Week 26

This week was our second week of teaching by Jerry Benjamin on end times prophecy (he would correct me here saying that it is the revelation of Jesus Christ through end times event). It’s been good to get grounded in the proper perspective of Revelation, which is as showing the character of God rather than primarily about a sequence of events.

Wednesday was a really cool day for Adam and I because we got to lead the Timaru youth group. We really just wanted to present something in a way that would keep the kids focused, involved, thinking, and hopefully excited about the Word of God. While reading through Ephesians, I came across a passage (1:15-20) that basically summarized our prayer for the kids so we decided to do that. But other than what passage we were going to study, we really had no idea where we were going with the message so we spent tons of our prep time simply praying that God would reveal to us what and how He wanted us to present. The night before, after at least an hour of prep, we both went to bed kind of bummed thinking that either the whole thing would flop (according to our estimation, we had enough material to fill half an hour of the hour and a half we were meant to fill) or God would do something awesome and it would be amazing. As I was falling asleep, God seemed to ‘suggest’ that we should let them tear the passage apart by simply giving them guiding questions and then allow them to come up with their own applications. Anyway, our Bible study ended up finishing right on time (taking the full hour and a half) so that we didn’t have to use our time filler game. The kids were focussed, listening, and giving their input. Some of them blew us away with the depth of the stuff they were coming out with! Basically, it wasn’t us, because if it had of been, it would have flopped. Instead, God totally used us! We were pretty excited!

On Thursday, we had our first family night of the semester. With four of our student body gone, we all do family night together now instead of splitting into two groups. We all learned how to lawn bowl and it was tons of fun! Bryan and I lost every single game, but we did have some pretty good rounds! My legs are now really sore from the repeated kneeling!

After the game, as we got back to the Crossing, Dale was driving by so a bunch of us jumped onto his car. He actually drove us half way into town with three of us hanging on to the back, one of us on the hood, and two of us handing onto the side windows. At the highway he pulled over and we all crammed into the car (three of us were in the trunk!) and Dale drove us to town where we got ice cream (at 10pm!). We had a blast, laughing the whole way!

Jenny, a lady from the church, invited us girls to sleep over at her house for the weekend. It was really refreshing to have a good conversation with her and her daughter. I’ve found that it is increasingly difficult to have a deep conversation with people at the Crossing. Us girls will often talk like that when we’re alone, but as a whole group it seems to be a challenge, making for rather quiet meals.

On Saturday, I went with Jenny and her grandchildren to Josh’s rugby game (Josh is the son of Werner, one of our teachers). And on Sunday afternoon, Jenny took us all for a drive to Mesopotamia (that’s the name of a place an hour outside of Geraldine). The drive was beautifully scenic and we had tons of fun and lots of good conversation. It was such a blessing to get away for the weekend and it actually felt really good to come home afterwards.

On Monday for quiet day, I went out to Peel Forest where I hiked, prayed, read, fell asleep (only for a little while :P). It was a nice relaxing day simply spent with Jesus, especially after two weeks of hearing Jerry Benjamin’s teaching (which Colin described as drinking from a fire hose).