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