I´m going to BRAZIL!!!!!!!!!!!
we have just beentold our outreach groups and I am going to Brazil! I can´t beleive it. I am so excited!!! My team should be realy cool as well. I don´t know them as well as I know some people at the school, but they are all lovely. So anyone know any Portugues?
Also I must appologise if I don´t write for a while. My computer has died- won´t boot up at all, so it might be a bit before I have good access to the net again.
But until then,
So long
Monday 31 March 2008
Friday 28 March 2008
I have no breath to shout, I have no breath to sing, I have no breath to dance, but I will praise you
LONG POST ALERT!!!! (well it was a long weekend!)
Fresh wind is the youth conference that TACF puts on every year. It is aimed at teenagers and is always on the Thursday, Friday and Saturday of Easter weekend. This year there were about 2 or 3 thousand people there at the peek, and it was… intense.
Each of the school of ministry students had a work duty assigned to them where they had a job for 4 hours each day. Some people were on security, some were car park attendants, some where serving the speakers in ‘Speaker’s lounge’ and some where on maintenance. I got kitchen duty!! I have to say that I was not particularly thrilled about this to start with, but Francis who runs the kitchen here is so lovely that you can’t help but enjoy yourself when you are with him.
So my shift started at 8 in the morning and we were supposed to work until 12 each day, but for the first two days we had a really light load. The kitchens were running a meal plan for delegates at the conference and it was to be served in one of the overflow rooms in the back of the church. So the first day we cut a few peppers, and arranged some pieces of chicken on trays (OK so over 400 pieces of chicken). Then we loaded up the trolleys with all the equipment we would need for the overflow room, set that up and that was about it. The second day we needed to check the overflow room, take over a few extra drinks, and that was about it for day two. Day three was more eventful as we had to take lots of new stuff over to the overflow room (crisp, bread rolls, a huge bucket of mayonnaise), then we had to pre-mayo about 300 of these bread rolls. It was disgusting! I am not a fan of mayonnaise in anything but tuna mayo, so having to dollop out this jelly like white gloop and then splatter it over some poor person’s lunch, was just not nice. However in all of that I learnt a lot about what is needed when catering for 500 people, and gained a new respect for the kitchen staff.
Apart from work duty all of the students were expected to be somewhere at all times. We had to be in the worship sessions (not that many of us would want to miss them) and attend on of the workshops, and in the evening we were part of the ministry team. Meal times were our only free time at all. I made full advantage of my first batch of free time by catching up with my beautiful friends, Becky and Lauren Ede. It was so nice to see more familiar faces and to be able to chat and catch up. We went out with Maretha to Boston Pizza,
where we had a lovely time and the other girls decided to stretch their prophetic wings and left messages on the napkins for our waitress, hee hee. After that though I spent each meal time in my room getting a bit of quiet and recovering a bit.
So the timetable for the day was as follows:
10:00 – 10:45 = Worship
10:45 – 12:30 = Workshop
12:30 – 14:00 = Lunch
14:00 – 14:45 = Worship
14:45 – 16:30 = Workshop
16:30 – 19:00 = Dinner
19:00 – 10:30 = Evening meeting
There were 4 streams in the workshops – Intersession, worship, prophecy & lifestyle. I went along to the worship ones (when I wasn’t working). They were so cool! One of the sessions was about using dance and art as a form of worship. The church for so long has taken sung worship as being the only type of worship that we have in church that the other creative arts are often overlooked. In the Freshwind band, who played for some of the worship sets, the group consists of about 15-20 people (all on stage at one time) and they include three dancers and two painters. It is so inspiring to see people giving their all in more than just their voice. This session gave us all the chance to stretch those dance and artistic muscles. So the room in which we were meeting (and it was filled to capacity) was dancing and stamping and marching around as they worshiped God and interceded for our generation. It was exhilarating, but so exhausting. At the end I just collapsed into a heap and wrote on my pad “I have no breath to shout, I have no breath to sing, I have no breath to dance, but I will praise you”. That is so how I felt. God was so real and so close and even though I had used up every ounce of my physical self I could to praise him, my whole being was still praising him. When I gathered enough breath and the meeting had finished I ran across to grab some lunch and headed back to have a shower. Worshiping God with all you are can turn into a rather hot and sweaty affair. Actually I discovered this many times over during Freshwind. Each day was at least two outfits, because in each time of worship I was jumping and dancing and shouting and just generally having fun, but when there are a couple of thousand people doing that in a confined space- well it gets a little hot.
The worship was great though. It was very much a concert where everyone was worshiping with the band, with house lights down, concert coloured lights going and speakers loud enough to make your ears ring (I had ear plugs in a couple of times :S what an old lady! But at least I can still hear!).
I know a photo doesn’t give it justice, but maybe it gives you an idea.
We had Starfield playing for some of the time, and the in house Freshwind band for some. The energy of all the youth was incredible and God’s presence was so tangible. It was so obvious to those who didn’t already know God, that many of them decided to give their life to him there and then (I know it was at least 200, because they did an alter call, where people are asked to come forward if they want to respond to a word spoken).
In the evenings we were on the ministry team which was very exciting. Each night at 6:15 we had a time of soaking and prayer- such a good idea for a ministry team!! It was very cool that on the first night we also got to pray for the speaker and the band, which for that night were Starfield. So yeah we all got to pray for Starfield, which was really strange because at the back of your mind you were thinking “These guys are internationally famous, and I get to pray for them!! AAAHHHHH” but they were just regular worship leaders who needed prayer for the work they were about to do. I actually felt that it was a huge privilege to be given the opportunity to minister to them.
Then we were on call for any of the alter calls that I mentioned earlier. And if people were called to go forwards then one of the teams would go to the front and pray for them, or if they were just asked to stand then the other teams would pray for those in their sections. The speakers were all really good and talked about the revival generation that we have called to be. It’s so exciting. It was really nice, and again a great privilege to be able to pray for people during those meetings.
The last night was a special one though. At the end we did fire tunnels for everyone! For those of you who can’t remember what that is (or are new to this blog and don’t know), a fire tunnel is when the ministry team stands in two long lines and prays for everyone as they walk through between the lines. They are so much fun and most people end up being really drunk on the Holy Spirit at the end. They went on for ages and ages, but we were all having such a good time, praying and being prayed for as well, that no one cared!
Eventually the conference was over, the tunnels had dissolved and it was time to start the clean up. The task of encouraging people to leave was given, in part, to me. So I wandered round firmly telling the groups of people lazing around that they really did need to go home. It was nice doing it in a Christian environment where everyone was so understanding and agreed at once to move. Like any other crowd though they promptly forgot and had to be re-reminded in Sarah’s “I am going to impress this thing on you so strongly but kindly that you are just going to be compelled to do it right now” attitude (those from LINKS will know the one I mean). Eventually the room was pretty much clear and we could hoover, pick up litter, put away the rope barriers and put out the 1500 chairs that were needed for Sunday church. By the end of clean up it was about 2 in the morning and I was tired enough that I literally had difficulty staying on my feet, so despite the promise of pizza in 10 mins for those who had helped with clean up, I headed back to my room. I had a quick shower before bed. Though my shower was a little strange, it started off fine- like any normal shower, but after a bit the who room went rather foggy. No people, don’t worry I was not passing out, I was so tired that I had forgotten to take off my glasses before getting in the shower! So I was giggling at myself as I crashed into bed, where I slept long and deep, well until I had to get up for the Easter morning service at church of course!!!
Fresh wind is the youth conference that TACF puts on every year. It is aimed at teenagers and is always on the Thursday, Friday and Saturday of Easter weekend. This year there were about 2 or 3 thousand people there at the peek, and it was… intense.
Each of the school of ministry students had a work duty assigned to them where they had a job for 4 hours each day. Some people were on security, some were car park attendants, some where serving the speakers in ‘Speaker’s lounge’ and some where on maintenance. I got kitchen duty!! I have to say that I was not particularly thrilled about this to start with, but Francis who runs the kitchen here is so lovely that you can’t help but enjoy yourself when you are with him.
So my shift started at 8 in the morning and we were supposed to work until 12 each day, but for the first two days we had a really light load. The kitchens were running a meal plan for delegates at the conference and it was to be served in one of the overflow rooms in the back of the church. So the first day we cut a few peppers, and arranged some pieces of chicken on trays (OK so over 400 pieces of chicken). Then we loaded up the trolleys with all the equipment we would need for the overflow room, set that up and that was about it. The second day we needed to check the overflow room, take over a few extra drinks, and that was about it for day two. Day three was more eventful as we had to take lots of new stuff over to the overflow room (crisp, bread rolls, a huge bucket of mayonnaise), then we had to pre-mayo about 300 of these bread rolls. It was disgusting! I am not a fan of mayonnaise in anything but tuna mayo, so having to dollop out this jelly like white gloop and then splatter it over some poor person’s lunch, was just not nice. However in all of that I learnt a lot about what is needed when catering for 500 people, and gained a new respect for the kitchen staff.
Apart from work duty all of the students were expected to be somewhere at all times. We had to be in the worship sessions (not that many of us would want to miss them) and attend on of the workshops, and in the evening we were part of the ministry team. Meal times were our only free time at all. I made full advantage of my first batch of free time by catching up with my beautiful friends, Becky and Lauren Ede. It was so nice to see more familiar faces and to be able to chat and catch up. We went out with Maretha to Boston Pizza,
where we had a lovely time and the other girls decided to stretch their prophetic wings and left messages on the napkins for our waitress, hee hee. After that though I spent each meal time in my room getting a bit of quiet and recovering a bit.
So the timetable for the day was as follows:
10:00 – 10:45 = Worship
10:45 – 12:30 = Workshop
12:30 – 14:00 = Lunch
14:00 – 14:45 = Worship
14:45 – 16:30 = Workshop
16:30 – 19:00 = Dinner
19:00 – 10:30 = Evening meeting
There were 4 streams in the workshops – Intersession, worship, prophecy & lifestyle. I went along to the worship ones (when I wasn’t working). They were so cool! One of the sessions was about using dance and art as a form of worship. The church for so long has taken sung worship as being the only type of worship that we have in church that the other creative arts are often overlooked. In the Freshwind band, who played for some of the worship sets, the group consists of about 15-20 people (all on stage at one time) and they include three dancers and two painters. It is so inspiring to see people giving their all in more than just their voice. This session gave us all the chance to stretch those dance and artistic muscles. So the room in which we were meeting (and it was filled to capacity) was dancing and stamping and marching around as they worshiped God and interceded for our generation. It was exhilarating, but so exhausting. At the end I just collapsed into a heap and wrote on my pad “I have no breath to shout, I have no breath to sing, I have no breath to dance, but I will praise you”. That is so how I felt. God was so real and so close and even though I had used up every ounce of my physical self I could to praise him, my whole being was still praising him. When I gathered enough breath and the meeting had finished I ran across to grab some lunch and headed back to have a shower. Worshiping God with all you are can turn into a rather hot and sweaty affair. Actually I discovered this many times over during Freshwind. Each day was at least two outfits, because in each time of worship I was jumping and dancing and shouting and just generally having fun, but when there are a couple of thousand people doing that in a confined space- well it gets a little hot.
