Amping for Getaway

It is officially the 4th year of Getaway since I have my heart to Jesus.
:D
Stoked!
However this blog will veer into slightly more trivial issues (though still so important) such as how to be completely prepared for Getaway 2011-12! :D :D :D

I have learnt from previous road trips that it is so important to bring MORE THAN ONE PAIR OF SHOES!!! I am so sorry about my wet, not great smelling sneakers that some of you had to endure. Must get jandals!!! asap!!

I'm so so keen to get a tan! And a new swim suit! (I'm thinking red/white polka dots?)
:D :D

Life is good at the moment, despite rejections from job interviews and the like, but hey!
Must.Increase.Faith

Content

This blog post is determined not to talk about work, money or anything akin to that.

I'M GON' TALK ABOUT HOW AWESOME JESUS IS!

I seriously doubt I would be here (maybe that's an overstatement) if it weren't for Jesus. He is my light, my saviour, just everything!

I cannot actually comprehend how VAST he is!

He takes away pain, and doesn't sugarcoat life but gives us a joy and determination that makes getting through life possible.

I have missed you!

Hey followers!!

I am so so so so sorry to have neglected my blog for...around five months!
I think of you always, you're never far from my heart!

So well what happened is that I got two, and then Three jobs all at the same time and was working manically, doing 53+ hour working weeks! If that is a fair excuse then I am excused.

I feel like God has humbled me, because what happened is that I Was doing million hour weeks, things were going swimmingly well (so I thought, I actually really on the way to burning out) I was paying large amounts off my debts at a time (due to a large debt) I was tithing sort of regularly, and I had extra money to do things that I wanted to do, for example, going to the movies... (more on that later..)

I did all this for a month all two, casually wearing myself into the ground, but rejoicing when Sunday came because not only was it my only day off it was also CHURCH!!! all day!!! :D :D :D

I did not realise that doing an occasional 14 hour day 7am - 10pm was not only bad for my health but also my mind set. You see, I was getting rather prideful, and "independent" relying on my income rather than God's grace. I am not against working a full week, but what I was doing was Overkill!!

So about God humbling me.
I am now working 16 hour weeks...sometimes more, sometimes less.
Gone is the large paycheck but also the figurative treadmill I was attempting to run on each day.
I feels strangely delightful to be able to sleep in until 10am, rather than forcing myself out of bed at 6am.
Also, it is so great to be able to hang around with wonderful people on a regular basis!
:)

I am a connect group addict, and because I was working some nights and such, I could not attend all of these. I am happy to say I am now back on my 4-5 connect groups a week swing.

On a not too unrelated note, I love working with my friend, fellow C3 attendee and manager Amy Chiles!
She has helped me amazingly. Thanks to her I work every monday at Quattro Cafe, situated inside Elim Cathedral of Hope. Mondays are my favourite day to work as I get to make lots and lots of coffee (which I love) and talk to awesome customers, some who come in every single day and order the exact same thing! And there are some who are oblivious that it is a cafe inside a church. :P

The other day it was raining, not heavily, just enough to warrant the use of an umbrella. Anyway I was walking to work and instead of listening to various songs on my mp3 I accessed youtube on my phone and played "Let it Rain" by Jesus Culture

Let it rain, let it rain.
Open the floodgates of Heaven.

I feel the rains of Your Love,
I feel the winds of Your Spirit,
And now the heartbeat of Heaven,
Let us hear.

Because we want to see You;
Show us Your Glory.
And we want to know You, Lord.

They're quite simple lyrics but very profound, and the whole experience was quite beautiful.

It is sweet, simple moments like that in life that I want to really treasure, and sometimes it is so easy to get caught up in the little annoying things and fixate on those.

The year is flying by, and soon I'll be 23. This is exciting and scary, and also weird! Weird because half the people I know think I'm 18 still ( or 16)
In fact, a new person at C3 a couple of months ago would not believe me about being 22, and I ended up showing him my drivers license!! O.O

Yeah...but that's worthy of another blog for another time!! Because I promise I will write more regularly, maybe. ;D

Because I really really love reading peoples' blogs, for example Holly May Bruce and Sophie Laughton Mutu, theirs have to be my absolute favourites!!

Maybe I should get a laptop???

But I'd rather pay my debts first, or getaway rego.


So, ABOUT GOING TO THE MOVIES.

This isn't that exciting, but I thought caplocks would liven things up a bit, plus I barely slept at all last night.

I have seen about a dozen (maybe more) movies this year alone.
Here are some that I have gone to watch.

The Fighter
Captain America
The Help
Friends With Benefits
Love and Other Drugs
The Change Up
Crazy Stupid Love
What's Your Number
Real Steel
Kung Fu Panda 2
Cowboys and Aliens
Something Borrowed
Horrible Bosses
Rise of the Planet of the Apes
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

WOAH, that's heaps!!!
I really do love going to the movies, so if you ever want to accompany me feel free to! (if you're not 50 :P)

I'm being kicked off this computer now, so yes!!
Goodbye!!
We shall talk again.

I got two jobs!

God has hardout blessed me with not one, but two jobs. Not only will this provide me with a good income (for the first time in four years) it will also enable me to be challenged, as in working in a busy environment, and being busy, which I love anyway!

Bring on the waiting of tables!!

Woo!

Is the End Near?

