Week 20

This week was our missions focus week so we had different speakers come in from different missions and tell us about what they are doing. We’ve also each had to prepare a five minute presentation on a country and have been presenting it to the class after meals. I did my project on Senegal.

In order to get a taste of what people eat around the world, Sheryl has been making special meals for us. On Monday lunch, we all sat around a picnic blanket on the floor and had a bowl of white rice which we ate with our fingers. On Tuesday, we got upgraded to chopsticks and we even had soy sauce to put on the rice.

Tuesday night was our family night. For the first time this semester, we did a small event, just in our family groups. We played spoons and a game where you had to bend over with only your feet on the ground to pick up a Tim Tam (a small chocolate candy that is only about three centimetres off the ground when it is lying on its side) with your mouth.

On Thursday, we had our quiet day. I was feeling pretty rotten and tired, but that meant that I had to sit down and just focus on God. He gave me some good reminders. Last semester, Joseph was teaching on one of the letters to the churches (in Revelations) and he encouraged us to write ourselves a letter like that, so I did that on quiet day. Here is my letter:
These are the words of the creator of the heaves and the earth, of whom all creation sings praises day after day. I know your deeds, that you strive for justice and obedience. Yet this I have against you, that you are lazy and do not seek Me with all your heart, soul, and mind. I see your desire to live a holy and blameless life, but you put your hope and seek strength in yourself and the fading things of this world. You want to do big things, but I tell you this: you must first be faithful with the things I have already entrusted to you. For to him who is faithful with little, much will be given. But to him who is not faithful, even what he has will be stripped away. He who has ear, let him hear.

Today (Friday) we all leave for guy/girl weekend. The guys are heading down a little past Queenstown (a 7 hour drive!) and us girls are going to a women’s conference just outside of Christchurch that a lady wanted to pay to send us all to (to say thank you to Patti for some conferences she has organized in the past).