Arrived Safe and Sound

So I have landed in Emerald and we have gone straight into it head first! We were picked up from Rockhampton Airport by the lovely Loy and her husband Glen and driven 3 hours west into the rural parts of Australia. Yes, I am living 4 hours from the nearest beach, which is a big change from what I am used to. The heat is ridiculous we have been experiencing days of 35 degrees and up, apart from one day where it went down to 25 degrees and we all felt cold. COLD? IN 25 DEGREES? lol. Also since being here on Sunday we have had 4 thunder storms ... I love Queensland storms! So I have settled into our little house in the center of Emerald a cute little 3 bedroomed house. Ruth and I are sharing the biggest room and the boys are in the next bedroom along, we have cooking and cleaning roster all in place. So we have already settled into the swing of things. 

We were greeted into Emerald with an afternoon tea put on for us by a few of the parishioners, so many names to remember! Monday we were given a tour of Emerald, which took approximately 5 minutes as most things seem to be on the one road :) So it was really quite a relaxing day. Tuesday we were introduced to the Catholic High school, Marist College, I feel like there is quite a bit of work needing to be done there, and the school has made me appreciate how Catholic my high school was and still is. For a little bit of fun we have all been put into house, I, naturally, have been put in the best house, Moore with the awesome symbol of a shark, and we will be soon be given our Marist College Staff sports shirts in our house colour. We will be heading along to all house competitions to help out and just hang with the students, coming up is the school swimming gala, where there may actually be a NET team race taking place :( ... that should be interesting, and the school war cry competition! We were introduced to the St Patrick's Primary school on Thursday, and they are all so cute and just fell in love with all four of us!

Friday night we had our first youth group, Zeal, which is for Year 4-7's. Wow what a loud bunch of crazy kids, it was insane, they have so much energy ALL THE TIME! We just really introduced ourselves to them and played games and hung out for and hour and a half.

We have our older Youth Group, Impact, tonight, for year 8-10, so please pray that it goes well, and we have Young Adults Group tomorrow night, for year 11 and 12's, so it's going to be a busy few days.

So life is real good at the moment, I'm missing all my family and friends back home. I'm also really missing all my NET family who have been sent around the country! Love to all and God Bless

This is the AWESOME Emerald Team of 2012! Ruth, Me, Odyn and Mateo

Odyn and I celebrating The Lord's Day Celebration

Mateo ... Chillin' as usual :)

The amazing Ruth stood in the check-in queue at the airport  hoping that our bags aren't overweight

Boarding the plane to fly to Rockhampton!

TEAM TIME! Boarding the plane

The crazy brothers and a little snapshot of Ruth and I

SISTERS!!!

TEAM!

Emerald City

The kangaroo that just hung out with us, that we named Peter Wallace (not sure why)

A treat to myself on Waitangi Day

This is Ruth, my sister for the coming year, in the golf shop with a golf club cover :)

So life has been very full on these past few weeks. And I have had hardly any internet connection, which in one way I have quite enjoyed but in another been slightly annoyed by it. The past four weeks of my life have been spent at a camp, where 42 NETters have been learning about all the different skills we will need to survive the coming year. It was an amazing secluded place in the middle of the Australian rural - ish area. To be honest the world could've ended whilst we were on camp and we wouldn't have known about it. The camp has amazing beauty surrounding it, but with that comes creepily large flies, random stick bugs and HUGE lizards, but among it all there were the mornings where we woke up to Kangaroos outside our dorm.

We were thrown head first into a crowd of 42 people we didn't know from ALL over the world, and told we would know each other very well in the time span of a week, it's true, we all got on very well and started to build really strong friendships with everyone, after 4 weeks at camp we would all be able to tell you each others random little things, like knowing which night was a retainer (braces) night for other people.

Since being at camp I have a group of incredible friends, learnt all the different skills for youth ministry, everything from doing a random skit about vasaline to Crisis Care. I have experienced the Brisbane rain and blistering sun, and soft tissue and ligament damage in my left ankle. That was fun, being on crutches for a week ... or as much fun as it can be. All is going well now with my ankle, still in an ankle brace but I am walking on it again, everyone has been really good and helpful and most of all patient with my slow pace of walking :).

Teams were announced a few weeks ago, I have been put on the smallest team, a team of four, we will be spending the next ten months in a place called Emerald, in rural Queensland. My team is amazing, my sister for the year is Ruth who is 19 years old from Cairns, Australia and my two brothers for the year are Mateo, 21 from California and Odyn, 19 from Port Macquarie NSW, Australia. This year is going to be an epic year of ministering to the young people of Emerald and getting to know more about running a household and normal everyday life.

I am now back in Brisbane at an amazing host home, a beautiful family of three older boys, one who now lives in London, and whose bedroom I am currently using, and the parents, our host-mum just love to feed us, so don't worry I'm not starving. I was thrown into it the other day driving back to Brisbane when we were lost in the city centre of Brisbane and I was asked to take over the driving, we were somewhere very confusing in a van and trailer in the mist of the Brisbane traffic at night with one working headlight, two GSP's, one of which wouldn't even switch on and the other one so old it was telling us to take a left turn on a bridge ... hhmmm. It was a very good team building excersise. Don't worry we finally made it to our host homes after five and a half hours in the van.

I will be staying in Brisbane until next Sunday, which will be when I am being sent to Emerald. More news is to come in the coming weeks

Here are some pictures of the last few weeks of life:

Katie and I at the beach

Christine and myself on one of the girls nights

Me with the large creepy lizard