Trip to the Zoo!

Today Angelique and I decided it would be a perfect day to go to the zoo! So we trekked to the Harbour and took a ferry over to Manly Island to visit Taronga Zoo! Although it was a tad pricier than we thought, the experience was definitely worth it. We had such a good time, just us, getting out of the city and doing something new! We saw tons of animals, and neither of us have been to a zoo in SO long so we were really excited. The first animal we saw were the giraffes and we got VERY excited. That was definitely a highlight. What a cool creature! Magnificent and perfectly created. What an awesome God we serve.

Not much more to say about this, just thought I would include a picture and give a quick update to say that my break this week has been relaxing and fun! Hanging out with lots of friends and just building relationships. Back to school on Monday, but I can't believe it's less than 2 months til I come home for the summer break! AH!

New Season Approaching

Sorry that it's been a while since my last blog/update! I sometimes forget how many people are reading this to stay in touch and updated on my life! It's really encouraging, by the way. :)

It has been, as usual, very busy around here. After Easter, we had a week off and I didn't end up doing anything special like I thought I was going to. But it was a good week of relaxing and getting refreshed from a busy weekend. Then it was back to classes and normal routine, as well as some big assessments that were due! Angelique and I found a Christian bookstore and trained over to it on a Saturday morning and spent the day working on our assessments. There was a nice cafe in there as well, so of course we got some coffee and breakfast too! There was no internet there, so it was easy to focus ;)

Everyone is getting their plans in place for living arrangements next semester... Almost everyone from my intake are moving out of their flats and finding cheaper accommodation with different people! It's gonna be a hectic week when we all move out. I am planning on moving into a 3 bedroom flat with 4 other girls (1 girl will have her own room and the rest of us will share) and hopefully that will be happening mid-to end of June. We're all really excited about it, even though it will be a bit of a hassle. I think God is going to challenge & stretch all of us in this new living arrangement but I think it will definitely be rewarding as well. A time to grow new relationships and continue to water old ones!

The last couple weeks I've had some particularly good/challenging classes in Old Testament and Personal Leadership. Goal-setting was one thing that really stretched me. I had to plan out 4 weeks and incorporate things into my life that I felt were "necessity" and take out things that didn't fit in. It was hard to stick to my plan for the weeks that I scheduled all the time, but overall it wasn't too bad. I'm trying to eat healthier and exercise more too... It's so easy to eat here when there's nothing else to do! haha.

Otherwise, I think that's about all that's been new around here! Nothing tooooo crazy. Oh! I got a free iPhone from a friend who doesn't use it anymore! So that's been pretty sweet, not gonna lie! :) Yep, that's all folks! :)

Easter & Break

Hello again! Easter is just around the corner and that means it's getting busy around here again. Hillsong (city campus) is renting out the Sydney Entertainment Center for Good Friday service and also Easter Sunday service! That's 9000 seats that we're trying to fill! We've been doing this cool initiative to invite people to the services where we do Random Acts of Kindness. Once we do the act, we give a business card that simply has a cross = love (where the cross is a symbol and love is a heart). Then the back of the card says This Is Love and gives a website which isn't directly hillsong. So it's kinda cool and gets people to a site which then explains why they were given that act of kindness and talks about Easter, etc. There have been some pretty cool stories with that so far!

Next week, Monday and Tuesday are public holidays here, and then we have Wednesday-Friday off of school! It will be a nice week to relax and catch up on sleep... Perhaps take a day trip somewhere south and hit the beach for the day! I'm really looking forward to just having absolutely nothing. Besides work... which is good because it's paying my rent! (yay bills! haha)

Another cool thing that I did recently was started to write the first song I've written since I've been here! That's pretty crazy for me as I love to write music at home a lot... I just don't have ready access to a piano or guitar here, so it's more difficult. But that was really refreshing to just write and get out some of what's inside (on the musical side of things!). I think my friend Angelique and I are going to try to write a song together for the college's talent show called The Box which is coming up in May. We're both pretty excited about that too :)

Anyways, I think that's about all for now. Besides Easter and the break, nothing is really new over here! Just keeping up with classes, friends, and God! Much love...

