I’m trying to sign off from my last post but it keeps losing the last line…so what I am trying to say is…I’m doing great and I hope you are too! Much love to you all xxx

Hi everybody! As today marks the end of week 2 I thought it was about time that I sent you another update and let you know what I have been up to! It has been a busy week, but I feel like we have now settled into a good routine, which definitely helps. Here is a rough idea as to what our weekly schedule looks like!

On weekdays my alarm goes off at 6am and I get up, breakfasted and ready for the day. I head outside for my quiet time, as there is a park area just across the road from us outside of Perth stadium (to which Taylor Swift will be coming for concert in the next month or so!) and then get back to the house for morning family chores.

The base that we live on is pretty new. God provided the building and finances a few years back but they have only been working from it for the past year or so. Because of this, there is a strong conviction that we should do everything we can to look after the base, as it was Gods provision to us. Because of this, every weekday morning at 8am the whole base, students and staff, come together for half an hour to clean! We split up into groups and have different responsibilities to clean certain areas. Every 3 weeks you change area just to make things interesting! I am currently in the group responsible for cleaning 228, the house that I am living in, so every morning I am cleaning all the bathroom sinks and mirrors! Ive got one more week left there, and then I will change to a different part of the base.

Then at 8.30 we have different things going on each day. On Mondays we have base worship, where everybody comes together in the auditorium for an hour of worship and prayer. Tuesdays we have class worship, so just the 30 of us in our classroom, Wednesdays we have class intercession, Thursdays lectures start at 8.30 and Fridays we have class worship again! Then at 9.30 we have morning tea break!

Lectures start at 10ish, depending on how many class notices we have! We have a 5 minute break somewhere in the middle of all that, then finish at 12.30 for lunch. At 1.30 work duties begin! Everybody on base has to do 2 hours of work duties a day, serving the base as part of our discipleship. For some people this means cleaning the dishes, others it is food prep, being the handy man and fixing stuff, showing hospitality by baking cakes and preparing guest rooms or washing or ironing, or sitting on reception answering phones. Because I cant stand up for very long, I have been given an office based work duty, so I am based in simple healthcare. They are in charge of creating and designing resources to train up local people to be able to train people in simple health issues when working overseas (if that makes any sense at all!) but basically, I am currently working on their posters linking all of their pictures, and figuring out where extra translation is needed. This has proved to be a real lesson in patience as the computers are all horribly slow! But at least I am able to do something useful for them, as the job is very time consuming, and so by doing this, I am able to free up other workers.

I finish work duties at 3.30 and then have 2 hours off! Which is lovely. Dinner is at 5.30 and then again, different evenings we do different things. Monday night we have another 2 hours of lectures starting at 6.30. Tuesdays we have small groups, where 6 or 7 of us meet up from class to share with one another. Wednesdays we have a free night!! This is meant to be our study night for our weekly journals, but most people do this at another time and take some well-deserved time off instead! Thursday nights we have a packed dinner picked up from lunch, as at 6 everybody from base heads out into town for evangelism. And on Friday night we have our Friday night meeting, which is basically like extra church!

Wednesdays are slightly different, as because we have the evening off, we have something extra in the afternoon. Straight after work duties at 3.30 we have group intercessions for an hour. Our class has been split into 5 groups and each given a country to spend time praying and interceding for. My group have been given Egypt to pray for these next couple of weeks, and then we will rotate to a different country.

Weekends are mostly free, but from time to time we will have extra activities going on. Some people go to church on Sundays, some use the day to rest as the week is pretty intense with not much free time. Most people at some point will be found working on their journals as these are due in every week at Sunday dinner! And of course, Saturdays are generally used for that all important lie in and catching up on sleep!

Unless…you are on the prayer chain. Since 1999 ywam perth has had somebody from base praying 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. As you can imagine, this takes a lot of organising! Every individual is given a one hour slot each week when they are to be praying for the base. There are usually 3-5 people with the same slot as you, so you can meet up and pray together. My class has been allocated the time slots of Saturday morning 4-10am every week! So we have split into 6 groups and allocated each group with a one hour slot. This week my group were praying from 7-8am, but next week we get rotated, so at some point we will all get the 4-5am slot…which kind of messes up your Saturday morning lie in! But it’s a really important thing to be doing so we shall carry on regardless!!

Right. I was going to let you know what has been going on this week, but as Ive already written loads and I need to go work on my journal I shall leave that for another day! But it has been a really great week with some really exciting teaching, and other than a still gammy knee I am doing just fine

So a couple of you have asked me about life in community. Its pretty intense living with 40 people…you really don’t get much space to yourself! But it also has some really fun times too! There are lots of stories that I will be able to share with you in the future, but for now I thought I would send you some pictures!

That’s it for now! But I hope it has given you some insight into my life! Will try and post other random insights throughout my time here.

Big love from sunny Australia!

Well what can I say about the past couple of days??? So much has happened!

