the flame goes forward

wow, it seems everytime i start to write i have to apologize for not writing in so long. so sorry :) believe it or not, things have never been this carzy here on beach to bush, and although i was warned about it before hand it still took me by surprise how much we were moving around! since i last talked to you i have been in straddie island for survivor week, been back at base for not even a day and i was off again for canberra for ywam's 50th anniverary celebration, then to sydney, the blue mountains, mudgee, and now i'm finally back on base for 2 weeks before outreach. needless to say, me and the bus have gotten pretty close these last few weeks.

so, last i talked i was headed off for survivor week and i was FREAKING OUT! i had heard horror stories of what other teams had to do ( wake up in middle of the night and hike for 4 hours only to walk alll the way back. no toilets- it's a hole in the ground. no team member could be more than ameter away from you- even when you used the restroom. this and so much more) so i was about to just pack my bags. the anticipation was killer. monday we had the whole entire day, literally the whole day, lectures about missions, how we should behave ourselves, an intro to how to remain clean, a squatting lesson on how to use the toilet in developing countries (a hole in the ground. let me tell you, it takes great skill, one which i have yet to acquire), and so much more. the next morning began our first day of "mission impossible" as the leaders called it. how encouraging... anyway, the night before we had gotten a packing list of what we could bring, that and only that. no razors, no make-up, no hair products (shampoo & conditioner only), and the list went on. ha you can imagine how the girls reacted ;) the next morning we got up and with our backpacks we entered Bagistan, the madeup country our base staff came up with. the base was made into some kind of middle east airport and country. we had a mock airport where we had some people get detained for having guns (they were planted) and others had their passport taken away. it was overall a good job done by the base staff. i even converted one of the "beggers"! my first one! ha he wasn't really a begger, but it was cool all the same :) from there we had a mock church service, were given ice cream (last bit if heaven before we hit hell) and then put on buses. we drove to a ferry which took us over to stradbrook island, aka straddie. we got off the bus on the island and had lunch. each outreach team was given something that would be eaten in that country. the asian countries stayed together and we had rice with tofu, chicken, and.... chicken feet. i'm not going to lie, i avoided those feet with everything possible, but i know i ate some pieces for my i felt sick for the rest of the day (it's a good thing they gave that to us though. a team from another base is in a remote village in asia and chicken feet are very popular there). from there we drove to a camp site and set up tents and "bought" food with our paper money. unfortunately my team didn't have enough money for showers so no showers for a day or two :( we bought our food and on went the survival week. we had to make our own food according to what country we were going to. south africa had sheep's brain, peru had chicken heart, but other than that it was good. i ate with my fingers for the first time (rice with fish and veggies) and that was interesting. my fingers smelled of fish for so long!

the first night the staff let us go to bed early so that "we could be fully rested". ha whatever. i knew something was going to happen and i was on edge laying there in my tent. true enough, at 1am my team and i were woken up and we made our trek through the woods. it was like an obstacle course were you had to do certain activities and eat things. thank goodness for project graduation; the stuff we did there actually helped me. some things we did were like our team had to eat a raw onion and half a tub of peanut butter, eat sardines with crackers and drink cherry cream soda that tasted like cough medicine, answer trivia questions, and some team building acticities. then came the worst one of all. this activity had a swamp and the point was to get to the other side of the swamp. there was a rope that ran over the swamp so you could shimmy across. so some people walked through the swamp (which was deeper than it looked) while most shimmied across. then it was my turn. i was crying sitting in the tree looking at the rope and knowing i was going to die. but i tried it anyway and i maybe made it not even a quarter when i started to fall. so, i fell into the swamp, hiking boots, jeans, shirt, heavy sweater and all. it was great. the more i walked the more deep it got and i could feel bugs getting into my clothes. we had to go through the woods so more and we came to the beach (did i mention this was on/near the beach?) and our group had to do 300 push-ups then run half a mile if not more down the beach. now, this wouldn't have been bad except for two things. 1) after i got out of the swamp i emptied my boots then just tucked my laces into my boots. i was running top speed across the beach thinking i was doing pretty good. then tragity stuck and my laces from one boot got caught on a hook on my other boot and i went down face first into the sand. think of a skidding motion with my face in the sand. looking back i laugh thinking how stupid i looked, but at the time it was painful. 2) running down the beach in floppy wet socks (i took my boots off after the fall) and wet jeans is pretty hard, especially when you have to use the restroom and there is none to be found. i actually had to stop running and make sure i was going to make it. finally after about 3 1/2 hours i was able to go to bed. no shower but at least clean dry clothes.


the rest of the week (til saturday) we played competative games against all the other outreach teams. by the end of the week i had NO clean clothes and i had sand everywhere and the clothes from the swamp smelled like something died. ha as soon as we got on base i made a bee line for the washing machines. we didn't have much time since it was lunchtime by then and the next morning we were leaving for canberra, a 16 hour drive south to australia's capital. the drive was off to a good start, i guess, if you can say that riding in a packed bus with no a/c is good :) this trip we were making with the sports dts so we had more people than usual. after 4 hours we took a lunch break and we were off for the next 4 hours. wrong. after driving for 15 minutes we get a call that the other bus broke down so we had to turn around, get dopped off at a mackers (mcdonalds), and wait while the bus got the other people. so for an hour we hung out at mackers and while we were all there (about 50 of us) this massive storm came and knocked out power and blew signs down. i guess it was a good thing we weren't driving thru that. anyway, we hung out outside of mackers (we got kicked out because th power was out) for about 6 hours wondering what we were going to do. we had one bus that worked and carried only 25 people and we had 50 people. the bus was really broken so at the last minute the leaders decided that instead of us all spending the night at a campsite they put all of us girls on the bus that worked and we drove thru the night to canberra. the guys and 3 girls stayed at a half-way house and waited on the bus.

