Easter Camp - Warrambui Style!

Every year Warrambui puts on an Easter camp for the confirmation aged kids of New South Wales (and whoever!) This year there were 23 campers and 20 leader!...therefore us interns where campers with Dallan as our leader when it was group time and leaders for everything else - a bit of a mix up weekend. It started on thursday night where we did a passover meal in the centrium - and later did a Taize service - just lots of music and readings - much of the songs where the sending songs from campfire at Kuriakos actually!! On the friday we did a mock Sanhedrin drama where we as an intern group became herodians..we had to make up a cheer and prove our points. It was really fun because everyone got into it and acted out their roles. That afternoon we walked to stations of the cross walk - it was very well put together as we experience many different aspects of the Easter story as we went. That evening was a bit different as we were all blind-folded and they walked us through the easter story again using sounds. The following day - Sat. we fasted all day...the campers didn't know about it but we knew. We got breakfast and then went the whole day until sunday morning. On sat. we just did a lot of skit preparing and such. Also just lots of hanging out and not doing too much. Although at one time we went down to the basketball courts and Joel and I taught everyone how to play 'toilet tag' and now they call it the toilet game! Sunday morning we got up nice and early - 6:00 and woke up all the campers cheering 'He is Risen' - from there we walked to the tomb to see that it was empty! There we had a sunrise service with lots of singing and readings and such. Leading from the tomb we did the bushwalk trail up to the lookout point (highest point of warrambui) and then the path lead us the to the campfire. Here we (the interns (me) and Bri) lead everyone in a bunch of campfire songs. Joel and I lead 'Brown Squirrel' and they LOVED it! I have not heard them stop talking about it since! We then got a cooked breakfast as our first meal since the day before and carried on singing. Jumping ahead for our last meal of the weekend we had a party lunch in the center! They had decorated it all up with ballons that we had wrote 'what easter means to us' attached to the bottom of them....we then walked to the new building site and let them go!! Easter camp is the very busy impacting weekend but overall it went really great and I have again met new people (even though I recognized a lot of them too!)

I don't know if you all knew but for Lent we as a staff here at Warrambui gave up watching TV...so when the campers all left we set up a movie in the centrium and watched it big screen just like the movies. Well now we are all back into camp life again as we have our second school group coming in this week that we has interns will be leading programs and the whole deal so looking forward to that!
Again sorry I don't update this often and sorry the photos are limited - I do have a whole lot more, it is just the internet connection is so slow it would take me ages to download them all!! Enjoy and hope you all had great Easter's too!!

Jack Johnson Visits Wollongong and so did we!!

So last thursday Lena, Joel, Marla, and I all headed out in a very full car to head out to the green city of Wollongong - about a hour south of Sydney for a Jack Johnson concert! We had decided to go camping so the little car was packed with eski (cooler), swags (heavy duty sleeping bags with mattresses), and other camping gear! Also we were in a quite a rush as we arrived in Wollongong with just enough time to set up our tent and race to the concert. The concert was very very good...although we were nearly at the back of our row we were kind of middle close to him so that was amazing. He nearly played 17 songs with his band of a bass player, drummer, and piano player (who at times was playing two pianos at once!!) I suggest that if anyone ever gets a chance to go to a Jack Johnson concert they should definetely go!! Then to make it better he came out and did a 3 song encore so that topped it all off. As well as Jack Johnson there was another guy named Will Conner, Matt Costa, and special appearance by some Australian Aboriginals who did some dances and played the didgeridoo!!
For the weekend we stayed at this campground called Surf Resort - or something very close to that. When we arrived we were the only ones in the tenting area and we were less than a walk away from the ocean!! On sat. we spent the entire day almost at the beach, we also had rented a body board so enjoyed surfing the waves!! Then to conclude the day we played tennis at the campground - it was my first time playing and it was soo fun! On sat. we drove back home with one quick stop in Kiama to see the blow hold - unforunately the tide was out so we didn't get to see the famous blow hole but we did get to enjoy climbing the rocks - the one photo is of Joel 'hanging off' one of the rocks. We got back just in time to quickly get to Canberra to see Sky-Fire Fireworks. One of the radio stations put it on and it was so good - set to music and everything. We joined a big group from Woden (the church we attend) so that was heaps of fun! All in all it was good to get out and see more Australia and especially good to see Jack Johnson!!

More photos!!

The first one is when we babysit the Veerhuis boys (camp directors boys). We took them to church and then we went to the park. It was Kira, Bri, Heidi and I. And the 4 boys Jayden-9, Cameron-8, Luke-4, and Mitchell-2).
Second photo is from Lena's birthday party we had for her in Canberra. When it is your birthday here they blindfold you and take you somewhere. So for Lena we planned a bike ride around the pond in Canberra, picnic lunch, and then a Walk through the Art Gallery. The photo of me holding up the ball is taken at the Art Gallery, it is actually a huge ball suspended in the air with wires. The art gallery had a lot of Australian Art and aboriginal work so it was all very interesting.
The last two photos are from my trip to Parkes with Candice to her home. Parkes is known for this HUGE dish that first spotted people in space (or something like that) There is also a movie made about it called 'The Dish' that I will have to watch later...where they actually play cricket on the dish!! These photos just show how huge it really is. And while we were there Candice, her parents, and I the dish actually almost did a full circle which Candice had never even seen so that was super cool!!

Cockington Greens...

While Joel and Marla where here for a couple days we headed into Canberra to do a bit of tourist things. Canberra is Australia's capital city and has heaps of tourism things that I hope to do slowly through out the year. We went to cockington greens which is just a huge minature land of famous buildings and such from around the world...unfortunately none were from Canada. We were amazed at how GREEN and beautiful everything was!!

Australia Football League

Also as a fun little activity one day we decided to all go to a footy game. Dallan looked into it and his favorite team happened to be playing so we all bought tickets and got excited. Lena, Candice, Thea, Kira, Dallan, and I went. Geelong VS. St. Kilda. Althought I had no idea who either where we cheered for Geelong and although they did not win it was a VERY close and exciting game. A little different than our normal footy but it was still exciting. Also there are 2 or 3 different kinds of footy in Australia so I'm slowly learning who likes what and who cheers for what. Eventually I will figure it out though!!