So sorry for the super delayed update, blame the hecticness of moving home from the UK to Sydney, going on holidays to Victoria, then packing all up again to come to Perth for 6 months!
Okay, here's the impressions so far...
I arrived in Perth and met my school the next day. One of my first thoughts was 'oh thank goodness, we're going to get along' cause we were all laughing wildly on our first night together. And actually we do have some seriously funny people within our group of 6 students.
Then I realised Perth was ridiculously hectic. Maybe because my DTS was all about children and in Africa, so basically love and children were the lowest common denominator, it seems so cruisy now compared to this base. My average work day begins at 8am with work chores and we can have classes till 9pm at night. I only have one night free a week and that's tuesday. The lowest common denominator here is probably vision and drive, but it makes it much less comfortable to live with.
However, I do have great news. There were two parts of my week that I hated facing every time and this week they were redeemed from the pits. the background of the first is this; I have two leaders - Ben is the main one and Katie is assisting leading - and a one-on-one is normally where I would meet with a leader to talk about my week, but actually mine was a two-on-one which felt more like the Gestapo. I already have trouble sharing deeply when I know it's going to be dissected and fed back to me, and to have it twice over was just painful. But hooray! this week it was just Katie and we actually chatted for 2 hours even though she was lying on the couch in pain.
The other thing is thursday night evangelism. This is where teams go out and talk to people on the street about God. My team went up to Midland, where I disliked every week cause I feel ineffectual and often can't even find anyone to talk to. So the first night we went, I popped into an old folk's home and asked is we could come back and tonight we finally did! we just sang a lot of the old hymns like amazing grace, then chatted to people. I spoke to a feisty old lady from Yorkshire in England who told me about how she biffed her sister. Katie sang a solo - his eye is on the sparrow - then spoke about Abraham and how no one is ever too old for God to care about or use. I thought that so many of the people were too far gone in dementia to understand what she was saying, but at the end I look across and one old lady was crying!
The most touching part of the night was when we went into a ward where a lady was so far gone in dementia that she was extremely unresponsive and sort of frozen. We were told to try with her especially cause she had been a very active Christian and they hoped the music would get through. So we sang 'Amazing Grace' and 'How great thou art' and she kind of smiled, her eyes began following us and she began moving. At the end she wouldn't let go of Katie and we had to pry her out of her grip!
So I am learning, and although the adjustment was fairly hard, it's getting better.
Okay, here's the impressions so far...
I arrived in Perth and met my school the next day. One of my first thoughts was 'oh thank goodness, we're going to get along' cause we were all laughing wildly on our first night together. And actually we do have some seriously funny people within our group of 6 students.
Then I realised Perth was ridiculously hectic. Maybe because my DTS was all about children and in Africa, so basically love and children were the lowest common denominator, it seems so cruisy now compared to this base. My average work day begins at 8am with work chores and we can have classes till 9pm at night. I only have one night free a week and that's tuesday. The lowest common denominator here is probably vision and drive, but it makes it much less comfortable to live with.
However, I do have great news. There were two parts of my week that I hated facing every time and this week they were redeemed from the pits. the background of the first is this; I have two leaders - Ben is the main one and Katie is assisting leading - and a one-on-one is normally where I would meet with a leader to talk about my week, but actually mine was a two-on-one which felt more like the Gestapo. I already have trouble sharing deeply when I know it's going to be dissected and fed back to me, and to have it twice over was just painful. But hooray! this week it was just Katie and we actually chatted for 2 hours even though she was lying on the couch in pain.
The other thing is thursday night evangelism. This is where teams go out and talk to people on the street about God. My team went up to Midland, where I disliked every week cause I feel ineffectual and often can't even find anyone to talk to. So the first night we went, I popped into an old folk's home and asked is we could come back and tonight we finally did! we just sang a lot of the old hymns like amazing grace, then chatted to people. I spoke to a feisty old lady from Yorkshire in England who told me about how she biffed her sister. Katie sang a solo - his eye is on the sparrow - then spoke about Abraham and how no one is ever too old for God to care about or use. I thought that so many of the people were too far gone in dementia to understand what she was saying, but at the end I look across and one old lady was crying!
The most touching part of the night was when we went into a ward where a lady was so far gone in dementia that she was extremely unresponsive and sort of frozen. We were told to try with her especially cause she had been a very active Christian and they hoped the music would get through. So we sang 'Amazing Grace' and 'How great thou art' and she kind of smiled, her eyes began following us and she began moving. At the end she wouldn't let go of Katie and we had to pry her out of her grip!
So I am learning, and although the adjustment was fairly hard, it's getting better.
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