Week Five Alive

Hello, hello =) It is a lovely Sunday night here in New Zealand it is about 9PM here, so it’s around 2 AM back home in Saskatoon then. We had a nice little barbecue tonight where we ate outside because the weather was gorgeous today. I hope none of you are freezing over there, last time I heard the snow had been cleared up, but perhaps it is back? It is getting nice and warm here, it is still spring though so it is not super super hot, but it is quite beautiful at this temperature. Anyways, I have not blogged in awhile so I have quite a few updates!

A week ago on Saturday Sheryl drove Kelsey, Amber and I down to Christchurch and we went shopping for the day! And while the 4 of us went shopping most others at the Crossing went for a small nature hike. Christchurch is a really nice city with a population about 100,000 bigger than Saskatoon, which is quite big for New Zealand. New Zealand has about 4 million people on it in total and their biggest city of Auckland has 1 million, so NZ is made up mostly of a bunch of small cities and towns. But yes it was a really good trip. We found some pretty sweet clothes throughout the 3 different shopping areas we visited and I got some stuff for ABS in April. While we were there we also stopped at the Cookie Time cookie factory. They are the company that has created the biggest cookie in the world; they used 5.1 tonnes of sugar, 2.5 tonnes of chocolate and 4.5 tonnes of flour to make it. Crazyness.

To get to Christchurch from where we live right outside of Geraldine it is about 1 ½ hour drive, so not bad at all. When we came home that same day for supper we had a relatively normal time at the crossing until nightfall. Angela, Amber, Kelsey and I had all gone to bed and Angela and I were just beginning to fall asleep when all of sudden Amber and Kelsey jump up on their bed and start screaming. They were yelling about how something was in the ceiling and you could hear it walking around and making noises. After that they ran downstairs to freak out to the boys who were awake in the formal lounge. Angela and I were so annoyed because we were so tired, but then I heard it making squeaking noises, it was so creepy so I left too and went downstairs. We all eventually came back up and we were trying to sleep but then all of sudden at random times it would start squeaking or walking around and we would freak out again. Then Cameron, who hadn’t gone to bed yet, walked in the room at midnight and since we were so on edge we were startled and began screaming. Haha she was so confused, I think we scared her too just because she didn’t expect that reaction.

Later around midnight we started hearing noises right by the windows, like the windows were shaking and we knew it wasn’t our rodent friend above us because we are not that slow. The guys were attempting to scare us, but it didn’t work very well. When Amber opened the window she heard one of them say “Ow!” and then we saw Bryan’s blue sweater flash across the yard. So it wasn’t too hard to figure out, but we didn’t know how exactly they got up that high to our windows on the second floor. That morning we found out that they had found a ladder, got a long stick and tied a broom to the stick to reach our windows. A lot of effort that didn’t really accomplish much, plus it was pouring rain while they were doing it. I suppose they can get an A for effort. That next day we went to a new church in Timaru called the Life Church and they gave us chocolate because we were visitors. A very good policy I must say.

That night all of us girls were quite determined to show the guys a worthy trick, but we needed some rope first. We went and asked Joseph for some rope saying we needed for our project coming up and that was enough for him to believe us, but he didn’t have any rope only wire, so we had to settle for that. So Amber, Kelsey and I woke up around 2:30 am and used the wire to tie it around the boy’s door handles that were adjacent to one another. Since the boys doors open inward they would not be able to open their doors in the morning because their handles are tied to a door across from them. The problem was the wire that we had to use was very rusty and old so it was quite noisy and we were afraid of waking the guys up so we did it quite quickly. At the time we thought we had tightened them well enough, but when the guys woke up the next morning they just opened their doors and the wire fell off. So we had an epic fail and they bugged us about that for a long time. Ah well, it was a good idea in theory. If only we had had some actual rope.

We didn’t have fellowship that Sunday night (where our teacher for the week comes and speaks and we have dessert) so our teacher for the week joined us the following morning on Monday. Our teacher this week was Richard Neville and he taught us through the book of Genesis. He was really good, as most of the teachers we’ve had so far are, and I never really knew there was that much to learn from Genesis in its original context and how it can be applied to us today. Our DVD lectures this week were from Russell Kelfer and it was about the life of Joseph, his message was quite good as well. Also we have a project coming up that is due in about 5 days on Friday to outline the “Progress of Redemption”, basically an overview of God’s plan shown through the bible. Kelsey and I are going to be presenting it as a puppet show haha so it should be fun.

On Tuesday this week we had girl / guy night. It’s where all the guys go spend some time together and all the girls go off and do the same. The guys all went on this mud racing track, had a steak and potatoes barbecue and then went possum and rabbit hunting haha quite a guy night. Our girls night was soooo good. We started off by going to Patti’s (the directors wife) and she made us some delicious appetizers with things like crackers, bread, dips, cheese, etc. We talked for awhile then had a light supper with salad, lamb and this cheese dish. We relaxed for about an hour then we had the most amazing dessert ever; we had a chocolate fondue fountain with shortbread, pretzels and every kind of fruit imaginable. We ate so much haha and then after that we did a foot spa while we watched Breakfast at Tiffany’s. The movie itself I didn’t think it was that great, but we talked through most of it anyways. It was a really good night though!

The good did not last long though; we woke up the next morning and noticed something quite different about the house… there were shoes everywhere! During the night the guys had taken one shoe from each of our pairs and hidden them all over the property. We spent the whole day looking for shoes; they put them in places like hanging on the deer antlers, behind a door, on a fire alarm, in a light, in a rubbish bin, in a vase, on mantles, on the ceiling, on the mailbox, in the umbrella bin and pretty much everywhere else.

The rest of the week was pretty chill just learning about God and hanging out with each other, nice and normal. That weekend the girls from The Crossing were invited to have some tea with the ladies from the first and second services at the church we attend in Geraldine called St. Andrews. It was a really good way to connect with the ladies there and the desserts they had there were amazing. They had things like caramel coconut balls, fruit shortbread pastries, raspberry cream filled pastries, fudge, cookies, lemon cake, caramel chocolate brownies, and even more I can’t remember. We ate so much, but it was quite worth it. Later that night after supper a lady named Louise from Tea called and invited us to come to her house for lunch after church on Sunday.

So today after church we went to Louise’s house for lunch. She has a beautiful acreage, as everyone here seems too, and we met her children Samuel, Esther, Grace and Faith and her husband Jason. They fed us a lovely lunch and they took us to this beautiful place called the Waihi Gorge. We have decided that this Friday coming up we are going with a bunch of us from The Crossing to camp there for a night, it’s about 15 minutes away from our school which is awesome =) .

I hope you are all doing well!

Love Love Love
Cara Lee