The worship was great though. It was very much a concert where everyone was worshiping with the band, with house lights down, concert coloured lights going and speakers loud enough to make your ears ring (I had ear plugs in a couple of times :S what an old lady! But at least I can still hear!).
I know a photo doesn’t give it justice, but maybe it gives you an idea.
We had Starfield playing for some of the time, and the in house Freshwind band for some. The energy of all the youth was incredible and God’s presence was so tangible. It was so obvious to those who didn’t already know God, that many of them decided to give their life to him there and then (I know it was at least 200, because they did an alter call, where people are asked to come forward if they want to respond to a word spoken).
In the evenings we were on the ministry team which was very exciting. Each night at 6:15 we had a time of soaking and prayer- such a good idea for a ministry team!! It was very cool that on the first night we also got to pray for the speaker and the band, which for that night were Starfield. So yeah we all got to pray for Starfield, which was really strange because at the back of your mind you were thinking “These guys are internationally famous, and I get to pray for them!! AAAHHHHH” but they were just regular worship leaders who needed prayer for the work they were about to do. I actually felt that it was a huge privilege to be given the opportunity to minister to them.
Then we were on call for any of the alter calls that I mentioned earlier. And if people were called to go forwards then one of the teams would go to the front and pray for them, or if they were just asked to stand then the other teams would pray for those in their sections. The speakers were all really good and talked about the revival generation that we have called to be. It’s so exciting. It was really nice, and again a great privilege to be able to pray for people during those meetings.
The last night was a special one though. At the end we did fire tunnels for everyone! For those of you who can’t remember what that is (or are new to this blog and don’t know), a fire tunnel is when the ministry team stands in two long lines and prays for everyone as they walk through between the lines. They are so much fun and most people end up being really drunk on the Holy Spirit at the end. They went on for ages and ages, but we were all having such a good time, praying and being prayed for as well, that no one cared!
Eventually the conference was over, the tunnels had dissolved and it was time to start the clean up. The task of encouraging people to leave was given, in part, to me. So I wandered round firmly telling the groups of people lazing around that they really did need to go home. It was nice doing it in a Christian environment where everyone was so understanding and agreed at once to move. Like any other crowd though they promptly forgot and had to be re-reminded in Sarah’s “I am going to impress this thing on you so strongly but kindly that you are just going to be compelled to do it right now” attitude (those from LINKS will know the one I mean). Eventually the room was pretty much clear and we could hoover, pick up litter, put away the rope barriers and put out the 1500 chairs that were needed for Sunday church. By the end of clean up it was about 2 in the morning and I was tired enough that I literally had difficulty staying on my feet, so despite the promise of pizza in 10 mins for those who had helped with clean up, I headed back to my room. I had a quick shower before bed. Though my shower was a little strange, it started off fine- like any normal shower, but after a bit the who room went rather foggy. No people, don’t worry I was not passing out, I was so tired that I had forgotten to take off my glasses before getting in the shower! So I was giggling at myself as I crashed into bed, where I slept long and deep, well until I had to get up for the Easter morning service at church of course!!!
Tuesday 25 March 2008
Week 3 - Healing Life's hurts
Ultimately this week has been about Forgiveness and repentance. It has been about forgiving others for the hurts that they have done to us, forgiving ourselves for the things that we have done or not done, and forgiving God for anything we hold against him for the situations we have been in.
Forgiveness is not excusing what people have done. It is not saying what they have done doesn’t matter or that it hasn’t affected you. It is merely choosing to give them grace, just as God gave to us.
For each of the following sections we were taught about what they are and then given a chance to ask God to come and work in us with regards to that issue. As with everything I am only giving a very brief overview of each one. If any of these speak particularly to you, you feel that what I have described fits you, they I would suggest that you talk to God about it. Even if talking to God is not something you normally do. Ask him about it and see what he does. If you are brave enough invite him to sort out some of it. I can also try to give you more information if you want.
Heart of Stone:
Ezekiel 36:26 “I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you, I will remove from you your hearts of stone and give you a heart of flesh”
A heart of stone can’t feel God or know him. Our aim to know God to the full, so we need to get God to remove the hard places in our hearts.
A heart of stone (or stony places in our hearts) is a defence mechanism, built up inner walls which we have put up to stop our selves from becoming vulnerable. They are often formed as small children, though you can of course develop hardened hearts later on in life too.
Checklist for a hidden heart of stone
Any of these can be an indication of a stoney heart, you don’t need to have all of these.
Inner vows
These are things that we have made promising our selves that we will never, or we will always. There are some inner vows that are totally right and godly (such as marriage vows) but may other vows, even if they are constructive on the face of it, can be ungodly and destructive.
“I will never let anyone hurt me like that again”- You stop letting people close, close of your heart and so keep God at a distance as well
“I will never get angry”- This can result in people shying away from even a good debate or discussion, because it ‘might’ end in people getting angry.
Soul Ties
A soul ties is a joining of peoples spirits so that they have a bond with each other.
As with inner vows, there are good soul ties. Us and God, Good friends (David and Jonathan – 1 Sam 18:1) family. These soul ties will lead to wholeness and good things will come out of them.
But soul ties can be warped and created wrongly.
Ungodly beliefs
Ungodly beliefs are as they say on the tin, beliefs that we have formed due to experience, lack of understanding, or misinterpretation of events.
The thing with ungodly beliefs are that often they aren’t obvious until someone points them out to you. To break out of it you write down your Ungodly beliefs.
“I am not important because my dad never had time for me”
“My life is a mistake”
“God loves other people more than me”
Then write down godly beliefs that counteract that (not necessarily the opposite, because sometimes ungodly beliefs are warped versions of the truth)
“I believe I am important, and my heavenly father will always have time for me”
If it is too hard to say “I believe” then write that you choose to believe (you’re not there yet, but you are working towards that)
“I choose to believe that I am not a mistake. God planned me. He chose for me to be born when I was and where I was”
“I chose to believe that God loves me just as much as anyone else”
It’s always good to find scriptures from the bible to match up to your godly belief.
Then read these each day until you start to believe. It’s not easy and it’s not quick but with God’s help, it’s perfectly doable.
Forgiveness is not excusing what people have done. It is not saying what they have done doesn’t matter or that it hasn’t affected you. It is merely choosing to give them grace, just as God gave to us.
For each of the following sections we were taught about what they are and then given a chance to ask God to come and work in us with regards to that issue. As with everything I am only giving a very brief overview of each one. If any of these speak particularly to you, you feel that what I have described fits you, they I would suggest that you talk to God about it. Even if talking to God is not something you normally do. Ask him about it and see what he does. If you are brave enough invite him to sort out some of it. I can also try to give you more information if you want.
Heart of Stone:
Ezekiel 36:26 “I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you, I will remove from you your hearts of stone and give you a heart of flesh”
A heart of stone can’t feel God or know him. Our aim to know God to the full, so we need to get God to remove the hard places in our hearts.
A heart of stone (or stony places in our hearts) is a defence mechanism, built up inner walls which we have put up to stop our selves from becoming vulnerable. They are often formed as small children, though you can of course develop hardened hearts later on in life too.
Checklist for a hidden heart of stone
- Keep people at a distance
- Protect yourself
- Keep up a good front but have trouble being real
- Find it hard to show emotions in front of others
- Stuff your emotions down
- Or maybe you can’t feel emotions
- Live life “Keeping it all together”
- Have the role of “the strong one”
- Find it difficult to ask for help
- Minister to others but can’t be ministered to
- Wish other people would/could keep it all together like you do
- Look down on those who express emotions as being immature or weak.
Any of these can be an indication of a stoney heart, you don’t need to have all of these.
Inner vows
These are things that we have made promising our selves that we will never, or we will always. There are some inner vows that are totally right and godly (such as marriage vows) but may other vows, even if they are constructive on the face of it, can be ungodly and destructive.
“I will never let anyone hurt me like that again”- You stop letting people close, close of your heart and so keep God at a distance as well
“I will never get angry”- This can result in people shying away from even a good debate or discussion, because it ‘might’ end in people getting angry.
Soul Ties
A soul ties is a joining of peoples spirits so that they have a bond with each other.
As with inner vows, there are good soul ties. Us and God, Good friends (David and Jonathan – 1 Sam 18:1) family. These soul ties will lead to wholeness and good things will come out of them.
But soul ties can be warped and created wrongly.
- Parents and children – When the parent doesn’t allow the child to individuate and become a mature adult independent of their control and domination.
- Child and parent- when an undisciplined child manipulates and controls the parents
- All abusive relationships which are or have become manipulation
- With sexual partners other than one’s spouse
- People who use occult power to exercise control over you.
- Two people who share amounts of personal information more than is appropriate for the relationship.
Ungodly beliefs
Ungodly beliefs are as they say on the tin, beliefs that we have formed due to experience, lack of understanding, or misinterpretation of events.
The thing with ungodly beliefs are that often they aren’t obvious until someone points them out to you. To break out of it you write down your Ungodly beliefs.
“I am not important because my dad never had time for me”
“My life is a mistake”
“God loves other people more than me”
Then write down godly beliefs that counteract that (not necessarily the opposite, because sometimes ungodly beliefs are warped versions of the truth)
“I believe I am important, and my heavenly father will always have time for me”
If it is too hard to say “I believe” then write that you choose to believe (you’re not there yet, but you are working towards that)
“I choose to believe that I am not a mistake. God planned me. He chose for me to be born when I was and where I was”
“I chose to believe that God loves me just as much as anyone else”
It’s always good to find scriptures from the bible to match up to your godly belief.
Then read these each day until you start to believe. It’s not easy and it’s not quick but with God’s help, it’s perfectly doable.
Friday 21 March 2008
Rollercoaster
I thought last week was an emotional rollercoaster, but that was nothing to this week! This week was “Healing life’s hurts” and basically it is giving God permission to root out anything in our past that has created problems in allowing us to meet with him. I’ll go into that a bit more in the teaching summary post.
