Days Like This!

Greetings from beautiful Broadstairs. For those of you who don't know where Broadstairs is, it's a little costal town near Ramsgate, on the eastern coast of England, near Dover.

Here's a few things that you might find interesting to read about, a few things that have happened in the life and times of the blogger, me.

Today I was involved in another Easter Cracked program, like I was last week. If you haven't read my previous post, I'll explain what Easter Cracked is. All the schools in England have a few weeks holiday over Easther, but not everyone knows what Easter really is. So the whole reason Easter Cracked is run is to help school children who are in their last year of primary school (ten and eleven year olds) understand what Easter is really about. It went a bit differently from last week's program, despite having the same amount of children present. I do think all the kids, and their teachers, really enjoyed themselves and were able to take something home with them.

Over the weekend I'm going off to see some of my family, one of my uncle's kids and grandkids.  I'm really to going and spending time with them as I haven't seen them in over a year and a half, not since before I sent my DTS application off to YWAM Heidebeek in the Netherlands. It's also quite exciting for me as I'm going to be traveling by train to see them, and that's still quite a novelty as I haven't done a lot of traveling by train during my time in Africa. They don't have a passanger railway system in Uganda and we haven't used the one from Nairobi, Kenya, to the coast in years. Thankfully I have been able to get a British Railcard, which arrived this last Tuesday along with my bank card. The Railcard will hugely reduce what I'm paying on my train tickets, and as I'm doing to be visiting family and friends throughout my time in YWAM, having a Railcard takes a huge amount of money off what I'd otherwise be forced to pay for a ticket on a train that's going out of London.

Lucy

The family I'm staying with have a lovely spaniel named Lucy, pictured here. If you've been visiting my blipfoto journal you might have seen the picture I posted of her (if you haven't, then just click here). Lucy is twelve years old. Something that many find hard to believe when they've witnessed Lucy's before food antics, which usually includes springing about with all four paws off the ground like a circus dog, or watches her mad rushing about when someone she knows walks through the door. Yet, despite all of this, she gets a lot of sleep. Some of these places have been quite odd, like in the laundry basket. She wasn't in there long, probably because the basket was cold and there were clothes pegs underneath her. She's a lot of fun to be around and has a very unique personality, that's for sure! For some reason, she's made me realize how much I miss my own little dash hound, Bessie, with her own quirks and personality traits. I've written about Bessie on my blog before and there have been times when I've asked myself and God if I'll ever be able to see Bessie, and her mum, Natasha (Hannah's dog), whilst they're still alive. Bessie's six years old and Tasha's eight. I know the smaller breeds are more likely to live longer than the bigger breeds, but I still wonder if I'll ever see my beautiful and very naughty scallywag again.

I've been doing a lot of walking since I got here, out of the shear pleasure of it. Well, most of the time. There have been occasions when I did not want to stick my nose out the door because of the sharp edge to the wind, or that promise of rain. It's taken a lot of determination to do that, but it's been worth it. I kinda had to tell myself that I needed to get used to the weather here as English weather isn't always nice. The weather today was actually really nice, so before leaving to do the Easter Cracked, I walked from Broadstairs into Ramsgte, and I really enjoyed it. I didn't spend as much time there as I would have liked to, because I wasn't sure how long it would take me to walk back to Broadstairs. However, at some point next week, I'll be walking that way again and I'm definately looking forwards to doing that, well, of the weather's nice enough to be doing it. I don't much like walking in the rain,

I still can't believe I'm here in England and that the BLS is going to be starting soon! It's a dream come true, almost. I might have mentioned this before but being part of a BLS is a family thing now. My parents both did DTS's, my mum was part of the YWAM base in Hong Kong, whilst my dad did his in England, at a base called Holmsted Manor. My dad had already done one or two BLSs when my mum joined the team. That's how they met, but I'm kindly asking you, my dear reader, not to make any assumptions in regards to my relationship status and whether or not it'll change after the BLS. If you have any ideas, please keep them to yourselves or you could tell God what you think about it. The reason I'm doing a BLS is to follow where The Lord had called me and to serve Him in the BLS classroom and on outreach, the purpose of a BLS not to find a husband, no matter what your opinions are.

Whilst we're on the topic of relationships, I do want to say this. Over the last few days I've realized, again, how grateful for the friendships God has given me over the course of my life. Many of the friends I made in my early teens are still my very good friends, though not all of my relationships have been good ones, as I was bullied quite a bit through out my teens. Though I've learnt through them, not only about the others involved but about myself as well. Though all my relationships, I've grown stronger and closer to God. I know that you'd find it tedious reading through a whole long list of names, I know I would, and, because I'm only human, there's a big chance I'll accidentally forget people's names, spell them wrong or something along those lines. So, instead, I'm just going to say that the people who have touched my life is a positive way know who they are and they know the impact they've had on my life. Even if it's long hours of deep, intensive discussion, often late into the night, over bottles of soda and snacks. Then there have been those moments of rib-cracking, tears-pouring-down-my-cheeks type of laughter over a silly joke or something like that, its the memories I won't forget and the lessons I've learnt from you all. So here's a BIG MEGA thank you to those special people. You are awesome the way you are! So don't you ever try and change yourselves to please other people (its a lesson I had to learn the hard way... Don't make the same mistake as I did)!

To close my post off, I probably won't write again until I'm back from my time away, but do feel free to take a look around my site.