I woke up really tired, but I had to repack everything and be out of my room by 8:30. I didn't eat breakfast and we didn't end up getting everything packed and leave on time, so we got to EPIC after 9. When we got there, we had our strand groups. We each had to give our presentations of what we had learned over the week. I thought they would be extremely boring and repetitive since there was about 10 girls giving talks on the same part of the bible. It wasn't as repetitive as I though it would be. Since I didn't have much time to prepare my talk, due to the Prayer Walk and wanting to spend time with people at Nathalie's party and because it was my last night with everyone before leaving, I only prepared an outline for what I wanted to say. It was alright because some other girls just had outlines too. I had the audience of my talk as Christians that are returning to faith. One girl gave me feedback about my talk and said that I seemed good to do that kind of talk because I seemed very caring. I had been thinking about my audition for Survivor and how people's initial perception of me is completely different than I actually am, so this made me laugh a lot (in my head, of course). We then took a group picture, but one girl had to leave before today so the leaders had taken her picture to photoshop in. They took our emails to send the picture, but I never got it...
We then had the final main session. I couldn't find Katie, Rohan, or Tom before it started, so I sat with Nathalie and Monica because I had found them.
Richard Chin was the speaker and the theme of his talk was to go make disciples. On the way out I had found Katie, Rohan, and Tom. We all went to eat lunch, but where the WA group was supposed to eat was outside and it was raining. We all ended up going to the race track at EPIC and ate in the bleachers under the cover thing. We had sandwiches, and I had gotten the meat thinking it was turkey... it was ham, so I just ate the bread. (the colouring looked like turkey!) I also ate some watermelon. We then got a group picture of the WA group and a picture of the eight of us from the Tinney's house.
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Photo courtesy of Jon Wan.
(I'm near the top right) |
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Eddie, Ben, Nathan, Chris
Monica, Katie, me, Nathalie
Photo courtesy of Katie |
After lunch, we broke into our mission groups so that we could travel there. My mission group took Gemma to the train station in Sydney. We then found that one Erica's luggage had gotten on the wrong bus. Erica, Frank, and Jack waited behind for Henry (the other bus) to come and drop it off. The rest of us took the train to Wentworth Falls. There were some beautiful sights from the train. The train was also double decker, which was cool. Katie and I mostly listened to our ipod/zune, but we also talked to some of the others on our mission. Our mission team consisted mostly of Murdoch students, but we had a few others from different Unis that didn't have enough people for their own mission. At one point, Jon Wan said that AFES really stood for Australia's Fastest Engagement Service instead of Australian Fellowship of Evangelical Students. I don't remember what brought this up, but it made me laugh. I guess there's something about getting a bunch of Christians together, since the same could be said about Hope. (Ring by Spring, anyone?) Kat pointed out that it worked for her since next month she is marrying someone that she started dating around NTE time last year.
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| Photo courtesy of Katie |
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| Photo courtesy of Jon Wan |
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| double decker train |
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Rocking out on the train
Photo courtesy of Jon Wan |
When we got to the train station in Wentworth Falls, Steve, Jo, and someone else picked us all up and took us to the church. We had pizza and garlic bread for dinner. They also told us what Billets we were staying with. I was with Nathalie and Bec. Sadly Katie wasn't with us. We stayed with Vanessa and Rodney who had a 4 1/2 year old son named Sebastian. Rodney wasn't home that night, though. Sebastian was hilarious and the title comes from him. At one point on the way there he asked each of us if we were tired. He forgot he had asked Bec and asked her twice. He then started asking inanimate objects if they were tired, and then they would answer saying, 'No, I'm gonna kick your butt!'
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Photo of Nathalie and Sebastian I
took from Bec's facebook |
It was very eventful when we got to their house... the key broke! Vanessa had put the key in the door and started to turn it, but it snapped in half! She called Rodney to see what to do, but there was nothing he could do because he was gone for the night. Vanessa then checked the other doors around the house to see if there was another way to get in to unlock the door. She then ended up calling someone that helped her break into her house. Their front door has a multi-panelled glass thing, so they broke one and unlocked the door. The whole time Sebastian kept worrying about getting in and it was so funny. The sleeping arrangements were a double bed with a bathroom in a room downstairs and a single room upstairs. Since Nathalie wanted it and she was the oldest, she got the single room upstairs and Bec and I shared the room downstairs. They also had a cute little dog named Maybelle.
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