Day 3. I'm Content. - Sunday, 20/11/2005

Being Sunday, there was a church service this morning. Most of the boys on project slept through most of the service, seeing as we get up at 11:15pm, and then we had our showers, so that by the time we were ready, church was over. We all attended the 6pm service instead though. The Baptist church we're living in has been very helpful and tolerant over the years that Student life has been doing the projects. They've even built a shower downstairs specially for us.

Today we started our training sessions that Student Life has on camps, projects and other events. We do these in groups of students who are on the same training level. What training level you are on depends on how many you have done on other Student Life events you've been on. On the Schoolies Project, we do two levels. So we started the first of those today.

While we were eating our lunch today, Noof and Tim L. shared their testimonies in front of everyone, as everyone on project will have to do either at lunch or dinner.

Lisa gave her inspiring testimony at the 6pm church service, and Bethany said some inspiring things too.

During the day, we have a clever little postage system to encourage each other. We each have a soapbox with our name on it, and there are little coloured pieces of paper with “encourageogram” written on the top. The idea is that when someone wants to encourage someone, they write something on one of the pieces of paper, and pop it in the person's soapbox. Last year they were called “happygrams” and I still call them that. “Encourageograms” just doesn't have the same ring to it. After the 6pm service today, I sent a dozen or so happygrams until it was out of my system.

The church has a pool table where the guys are staying, and it has forced us to become interested in starting a pool competition. When playing against Chris today, I didn't realise it was for the competition. I was just fooling arround, so I lost and am not in the comp. anymore. I probably would have lost anyway though, as I haven't beaten Chris at any other time. Chris shared his testimony at dinner tonight.

Tonight I had Kirsten, Cat and Trevor G. in my group. We prayed that we would be content with the night, and not be discouraged if we didn't have any spiritual conversations with anyone.

While on the streets Trevor was impressed with the number of conversations that were started solely by my beard. He said it made him want to grow a beard for next year.

When I meet someone that I know on the street, so many things are going on, that most of the time the rest of my group has no idea what has happened. I think this is the same for everyone. You have to stay alert, and alert others if it's something important, which doesn't include meeting people you know. This happened tonight when I met the girl who platted my beard last night.

We met a group of people sitting on the beach, and Trevor and I got excluded from the converstaion. There were about five or six friends in the group, so I thought I should make an effort to stay in the conversation by starting a sand castle. Nobody joined in, and it was only when I ended up sculpturing it into a dragon's head, that I realised it wasn't working. So Trevor and I stood up and talked away from the group. Trevor said he didn't feel like he was doing anything to help the Schoolies tonight.

I saw a few people who I met last year, but didn't know the names of. One was a certain security guard, so I know her name now.

We met a set of identical twins who told us that the floor above the one they were staying at had been burned by a fire, and that the people staying on it had lost all of their stuff.

About half way through the night, most groups decide to return to HQ for refreshments. A lot of times there are doughnuts. We are so spoilt! There are usually some voluteers from other support groups who are doing the same. Tonight we met a lady from the Schoolies Support Team, and Trevor gave her his autograph on a napkin. He said something like, “It isn't worth anything now, but in another 10 years... It still won't be worth anything...”

Back on the beach, Trevor and I sat down and talked to these two guys who said that they were not into the whole Schoolies thing, and had just come to check it out. We had such a great conversation! I got heaps out of it myself. I was really impressed with how great a friendship these two guys had. They really cared about each other. When one was telling us about a difficult conversation he was in, the other friend would then help us to understand the difficulty of his friend's situation. The exact opposite of the sort of friend who keeps butting in to make the subject about himelf. One or both of the guys were each in love with a girl, and Trevor had some great unintentional advice, and even showed them a very helpfull relationship graph on the sand. It wasn't a spiritual conversation, but it really made our night, and left me feeling really fulfilled.
In the meantime, the Kirsten and Cat were standing a little bit away from us, and we almost forgot to look after them, but the wind was blowing directly from them to me, so that I could almost hear every word they were saying to each other and to Schoolies. Also Trevor said that I said things to the two friends at just the right times so that he could not look distracted while he checked on the girls.
All in all, we should have broken up into boy-with-girl halves a lot more than we did, but it was a great night and I don't regret any of it. I got home feeling extremely content.