Refresh.

These past 2 weeks have been ones of refreshment for me. As my relationship with God grows, so does the amount that I hear His voice speaking into my life. There has been so much going on here, and with help from The Big Guy upstairs, I really feel as though I've been making good decisions about different things/circumstances that He has put in my life. I'm learning more and more that when I put time and effort into my relationship with Him, He WILL speak to me.

I started reading "The Power of a Whisper" by Bill Hybels today (thank you Linda Lesperance!!) and it is SO good. I was only going to read one chapter, but I couldn't put it down. Some of the key things that really stuck out to me were:
1) Whispers from God can be dangerous and costly. If we want to hear from Him, we also must be willing to sacrifice.
2) Our God is a communicating God. He is relational and he is near.
3) The issue isn't whether or not God is speaking; it's whether we will have ears to hear what He says.
These things really are making me think more about God's whispers on MY life. Maybe He will/is calling me to do something involving sacrifice. I know I just need to have the ears to hear what He's saying, and be open to the things that he may be calling me to do.

On a little bit of a lighter note... school is going really well! I'm doing well on all of my assessments (aka: assignments) and my "worship band" just had our first performance! It went really well -- it was just fun to jam out on a stage with a live audience and get a feel for the other 3 performances we'll have to do this year! Now we know what to expect and can prepare accordingly. Working in a band setting without chord charts is really helping me learn better how to play by ear and figure things out with a group of people who all have different and unique ideas of how the song should sound. It's been a really good experience! :)

I'm starting to feel a bit sick (sneezing, congested, etc.) so if some of you would keep that in your prayers it would be much appreciated! The weather is changing slowly here, so that could be part of it. Although I've got to say, it's a beautiful time of year in Australia! I can still wear a t-shirt outside, but there's a nice breeze that comes through so it's really the perfect temperature... I promise I'm not rubbing it in... haha ;) Anyways, i'm off to eat some American Kraft Dinner (Mac n Cheese) that was shipped to Angelique from the homeland! mmmm... Much Love!

A Trip to the Blue Mountains!

Hello again! Well, I just got home from a 3-day trip to the Blue Mountains with a few friends... As I said, we had a few days off after Colour Conference so we decided to rent a little cabin/cottage (very low-budget haha) up North a bit, and just get away from the "bubble" we live in here! It was a really nice getaway. The first night we were there we walked down the road a ways from our cabin and found a place called Govett's Leap. It was a lookout point over the Blue Mountains and it was absolutely breath-taking. Here's a snapshot of what we saw, although it doesn't do it justice:
We spent out first evening just going through a couple of trails in this area and taking in the amazing view. We took a BILLION pictures (check it out on facebook if you can!) and also just took a moment to pray together on the top of a cliff. It was a beautiful, magnificent moment. It just all hit me at once... Something this beautiful could never just "come into being." And this is only a fragment of God's masterpiece. It takes my breath away.

The six of us that went on the trip (from left to right: Trey, Me, Kyle, Frankie, Rand, and Angelique) had just decided at the last minute we wanted to take the opportunity to get away and experience a bit more of Australia. It was really nice and refreshing, and we have a ton of memories that will last a long, long time. :)

Other than the Blue Mountains trip, I am going back to normal classes starting tomorrow. It will be interesting as I feel I haven't been in regular school for a couple weeks now due to Colour Conference. Gotta get back into the swing of things now! Nothing major coming up anytime soon... Just back to school and back to the norm! I will blog again soon when I have more to say... Sometimes it's hard to figure out exactly what to write about! Anyways, will be in touch again soon! Sending my love...