But we started with some teaching on Monday morning, lunch time to recover and then more teaching in the afternoon. The day hadn’t finished there though, after the afternoon teaching we had small group and I have to say it was the scariest small group session ever! Emily took us to the upstairs storage room, and we all sat there in our duvets (because it was really cold in there). Then we did a thing called ‘Walking in the light’. Basically Emily sat us down and we were given the chance to confess any deep dark secrets, any hidden sins, that we felt we should share. Although I trust my small group this was not nice. However there is something very powerful about confessing yours sins out loud. It means they are no longer secret and the devil can’t hold that “Oh you could never tell anyone about that, you are so awful, no one will ever like you if you tell them that” kind of line on you. I was of course adamant that I wasn’t going to go first as we all sat there for a minute, two minutes, five minutes with no one saying anything, I realised that I was going to share first, so I promptly shared half of mine. You kind of feel that you want to know how bad everyone else’s is before telling yours. However once one person had gone everyone went and many people’s were very similar. To be honest despite it being horribly scary, it was incredibly releasing. Emily prayed for each of us after our turn and it was so releasing we went round again to add if we wanted to (so I said the second half of mine). We then did some painting :) and we were all chatting much more than before which was cool. Each of the small groups had done the same thing and so it was really odd talking to everyone after because obviously you can’t share what people in your group said (the whole point of small group is that it is a safe place), so we were all talking really abstractly about what we had done and the experiences we had had. It was quite strange.
Tuesday was another hard day, but made much better by the fact that I got a couple of parcels through the post. One was some birthday presents that mum sent on, the other was from my wonderful friend Jo who picked the best day for her ‘Chocolate ministry’ package to arrive. It was a lovely bar of English galaxy, and I finished the whole thing myself (except for two squares that Sophie had). I felt piggy but I felt much better afterwards! We had soaking in the afternoon which was very much needed. It helped to calm everyone down, catch up on a bit of sleep :-p and meet with God.
Wednesday afternoon was small group again. This time though it was all about having fun. We teamed up with Kaleena’s small group and spread out some large sheets of paper, then went wild with some paints.
Some people finger painted, some brush painted, I hand and foot painted! It was so much fun hee hee.
So now we have finished healing life’s hurts (the teaching at least, I have a feeling God will carry on working in us on this for quite a while to come). Now it’s on the the “Fresh Wind” youth conference!!!
But we started with some teaching on Monday morning, lunch time to recover and then more teaching in the afternoon. The day hadn’t finished there though, after the afternoon teaching we had small group and I have to say it was the scariest small group session ever! Emily took us to the upstairs storage room, and we all sat there in our duvets (because it was really cold in there). Then we did a thing called ‘Walking in the light’. Basically Emily sat us down and we were given the chance to confess any deep dark secrets, any hidden sins, that we felt we should share. Although I trust my small group this was not nice. However there is something very powerful about confessing yours sins out loud. It means they are no longer secret and the devil can’t hold that “Oh you could never tell anyone about that, you are so awful, no one will ever like you if you tell them that” kind of line on you. I was of course adamant that I wasn’t going to go first as we all sat there for a minute, two minutes, five minutes with no one saying anything, I realised that I was going to share first, so I promptly shared half of mine. You kind of feel that you want to know how bad everyone else’s is before telling yours. However once one person had gone everyone went and many people’s were very similar. To be honest despite it being horribly scary, it was incredibly releasing. Emily prayed for each of us after our turn and it was so releasing we went round again to add if we wanted to (so I said the second half of mine). We then did some painting :) and we were all chatting much more than before which was cool. Each of the small groups had done the same thing and so it was really odd talking to everyone after because obviously you can’t share what people in your group said (the whole point of small group is that it is a safe place), so we were all talking really abstractly about what we had done and the experiences we had had. It was quite strange.
Tuesday was another hard day, but made much better by the fact that I got a couple of parcels through the post. One was some birthday presents that mum sent on, the other was from my wonderful friend Jo who picked the best day for her ‘Chocolate ministry’ package to arrive. It was a lovely bar of English galaxy, and I finished the whole thing myself (except for two squares that Sophie had). I felt piggy but I felt much better afterwards! We had soaking in the afternoon which was very much needed. It helped to calm everyone down, catch up on a bit of sleep :-p and meet with God.
Wednesday afternoon was small group again. This time though it was all about having fun. We teamed up with Kaleena’s small group and spread out some large sheets of paper, then went wild with some paints.
Some people finger painted, some brush painted, I hand and foot painted! It was so much fun hee hee.
So now we have finished healing life’s hurts (the teaching at least, I have a feeling God will carry on working in us on this for quite a while to come). Now it’s on the the “Fresh Wind” youth conference!!!
Sunday 16 March 2008
Familiar faces
Saturday morning I woke up feeling nicely refreshed after sleeping from 11 till 9:30. On getting out of bed I did find I was not just a little stiff. It looks like although getting drunk on God means you don’t get a hangover you still get the aches from the amount of activity you did at the time. My calf muscles were so sore from so much jumping.
Like last week we had brunch at 10:30 where people were all still really upbeat and in such good moods. After brunch I hung around in my room for a bit then went out to meet my friend Kevin. Kevin is a friend of mine from university who is doing a term in a university over here as part of his degree. He was picking up his girlfriend from the airport later in the afternoon so we arranged to grab some lunch first. Poor Kevin had a bit of trouble with the car rental place, which meant he was a bit late picking me up, but I didn’t really mind as I got to take some pretty pictures of the snow in the lovely sunshine. It’s strange at the moment as there is always the sound of running water from all the melting snow, and things are so warm (well chilly for England but glorious for what we have had here so far) but there is so much untouched snow around. I can understand why the Canadians get bored of snow, I’m quite ready to see the world without it. However Kevin did make it and so we headed off for lunch at… well where else… Montana’s! It was so nice to have a good face to face chat with someone who I know and who knows me. I trust everyone here and could tell them anything, but there are some things that you just can’t talk about because they just don’t know about it. For instance I have told pretty much everyone here all about Charl, but they have never met him and so chatting about what we have done and little things he has said doesn’t mean much to them. Kevin knows Charl though and so such things mean more to him, and make more sense. So we could chat about friends, churches, the odd Canadian paper sizes and the difficulties of being away from boyfriend/girlfriend for a couple of months. It was so lovely, though did make me feel a bit home sick when he left. The rest of Saturday I just chilled with Sophie (who isn’t feeling very well at the moment) and blogged my little heart out. Unfortunately the internet is not letting me onto msn or blogger, not sure why, so I’m hoping that I can post this up tomorrow.
Prayer points:
Like last week we had brunch at 10:30 where people were all still really upbeat and in such good moods. After brunch I hung around in my room for a bit then went out to meet my friend Kevin. Kevin is a friend of mine from university who is doing a term in a university over here as part of his degree. He was picking up his girlfriend from the airport later in the afternoon so we arranged to grab some lunch first. Poor Kevin had a bit of trouble with the car rental place, which meant he was a bit late picking me up, but I didn’t really mind as I got to take some pretty pictures of the snow in the lovely sunshine. It’s strange at the moment as there is always the sound of running water from all the melting snow, and things are so warm (well chilly for England but glorious for what we have had here so far) but there is so much untouched snow around. I can understand why the Canadians get bored of snow, I’m quite ready to see the world without it. However Kevin did make it and so we headed off for lunch at… well where else… Montana’s! It was so nice to have a good face to face chat with someone who I know and who knows me. I trust everyone here and could tell them anything, but there are some things that you just can’t talk about because they just don’t know about it. For instance I have told pretty much everyone here all about Charl, but they have never met him and so chatting about what we have done and little things he has said doesn’t mean much to them. Kevin knows Charl though and so such things mean more to him, and make more sense. So we could chat about friends, churches, the odd Canadian paper sizes and the difficulties of being away from boyfriend/girlfriend for a couple of months. It was so lovely, though did make me feel a bit home sick when he left. The rest of Saturday I just chilled with Sophie (who isn’t feeling very well at the moment) and blogged my little heart out. Unfortunately the internet is not letting me onto msn or blogger, not sure why, so I’m hoping that I can post this up tomorrow.
Prayer points:
- Huge thanks to God for all he has been doing in me, and in the other guys here
- Thank you for the lovely group of friends I have got here. They are great and we have all be sharing experiences and working through everything together.
- Pray for good sleep. The beginning of this week I wasn’t sleeping very well. Friday I got my small group to pray and I slept right through, so pray that God would continue that and I wouldn’t have problems with getting to sleep.
- Energy. Next week is going to be exhausting, especially with fresh wind, so energy for everyone would be great
- Healing for Sophie, my room mate, who has got a horrible cold and is feeling rotten. Pray that she gets better really quickly and is back to full health.
Saturday 15 March 2008
Tears into dancing
So this week has been a bit crazy. It has been father heart week and so there have been a lot of tears as God deals with stuff, a lot of fun playing new game (signs being a school favourite). We have had exciting things to look forward to (bought tickets to go and see the Toronto Blue Jays vs Boston Red Socks – baseball) and few things I’m trying to look forward to (I’m working 8 to 12 thur, fri and sat in the kitchen for the up coming conference at the church :S).
Most of the days are settling into a sort of routine, but only sort of because the first month is always a bit crazy. We’ve had teaching and small groups and soaking again. On Thursday we had something completely new and different though. We were introduced to our work duties for “Fresh Wind”. Fresh Wind is possibly the biggest conference that the church puts on. It is aimed at ‘youth’ but anyone is welcomed and tends to fill the church pretty much to capacity. Because there is so much to do the students from the school are all assigned to a job to help in the running on the conference. I am on kitchen duty, so we toddled off to talk to Francis the cook. He is lovely and was basically stressing that the main priority was us and that we weren’t to burn ourselves out with the work, and just basically being very nice. We will be preparing the lunch and dinner for the 800 odd people that are likely to want to take advantage of the meal plan offered. Should be interesting as I have never work in a kitchen before (well anything but a home kitchen). After that we were given a lesson in the guidelines that TACF has for its ministry team, because from now on we are all part of the church’s ministry team who will be praying for the people who come forward for prayer in church and at conferences. They have guidelines because obviously the people getting prayed for need to be able to have confidence that the person praying for them isn’t a complete nutter dragged off the street, and just to ensure that people don’t get carried away and do something inappropriate. So we had the small group leaders doing a hilarious demonstration as to why some of these things were not the best idea.
They also reminded us that as we were representing the church we had to be careful about our conduct and our appearance. We don’t want to be distracting to anyone or offend people with the way we dress or present ourselves, so we have to even more conservative when on ministry team than we would normally.
Thursday evening was the first evening that we hadn’t been completely exhausted, so Sophie and I decided to supplement our dinner with a good old pudding session. So we headed down the road to Montana’s to get some pudding (or desert as I had to remember to call it). Despite the fact that they are advertised as ‘to share’ we got one each! Hee hee. Hilariously Sophie’s apple cobbler came in a jug! Was good fun.