Learning to understand different accents and languages has taken some doing, and that’s just the Australian! I’ve learnt that the basic rule is to shorten the word and add an ‘o’ on the end, so for example, today we had “rego day” commonly known in English as registration day! It’s amazing to think that these people actually think they speak English!!

Of course, Korean is a whole different story, and needless to say, very difficult to learn. But as half my class are Korean, I am trying to learn some basic words, and more importantly, how to pronounce their names! But we have an amazing member of staff who is helping with all of our translation, so we are very blessed. The Korean members of our group are incredible. So loving and servant hearted, and they have always been the first to help me with my crutches or anything else that I have been struggling to carry.

As for rego day! I now have all my class books, all my forms filled out and most importantly my house key! We also had a base tour, so I now (theoretically) know where everything is, and then we had the all-important fire drill!! Rego day ended with family games in the park followed by an amazing dinner and the biggest piece of carrot cake you have ever seen!

Tomorrow we have family chores induction at 8am, and then lectures begin! And so does all the work. We have book reports, journals, research projects, group projects, talks and memory verses to learn! Not to mention the daily chores, work duties and reading that needs to be done. So I’m going to be kept pretty busy these next couple of weeks.

Being on crutches has been pretty frustrating. Not being to go into town to explore, walking at a much slower pace than everybody else, and the fact that our classroom is upstairs have all made things more difficult than I would have liked. But people have been very gracious and helped out wherever possible. As of this morning I could pretty much straighten my leg, although it is still visibly much bigger than my other knee. But hopefully it is now on the mend and it won’t be too long until I can get out of the knee brace.

Living in such a big community has been interesting. I absolutely love it, and it really is beautiful to see, but those of you who know me will also understand how difficult this is for me at times. I am absolutely exhausted and there aren’t many places that I can go to get space from people. But God is proving faithful and has helped me along the way, so I am trusting that He will give me all that I need in order to faithfully live in this community that He has called me to.

That’s it for now! I will attempt to upload some photos of our house in the coming days so you can see just how crazy life is here! This week’s lectures are on hearing the voice of God so I’m sure I will have some exciting stories to tell too!!

In the meantime, for those of you who pray, here are a couple of prayer points that I would really appreciate prayer for!

1)      That God would help me with learning some basic Korean! Hard ask I know, but I believe God is able!!

2)      That He would help me in the times when I am feeling completely overwhelmed with people, and that I would be gracious when sharing a house with such a big community.

3)      For energy! Walking around on crutches is hard work, but when your days work starts at 8am and is pretty intense throughout as everything is so new and unfamiliar it is exhausting

4)      For continued healing for my knee

Much love

Jo x

 

 

 

I was just admiring the amazing artwork that my brother put together for this blog and felt like I should point out…this blog is still about the adventures of a country girl in the city…its just the city has changed slightly and is on the other side of the world! Just in case you were wondering….

Hello!!! Thanks for taking a look at my blog. Its been quite a long time since my last entry, but everything that has happened since can be summarised in 4 simple bullet points.

1)      Rachel and Paul moved back to the UK and have provided me with the cutest little nephew ever. I love being an Auntie, and he will forever be my special little man.

2)      I graduated! And by the grace of God I somehow finished University with a First Class Honours in Youth and Community Work with Practical Theology.  And my JNC, so I am now technically a qualified professional youth worker. Not like I feel like it though!!

3)      In January I met my life time ambition of visiting every continent in the world (excluding Antarctica) by spending just under 3 months in Burundi Africa. I loved it.

4)      I am now back in Australia for 6 months doing my YWAM dts!

 

So that is you all up to date! So onwards to my next adventure! I arrived in Perth very early Friday morning so after arriving at my accommodation it was a case of finding my pjs and going to bed! I’m living in a big YWAM house, one girls dormitory, one guys dormitory, a leaders room, the girls and guys bathrooms and then the kitchen/living area. There is about 40 of us altogether living in the house, so it brings a whole new meaning to community living! There are only 2 of us Brits, so I am also having to negotiate some very interesting names/accents/unfamiliar words. Yesterday it took me several minutes to explain to my new American friends what a duvet is!! And the list of unfamiliar things to each of us continues to grow.

Unfortunately because of my bad knee I haven’t really been able to get about much so far, but thankfully the ywam base is just around the corner from the house, so I have been backwards and forwards from there! The base is massive! So I have only seen a small part of it – when school starts tomorrow we will get the official tour. But so far things are going well. The people are lovely, the food is pretty good and we are in a good location. I’m still recovering from the jet lag, but we are getting there slowly!

We are still waiting for a few more people to arrive today, but the majority of us have been chilling out these past couple of days. School officially starts tomorrow so there will be considerably less free time from then on! One thing that we are very relieved about is that the people in my class don’t have to do 6am exercises! So our day doesn’t start until 8am which is amazing.

Anyhoo…lunch is going to be served up soon so I had better hobble over to the base dining room! Will try and update you again soon  once school has started!

