Team RYLA 06 - Sunday

Sunday proved to be an interesting day. All the Christians (and there were a lot more than i thought there were!) gathered on Sunday evening for a makeshift worship time, just praying and sharing, it was nice. We agreed to have a prayer meeting to start the day everyday at camp.

On the Sunday Night we were given the large task of putting together a Dinner for the Rotarian men. It was also an extremely lonnnnng night!!! All of us ended up grovelling our way into our beds. It was a very long and drawn out night, lots of waiting around and sorting through plans, explaining how a Rotary meeting ran etc. and our eyeballs started hanging out of our heads!!! We were required to organise ourselves into teams of logistics, program, entertainment, decor, etc etc.....we were also asked to nominate people to do the job of MC and SAA's (Sargeant At Arms) . So it was a big decision whether i wanted to be an SAA or apart of the entertainment team. I had Sarah nominate me for SAA. We got up, had to give 4 words why we should be nominated and then all trekked into the kitchen like slaves with a ball and chain to wait while the rest nominated. Whilst in the kitchen, it came to my attention that we were being voted for the role of MC. This wasn't what i wanted to do. Thankfully i wasn't chosen as it but again i had Sarah nominate me for SAA, something which i thought i was being nominated for before. This time, i thought, i would take more of a salesperson approach about why i should be nominated. Up on the stage i said this:

I'm crazy (which i used before) but the reason you should nominate me is because i am good at engaging old men's attention!

It seemed to get a bit of a laugh, thank goodness, otherwise i woulda looked like an idiot! Away we trekked again into the kitchen and waited while everyone else voted. We came back out and i honestly did not expect anything so i sat back down....low and behold, i was chosen as one of the SAA's for the Tuesday night dinner. There were two boys and two girls chosen as SAA's, Scuba Steve, Lil, Luke and myself. It was such a thrill and definate comfort and added bonus to have Luke on the team. Mostly because i was familiar with him and know what he's like to interact with.

What does an SAA do you might ask? Well they are kind of like the Jesters of the dinner. For those of you who don't know, Rotary Dinners are formal and there are formalities that are followed. The SAA's are supposed to add light humour to the evening and make people feel comfortable and relaxed. They also lead a section of the dinner to enforce fines. A light-hearted way of raising money for a good cause.

Our fines were done very last minute, all the group meetings we had were relatively unproductive for the SAA's and mostly focused on the MC's getting it right. So Luke and i ran around crazily gathering silly things to 'fine' people with, gathering 'dirt' on well-known Rotarians (which should've probly been done during the meetings!). Meanwhile, during the whole preparation process, i was starting to wonder what i'd gotten myself into and wanted desperately to opt out because i didn't want to be seen as a try-hard comedian loser....insecurities overwhelmed me leading up to the dinner and something that Fleur (RYLA admin leader) said to me (something along the lines of people voting me in because they believed in me, and thought i'd do a good job) really made me stick it out and persevere. So i did...

It was funny, coz at the dinner, each RYLArian sat at the table with the Rotary club they'd be sponsored by but our Rotarians didn't come!!! So we had two of the mothers sit with us. In the end it was a 'salvo' table because the two who weren't salvos didn't sit at the table for the whole night as they were serving meals etc most of the night. It was amusing. So thanks to Helen Nowell and Julie Campbell (the cloned Salvo Celeb Elyse talks about) for making it a special night for the RYLArians from the Campsie club.

The night went off without a hitch and we managed to raise over $300 for our nominated youth program - the Youth Insearch Team.

We also had a guy called Ron Lee talk to us about more stuff. I think he was giving us a lesson on communication and how we could become better communicators. He was actually quite fun, although there were a few things i didn't exactly agree with, but that's ok, he still had a lot of relevant stuff to say. One thing that stuck out to me with alot of the speakers was the common theme of serving others and making sure we're always looking out for others. The reason it struck me the way it did i guess was because they all lacked a faith in God. When you have a faith in God, serving others follows on from the teachings of Jesus. It was interesting how they had that same purpose, but lacked a belief in Christ, it confused me.

I enjoyed listening to him because sometimes it's interesting listening to someone who believes in something totally different to yourself. I find i learn alot from people like that. it doesn't necessarily mean i believe what they're saying but it surely educates me about other people. I was really engaged and 100% attentive to his activities (except the 'martial arts' ones, which were dumb because, they were more self defense rather than cool karate moves!!!)