Friday was the day of the week I cried the least. I only shed a couple of tears when David Dalley was talking about the penultimate scene in the railway children- “Daddy, my daddy”. If you have never seen the railway children, I thoroughly recommend it. The rest of the time we learnt about being a child with God and not letting our fears of what people thought of us, or what we thought was right and proper get in the way. After the teaching the small group leaders and staff did a fire tunnel. This is basically where they all stand in two lines and people walk through the middle. Those in the lines then pray for each person as they go past, so you get prayer from about 20 people in the space of about 10 meters. We had on some loud bouncy music and everyone just completely let go. We were running and jumping, bouncing up and down, dancing, shouting, singing, laughing and just having a fantastic time. Everyone ended up making a circle and rotating through the tunnel several times. It was so cool. I haven’t used that much energy in a long time, nor have I had such fun. I was so hot by the end that I ran out, minus the shoes and coat I normally don, and went and jumped in an untouched patch of snow. Then I lay down! I could feel myself sinking as my body heat melted the snow beneath me. Some of the other girls thought this was such a good idea that they joined in and we had a snowball fight. I was just a little soggy by the time I went in for dinner, but surprisingly not too cold and still buzzing with excitement. It must be why people act so crazy when they are drunk from alcohol- they have no inhibitions and just don’t care. I guess we were all drunk too, just on God rather than alcohol. Hee hee score, drunk but no hangover!! Lol.
Most of the days are settling into a sort of routine, but only sort of because the first month is always a bit crazy. We’ve had teaching and small groups and soaking again. On Thursday we had something completely new and different though. We were introduced to our work duties for “Fresh Wind”. Fresh Wind is possibly the biggest conference that the church puts on. It is aimed at ‘youth’ but anyone is welcomed and tends to fill the church pretty much to capacity. Because there is so much to do the students from the school are all assigned to a job to help in the running on the conference. I am on kitchen duty, so we toddled off to talk to Francis the cook. He is lovely and was basically stressing that the main priority was us and that we weren’t to burn ourselves out with the work, and just basically being very nice. We will be preparing the lunch and dinner for the 800 odd people that are likely to want to take advantage of the meal plan offered. Should be interesting as I have never work in a kitchen before (well anything but a home kitchen). After that we were given a lesson in the guidelines that TACF has for its ministry team, because from now on we are all part of the church’s ministry team who will be praying for the people who come forward for prayer in church and at conferences. They have guidelines because obviously the people getting prayed for need to be able to have confidence that the person praying for them isn’t a complete nutter dragged off the street, and just to ensure that people don’t get carried away and do something inappropriate. So we had the small group leaders doing a hilarious demonstration as to why some of these things were not the best idea.
- Have something to freshen your breath so you don’t pray halitosis into someone’s face
- Making sure that the something you use to freshen your breath is NOT gum. Leaning over someone to pray and having it fall out your mouth onto them would be awful.
- Don’t wear skirts or baggy shorts, people lying down don’t want an eyeful of that if they open their eyes!
They also reminded us that as we were representing the church we had to be careful about our conduct and our appearance. We don’t want to be distracting to anyone or offend people with the way we dress or present ourselves, so we have to even more conservative when on ministry team than we would normally.
Thursday evening was the first evening that we hadn’t been completely exhausted, so Sophie and I decided to supplement our dinner with a good old pudding session. So we headed down the road to Montana’s to get some pudding (or desert as I had to remember to call it). Despite the fact that they are advertised as ‘to share’ we got one each! Hee hee. Hilariously Sophie’s apple cobbler came in a jug! Was good fun.
Friday was the day of the week I cried the least. I only shed a couple of tears when David Dalley was talking about the penultimate scene in the railway children- “Daddy, my daddy”. If you have never seen the railway children, I thoroughly recommend it. The rest of the time we learnt about being a child with God and not letting our fears of what people thought of us, or what we thought was right and proper get in the way. After the teaching the small group leaders and staff did a fire tunnel. This is basically where they all stand in two lines and people walk through the middle. Those in the lines then pray for each person as they go past, so you get prayer from about 20 people in the space of about 10 meters. We had on some loud bouncy music and everyone just completely let go. We were running and jumping, bouncing up and down, dancing, shouting, singing, laughing and just having a fantastic time. Everyone ended up making a circle and rotating through the tunnel several times. It was so cool. I haven’t used that much energy in a long time, nor have I had such fun. I was so hot by the end that I ran out, minus the shoes and coat I normally don, and went and jumped in an untouched patch of snow. Then I lay down! I could feel myself sinking as my body heat melted the snow beneath me. Some of the other girls thought this was such a good idea that they joined in and we had a snowball fight. I was just a little soggy by the time I went in for dinner, but surprisingly not too cold and still buzzing with excitement. It must be why people act so crazy when they are drunk from alcohol- they have no inhibitions and just don’t care. I guess we were all drunk too, just on God rather than alcohol. Hee hee score, drunk but no hangover!! Lol.
Friday 14 March 2008
Week 2 - The father heart of God
Father Heart
This week has been run by David and Faith Dalley. They are a fantastic English couple who are from a church in Bath. They are also the parents of Sarah Dalley (for those of you who know her).
I have to say that this teaching stream is really summarised in the following:
God love you. He loves you because you are you, not because of anything that you have done. There is nothing you can ever do to make him love you more and certainly nothing you can do to make him love you less. His love is perfect and unceasing.
Right at the start David got us to pray a scary prayer. “God I give you permission to dig in my heart and root out anything that is stopping me from receiving your perfect love” Now this is a scary prayer for two reasons. Firstly we have all had imperfect parenting and so all have issues with the way we relate to people (and so consequently to God), Secondly because if you ask God to do something… he does it!
Much of the teaching has been a lot of testimony, David and Faith explaining what in their hearts God has changed and what the result of that change was.
We have all only ever had one set of parents and the way the behaved subconsciously shaped much of our basic impressions about what people are like and how we expect people to act. If your father was a workaholic and didn’t have much time for you, it can leave you with a feeling of low self worth “My dad doesn’t have time to spend with me, I must not be worth it”. If one of your parents left you (or just was never able to connect emotionally with you) it can leave you with a fear of abandonment, and you can in the back of your mind be always afraid that those around you will abandon you at some point as well. As we get into adult life we can understand and rationalised all of this, but when things happen to us as a child it forms thought processes that are not easily broken, and often you probably aren’t really aware of.
By asking God to dig in our hearts we were giving him permission to show is the things from our childhood that really hurt us. We went through teaching on forgiving the person who hurt us, ourselves and God. We looked at the concept of honouring our father and mother. We looked at the different sides of God. God made us in his image, male and female. So the protecting, fathering side of God was put in man and the nurturing side of God was put in woman.
All of these issues brought up a lot of painful memories for many people and it was a bit strange being in a room where almost every single person in the room is bawling their eyes out. But in the end everyone felt much better for it, as God dealt with issues. None of us are finished with, but we are getting there.
The last day was the most fun, no tears just pure fun. We were looking at being children before God. Jesus himself told us that we have to be like children to get a full revelation of God:
At that time Jesus said, "I praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and learned, and revealed them to little children Matt 11:25
Now there are certain characteristics that set children apart from adults:
We spend years growing up and the God asks us to become like children with him again.
This week has been run by David and Faith Dalley. They are a fantastic English couple who are from a church in Bath. They are also the parents of Sarah Dalley (for those of you who know her).
I have to say that this teaching stream is really summarised in the following:
God love you. He loves you because you are you, not because of anything that you have done. There is nothing you can ever do to make him love you more and certainly nothing you can do to make him love you less. His love is perfect and unceasing.
Right at the start David got us to pray a scary prayer. “God I give you permission to dig in my heart and root out anything that is stopping me from receiving your perfect love” Now this is a scary prayer for two reasons. Firstly we have all had imperfect parenting and so all have issues with the way we relate to people (and so consequently to God), Secondly because if you ask God to do something… he does it!
Much of the teaching has been a lot of testimony, David and Faith explaining what in their hearts God has changed and what the result of that change was.
We have all only ever had one set of parents and the way the behaved subconsciously shaped much of our basic impressions about what people are like and how we expect people to act. If your father was a workaholic and didn’t have much time for you, it can leave you with a feeling of low self worth “My dad doesn’t have time to spend with me, I must not be worth it”. If one of your parents left you (or just was never able to connect emotionally with you) it can leave you with a fear of abandonment, and you can in the back of your mind be always afraid that those around you will abandon you at some point as well. As we get into adult life we can understand and rationalised all of this, but when things happen to us as a child it forms thought processes that are not easily broken, and often you probably aren’t really aware of.
By asking God to dig in our hearts we were giving him permission to show is the things from our childhood that really hurt us. We went through teaching on forgiving the person who hurt us, ourselves and God. We looked at the concept of honouring our father and mother. We looked at the different sides of God. God made us in his image, male and female. So the protecting, fathering side of God was put in man and the nurturing side of God was put in woman.
All of these issues brought up a lot of painful memories for many people and it was a bit strange being in a room where almost every single person in the room is bawling their eyes out. But in the end everyone felt much better for it, as God dealt with issues. None of us are finished with, but we are getting there.
The last day was the most fun, no tears just pure fun. We were looking at being children before God. Jesus himself told us that we have to be like children to get a full revelation of God:
At that time Jesus said, "I praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and learned, and revealed them to little children Matt 11:25
Now there are certain characteristics that set children apart from adults:
- Children are very dependant
- Children are very trusting
- Children find it easy to receive
- Children are spontaneous
- Children love to be loved
- Children love to have fun
- Children are totally unreligious.
We spend years growing up and the God asks us to become like children with him again.
Monday 10 March 2008
Happy Birthday
Sunday was my birthday. So I had fun opening the presents I brought with me from England- Oh lots of socks! I love socks! New socks, nothing feels better! I felt incredibly blessed by the people around me, as my friends all gave me birthday hugs and cards, and when I walked into the canteen for breakfast everyone broke into song. Sunday was also our first time at the main TACF meeting. It was a cool service, there was a visiting speaker from Peru, who was really cool. Talking for Ezekiel about how if Ezekiel can talk and prophesy life into bones, and how we can prophesy order, life and purpose over areas of our life that are ‘dry’ and without God’s life and purpose. The service was one of the longest church service I have ever been to starting at 10:30 and finishing after 1. However I didn’t even notice the time, let alone get bored, which is a measure of how much I enjoyed it.
After the service, I had to wait for Jonathan to come back from one of the other congregations before going to lunch. So I wandered around and admired the icicles and the snow.