Love to you all

Forgot to say in my last post that whilst on our weekend away O received news of my parents going AWOL on their return trip from Equador! To receive the news that your parents have become stranded somewhere in Latin America and nobody has managed any contact in recent hours wasnt hugely comforting; but they eventually landed home safely a few hours aftyer my return home from Staffordshire! Also forgot to mention that we accidentally left half our cake for the weekend on the coach on the Friday night; so that was waiting for us when it came to pick us up again on the Sunday…oops!

Today was a day full of excitement; as I got to see in person my sister and brother in law for the first time in nearly 2 years! It was a little bit mad thinking about it on the way into central London to meet with them; but it was really nice to actualy physically give them a hug and catch up on all news. Sadly time flew by rather quickly;  but I will get a chance to see them again at some point around Christmas before they head back to Peru in the new year.

It got me to thinking about the whole family business, and what it actually is, and it was really interesting to reminice (no idea how to spll that; sorry!) with Rach about some of our childhood expriences. What was really funny though was how differently we remembered things due to out fairly big age gap (9 years) What I can only just remember from when I was very little was a very real experience for her as a teenager growing up, and had many more and much bigger implications for her. And I dont think Ive ever really thought about that before. But it made me realise just how blessed I have been with a family that have done all they can to protect me from some of the harsh realities of this world. But also a very biazarre thought in that, I know no matter how old I get, I will always be the baby of the Smith clan. But looking at where all our lives are heading right now, I have a feeling that family for us in 30 years time is going to look very different from how it has been. But again, only time will tell.

So now Im about to head off to bed, as I have a early morning ahead of me as I am in college at Cambridge for the next 2 days. So I shall bid you all a fond farewell :o)

As promised the low down on the weekend away!

All a little bit of a blur to be honest…lots of people and very chaotic! The coach arrived early, and so did about 20 of our yp who were all grabbing tea in McDonalds! Eventually managed to load them all on (1 hour later) and had a 3 hour coach drive, arriving at our destination just before 10pm. LONG day.

And then things go a little blurry. One of our girls wasnt very well on the first night, so I missed the evening meeting trying to get her room! No joke….the place we were staying was beyond all logic and we ended up getting completely lost! It was like a maze with hidden doorways and secret passages round every corner. Which caused utter chaos trying to sort out rooms as people continually got lost and then reappearing in corridors that they shouldnt have been on! But by the end of the weekend I was just about getting my head around it….was a very nice mannor house though; although the 500 cows as promised seemed to have diappeared into a further field away from us and we missed them completely!

Our guest speaker was really great and the teenagers response to the teaching was fantastic. Got to have some good conversations with some of the girls; although I have to confess a lot of my time wa spent running around organising things and people, so didnt do as much face to face youth work as I would have liked. But I think the coming weeks will allow me to meet up individually with some of the girls and have some great conversations.

Needless to say I didnt get much sleep; and physically it was a very active weekend so I have come back feeling exhausted. So I had a lovely duvet day yesterday to catch up on my sleep and some good company with the TV! But Im sure in the coming weeks the events of the pst 4 days will start to come together a bit more and Ill have a more complete picture ofwhat was actually going in….hopefully! Only time will tell!

Peace

Jo x

Realising that I have been monumentally bad at this whole regular update thing; I thought I would drop by and give you a quick update! (and quick, I guarantee you, for this time only, it shall be!)

We are leaving on our weekend away today; going to Staffordshire, which is going to be a 3 1/2 hour coach journey :-s

Not only that; but the number of people that we were expecting to come has doubled from 40 to 80; which has meant a HECK of a lot of paperwork and other such adminy things. Ive still got more to get done too, which is why this is only a quick pop round entry! I am about to head round to the office now to sort out all last minute paperwork before going to help pack up the van!

So I shall come back again on either Monday or Tuesday (depending on how dead to the world I am by the end of Sunday!) and let you know how it all goes. But in the mean time; please pray for…

1) safe travelling, and protection for the whole weekend 2) that we would all have lots of fun 3) for our guest speaker and that we would all meet with God (especially as several of our teenagers are not christian which is really exciting!) 4) that all of our new teenagers would feel welcomed and fully accepted into our church family/that strong relationships would be built.

On a more personal note: 1) that I would have lots of energy (cus Im currently feeling exhausted! ) 2) that I would build really good relationships wit the girls and start to see their needs so that I can be guided as to where we should be going with the girls work in the coming future!

Thanks a lot

Jo x

So I met my fieldwork tutor  (which is now meant to be called PPT for Proffessional Practice Tutor?!) today. I dont think Ive mentioned this; but as part of my course, I have been allocated Jenny Baker as my tutor to help me develop into a proper and professional youth worker. For those of you who dont know, it is THE Jenny Baker; a well known youth worker in the Christian circles; has written many books, does seminars at all the major conferences and is a reugular contributer for the youth work magazine. She is also the co-founder of the Sophia Network, which aims to support wwomen in christian youth leadership. She is quite well known highly respected, so watching peoples responses has been quite interesting when I have told them that she is my tutor! Continue reading Monday