He did some skit activities with some volunteers, that was funny to watch. He also had some volunteers break some wood in a karate chopping way - think past the problem, i wasn't game enough to do it in fear of doing some serious wood slapping but other people actually smashed the wood in half!!! There was another excerise which scared the heebie jeebies outta me! He had a real arrow and positioned the point of it on his neck near his collar bones, right in the middle, he then had a volunteer apply enough pressure onto the other end of it so that it sat comfortably on his neck. After he was ready, he then counted to three and walked into the arrow!! Shrieks and gasps came from his captured, attentive audience as they thought he had just walked into his death. Before long we realised that he was still alive and had, in fact, snapped the arrow in half. To our astonishment and my temporary disapproval, he beckoned a volunteer to come and try it. I was mortified. I could just see someone killing themselves on this arrow. Great, weirdo camp! Lianne tried it and not surprisingly, was very uncomfortable with it and opted out - smart girl!!! The second volunteer, Kandis, attempted it and walked so fast into the arrow that Ron Lee even commented saying that most people don't usually walk into the arrow that fast - however, she snapped it in half as well! Craziness, absolute craziness?!

Either Sunday or Monday night, i ended the night by chatting with Sarah, Michael and Lorie....it was a great chat and i was highly educated by Lorie inparticular. WOW, is he a wealth of knowledge.....and it's not because his dad's a doctor!!!

Stay tuned for tomorrow's blog about Monday at camp RYLA...

Tink xoxo

God Gazing

I was spending a bit of time with God on the train today and read something really interesting. Perhaps it won't be as interesting for you as it was for me.

In my devotional book it said this:

"Jesus was always confident, always assured, always in the right place, doing the right thing at the right time."

It also said that he always lived in "the power of the Spirit" and always had an amazing spiritual freshness about him.

My guess is that his focus was continually on God without faltering. With a focus and devotion as strong and committed as that, why wouldn't he be all of those things and more.

This got me thinking harder.....if we're continually focusing and meditating on God without faltering, or at least trying to do that as much as we can, we too will have that same spiritual freshness. Our devotion to God won't go stale if we are always living for God, in his presence and striving to do the things he wants us to do.

I was reassured by that because so often my Christianity can seem to become stale, possibly because i've taken my gaze and my focus off Christ and onto myself. Jesus never did that! His focus was always on God! We will never become Christ-like or remain spiritually alive while the focus is on ourselves, it must always remain on the most alert and spiritually alive person in history and that is Jesus Christ, God.

Blew me away and it gave my day the hugest kick-start!

Tink xoxo

The Saugageness of It All

i have to blog this...

On Saturday night after Flayva (our 'once-a-month' youth church) i received a phone call from .... well actually, i don't know who it was. But i have my suspicions!!

This chick with a funny, but strangely captivating, accent rang to tell me that she was a sausage. That she was being served in a Berlin restaurant and that they were about to open for business and she was about to be eaten.

I had to ask what I could do to help her and she said i had to save her. I asked how and she said, i had to come to Berlin. I told her that i lived in Australia but she insisted that i come and save her, her voice was quivering and i could hear the tears and emotion in her voice. So i told her that i'd send my friend david over to Berlin to save her.

At that point, she accepted, and with a departing farewell, finished the conversation.

The conversation lasted for all of 10 minutes (sorry to those i told 20 mins - i fibbed) and half the time because of interrupted conversation and noise and her crazy accent, i couldn't understand or hear what she was saying. I think this almost caused her to get more teary and upset.

I know it was a prank from a friend but which friend i am yet to determine!!! I bet no-one else has ever been called or had a conversation with a sausage and how the sausage actually even had my number is beyond me!!!

Tink xoxo

Team RYLA 06 - Saturday - Camp Arrival

Alrighty, well, I've been essaying this blog for a while and now i think i'm up to about 50,000 words. It's a tad belated so what i've decided to do, instead of not writing, i'll blog it in a day by day process. So for every day that i blog this week, will be about one whole day of camp RYLA. It's the only way i think this blog is going to be blogged. Like one of my new friends from RYLA, procrastination is my middle name!

Soooo.....

Neil Gonslavez is the creator of "Team RYLA 06" and apparently he wants jackets to be made with this slogan strewn across the back of it.

So i thought it was a good title for a blog and seeing as though i haven't blogged for awhile, i may as well blog about the first day we arrived for the RYLA 2006 experience, enjoy the (week's long) ride.....

It was an extremely early morning on January 28th when 7 of us, Alan Hamad, Luke Nowell, Sarah Campbell, Anita Crown, Kylie Unicomb, Mary Taouk and myself set off on our trek to a camp called RYLA (Rotary Youth Leadership Award) along with 3, tightly crammed/squished, Rotarian men in the front seat, which was a sight in itself.

None of us knew exactly what to expect and, in fact, many of us didn't want to even be going at all but nonetheless there we sat, all thrown in together in a little white mini van heading to Stanwell Tops. Most of us knew each other but for Mary and Alan, it was a great 'getting to know you' trip down.

Once we arrived we registered, threw our things in the rooms we were allocated and headed back for the official opening (ahhh i can still imagine it as if for the very first time) and wasn't the official opening quite something. Many people hadn't even been to a Rotary meeting let alone the formalities of camp opening.....