(picture of the icicles put up especially by request of Charl)
Oh and I got given my present from Emma and Fanny.
Unfortunately it was too small so I couldn’t wear it all day :(
When Jonathan finally appeared, we wandered in the snow down the road to Montanas. There were four of us; Me, Jonathan, Ben (Jonathan’s best friend here) and Jo (a lovely Irish girl who was at the school before is back for this week’s teaching, and who Jonathan is rather fond of). It was a hoot! I get on with Ben very well and Jo is lovely, though she did go and tell the staff it was my birthday, so I had to wear a moose hat as the staff all sang to me. Ben has a picture, which I will try to remember to put up at some point. It will definitely go on facebook when I have it. On the way back we managed most of the way along the pavement, but suddenly the pavement disappeared under snow again. The others all started climbing down the snow bank onto the road to carry on walking. I, on the other hand, thought to myself “It’s not far to the next junction, I will walk along the road after that”. So I quickly discovered just how deep the snow covering the pavements was as I promptly sank up past me knee! After some mad scrambling and a bit of help from Ben, I managed to get on to the road again, now doubled up with laughter and a serious stitch forming. It was a great little outing.
When I got back I had about half an hour before it was dinner time! Lol lots of food. The evening was another quiet one, finishing off my journal assignment. I did get rather home sick though as I lay on my own. So I went and stole my laptop back off Sophie and had a good old chat to Charl which made me feel much better :-D I can’t actually remember what I was doing after that, but I think I just chatted to my room mates for a bit and then went to bed. Oh no I know what I did, I had a shower and then wrote Saturday’s blog entry!
After the service, I had to wait for Jonathan to come back from one of the other congregations before going to lunch. So I wandered around and admired the icicles and the snow.
(picture of the icicles put up especially by request of Charl)Oh and I got given my present from Emma and Fanny.
Unfortunately it was too small so I couldn’t wear it all day :(
When Jonathan finally appeared, we wandered in the snow down the road to Montanas. There were four of us; Me, Jonathan, Ben (Jonathan’s best friend here) and Jo (a lovely Irish girl who was at the school before is back for this week’s teaching, and who Jonathan is rather fond of). It was a hoot! I get on with Ben very well and Jo is lovely, though she did go and tell the staff it was my birthday, so I had to wear a moose hat as the staff all sang to me. Ben has a picture, which I will try to remember to put up at some point. It will definitely go on facebook when I have it. On the way back we managed most of the way along the pavement, but suddenly the pavement disappeared under snow again. The others all started climbing down the snow bank onto the road to carry on walking. I, on the other hand, thought to myself “It’s not far to the next junction, I will walk along the road after that”. So I quickly discovered just how deep the snow covering the pavements was as I promptly sank up past me knee! After some mad scrambling and a bit of help from Ben, I managed to get on to the road again, now doubled up with laughter and a serious stitch forming. It was a great little outing.
When I got back I had about half an hour before it was dinner time! Lol lots of food. The evening was another quiet one, finishing off my journal assignment. I did get rather home sick though as I lay on my own. So I went and stole my laptop back off Sophie and had a good old chat to Charl which made me feel much better :-D I can’t actually remember what I was doing after that, but I think I just chatted to my room mates for a bit and then went to bed. Oh no I know what I did, I had a shower and then wrote Saturday’s blog entry!
Sunday 9 March 2008
Blizzard
Saturday saw a slightly lazy getting up. When we had originally found out that we would be having brunch at 10:30 rather than breakfast and lunch at 8 & 12:30 respectively we thought we would all be starving by then and never manage. However when you stay up till 2:30 in the morning listening to people talk about angels and exciting stuff like that, 10:30 became a very reasonable time.
It was gently snowing when we (Sophie, Candice, Lizzie and I) called our cab to take us to the shopping centre. It had snowed overnight- about 10cm, which made walking rather tricky. So despite the fact that the Woodbine mall is only 20 mins walk away, we shared a cab there. Despite the fact that Woodbine is smaller and much more downmarket that the Eaton Centre where we went before, I have to say that I liked it much better. We had so much fun and everyone was so friendly. The cab driver was chatting to us on the way there, the people in the first shop we went into dragged us over to join them for cake, and then combined our bills to give us the ‘$10 off when you spend $50’ deal “just because your English”, and the lady kept us there chatting for ages! We found other shops where the cashiers were only too happy to just chat to us and recommend places to visit and clothes to buy. Admittedly the shopping centre was really quite empty (snow has that effect on places I guess), but even so I was pleasantly surprised by people’s general attitude. But then we found Woodbine’s crowning glory – Dollarama! It is basically like poundland, but half the price and about 50 times better. We found so much good quality craft material, and little nicknacks that we were in heaven. I got coloured paper, fabric leaves (they don’t look quite as tacky as they sound) ribbon, paper flower things, scissors, pens and pencils, a coat hook that hands on the back of the door, plate and cutlery (I have finally got fed up of using disposable stuff every meal time) and all for just over a tenner! Bargin!
By the time we had finished though the weather had taken a turn for the worst. There was freezing rain (very fine) blowing all around taking visibility right down and caking the roads in ice and snow. We managed to get a taxi in about 5 mins which was impressive. He had been diverted on his way back from somewhere and had no idea where we needed to go, so we had to look it up. Trouble was the visibility was so low that even with the map we struggled to follow it. I have never been so scared in a car before. It was sliding all over the road and I was praying very hard. My lessons came in handy though and I was able to listen as he assured me that he had his angels round the car and we would stay on the road, stay safe. Eventually the normally two minute drive was over as we turned into the church drive. Then it was really over as the driver turned to Candice and said “See now the car’s stuck! It’s stuck, no forward, no backward! Stuck!” in a way that suggested it was all our idea to get stuck. The snow was now about 20 or 30 cm deep and he had hit a snow drift across the entrance to the church and the taxi was stuck. We ran inside, or rather waded inside and managed to get a few of the lads who with amazing willingness came out and gave the guy a push for us, getting him out of the snow drift in a flash. Another adventure for the books.
After that we just had a quiet night. Most people went to watch a couple of films in the main hall. I took advantage of the empty and quiet room to decorate my journal and start my assignment for this week.
Then bed.
It was gently snowing when we (Sophie, Candice, Lizzie and I) called our cab to take us to the shopping centre. It had snowed overnight- about 10cm, which made walking rather tricky. So despite the fact that the Woodbine mall is only 20 mins walk away, we shared a cab there. Despite the fact that Woodbine is smaller and much more downmarket that the Eaton Centre where we went before, I have to say that I liked it much better. We had so much fun and everyone was so friendly. The cab driver was chatting to us on the way there, the people in the first shop we went into dragged us over to join them for cake, and then combined our bills to give us the ‘$10 off when you spend $50’ deal “just because your English”, and the lady kept us there chatting for ages! We found other shops where the cashiers were only too happy to just chat to us and recommend places to visit and clothes to buy. Admittedly the shopping centre was really quite empty (snow has that effect on places I guess), but even so I was pleasantly surprised by people’s general attitude. But then we found Woodbine’s crowning glory – Dollarama! It is basically like poundland, but half the price and about 50 times better. We found so much good quality craft material, and little nicknacks that we were in heaven. I got coloured paper, fabric leaves (they don’t look quite as tacky as they sound) ribbon, paper flower things, scissors, pens and pencils, a coat hook that hands on the back of the door, plate and cutlery (I have finally got fed up of using disposable stuff every meal time) and all for just over a tenner! Bargin!
By the time we had finished though the weather had taken a turn for the worst. There was freezing rain (very fine) blowing all around taking visibility right down and caking the roads in ice and snow. We managed to get a taxi in about 5 mins which was impressive. He had been diverted on his way back from somewhere and had no idea where we needed to go, so we had to look it up. Trouble was the visibility was so low that even with the map we struggled to follow it. I have never been so scared in a car before. It was sliding all over the road and I was praying very hard. My lessons came in handy though and I was able to listen as he assured me that he had his angels round the car and we would stay on the road, stay safe. Eventually the normally two minute drive was over as we turned into the church drive. Then it was really over as the driver turned to Candice and said “See now the car’s stuck! It’s stuck, no forward, no backward! Stuck!” in a way that suggested it was all our idea to get stuck. The snow was now about 20 or 30 cm deep and he had hit a snow drift across the entrance to the church and the taxi was stuck. We ran inside, or rather waded inside and managed to get a few of the lads who with amazing willingness came out and gave the guy a push for us, getting him out of the snow drift in a flash. Another adventure for the books.
After that we just had a quiet night. Most people went to watch a couple of films in the main hall. I took advantage of the empty and quiet room to decorate my journal and start my assignment for this week.
Then bed.
Saturday 8 March 2008
Week 1- Hearing God's Voice
So the first section of teaching that we had is all about hearing God's voice. The sessions are run by a guy called Mark Virkler who is part of the "Communication with God Ministries" (www.cwgministries.org). He shared his own testimony with us about the frustrations that he had once becoming a Christian, that he read in the bible that people heard God's voice, but that he never heard it himself. He tried everything and finally had the following simple steps:
Mark has been stressing the value of journaling, of just writing whatever God puts into your head. This is incredibly useful for a number of reason. We are not perfect and we get things wrong. If you are questioning everything as God says it you interrupt what he is saying. By journaling you give yourself the ability to just flow, to let God say what he wants and then allow you to look back on it. Once you have written it you can read over it and test it- Does it fit in with what the bible says, does it fit with the character of God? It also means that you can submit the journal to three other people, not to see what they think about it, but what they feel that God is saying about it, if they think it is from God.
He also taught us a lot about Right brained and left brained people. Ideally God wants us to be able to use both sides of our brains. The western world leans heavily on the left brained way of learning, on rationalization and reason and as a left brainer himself he had to learn to tap into his right brain functions to better meet with God (not to replace his naturally left brain, but to supplement it with right brained functions as well). Right brained activities are things like music, art, imagination. So we would start our journal practice times picturing us with Jesus, walking along a beach or in a field or something and then stop trying and see what happened.
It all sounds so simple when he says it and made me wonder why I hadn't worked all of this out long ago. It takes practice though. The course he gave us is designed to be a 12 week course and we studied it in 4 days. I'm sorry that I can only just you such a glimpse of what we were taught, but if you want to know more then you can either go to the website I gave earlier, or grab me when I come back and have a chat, and or have a look through my course books.
- Stillness - Quieten yourself down, give yourself some space where you can be free from distractions
- Vision - fix your eyes on Jesus, focus on him
- Spontaneity- The way God normally talks to us is through our spontaneous thought. The things that come into our head without us planning them are often from God.
- Journaling- write down everything God has been saying.