the bus ride thru the night was..... super. a bus packed with girls who are trying to sleep is less than enjoyable. i fell asleep and woke up a few hours later feeling so proud of myself that i'd actually fallen asleep. i looked at a clock and i'd only been sleeping for 10 minutes! it was horrible! i actually started flipping out. i finally, after a few hours, got to sleep and i didn't care that i had people's feet in my face. in the end i got 4 hours of sleep on the 12 hour drive, but i have to say that watching the sunrise across the BEAUTIFUL new south wales mountains and vallies made it almost worth it all. we got in canberra and lucky us there was a cold front that was coming thru, and i had only summer clothes. we set up the tents, but it must have been entertaining to watch because most of us were dillusional after getting next to no sleep. we got there at around 8am and finished the tents around 9ish. even though the meetings had started we were allowed to sleep that morning. the ywam base in canberra is so beautiful! it's big and spacious and i loved it. each day we had a meeting in the morning and evening from monday to friday. we were given work duties and we had double duty since the other bus didn't get there til mid-week. (the other bus is still in the town it broke down in. a fuse or something broke and to fix it will cost a ton of money. so we rented a bus for canberra) it was a fun time for we were there to celebrate ywam's 50th anniversary and the theme: the flame goes forward. bases from adelaide, gold coast, townsville, sydney, newcastle, and others were there and it was good being able to see alot of familiar faces and friends. mid-week loren cunningham and his wife came (they're the founders of ywam). they were so cute! i canonly hope to be that cute and adorable when i'm old :) they spoke about the things that they've been thru and how God has provided over and over. it was truelly inspiring.

we also took some time to see the pariament house in canberra and that was cool. the next day i was reading a book when i was told that we were having an emergency meeting. i'm freaking out waiting for our staff to get back from wherever thinking someone got hurt or someone died. after what felt like forever the bus pulled up and we're all asking what's going on and one staff was like "oh, there's no emergency, we just found this animal and need you to take of it. i'm tried of having it on the bus to just take it". and what comes off the bus? JEN! oh my goodness, i was in such shock to see her standing there that i started to cry. i was so angry! i thought someone was hurt or died, but it's only jen. i hugged her but told her that i was angry that she did this to me! so i went and cleaned toilets (my work duty) and tried to calm down. but i did miss her and was super excited and happy to see her!!! and boy did she miss us. she couldn't keep her hands off me and sara ;) it's good to have her back!

after canberra we drove 4 hours north to sydney and stayed at the island breeze base. island breeze focuses mainly on the islands (fiji, samoa, papua new guinea, solomon islands, vanuatu, etc) and also the aboriginals. it's so intersting! remind me to sing you a song i learned :) anyway, at the base there we took some time to just hang out. the first day we went to see hillsong which was awesome! the next day we went into sydney and me, sara, and jen kind of got lost since we missed our stop on the train, but it was all good. i found some clothes for outreach and i saw the sights of the city, and i have to say that i was just in awe of the fact that i was in sydney! the next day was australia day (their fourth of july) so we went onto the city to celebrate! we went to the opera house, the sydney bridge, and ended with the sydney harbour that night watching fireworks and listening to the blaring singing. i honestly felt like i was at the olympics or new years instead of australia day. it was a day i won't forget. anyway, that week we also had lectures and the speaker was actually the guy who wrote the classbooks i used in my senior Bible class. it also happened to be the best class i ever took due to those books, so the week was interesting to say the least. we learned alot about islam so i have to say that was the highlight as far as the lectures go.

after sydney we went to this town called katoomba and went to see the three sisters, it's a famous australian place and it's in the blue mountains (it was only beach to bush, sports went somewhere else). i was so excited to see them, but when i got to the lookout point to where they were there was in it's place this HUGE fog blob so i saw nothing. this great natural wonder and i can't even see it! so disappointing. but as we left the fog magically disappeared and the sun came out, so we took a hike down a trail that let us look out at wonderful views of the mountains. we left afterwards and went to the blue mountains in this national park and went camping. we drove up and down steep hills (i honestly feared for my life. i thought the bus was going to fall down the mountain). we ended up camping far far away from the entrance and far from civilization. i'm still kind of new to this camping thing and when i saw that our toilet was an outhouse and our only source of water was at the entrance, which was 15 minutes away, i really wondered if i would make it. but after putting up the tent and sitting by the fire i actually enjoyed myself, except for the whole toilet thing. i only went when absolutely necessary. there were bugs in the toilet that came out every time you opened it and no water to wash your hands. thank goodness for handsanitizer! anyway, we camped out for 2 days and i did like it. we just hung out and relaxed. i saw a goana, this huge lizard thing that walks like a kamodo dragon. he hung around our campsite and we ended up catching him in a tent. there were also kangaroos that were outside our tents the last morning so that was neat to see. next we drove to mudgee to get the sports dts and after spending the night in a church (they had real toilets!!) we drove for 12 hours back to brisbane. it was a long drive, but i was so happy to be back! i hadn't taken a shower in 5 days (5 DAYS!!) so you can imagine i was happy to be clean again. the next 2 weeks we had lectures.