Alot of us who were set to endure the week of camp were amused and fidgety, some wondering what the hell they'd got themselves into as we sat in front of a panel of "camp counsellors", camp directors and official Rotary people.

After we'd been welcomed into our little commune for the week, we then moved all the chairs and started playing games and things, which was a nice start. Very quickly we became acquainted with the people we'd get to know intimately during the course of the week. The first game we played was a 'who can do what' game - i'm guessing this was to display the different talents various people had and sort of to get to know each other better....i whistled loudly which seemed to draw people's attention towards me as you had to mark off your page who could do what. One of the talents we had to find was someone who could make the noise of a bunyip... ?????..... what the???

For the duration of the week we were all assigned to discussion groups which, if it was a Christian camp, which it wasn't, would most likely have been called biblestudy groups, which they weren't. So we set about our first activity in our discussion groups. What we had to do was present to the rest of RYLA what the name of our group was and introduce each member of the group, either by their interest or name or whatever.

And so that's how group SAKADALLA came to fruition. We rocked the house with our unprepared cheer leading squad. We came up with the name by creating an acronymn (i think that's what it's called) of our names. Sammie, Adam, Kandis, Adrian, Daniel, Alexandra, Liljana, Liz and myself. That was interesting.

I very much enjoyed the "Priceless" group, it was such a creative, awesome idea and has obviously stuck in my head, they each talked about an expensive obsession they had and then talked about the RYLA experience as being....you guessed it...priceless. i hardly remember any other ones except for the one where they acted out something about their personalities....all i remember was Anita sneezing alot....

That afternoon we had Greg Meyer speak to us. Yep, he was good, very animated. A yankee but not proud of that.....weird....but good speaker. We had to do an excercise with another RYLArian and say stuff like who are you and keep repeating it and why we were at RYLA and what we wanted to get out of it - you know the deal....anyway, i partnered up with a guy called Blake, absolutely lovely fellow, smile from ear to ear, as wide as the ocean. Now i'm really awkward with one on one conversations especially with someone i don't know from a kellog's cornflake! So we got started on the activity and as expected it was uncomfortable but then we both realised we were both passionate Christians and so had a completely different outlook on life and what we wanted to get out of it and RYLA. It definately put a spin on the activity! This led us into a really great conversation about where we were both up to in our Jesus Journeys and low and behold, the conversation became comfortable, perhaps because we were on the same spiritual level, who knows?! I was just buzzing after that conversation, it was soooooo good to know that there were other Christians at the camp other than us Salvos. There was some sort of calming safety knowing that you were in good company.

On Saturday night, we were left to amuse ourselves until we got so tired we went to bed. It was fun and it was a great way to start getting to know people at our own pace, not so force-fed. I found some people who knew how to play 500 which was the highlight of my night. Tim, Adrian and Lianne. Lianne was my partner, so it was kind of a boys against girls game. As they say, first impressions last and these people were great!!! It was tops beating the boys too - Lianne is the best partner for a 500 hundred game, she just totally rocked the joint!!! We kicked their butts!!!

So that's Saturday, first day of camp for ya....stay tuned this week for more exhilerating RYLA camp stories (i don't care if this bores you all to tears, i'm loving reliving every moment of it as i miss it sooooooo much!!!)

Bye for now
Tink xoxo

Remember the Word...

MOONCALF

Perfectly Imperfect

I read the below article and it really made me think, hope it makes you think about it too!

What gives us the right to consider someone else “deformed”? Everyday there is probably more than one supposedly “deformed” child born into this world. “Deformed” because maybe he is missing a body part, like an arm or leg. You know whom I’m talking about. Everyone will meet at least one “deformed” person, right? Wrong!!!!!! The reason I say this is because we are all the same in God’s eyes. In God’s eyes, no one is “deformed” or any synonym of the word deformed. Everyone is perfectly formed, because they are exactly the way God wanted and the way God made them.

I have this cousin named Geoffrey. According to doctors, his is “physically handicapped”. I don’t look at him that way though. What I see is a tangible blessing. The reason I say that is because if he falls, for instance, everyone comes running to assist him. His supposable disorder makes it seem as though everyone cares. It makes it seem like we actually use the loving ability God gave us.

Doctors and technology have misdirected anyone who considers someone else “deformed”. These doctors use technology to set the standards of human beings. These are the standards state that, “A human should have two legs, should have two arms, and those who don’t are physically deformed.” My opinion is different though! I believe that everyone was created to be “perfectly, imperfect”! I think everyone was created “perfectly” according to God’s wishes and will, yet everyone is “imperfect” because no one is the same! They were not created to correspond with any medical standards. So the next time you see that friend of yours that is supposedly “deformed”, stop and try to think of it in this “new perspective”. You might agree with me after you do.