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