Marathons, Cows and Funny Old Ladies

Even since I was a kid, I’ve had the desire to get in a car with a full gas tank and then see how far it would go until it ran out of gas. I know that this would be an incredibly senseless, absolutely idiotic, and completely inappropriate act of ultimate stupidity. But it sure would be fun! However being the sensible person that I am, (ha ha) I doubt I would ever do anything to that extent without a qualified professional at my side (and I’m not talking about the type that says things like “hey hold my beer and watch this!”) Since I can’t safely do this, I have decided instead to run a marathon. Made the connection? Although we marathoners don’t really want to admit it, it’s basically the same type of idea. You start out with a full tank of “gas”, and you see how far that gets you. For me I hope that’s the full 26.2 (43.3K for all you Aussies) miles. I have decided to do the Great Ocean Road marathon in Australia which will take place in less than….. 2 days! I’ve done the training these past couple of months and will see if I have enough “gas” to finish it. So wish me luck!

Other than training for marathons’ I’ve been pretty busy. Since I’ve last written in here (it’s been ages) I’ve been back to Texas to visit. I knew immediately that I was home when I heard things like, Ma’m, Sir, Mr. and Mrs. It felt even more like home when I began to hear phrases like, “man you should really try these fried green beans because they’re amazing”, “now Hannah if this cow charges you don’t worry because you just run and I’ll put my hand on her head to stop her (my dad), and “I made bacon cookies!” It was great to hear the Texas accent again, shoot guns, ride 4-wheelers, go to my church, have Mexican food and buy things that were under $5. The most exciting and surprising was probably going to the nursing home. Seriously! I went to visit my lady nursing home friend back in my college town. But she wasn’t in her room and her name tag had been removed from the door. Uh oh. Seeing these types of things make one awfully nervous in a nursing home. However, I breathed a sigh of relief when I was told that she had switched rooms. When I found her sitting in her room I was surprised that her roommate was a man. Upon further inspection I realized that this man was my other nursing home friend I used to visit. Then I saw her give a big smile and utter the words “we done went and got married!” And she’s 93! Then she proceeded to show me photos of their wedding. It was the sweetest thing! I was incredibly happy for them and it was amazing to see the positive change in both of their moods. It was also slightly funny with phrases like “We don’t fight b/c I do what she tells me too and I’m scared of her” or “well he had another lover but…….she died!” It was great to see my family, friends and of course Stephen but it went incredibly fast. And I never saw one single person as much as I wanted to! I spent three weeks at home. This means that I was jest lagged a total of five weeks! As soon as I got used to being home, I got on an airplane (23+hours) and flew back to Australia where it took me another 2 weeks to recover. It was bearable due to the fact that I absolutely love flying. I love airports, layovers and the long 16+ hour flights. You meet so many neat people and what other time are you able to sit down for 16 hours with nothing required of you but to read a book or watch a movie? And you don’t even have to get up to get your food because people bring it to you. I love it! I had a 6 hour layover in L.A Airport but I loved every minute of it (except for whenever I almost tripped over my chair)

I’m still at “uni” and I enjoy what I’m learning. Uni is the name Australians call college because they call high school college so it can get quite confusing. On Wednesdays I have a 6 hour Christian theology class! 6 hours! When I first heard about having to sit in class for 6 hours I wasn’t exactly happy. However, over the weeks this class has become one of my favorite classes I’ve ever taken and I actually look forward to Wednesdays. The Christian theology here is so much more liberal than back home and I have some issues agreeing with the professors about particular things. But I still enjoy looking at different sides of an issue and it’s been great to learn about. I would be more at ease if the professor wasn’t always making negative comments about those “Southern Baptists from Texas”. He has no idea that this is where I come from. I also have one class that I find hilarious because when I look around I find that I’m an American, at an Australian college, surrounded by majority Asian students, listening to a Germen talk about British Christian Theology. Talk about culture exposure! By the time that I’m done with all my college courses I should have an Associate’s degree in ministry. I’m not too sure what I’ll do with that back in the states but who knows where God will lead?!

The youth ministry stuff at the church is going great! I finally feel completely at home with everyone at the church. They’re like my family away from home. The thing that really took off these past few months is something I started a while back called “girls group” (mainly because my creative juices weren’t flowing when I created the name). It is…. well you guessed it…. a group for girls! It started out 8 months ago as a failed attempt to get kids from a non church background to come to my meeting. I was in charge of it and expected over 20, maybe 30 youth to come to the initial get together. I had all this stuff set up and all these games prepared. I was pretty excited and nervous about it but only 2 girls from the church came. I did my best to stay positive although I was honestly a bit discouraged. Actually quite a bit. Something kept telling me to just continue with the group although there were only 2 people doing it. Well it wasn’t something but someone and more specifically God. Long story short I decided to just make it a group for girls where we cook, study the bible and have fun. Then they started inviting their friends and now it’s grown quite a bit but more importantly there have been some of the best relationships formed with myself, each other and most notably God. It’s been so great getting to know all the girls. Girls from a non-church background started to come and it’s been amazing to see their curiosity and growth. It’s awesome what God’s doing there and splendid the way it arose out of an apparent disappointment. I think that’s sometimes like life and the way God works. He has a lot of neat plans but a lot of times it isn’t exactly the way we think it’s going to go. In fact it hardly ever it. We just need to remember that and keep plodding along in the midst of seemingly obvious “set backs” to see what happens! If there’s any doubt over God’s power I think all you need to do is look at stuff like this, where you have ill-equipped leaders (speaking of myself. I’ve never even so much as led a mini small group before plus I typically burn all the food we cook), bad circumstances, and set backs all around. Anybody with a brain can see that it’s an obvious fail but somehow, and it still amazes me, it all works out and big things happen.

Funny thing of the week: The following is a conversation I had with a lady at the fruit shop I work in.

Mother: Oh you have such a different accent where are you from? (every other customer asks me this)
Me: Texas
Mother: Oh that’s nice. My son was born there.
Me: Oh really! Wow! And have you ever made it there yourself!

Epic fail. BTW this happening actually made it in the daily Australian newspaper in a section titled “Overheard” where people write in to report all the dumb funny stuff that they overheard people say that say. So I’m famous b/c I made it in a newspaper!