Mark has been stressing the value of journaling, of just writing whatever God puts into your head. This is incredibly useful for a number of reason. We are not perfect and we get things wrong. If you are questioning everything as God says it you interrupt what he is saying. By journaling you give yourself the ability to just flow, to let God say what he wants and then allow you to look back on it. Once you have written it you can read over it and test it- Does it fit in with what the bible says, does it fit with the character of God? It also means that you can submit the journal to three other people, not to see what they think about it, but what they feel that God is saying about it, if they think it is from God.
He also taught us a lot about Right brained and left brained people. Ideally God wants us to be able to use both sides of our brains. The western world leans heavily on the left brained way of learning, on rationalization and reason and as a left brainer himself he had to learn to tap into his right brain functions to better meet with God (not to replace his naturally left brain, but to supplement it with right brained functions as well). Right brained activities are things like music, art, imagination. So we would start our journal practice times picturing us with Jesus, walking along a beach or in a field or something and then stop trying and see what happened.
It all sounds so simple when he says it and made me wonder why I hadn't worked all of this out long ago. It takes practice though. The course he gave us is designed to be a 12 week course and we studied it in 4 days. I'm sorry that I can only just you such a glimpse of what we were taught, but if you want to know more then you can either go to the website I gave earlier, or grab me when I come back and have a chat, and or have a look through my course books.
Friday 7 March 2008
Back to School
Thursday evening was the official SoM (school of ministry) spring 2008 Back To School social. Everyone was separated into their own different cleeks and each group had to dress accordingly.
There were the:
Now if you think of me, which group do I fit into the least? I would say it was a toss up between gangster and cheerleader, so of course I was a cheerleader! I managed to have a complete emotional break down about the whole thing. “I don’t know what to wear” “I know what I want to wear and now the other cheerleaders have decided a colour scheme that doesn’t fit” “I don’t know what I’m going to do now” “I don’t want to have to do a cheer”. I think I possibly scared my room mates a bit as I sat there a blubbing mess of tears. The entire breakdown probably had nothing to do with the social at all. We are doing the father heart of God and healing life’s hurts over the next two weeks and apparently it is not uncommon for people to be gibbering wrecks before and during these weeks. Oh well par for the course I suppose. So crisis just about over, Sophie and I headed over to the café, where it was so much fun to see everyone in their costume. After dinner we had ‘class’. Each of the small group leaders was a teacher and we had 7 subjects, each with a different task relating to their subject. It was hilarious! People got so into character that we were rolling on the floor with laughter as the nerds fell about clumsily with their ‘kick me’ signs, the emos flatly refused to cheer at the mention of their name, the gangsters were given detention for supposedly bringing a duck to school and the preps were made to make a human pyramid. One of the classes was dance and because we were the cheerleaders it only made sense that our dance was a cheer. Last minute we planned the ending and so without any warming up I did the splits at the end- bad move. I managed to strain the muscle at the top of my leg. Unfortunately the gym class was an obstacle course which involved fetching snow from outside. On my turn I manage to slip and doubly pull the muscle in my leg! Oops. My the end of the evening I was walking like a drunk soldier, rolling from side to side rather than bend my legs and walk. Despite this it was a fantastic evening, way better than I had thought it would be.
Even the injury proved a sort of blessing, in that it gave a chance for God to do some super fast healing. During worship the next morning I was still struggling with the whole bending my knees, but as God was moving and doing stuff in my heart I found that the pain dropped by about 60%. It was stiff but I could walk with hardly a twinge. It was so encouraging.
After worship we had the last session on “Hearing God’s voice”. We had all really enjoyed the sessions so it was a bit of a shame to know it was the last one, but as before it was good. The course he gave us is designed to be a 12 week course and we did it in 4 days, on the assumption that we would continue to work on it during the rest of our time at the school. I like hearing what God says so I think I’ll carry on, hee hee.
I will finish writing up the summary from that teaching this weekend and post that up soon.
This afternoon was our second small group session. Emily had us journal a few questions (journaling at the school always means ask God a question, wait on him for an answer and then write down whatever he says), then make a collage which represented us made from magazine cuttings. Finally we wrote ourselves a letter, where we wrote down what our expectations were, what we wanted God to do in us at the school and stuff like that. The idea was that Emily kept these and gave them back to us at the end so we could look back over it and see how we have changed/God has answers/God is still working. I found the collage quite tricky really seeing as there went any pictures of electronics, trampolines or bandages (what with them being fashion magazines and a single copy of national geographic!), but got it done in the end. It was nice to spend some time with my small group. They are all really lovely and I look forward to getting to know them all better. Emily was, went she first came to the school, much more like me, not artistic or creative, but she learned to be creative through her time there. It was nice to chat through with her why I found it hard. The school, and in fact the church in general, tends to attract right-brained creative people. They tend to be the vision, intuition and music led people for whom listening to the holy spirit probably comes much easier. As a left brained analytical thinker it’s an experience. I think it’s going to stretch me.
Less stretching was the playing in the snow after dinner. My friend Candice is from South Africa (though has adopted Ireland as home) and she had never made a snow angel before. So off we went to find a fresh patch of snow to have a go. Hee hee snow is fun.
Prayer points:
There were the:
- Gangsters
- Nerds
- Preps
- Jocks
- Cheerleaders
- Hillbillies
- Emos
Now if you think of me, which group do I fit into the least? I would say it was a toss up between gangster and cheerleader, so of course I was a cheerleader! I managed to have a complete emotional break down about the whole thing. “I don’t know what to wear” “I know what I want to wear and now the other cheerleaders have decided a colour scheme that doesn’t fit” “I don’t know what I’m going to do now” “I don’t want to have to do a cheer”. I think I possibly scared my room mates a bit as I sat there a blubbing mess of tears. The entire breakdown probably had nothing to do with the social at all. We are doing the father heart of God and healing life’s hurts over the next two weeks and apparently it is not uncommon for people to be gibbering wrecks before and during these weeks. Oh well par for the course I suppose. So crisis just about over, Sophie and I headed over to the café, where it was so much fun to see everyone in their costume. After dinner we had ‘class’. Each of the small group leaders was a teacher and we had 7 subjects, each with a different task relating to their subject. It was hilarious! People got so into character that we were rolling on the floor with laughter as the nerds fell about clumsily with their ‘kick me’ signs, the emos flatly refused to cheer at the mention of their name, the gangsters were given detention for supposedly bringing a duck to school and the preps were made to make a human pyramid. One of the classes was dance and because we were the cheerleaders it only made sense that our dance was a cheer. Last minute we planned the ending and so without any warming up I did the splits at the end- bad move. I managed to strain the muscle at the top of my leg. Unfortunately the gym class was an obstacle course which involved fetching snow from outside. On my turn I manage to slip and doubly pull the muscle in my leg! Oops. My the end of the evening I was walking like a drunk soldier, rolling from side to side rather than bend my legs and walk. Despite this it was a fantastic evening, way better than I had thought it would be.
Even the injury proved a sort of blessing, in that it gave a chance for God to do some super fast healing. During worship the next morning I was still struggling with the whole bending my knees, but as God was moving and doing stuff in my heart I found that the pain dropped by about 60%. It was stiff but I could walk with hardly a twinge. It was so encouraging.
After worship we had the last session on “Hearing God’s voice”. We had all really enjoyed the sessions so it was a bit of a shame to know it was the last one, but as before it was good. The course he gave us is designed to be a 12 week course and we did it in 4 days, on the assumption that we would continue to work on it during the rest of our time at the school. I like hearing what God says so I think I’ll carry on, hee hee.
I will finish writing up the summary from that teaching this weekend and post that up soon.
This afternoon was our second small group session. Emily had us journal a few questions (journaling at the school always means ask God a question, wait on him for an answer and then write down whatever he says), then make a collage which represented us made from magazine cuttings. Finally we wrote ourselves a letter, where we wrote down what our expectations were, what we wanted God to do in us at the school and stuff like that. The idea was that Emily kept these and gave them back to us at the end so we could look back over it and see how we have changed/God has answers/God is still working. I found the collage quite tricky really seeing as there went any pictures of electronics, trampolines or bandages (what with them being fashion magazines and a single copy of national geographic!), but got it done in the end. It was nice to spend some time with my small group. They are all really lovely and I look forward to getting to know them all better. Emily was, went she first came to the school, much more like me, not artistic or creative, but she learned to be creative through her time there. It was nice to chat through with her why I found it hard. The school, and in fact the church in general, tends to attract right-brained creative people. They tend to be the vision, intuition and music led people for whom listening to the holy spirit probably comes much easier. As a left brained analytical thinker it’s an experience. I think it’s going to stretch me.
Less stretching was the playing in the snow after dinner. My friend Candice is from South Africa (though has adopted Ireland as home) and she had never made a snow angel before. So off we went to find a fresh patch of snow to have a go. Hee hee snow is fun.
Prayer points:
- That last little bit of healing in my leg
- A readiness to go and talk to my small group leader. With Jonathan here it is hard not to go to him coz really I should be going to Emily. This is a hard instinct to break, so prayer for that would be good.
- Creative juices. I get ideas easily but I really struggle to actualise them. So peace that I don’t fret about it when it doesn’t look like the picture in my mind, and an open mind to learn how to be more artistically creative.
- And then just that God would carry on with what he has been doing.
Thursday 6 March 2008
Day tripper yeah
So yesterday after my last entry, we were all given a tour of the TACF complex. The church consists of two buildings; the School of Ministry Building and the main church building. The School building is much larger than I initially thought. There are loads of offices tucked away on one side of the building, which I hadn’t even really registered was part of the our building. So we saw all of that and tried to set a new record for the most number of people in Pete Lazare’s office (we did quite a few!). I also found that being Jonathan’s sister has it’s advantages. One of the guys in the Youth net office was giving out free CDs and one of his questions was “What is Jonathan Clarke’s full name – i.e. middle name?” Well naturally I was the only one who knew!! Lol. So I got a CD from the “Fresh Wind” conference in 2003. I’m currently ripping fresh wind at the moment (of the possibilities for jokes is going to drive me crazy!), so I will tell you if the CD is any good at the end of the post, if I remember. From the School of Ministry offices we went over to the main church. Despite having been in for the soaking on Tuesday, I, again, had no idea how huge it was. I didn’t have my camera with me at the time, so I am going to have to go back at another time and take some pictures to show you just how vast this church is. I was gob smacked! Jonathan said there are about 1,200 people on an average Sunday. However at conferences such as Fresh Wind (which is being held in two weeks, and at which we will be the ministry team :S more about that at a later date) there are so many people that even with the overflow rooms opened up there isn’t even the space for chairs, everyone has to sit on the floor. Once you see the pictures you will get an idea of just how crazy that is. The stage backdrop looks like an American talk show back drop, and in fact they did apparently get it from a TV studio who didn’t want it anymore. The kids’ church is located in the ark. Now the ark is a HUGE 3-D model of the ark and some animals which covers an entire wall of the church. You enter through the ark doors and behind it are a number of other large rooms all kitted out for Kids’ church. The children even have their own soaking mats and the room has a black light that can be turned on to make all the paper stars handing from the ceiling glow purple. It’s so cool. I’d do you all a photo tour at a later date.