Hey fellow bloggers and bloggees!

It has been such a long time, and so much has been going on! I apologise for my lack of blogs.


Lately the book of Revelation and the End Times have been on my mind and heart.

It all began about two months ago while I was flicking through the bible as I do and my eyes saw this scripture:

Isaiah 24:18-20
"The floodgates of the heavens are opened,
the foundations of the earth shake.
The earth is broken up,
the earth is split asunder,
the earth is violently shaken.
The earth reels like a drunkard,
it sways like a hut in the wind;
so heavy upon it is the guilt of its rebellion
that it falls—never to rise again."

Now as most of you will know, we had a quite sizeable 7.1 magnitude earthquake in September 2010. This was frightnening for everyone!
Not long after this earthquake I would flick through my small pink bible at random and often come across passages that would bring up the topic of earthquakes.
However it was this scripture from Isaiah that had me the most captivated and I told many people about it.
On that monday night some months ago, I was at a connect group which is called Getting Real with God. I spoke of this passage I had sighted and that led to an indepth conversation about end times and the rapture and so on.
It is safe to say that since that converation I had a fear envelope that I simply could not shake! I would constantly think about the end times, and the likelihood of more quakes and so on. Natural disasters and a fear of the rapture would not leave my mind!

So....22/2/2011
This is a day I will not forget in a hurry, or ever in fact.
12:51, I was sitting at a desk on the 3rd floor of the Avonmore builiding out near latimer square on a lunch break. I hadn't eaten except for a flavoured latte because I had no food. The building started to shake, not too badly at first and then increased in violence. I thought nothing of it at first, and looking back it all seems like a big blur. But then the class realised it wasn't stopping and windows were smashing as well as pieces of the building fall off before our eyes.
It was then that I remember what our hospitality tutor Amber had said
"If there is another big earthquake it'd be more likely that the outside of the building will be damaged, not the inside. It's a safe building."
This provided a small comfort for a second but that soon faded as my classmates screamed and had expressions of utter terror on their face as the room swayed dramtically back and forth. I cowered under a desk along with everybody else and then ninja'd my desk closer to my classmates so I wasn't alone.
It was at this moment that I thought I actally might face death because I was certain the building was about to collapse under us. So I started praying for protection in between my screams of terror.
We went into the classroom next to us and our other tutor, Sean, shouted at us: "GET OUT! GET OUT!"
So we all mished down the stairs as quickly as possible.
The scene outside was like an apocolypse. Buildings on fire, buildings on the ground, people with blood pouring down them and all the while there was an eerie smog/smoke in the air.
We assembled in Latimer Square, at first I was trying to be cool and calm, and giving people hugs and reassuring them, but then I just lost it, I started sobbing. I felt like I would never feel happy ever again. I was certain that it must have been at least a magnitude 8 or higher, and when I got a tweet from geonet saying 6.3 I was very surprised. Then the aftershock came. It felt massive, and the ground lurched about a metre in one direction. I was certain that the end had come. I was bracing myself for a huge earthquake that would finish us all.
I know that sounds very melodramatic, but it is exactly how I felt at the time.

So about this fear, it was chasing me down ever since I'm not sure when, well ages anyway. It came to a head when I was at a prayer meeting a couple of weeks ago and I got a text from my bro saying: "Watch channel 3."
I then heard about the horrific events that had occurred moments ago in Japan, the huge 8.9 quake that was beyond comprehension, and the devastating 10 metre tsunami that had swept over Japan. There was talk of tsunamis in N.Z, and I felt very afraid.
As you can probably tell from the way my mind works thus far, I usually come to the worst conclusion first. It doesn't matter how small or big it is. So when I heard rumours of a tsunami for N.Z I was wracked with images of a humungous wave sweeping our house away and everything around it.

So what did I do? I did the only thing I could do, I prayed to God.

Life went on as normal (as normal as could be under the circumstances) and at a prayer meeting a week or so later I learnt that I could/should repent of my fear that was suffocating me, i.e, ruining my life. So I did that! Needless to say it helped a lot. It took some time to completely erradicate the fear but I just kept on giving it to God.

And about end times? Well I don't feel so fearful about them now, which is a huge relief, I even kind of look forward to them, maybe?! (Just a teeny bit perhaps :) )
I know that they're inevetible, and that there's not a lot I can do except live for God the best I can and talk with Him every single day.

Lately I'm been considering what to do next year. Even though I'm currently studying hospitality, I keep thinking of MTC, and might just do that. Time will tell. I would definitely love to be employed this year though. :)

Love you all! God Bless!
Kia Kaha Christchurch!

If you keep losing sleep

Like the title says, I reckon sleep is super important to have a good life!

The past couple of nights I have slept Really Weirdly. As in not being able to sleep until 1-2am then waking up at 4am then again at 6am. For someone who usually sleeps 8-9 hours straight no worries, this makes for a confused/unhappy camper.
After being at Getaway, which was AMAZING and deserves it's own blog post, I didn't sleep as much as I thought.

Anywho, I know this blog is strange and not the most in depth thing I've ever written but I am sleepy, haha.

On another note, I am getting my hair cut on friday! I haven't had that done for two months! Very excited! I think to be safe, I'm gonna find a picture because that usually helps a Lot.

Hope you're all having great, well rested holidays!

From Gemma.