there would be a bigger reaction and we did plan to do one for every guy but there around about 29 guys on the DTS which would have taken us way too long so we did about 10 and they didn't really tell anyone about them at all. Where was the shock? Where was the confusion? Where was the hilarious reactions? There was one hilarious reaction though. We quoted a scripture from Songs of Songs (1:2-3) to a guy but didn't put the scripture reference on it so it was just a quote and quite a few guys said the handwriting looked like a guys writing so he was pretty freaked out by it. So Christian...if you're reading this...it's a scripture reference, it wasn't a bloke, it was a joke and if you're going to get me back just remember we're on outreach together so i will get you back!

The guys did something really sweet for the girls on Valentines. They wrote us a song, bought us a rose each and each wrote a note for a girl (a serious and sweet one) and were generally encouraging towards us. It was sweet. I got my note off the guy who barely speaks which was a surprise! It was a sweet wee note too!

So i've found this week pretty difficult in terms of tiredness, the injury (and the persistent questions about what happened to my shoulder) and just all the comparisons i've been drawing between myself and other girls. I've always been terrible when it comes to comparing myself to other girls and although i thought that I was dismissing bad thoughts, i obviously wasn't doing it as consistently as I needed to as I pretty much just broke down on Tuesday. On the break before class i grabbed a snack, went to my bed and just sat there trying to calm myself down and then someone asked me if i was ok and i burst into tears and it all came out and the more people who came and asked me the more i cried. I've had a pretty bad attitude towards myself for a long time, in particularly my body image and when i expressed this all the girls were trying to comfort me using things i had all heard before (most of you have probably had to deal with a rachel-bad self image breakdown before in the past) and I was just getting more and more frustrated in a way because I'm just sick of hearing the same things over and over again. I've really got to the point where everything just sounds like opinion rather than truth and I want a truth which is more secure, the most secure you can get, i want to know how God sees me and I want this to become how I see me. This is going to take time though as I've got a lot of lies and bad thought patterns floating around in my head and the idea of perservering isn't really a fun and uplifting thought as i feel like it's been a battle which i've had to struggle through for so much of my life and it just sucks...but through perserverence there will be an end. Prayer at this time would be appreciated! Having to face up to the idea that you've been choosing to accept lies about yourself, uprooting these lies and discarding them and replacing them with truth is not an easy process especially when the lies are attached to emotions and many memories of your life.

Wooo well i don't want to end on a downer. I would have discussed my notes this week but the blog is already so long! I might make up another blog so if anyone has an interest in evangelism then they can just peak at it when they have time!
Going camping this weekend which is why I'm writing the blog a little earlier than usual. This kind of camping is without tents (say WHAT?!!) and apparently has these massive flies which bite you and in a way which is very painful. Oh boy oh boy am i looking forward to this! I'm sure it'll make for a very entertaining blog!

Hope you have all had a great week!
Sorry to all of you who I promised skype dates and general communication! I really wish i could follow through on those commitments! I miss you all and wish i could see all your faces! Not sure how communication will work on outreach but both places i'm going are pretty developed i think so internet cafes should be dotted around (fingers-crossed!)

Much love and blessings to you all!
Rachel

p.s. Thank you to those who have sent me things in the post since i've got here. I have been receiving things and forgetting to thank people for them! I am so sorry! So i will now thank you:
*Thank you Lisa for sending me that lovely care-package of chocolate complete with a complimentary note from the council, it made me smile!
*Thank you to the Nelson family for the postcard! I'm amazed that Carlisle has pictures with the sky that blue! It was lovely to hear from you and it was nice to be able to show some people what some local sites look like.
*Thank you to my mum for her package of chocolate and toiletries. It came just at the right time and was enjoyed by my whole room!
*Thank you to Laura for the card she send me! it put a smile on my face and was so unexpected!
*Thank you to my Kings Church family for the card you sent me! I got it on Valentines day and it was definitely what i needed!

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Comments

[Margaret Bunting]

catch up
hey Rachel, so enjoy reading your blogs! You are so honest and really bear your heart and soul. I'm sorry to hear that you are struggling with your self image (what female doesn't!!) but I want to encourage you that there can be an end to what you are feeling. Its strange that you should write about that the lies that you are listening to. I am currently doing a course in my church called Freedom in Christ which covers exactly that topic. It would be hard to tell you all about it in this email but if you go to www.ficm.org.uk you will see some info there. I will be praying for you that you will know a real freedom to be who you were meant to be in Christ and to really enjoy the life that He has planned for you. love and prayers Auntie M xxoo