BEWARE: THIS BLOG MAY BE LONGER THEN USUAL AS I AM UPDATING YOU ON TWO WEEKS OF BEING AWAY!
Two weeks ago now, we ventured in vans and buses up to hidden valley on a treacherously bumpy dirt and gravel road. It took about two hours to get up there but I was reminded so much of New Zealand as we drove past all the bush and tree’s, which I found really comforting.
When we arrived at the campsite, people had already set up tents because some of the people who were coming camping had come up a day earlier to clean up the site.
Because of the cyclone Yasi, tree’s had been blown over and were rotting, but some still remained standing – apparently before the campsite had a lot more green from when all the tree’s were standing.
Behind the grassy field where we pitched our tents, a creek with running rapids flowed downstream. Not far from the creek was a water hole. The water in the water hole and creek was so nice and cool and not salty – the complete opposite to the beach water here in Townsville which is salty and warm J - but still I really like the beach here!
Another night that I was reminded of home while being here was when one night when me and Maddie and Erin walked to the beach. It reminded me of home because sometimes at home I had gone to the beach at night because it was so nice!
Anyway...back to camping...
The very first night was a Sunday night there and the afternoon of that Sunday we were getting all set up in our tents – I shared a tent with Asta and Rachel which was so fun because I hadn’t hung out with Rachel a whole lot before that and she is so cool! :D
On Sunday night, we had an amazing worship time around the camp fire! We eventually had all of the lights in the shed turned off and we were all singing to God around the fire and I remember one line of a song that we sung that stood out:
‘Your love never run’s dry’
That was cool because so often we seek after love from other things and they will always have a limit and eventually fail us but Jesus never does!
After that night we got into lectures from the next morning, and Mark Parker was speaking on ‘Lordship’.
I don’t always remember what the speakers say shortly after they say it because they say so much – especially Mark because basically every day we went over time in lectures.
But when I write notes, I write what I get from it and what God speaks to me through it too, so I definitely learn still even when I forget things! One thing that was said was: ‘being a Christian is hard, but not impossible’ – so in the times of persecution, whatever it will look like we need to learn to lean on God fully because he will give us the strength to walk through it and gain all we can through it.
One thing God has shown me is that we have greater strength in God, the more knowledge that we have of him in our heart, through experiences and through reading the word and letting God reveal himself to us.
Another really cool thing that was said in the lectures was about sin and when we struggle. When we struggle if we pay more attention to God and where he is wanting to take us and what he is wanting to do in us and what he wants to say in us then our sin and our circumstances won’t be as much of a problem, compared to focusing on the struggle or sin and be overcome by it. I am by all means not good at doing all these things I have written about in this blog and in all the other blogs too, but I really want to tell whoever reads this about all that God has been teaching and encourage you with it as well as me trying to walk in this better myself too.
I sometimes think about how I don’t want to be a hypocrite and say all these things when I am not
even practising them myself, but I am going to keep growing in these area’s in my life because I want to practice them too.
On Thursday and Friday we had a really powerful time of ministry and God was really there with us and it was so good!
We started on Thursday night and had a time of praise and worship and then we had a time of thanksgiving.
We were encouraged during the day leading up to Thursday night to prepare ourselves ready for the night of ministry, so we weren’t just thanking God for the sun or for things like that that aren’t very deep but to be truly thankful for things God has done in our lives personally.
It was really cool to take time to be thankful because God truly does so much in our lives – even in the lives of people who aren’t walking with him because God truly desires all to be saved from the powers of darkness and to come into the knowledge of the goodness of God because he is soooooooooooooooo good!
I know this for myself so much from so many times! But I know that God wants to use me to tell other people who don’t know that too and that is a huge place where I need to grow way more in and display God and his beauty and love to people who need him even more- it is going to take getting out of our comfort zone sometimes which is the hard part!
After we had been thankful we had a time of bringing things to the light, like a guilt offering which they did in the old testament to be forgiven for their sin they had to sacrifice animals. Except now we don’t need to do that, and when we bring things into the light, the darkness must flee – except I don’t have internet connection to find out where it says it exactly in the bible. When we bring things to light the enemy has no hold over that part of our life if we give it to Jesus and have the support of our friends and family.
Through that, God really took me to a deeper place with him in my relationship with him –and I am so thankful for that because I don’t want to just stay in one place with him.
It was a really amazing night to see God move in the lives of everyone who stood up!
We ended that night with a time of worship again, I think because Mark really liked music.
On Friday morning we came back into the same kind of thing of bringing things into light and then we had a time of making commitments to God, but we were really encouraged to consider the cost before we made commitments and prepare for the commitments we were going to make.
After that we had another worship time – we had a lot of worship times which was at times really challenging because it was really hard to really focus and press into God all the time. It was so worth it though when we really got into it!
‘God’s love never run’s dry’. :D
I know I talk about God a lot in these blogs more than anything else but I can’t help it JJ
The next week was more of a relaxed week, because we had two days of lectures learning about ‘hearing God’s voice’ and then the rest of the week was hearing the testimonies of our staff and leaders of the DTS. Our leader spoke to us about love too and that was really cool too!
__________________________________________________________________________________
Other stuff we did while camping was go swimming at the water hole several times and then one day as a DTS excluding some people who didn’t want to come we floated down the creek. There were also waterfalls around hidden valley and a gorge where you could also go swimming but I never went there while camping.
When we were camping, we still had duties to do too – I wasn’t very good at getting to dinner prep on time though which was my second duty I had on the second week camping.
The weather most of the time rained apart from maybe 5 days (not in a row) that were sunny. The sunny days up at hidden valley were definitely not as hot as being in Townsville, but the thing I like the most about being back at the base is being able to have a shower and stay clean after for longer than 1 minute after getting out of the shower.
While we were camping, if you had a shower as soon as you got out, you usually stepped into mud again because we had so much rain that the ground was mostly muddy rather than dry.
One night me and Asta and Rachel were sharing a tent with a baby frog...that was exciting that’s for sure, and then after that we were paranoid that there were heaps of frogs in our tent.
One thing I am glad about is that I never saw any snakes or scorpions or giant spiders – the only spiders we saw we still a descent size.
Oh! And two other main things we did while we were there was we had a love feast! We had a day where we were really encouraged to love on each other and then at night we had dinner together and all the lights were turned off in the shed but there were heaps of tea-light candles set out and we all sat in a circle together eating a stir-fry meal which was sooo yum!
We had to bring love offerings which could be anything to give to other people, so I gave notes to a couple of people!
That night was such an amazing night and when I sat outside under the starts it was even more amazing because it was such a clear night and you could see sooooooo many starts – the sky was beautiful! And you could see lightning in the distance flash every now and then!
In the shed people in our DTS were having a dance off and it was so funny to watch some people because they were going crazy!
Another cool thing was on Saturday night, the last night we had there, we had a talent show, and there were some really cool and really funny talents people brought to the stage!
AND...another fun thing me and Rachel and Asta would do ismake up stories each night before we go to sleep - Rachel and Asta were really good at killing off the characters we made, but I admit I started off that way...but then I had a change of heart and wanted to let them live - thta could have influenced the way I started this blog because it sure did sound like a start of a story to me :)
Over all the whole camping experience was so amazing and it was a really good time to be away from distractions and to get to know more people, even from the ‘not for sale DTS’ and some people I don’t talk to a whole lot in my own DTS!
Again I really hope that whoever else reads this blog can be encouraged!
Godbless
No comments:
Post a Comment