Last Monday we started out extremely positive and Satan slowly moved in to annoy us and break us down. We were both fasting for daylight hours so by the afternoon our resources were low. My guitar student was super cheeky and difficult, which seriously rocked my boat. El was a gem and encouraged me with some great ideas to get him to practice more. On the plus side, his mom paid me for two months worth of lessons in full! Some much needed cash – as you’ll read…
On Tuesday I had two young adults cancel on us for the camp – which was not what I wanted to hear. Work was pretty mediocre for both El and I and I managed to get all the printing done for our camp booklets. In the evening we’d been invited to dinner with Ant and Nadia, so I’d been looking forward to that all day, especially since we’d been fasting! We got to their place in good time and were early for once… They have a tiny, tiny place but have really done a nice job of setting it up. Nadia cooked a fantastic meal which was followed by a delicious chocolate fondue for pudding. Anthony whipped out his PS2 gaming console and steering wheel/pedal controls to show me his racing game. They have a massive flat screen TV with some impressive MISSION speakers and since the size of the apartment finds you sitting right in front of these speakers, the gaming experience is awesome. We all took turns in driving a car at about 200mph through a busy street where the aim was not to crash but take as many other cars out as possible. It was so much fun and just what El and I needed to lift our endorphins for what happened on Wednesday night.
Wednesday went well and I had called two young adults (Jeanine and Ryan) who hadn’t filled in camp forms yet and confirmed that they would be at homegroup and would sort out the final stuff for the weekend. In the middle of the afternoon I was working in the office and stretched behind my chair and hurt my neck – the same old injury that Aunty Penny physio’d for me last year. So that got me stressed and in pain. Then when El got home Paul’s dogs were in the front garden (which we have to drive through to get to our cottage) and so she had a hard time getting through both gates without their dogs eating ours. So we were both on edge when Honey and Pooh decided to have massive fight – fortunately they didn’t injure one another but their vocal chords painted a very different picture of what happened. Then, I got an sms from Jeanine saying that they couldn’t come on the camp anymore, followed by another saying that they couldn’t make home group either. Then I scalded one of our pots and burnt the rice for our supper, this was followed by the arrival of Themba, who hadn’t bathed in several days and requires a great deal of attention as his English isn’t great and he’s a little slow on understanding simple concepts. El pulled out another pot and started the 40 min process of cooking the rice again (remember that we hadn’t eaten the whole day yet). I realized that Honey was not well as she was growing even more ill tempered with everyone and wouldn’t eat, so I called the vet and she told me to give her half a panado! Themba had bought himself a cellphone which was annoying because he doesn’t even have enough money for rent, let alone food and parafine and now he’s bought himself a really budget phone! He had 12 messages that he couldn’t read so I showed him how and they were all “please call me” so he proceeded to send them back… So, when written down, it may not seem that bad but with our diminished patience and everything hitting us within the span of about 2 hours we felt the attack! We decided to postpone home group and took the night off to regroup with one another and pray.
Thursday started off pretty well and both El and I had much better days, I fetched the woolies food with Paul in the afternoon and El and I had a final camp meeting in the evening. The meeting went really well and we all encouraged one another as the other leaders had been under attack as well and we all needed the comradery of the meeting.
Friday was camp day and I received three more cancellations! Plus, Honey was really not looking well (despite the panado…) so I took her to the vet and found out that she had billary. Fortunately we’d caught it really early and her four injections (yes, 4!!) sorted her out. Satan really was doing his bit well… but God was doing His bit even better! I made a decision a couple of months back that we would have the camp – regardless of how many kids came. The church hasn’t had a youth camp in about 7 years, so anything would be a great start. By 16h30 everyone was at the church and all the cars were packed so we headed out to the beautiful Magalies Mountains in Christian convoy. Our first night was awesome and we had such a good response from the kids and young adults.
Saturday’s highlights were the obstacle course and the Weakest link. We ran the obstacle course in two waves, the kids in the morning and young adults in the afternoon. I’d spoken to the camp facilitator and told him that we had allotted 1.5 hours for the course but only had 8 young adults – would he be able to fill the full time? Well, he didn’t realize that of those young adults there were 6 ladies… so the course took almost 2 hours!!! El and Mike organized the Weakest Link and El was Fiona. Everyone loved it and were talking about it the next day. Mike did the graphics for the projection and we had a little animated Weakest Link vibe on the wall with the points accumulating just like the banking in the show – it was very cool. We worked with teams instead of individuals and a point scoring system that allowed groups to stay in the whole time, they just lost all their points if they were voted the weakest link. After that we had a bonfire which was followed by an almighty thunderstorm. It was pretty awesome because the wind and rain only came about 40 mins after the lighting started so we sat outside in the calm watching the lighting. When the wind came it was incredibly strong and we literally all just went running to the dorms and hopped straight into bed!On Sunday we had a church service together and then when on a nature walk in the mountains (well, more like hills…). We arrived home after packing and leaving around 15h00 and El and I slept for about 3 hours. The rest of our evening was spent unpacking. We discovered that Roo had a large bump on her neck, which we thought was a cyst, but turned out to be a haemotoma! So we took her off to the vet to have that lanced and the vet said that it was time for her to be neutralized… so that will be happening next week. I’m beginning to think that Vets make a lot of money of El and I… I supposed the Horners may disagree though…
Ciao, have a rocking week!
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