After the tour a group of 10 of us decided to go and find a shopping centre and have a poke around a few shops. For some reason the others decided to go to the Eaton Centre which is right in down town Toronto. It took us about an hour and a half to get there!!! The bus was stupidly hot and crowded, and after riding the bus all the way to the end of the line we then had to get three subway trains!! So each one of us was regretting going by the time we got there, deciding that a closer mall might have been a wiser choice. We then had to go and find some food because we had left before dinner. So after setting a meeting time and place we split up to find food. We went to go and get Chinese :) which was cool. Rather strange eating it with plastic forks and knives which struggled to even pierce my sweet and sour chicken balls. I was so hungry though I cleaned the plate entirely before you could say “bent cutlery”. Then it was time to hit the shops. I discovered a small flaw in my shopping plan rather quickly, my bank card was in my other purse, the one I didn’t bring with me. So I had about $50, OK I thought I can just budget carefully and just get the bear essentials from my list (this ruled out the waterproof boots I wanted to get :( oh well have to go again on Saturday for those). I found out that not only are the Canadians a bit strange at not realising travellers don’t have change, but they also haven’t understood the concept of including VAT. So in England the tax is included in the price on the price tag. In Canada however the tax isn’t included, so you always have to allow for 15% extra to what it says on the label. Now mental arithmetic is not my strong point, never has been, so this was a rather inconvenient truth. I had to work out what 15% of the $7 my new hairbrush cost before knowing if I had enough. The hairbrush by the way is amazing. It has got just the coolest squidgy handle. It moulds to your grip and you can squidge the whole thing around. Needless to say I spent the subway journey home squidging my brush handle!! Lol. But I got myself some shampoo, colouring pencils and pens, glue and a pencil sharpener, as well as my hairbrush, so I was happy.
The journey home was infinitely more fun than the journey out. For one we only got one subway train, we all started singing the little mermaid and veggie tales songs at the bus stop and then on the bus we made a friend. I felt a bit sorry for this guy actually, here he is minding his business when Lisa taps him on the arm and says “Excuse me do you mind if I have my picture taken with you?” He said he didn’t mind, so a few attempts later there is a picture of him and Lisa sitting happily on Charlotte’s memory stick. We then all started chatting to him about where we were from and after a mildly awkward pause we managed to explain what we were doing as well. His face was a picture when we told him that this tight night group of girls had only met a maximum of 2 days earlier and many of us only that day. It’s amazing the closeness that a shared experience brings to a group. I’m not sure if he was relieved or disappointed to leave us all, but he happily gave us his name so we could add him on facebook and tag the photo. This is a bit of a strange occurrence for me, I never dream of giving out my details to random people and certainly wouldn’t add stranger from the bus, but hey that’s me. We all agreed, as we huddled on the bus for one final group photo, that this was certainly a memorable first trip out!!
After the tour a group of 10 of us decided to go and find a shopping centre and have a poke around a few shops. For some reason the others decided to go to the Eaton Centre which is right in down town Toronto. It took us about an hour and a half to get there!!! The bus was stupidly hot and crowded, and after riding the bus all the way to the end of the line we then had to get three subway trains!! So each one of us was regretting going by the time we got there, deciding that a closer mall might have been a wiser choice. We then had to go and find some food because we had left before dinner. So after setting a meeting time and place we split up to find food. We went to go and get Chinese :) which was cool. Rather strange eating it with plastic forks and knives which struggled to even pierce my sweet and sour chicken balls. I was so hungry though I cleaned the plate entirely before you could say “bent cutlery”. Then it was time to hit the shops. I discovered a small flaw in my shopping plan rather quickly, my bank card was in my other purse, the one I didn’t bring with me. So I had about $50, OK I thought I can just budget carefully and just get the bear essentials from my list (this ruled out the waterproof boots I wanted to get :( oh well have to go again on Saturday for those). I found out that not only are the Canadians a bit strange at not realising travellers don’t have change, but they also haven’t understood the concept of including VAT. So in England the tax is included in the price on the price tag. In Canada however the tax isn’t included, so you always have to allow for 15% extra to what it says on the label. Now mental arithmetic is not my strong point, never has been, so this was a rather inconvenient truth. I had to work out what 15% of the $7 my new hairbrush cost before knowing if I had enough. The hairbrush by the way is amazing. It has got just the coolest squidgy handle. It moulds to your grip and you can squidge the whole thing around. Needless to say I spent the subway journey home squidging my brush handle!! Lol. But I got myself some shampoo, colouring pencils and pens, glue and a pencil sharpener, as well as my hairbrush, so I was happy.
The journey home was infinitely more fun than the journey out. For one we only got one subway train, we all started singing the little mermaid and veggie tales songs at the bus stop and then on the bus we made a friend. I felt a bit sorry for this guy actually, here he is minding his business when Lisa taps him on the arm and says “Excuse me do you mind if I have my picture taken with you?” He said he didn’t mind, so a few attempts later there is a picture of him and Lisa sitting happily on Charlotte’s memory stick. We then all started chatting to him about where we were from and after a mildly awkward pause we managed to explain what we were doing as well. His face was a picture when we told him that this tight night group of girls had only met a maximum of 2 days earlier and many of us only that day. It’s amazing the closeness that a shared experience brings to a group. I’m not sure if he was relieved or disappointed to leave us all, but he happily gave us his name so we could add him on facebook and tag the photo. This is a bit of a strange occurrence for me, I never dream of giving out my details to random people and certainly wouldn’t add stranger from the bus, but hey that’s me. We all agreed, as we huddled on the bus for one final group photo, that this was certainly a memorable first trip out!!
Wednesday 5 March 2008
SNOW!!!!!!
The more time goes on the more things I wish I had packed to bring, and consequently my shopping list for Saturday is growing: hairbrush, shampoo, colouring pencils and other craft supplies, jeans (Sitting on the plane on the way here I realised that my jeans have a lovely rip in them) and the item which as of this morning is becoming an essential; waterproof (or rather snow proof) boots! We woke up this morning to a good few inches of snow. It was certainly the sort of amount that in England would cause the entire country to grind to a halt. Here though the snow ploughs were out in force and the paths were being cleared by hand pushed snow blowers (like vacuums for snow, which instead of storing it blows the snow straight out the side). Sophie (my room mate) and I got very excited!!
So, so far in my time at the school I have had two sets of morning worship, two morning teaching sessions and I’m already revising what this blog is going to have to be. I was thinking that I could post up everything that I’m learning so that all my lovely readers can follow along and learn too. However the shear volume of information that both the teachers and God have thrown at us, I know that won’t be possible. So I will still do teaching summary posts, but probably at the end of each week with a summary of the key points. The current teaching stream is on “Hearing God’s voice” and it’s been really cool in that there is a lot of things that I know in my head to be true because I have read them in the bible, I’ve just never managed to get as far as working out how to apply it (at least with any kind of consistency).
As well as the teaching I have also now met all of my small group and my small group leader. My group leader is called Emily and she is a lovely Canadian girl, the others are: Julia, Candice, Elizabeth, Fanny, and Faith. We had an introduction time to each other and then Emily got us playing a load of silly games, such as Doctor Doctor (the one where you tangle yourself up and have to work your way into being in a circle again, the hand tap game (where your hands are in a circle and all crossed over and you have to tap round in the circle without mistakes), and a weird Norwegian game that Emily learnt in Finland which is a kind of twister without the mat. It was fun and helped us all feel much more relaxed with each other which is kinda what your after. Yeah so that was yesterday afternoon, then we had dinner. The food so far had been fine, mass catered food, but perfectly edible. Not nearly enough of it for my liking though! Might end up being good for me in helping me cut down the amount I eat, but at the moment I am just having a very rumbley tummy! After dinner I went back to my room to chat to a few people online (that was the oddest conversation ever! – you know who you are!!!) and attempt to read some of the course book that goes with the “Hearing God’s voice” stream. I failed miserably at the reading so when Sophie came in and said that there was soaking in the main church I decided to go along. For those of you that haven’t come across soaking before it is basically a time when you have gentle music on and you just sit or lie down and just be quiet in God’s presence. It’s a time when you can just be quiet and listen to him or just escape from the world. TACF (Toronto Airport Christian Fellowship) take soaking quite seriously and we found that they have a supply of nice fleecy blankets which were all laid out on the floor and a load of pillows. So there were all these peaceful bodies lying comfortably on the floor in the church. WE went to join them. It was really nice, though I did end up doing more sloaking than soaking. Sloaking is an expression I have learned here which describes the act of falling asleep in the presence of God! But hey as long as I didn’t snore and disturb other people it’s all good. God doesn’t care if we are awake or asleep, he can talk to us anyway. So yeah that was nice :)
Apart from that I have been doing surprisingly well with the whole jetlag thing. I have been a little low on energy but not too sleepy which is nice. I’m gradually catching up too as I can sleep from about 10:30 to 7:30 each night :)
Right now I’m off to have a tour of the church.
Prayer points:
Higher energy levels
Good memory- to remember all this vast amount we are learning
So, so far in my time at the school I have had two sets of morning worship, two morning teaching sessions and I’m already revising what this blog is going to have to be. I was thinking that I could post up everything that I’m learning so that all my lovely readers can follow along and learn too. However the shear volume of information that both the teachers and God have thrown at us, I know that won’t be possible. So I will still do teaching summary posts, but probably at the end of each week with a summary of the key points. The current teaching stream is on “Hearing God’s voice” and it’s been really cool in that there is a lot of things that I know in my head to be true because I have read them in the bible, I’ve just never managed to get as far as working out how to apply it (at least with any kind of consistency).
