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:

• 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.