apparently uni students are sophisticated?

Yep, pretty sophisticated - me, Hannah, Tam-ster, Tom and Jeremy (ooh, boys in a girls school! What chick-magnets!)

So last Friday was pretty awesome.

Tamie did a talk in the chapel service at Saints Girls a few months back, and Catie (the chaplain - she was on the pilgrimage last year too!) asked her to come back to talk with the year 11's for an hour about what EU does. An hour! About what EU does! What does EU do? Tells people about the gospel on campus! So what could we do? Tell them about the gospel!

So Tamie got a few of us along with her to help her out, in what was a pretty jam-packed hour. We got into smaller groups and brainstormed what came to mind when they thought of uni -unibar was pretty high up there, and surprisingly in my group things like 'sophistication' and 'maturity' were considered seriously, teehee. It was also pretty funny, each group had to report back on the top couple of things, and one girl, instead of saying 'co-ed' accidentally said 'uni-sex', which was followed by much uproarous giggling.

But anyway, as well as talking about the things we do (like Tom (el presidente) talked about what EU is, & I talked about Commencement Camp), Tamie worked it so that we could use talking about those things as a neat segue into talking about the gospel.

Hannah, in talking about FAT (Fellowship and Training) did the Two Ways to Live outline (what an opportunity!!), and then each small group got the 6 pics and raced against each other to put them in the right order and explain it.

From there Jeremy talked about Jesus Week - and the whole theme of 'Has God Failed' - and in typical Jeremy style was pretty up front with asking them 'do you think God's failed?'.

This is where the best bit came - we then, in our small groups, opened that topic up for discussion. We were prepared for what to do if our girls didn't talk, but it was the opposite! From talking about which 'has God failed' issue resonated most with them (poverty, injustice, natural disasters, too many faiths, and one dead Messiah) a whole host of issues and questions came up, and they were so open to talking. In about ten minutes I think my group talked about poverty, God's responsibility, predestination, the authority of the Bible, God sending Jesus to die as 'cosmic child abuse' - so many things, and so little time! Having the 2WTL pictures there really helped as having something to keep referring back to. It was fantastic to see that hunger as opposed to apathy. Please pray that they'd keep looking for answers!!

It was a fantastic opportunity that I really enjoyed - but more so I'm glad that God works even through our bumbling words!

Go team!

here in this place

WOOHOO, uni stuff done, finito for the year - exams are done (quality questionable, but they're done), and last essay handed in on Monday. Yesss. All the best to everyone who's not quite finished yet -almost done! Hang out for walking out of your last exam/handing up your last assignment.

Although I keep having this strange fear that there'll be some big essay or exam that I haven't realised I had and not do/hand it in ... A little paranoid, Woody Allen-esq? I think it's stemming from when I slept through my alarm for work a couple of weeks ago and woke up a half hour after I was supposed to be there, eep!

BUT I'm enjoying the freedom to read and nap and think and process and have space and get put-off things done.

Also, I found this quote the other day which I thought was pretty awesome:

"No man who bothers about originality will ever be original ... if you simply try to tell the truth (without caring two pence how often it has been told before) you will, nine times out of ten, become original without ever having noticed it"
- C.S. Lewis

Go C.S.

it's an unjust world

hello!


At the moment my excercise book is lying open in front of me, taunting me with as yet unrevised fun things to learn. What better thing to do, then, than update my poor neglected blog! This time with something of a bit more substance than name-alike people ... I've been meaning to for a while actually, to let you know about a book I've been reading for my history subject, one of the more confronting one's I've read in a while:

Granted, I haven't actually finished it (yet!), but I first started reading it on the bus home from uni one day, and was so drawn into it that I missed my stop - never have I done that before! That, I thought, is the sign of a good book (a non-fiction one at that!)

It's basically about modern day slavery - even though slavery is illegal in the world, there are 27 million people trapped in a new kind of slavery (e.g. it's not racial anymore). That there is still such a huge amount of slavery in the world today was a revelation to me - I thought that apart from a few abnormal situations, it was pretty much non-existant. But not so. It's a hugely lucrative business - big profits are made out of cheap lives. It's pretty hard reading - the second chapter's on Thai sex slaves, where young girls are lured away (or sold) from their villages and homes with a false contract. Anyway, if you're interested http://www.freetheslaves.net/ has got more info.