As well as the teaching I have also now met all of my small group and my small group leader. My group leader is called Emily and she is a lovely Canadian girl, the others are: Julia, Candice, Elizabeth, Fanny, and Faith. We had an introduction time to each other and then Emily got us playing a load of silly games, such as Doctor Doctor (the one where you tangle yourself up and have to work your way into being in a circle again, the hand tap game (where your hands are in a circle and all crossed over and you have to tap round in the circle without mistakes), and a weird Norwegian game that Emily learnt in Finland which is a kind of twister without the mat. It was fun and helped us all feel much more relaxed with each other which is kinda what your after. Yeah so that was yesterday afternoon, then we had dinner. The food so far had been fine, mass catered food, but perfectly edible. Not nearly enough of it for my liking though! Might end up being good for me in helping me cut down the amount I eat, but at the moment I am just having a very rumbley tummy! After dinner I went back to my room to chat to a few people online (that was the oddest conversation ever! – you know who you are!!!) and attempt to read some of the course book that goes with the “Hearing God’s voice” stream. I failed miserably at the reading so when Sophie came in and said that there was soaking in the main church I decided to go along. For those of you that haven’t come across soaking before it is basically a time when you have gentle music on and you just sit or lie down and just be quiet in God’s presence. It’s a time when you can just be quiet and listen to him or just escape from the world. TACF (Toronto Airport Christian Fellowship) take soaking quite seriously and we found that they have a supply of nice fleecy blankets which were all laid out on the floor and a load of pillows. So there were all these peaceful bodies lying comfortably on the floor in the church. WE went to join them. It was really nice, though I did end up doing more sloaking than soaking. Sloaking is an expression I have learned here which describes the act of falling asleep in the presence of God! But hey as long as I didn’t snore and disturb other people it’s all good. God doesn’t care if we are awake or asleep, he can talk to us anyway. So yeah that was nice :)
Apart from that I have been doing surprisingly well with the whole jetlag thing. I have been a little low on energy but not too sleepy which is nice. I’m gradually catching up too as I can sleep from about 10:30 to 7:30 each night :)
Right now I’m off to have a tour of the church.
Prayer points:
Higher energy levels
Good memory- to remember all this vast amount we are learning
Monday 3 March 2008
The Journey Out
So after a week of procrastinating over my packing, I finally had two rather large bags packed and ready to go. I thought at one point that I was going to have trouble filling them, but when it came to it I ended up having to do a last minute sort and find some things to leave behind. The impressive weight of my bags certainly won’t have been helped by the kilo or so of chocolate that I packed. Well what can I say, Hershey's mings!!!! So I’m taking supplies for both Jonathan and myself (for anyone unsure what I’m on about, Hershey's is one of the North American chocolate manufacturers. It is also disgusting, not a patch on good old Cadbury’s). But despite the last minute packing panic and the mild hysterical out-bust that accompanied it- turns out emotional goodbyes, 5 hours of sleep and early morning crises don’t mix well with me!
Once we had crawled through the morning rush hour, and finally made it to the airport. In typical Clarke style I was hours early, but I had a lovely queue free check in :) and then a good old mooch round the shops.
The plane journey was fairly uneventful. I got to sit by the window, so got a fantastic view of Heathrow from the air:
The English coast, Ireland (who apparently had some snow), the ice cristals which form between the layers of glass in the windom:
And Canada:
So as well as getting a window seat, I was also blessed to be sitting next to a very nice old couple, who were more than happy to chat a bit and tell me just how cold it was going to be when we landed.
I got to watch “St Trinians” on the plane, which was entertaining enough even though the sound kept cutting out and being replace with rather loud static for a few mins. I also got to watch “Enchanted” (again) which was of course played in a loop, so I got to see bits of it several times over!! Oh I love that film. Most of the flight though (and all the waiting time in the airport lounge) was spent reading a new book- Jasper Fforde’s Lost in a good book. I have to thank Sheila for the money which I used to get it and Adele for the recommendation. (Adele I was so glad you told me the plot outline of the first book, because they didn’t have it and otherwise I would never have understood this one).
So anyway we finally made it to Toronto Airport and after an unexpected delay while health and safety people checked the plane (no idea why or what they were looking for) we made it out into the terminal building. I though we would then breeze through and be on our way. How wrong I was. It was about a half mile walk from the plane to the customs office where everyone from every plane goes through to say if they have anything they shouldn’t have in their bag. I pick a line and waited, and waited, and waited. The family in front of me seemed to be having fun with the fact that their son had brought back a hat made from dried plant leaves. Well in Canada you aren’t allowed to take in any food, animals, plants or much else for that matter. So they had a while discussing if that was permitted. Finally though it was agreed that they could proceed and I was up, ready to declare my kilo of chocolate, tell the guy at the desk a bit about what I was doing, show him my lovely immigration letter and be on my way.
As I went to pick up my bags I found that Toronto airport is stupid! The trolleys for your luggage require $2. I had Canadian dollars, but surprise surprise as is the case for almost all foreigners entering the country, I had notes, no change, so I had no trolley and two bags I could hardly lift. Then out of nowhere a guy came up to me and with a big smile said “So you’re going to the school of ministry then?” His name was Dan and he had been on the same flight as me from Heathrow. In the immigration queue he had seen me show my letter to the attendant and had realised I was headed the same place. Seeing I couldn’t carry my bags, he, incredibly sweetly, offered to take my rucksack for me. I felt a bit bad as he had two bags of his own, but he insisted and so we headed out together to find Becca who was meeting me at arrivals. So having found Becca, we all three jumped in a taxi and headed to the church.
The church is really quite close to the airport (as you might expect with it being called Toronto Airport Christian Fellowship!) so it wasn’t very long at all before we got there, only to be greeted at the door by none other than my little brother :) So then there was the registration and about a million forms to sign, then I got my key, was shown my room, picked up the bed sheets and duvet that Ayshka so very kindly left for me (Ayshka you are a star), unpacked a few things and met my new room mates. Sophie is English and Emma is from Iceland. We have another girl coming but her dad just died so she is coming later.
Dinner was a nice steak, though possibly a bit too tough to have just been using the regular knives we had.
After dinner we had a worship session (sooo good) and the introductory talks, before we were dismissed. It was only about 8:30 local time, but I was shattered, so although some people stayed up and played games I came to my room, settled down and made a start on this blog. And that was the end of my day!
Once we had crawled through the morning rush hour, and finally made it to the airport. In typical Clarke style I was hours early, but I had a lovely queue free check in :) and then a good old mooch round the shops.
The plane journey was fairly uneventful. I got to sit by the window, so got a fantastic view of Heathrow from the air:
The English coast, Ireland (who apparently had some snow), the ice cristals which form between the layers of glass in the windom:
And Canada:
So as well as getting a window seat, I was also blessed to be sitting next to a very nice old couple, who were more than happy to chat a bit and tell me just how cold it was going to be when we landed.
I got to watch “St Trinians” on the plane, which was entertaining enough even though the sound kept cutting out and being replace with rather loud static for a few mins. I also got to watch “Enchanted” (again) which was of course played in a loop, so I got to see bits of it several times over!! Oh I love that film. Most of the flight though (and all the waiting time in the airport lounge) was spent reading a new book- Jasper Fforde’s Lost in a good book. I have to thank Sheila for the money which I used to get it and Adele for the recommendation. (Adele I was so glad you told me the plot outline of the first book, because they didn’t have it and otherwise I would never have understood this one).
So anyway we finally made it to Toronto Airport and after an unexpected delay while health and safety people checked the plane (no idea why or what they were looking for) we made it out into the terminal building. I though we would then breeze through and be on our way. How wrong I was. It was about a half mile walk from the plane to the customs office where everyone from every plane goes through to say if they have anything they shouldn’t have in their bag. I pick a line and waited, and waited, and waited. The family in front of me seemed to be having fun with the fact that their son had brought back a hat made from dried plant leaves. Well in Canada you aren’t allowed to take in any food, animals, plants or much else for that matter. So they had a while discussing if that was permitted. Finally though it was agreed that they could proceed and I was up, ready to declare my kilo of chocolate, tell the guy at the desk a bit about what I was doing, show him my lovely immigration letter and be on my way.
As I went to pick up my bags I found that Toronto airport is stupid! The trolleys for your luggage require $2. I had Canadian dollars, but surprise surprise as is the case for almost all foreigners entering the country, I had notes, no change, so I had no trolley and two bags I could hardly lift. Then out of nowhere a guy came up to me and with a big smile said “So you’re going to the school of ministry then?” His name was Dan and he had been on the same flight as me from Heathrow. In the immigration queue he had seen me show my letter to the attendant and had realised I was headed the same place. Seeing I couldn’t carry my bags, he, incredibly sweetly, offered to take my rucksack for me. I felt a bit bad as he had two bags of his own, but he insisted and so we headed out together to find Becca who was meeting me at arrivals. So having found Becca, we all three jumped in a taxi and headed to the church.
The church is really quite close to the airport (as you might expect with it being called Toronto Airport Christian Fellowship!) so it wasn’t very long at all before we got there, only to be greeted at the door by none other than my little brother :) So then there was the registration and about a million forms to sign, then I got my key, was shown my room, picked up the bed sheets and duvet that Ayshka so very kindly left for me (Ayshka you are a star), unpacked a few things and met my new room mates. Sophie is English and Emma is from Iceland. We have another girl coming but her dad just died so she is coming later.
Dinner was a nice steak, though possibly a bit too tough to have just been using the regular knives we had.
After dinner we had a worship session (sooo good) and the introductory talks, before we were dismissed. It was only about 8:30 local time, but I was shattered, so although some people stayed up and played games I came to my room, settled down and made a start on this blog. And that was the end of my day!
Keeping in Contact
I have easy internet access here, so please do email me, chat to me on msn or skype me, well if you ever catch me online with the time difference. (I don't want to post this info publicly, so if you want any of those details let me know)
Please not I don't have my phone with me.
You can also snail mail me if you wish
Sarah Clarke
Toronto Airport Christian Fellowship
School of Ministry, TACF
268 Attwell Drive
Etobicoke
Ontario
M9W 6M3
Canada
If you do send anything by post, please do make sure it is marked "Personal" otherwise there can apparently be problems with customs and stuff.
If you wish to make any financial contribution to my trip, please don't send it to me in Canada. Please send it to my parent's house in London and they will put it into my bank account on my behalf. drop me an email if you need that address.
Please not I don't have my phone with me.
You can also snail mail me if you wish
Sarah Clarke
Toronto Airport Christian Fellowship
School of Ministry, TACF
268 Attwell Drive
Etobicoke
Ontario
M9W 6M3
Canada
If you do send anything by post, please do make sure it is marked "Personal" otherwise there can apparently be problems with customs and stuff.
If you wish to make any financial contribution to my trip, please don't send it to me in Canada. Please send it to my parent's house in London and they will put it into my bank account on my behalf. drop me an email if you need that address.
Little duck has landed
I have arrived!
Rather tired, and still have lots to do this evening (having gained 5 hours to my day!)
Will post about the trip etc... probably tomorrow
Sarah
xx
Rather tired, and still have lots to do this evening (having gained 5 hours to my day!)
Will post about the trip etc... probably tomorrow
Sarah
xx
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)