Colour Conference

Wow it has been crazy here lately! We just came out of Colour Conference 1 and are headed quickly into Conference 2. Colour Conference (for those that don't know) is Hillsong's major Women's Conference that they do every year. It is a BIG deal here. Conference 1 was held in the Sydney Entertainment Center which holds approximately 9000 people. Every student was allocated to serve in a specific area for the 3 days of the conference. I was originally assigned to Refresh which was a fancy way for saying that I would be cleaning. However at the last minute they cancelled that team because the center actually had people to do that instead. So our team was reallocated to Snack Packing. We had to fill bags with a few snacks for the last 2 days of conference for the women. We packed around 17,800 snack bags. CRAZY! But it was really actually fun because we created assembly lines and just got the chance to get to know people we didn't really know yet! I met a few people from the Hills campus who are really cool. It's gonna be good to know people there so that I can go visit that area and see more of Australia! :) Anyways, besides packing snack bags I also got the opportunity to be in the "opener" for both Thursday and Friday of the conference. Essentially, I got to be one of the people on stage in front of 9000 people in a short song/performance to start off the session. It was really awesome! Here's a picture of the stage -- not the best quality, but better than nothing!

So I got to sit in for a BIT of conference but not that much. It was really all about serving for us, and it was a really cool experience. Conference 2 is coming up in a couple of days and it's going to look a bit different as I don't think the first years are part of the actual conference... Not 100% sure at this point but I will update you after it's over!

Otherwise things here have been good! It's been a weird schedule the past couple of weeks because of Colour, so I feel like I haven't really been in school too much. After this week is over I have 3 days off and I think a bunch of us are going to go do a bit of sightseeing! Not sure where exactly at this point, but again, will inform you upon my return where I went and what I did! :) The week after that, everything will be back to normal class schedules. 

Anywhoooo, not too sure what else to blog about right now... But if you have any questions, feel free to ask and I'll answer them to the best of my ability :) Hope all is well over there. Missing you all!

It's Been a While!

Hello everyone! Sorry for the lateness of this blog... I guess I became busy and distracted and forgot about my updates! I will try not to let that happen again... :)

So much has happened since the last time I blogged, so I will just try to condense it a bit! First of all, my normal class schedule has commenced, and it's been really great! I was asked to be a "tutorial host" which means I'm just the go-to person for my tutorial classes. There is a tutorial that goes with each lecture, just so that we can be in smaller groups to further discuss what we learned in lecture, or if we need help with our assessments (aka: assignments). So that's been going really well too! Our tutorial groups stay the same for the whole semester (or maybe the year... i'm not sure) so we get to know our group of 25 people pretty well! I think it's an awesome idea because you really start to build community within that!

One of my classes is Worship Band/Music Excellence. This class is based around learning to work together in a band setting. So within our tutorial groups, we were divided into 2 bands (yes, quite large bands!). For our first assessment, we had to choose 3 songs out of an allotted 6 and learn them together in order to perform them in about 3 weeks from now! We have one class that is dedicated to rehearsing each week, and then outside of that we have to find our own time to rehearse. So far, it's going really awesome. My band is super talented... Actually, everyone in my "in-take" (the people that came at the same time as i did) are really talented. It's pretty awesome!! So as far as classes go, things are really good! I have a few assessments due on Monday (2 days from now) so I have to finish those up tonight. They're not too hard yet, but we do have to keep a Practice Journal to record what we're practicing each week, which is good for my procrastinating nature! haha.

Tonight at church I played piano for Kids Worship for the first time! It was really fun, and an awesome opportunity that I got to play already! I guess that isn't the most usual occurrence for new students, which made me feel kinda good :) although, it's most likely because I'm a piano major and they need us haha. Either way, it was awesome! The kids are really cute and super fun to play with and worship with! It's cool to see how God is touching their lives already at such a young age, and seeing them respond is really amazing. I get to play piano again tomorrow morning for their service again, so I'm looking forward to that.

I suppose that's my life here in a nutshell right now! Things are still awesome with my roommate and flatmates! I'm still meeting more new people and developing the relationships I already have. Community is such an awesome thing :) Miss you all at home, and always feel free to comment on here, send me a facebook message, or send me an email and fill me in on your lives as well!!

Love you all!