ABS

At the very end of January, I started my 6 weeks of Adventure Bible School. It's fair to say, I have been the most nervous about this 6 weeks since signing up for the two courses last year. Adventure Bible School is all about trust. You know that going into it, you'll be doing lots of activities (adventures) but you don't know exactly what. They don't tell you what you'll be doing each day until you're actually doing and when you go on trips they give you a packing list that never seems to be enough when you look at it for a trip that you don't know how long it will be. They never let you bring your watch on trips and lots of other things most of us would consider necessary. I knew it would be physically challenging but I wasn't as prepared for it to be as emotionally and spiritually challenging as it was. Overall, I am So trilled to completed to course and I can honestly say, I'll never be the same after it.

The first day of ABS we got dropped off by some bikes and we had to bike to a point where we ran back to the lodge. This was before we had even been there yet. You pretty much hit the ground running (literally) on ABS.

The first week was CRAZY. The push you alot an your constantly moving. This is on a "trig" which at the summit of a mountain. The mountain is Mt. Mongatautri that's near the lodge (our home on ABS). It was about a 5 hour hike on our 2nd day.

During the hike we played a game of ninja to get to know each other better and we were waiting on one of our leader to get back.

Here is my hiking group going back to the vans after the hike.

After the hike we were taken to this guy's farm where he had 3 turkey's waiting for us to catch, kill, gut and cook. Yup, second day on ABS and we were killing turkeys for dinner. I had the fun job of gutting mine. I will say, in the end it's pretty fascinating to see REALLY where your meat comes from.

Here's me, Cloudy and Jodi. Cloudy is one of the staff and Jodi was on the last ABS and came back and did 4 weeks at Monavale where I got to know her. This ABS she came back as an intern which was cool to continue our friendship.

Here's a view of the lodge where we lived when we weren't on trips, which was not very much!

The third day on ABS we were woken up at 4am by the fire alarm and then told to get kayaks because we were going for a kayak ride!! They were sea kayaks which are 2 person and it was crazy starting off in the dark and having no clue what we were doing but by the time the sun rose it was really fun and when we dropped off the kayaks we had breakfast and off for a bike ride.

Our first trip was a sea kayak trip. We had to fit EVERYTHING for the whole trip into our kayaks which was no easy task. It was so fun kayaking everyday!

Here I am getting my stuff together before we put up our tents at our first campsite. This trip was especially big for me because I was "leader of the day" with one other student for the third day of it. We were pulled aside the night before and given coordinates of where we had to go the next day and by what time. We had to organize the schedule of the day and meals and stuff. It was crazy because me and my co-leader (a guy named Matt) had one of the most intense days of ABS to lead. We kayaked for a couple of hours, then had to portage our kayaks for an hour uphill (which the guys all agreed was the hardest thing they've ever done), then we kayaked for another couple of hours and finally portaged again but this time we put wheels under the kayak and were on a road so we just had to pull them. I learned SO much through leader of the day. I had to FULLY rely on God and learn to go-with-the-flow.

Our next trip we stayed in this woolshed. We did caving and abseiling (or repelling) which I loved! One night we went to this cave that was FULL of glowworms and sang worship songs. It's probably my favorite memory from ABS.

Here's Jodi (intern), Matt (staff), PB (staff) and James (intern) hanging out at the woolshed.

We went to this waterfall and even walked down to it and swam in it! It was SO muddy walking down and up to it and the water was so loud you couldn't hear the person next to you.

Here I come abseiling down from this natural bridge. It was So beautiful and lots of fun!

coming down...

and I made it all the way down!

Here we all are in our caving suits complete with hard hats and head lamps.

Part of caving is going through really tight passageways. When I first heard about it, I was a bit nervous but it turned out to be super fun. Here you can see my blue helmet.

Here I'm squeezing through what is called the "birth canal"

And I made it!

You get super muddy and wet in the cave and there's so much to look at! It was like be introduced to a whole new part of creation that I didn't know existed.

Here's PB (Peter Bichan) who leads ABS. He is AMAZING! I learned so much from him. Here he's teaching us about "being lights" in the darkness. I like that you can only see our headlamps in this picture.

Here we are after coming out of the cave and crossing the stream to get back to the vans.

Here's my group after we got done caving.

This is one of the lounge rooms that I spent a lot of time in when we were back at the lodge journalling and processing all that I would learn on our trips.

This was a challenge to make a bridge out of random materials they gave us.... it was really hard and really fun

Here I am helping hold it together as we all had to cross over it before lunch time

Here it's starting to fall apart.... this is like 10 mins after completing it

and after about 15 mins it was totally falling apart. Apparently we are the first group to have our bridge fall apart so quickly. It was a disaster but so much fun.

The next day we had a similar challenge. We had to get into 3 groups and build a raft that could be carried and could fit all of us on it. We were then told we were going to have to use our raft to go down a gorge and then float down a stream to a campsite where we would be spending the night. It was really nerveracking to build something when we had no clue what we were doing.

Here's my team carrying our raft down to the water. We used 2 palettes and big rubber tubs.

Here's me, Emily and Christina getting ready for the big adventure

This is my team on our "test run". We ended up flipping so when we actually went down the stream we flipped the thing upside down and used it that way. it was WAY more stable

This is us at our campsite. We were SO cold that night and most of us didn't bring sleeping bags so we didn't get a lot of sleep. Part of this trip was the leaders left (by sneaking away) at night so we had to piece together what information they had given us to get back to the lodge by 12:30pm on our own.

All in all, this was a really hard trip. The next day, people's attitudes weren't great and it caused a lot of tension. We did make it back in time but I was so emotionally exhausted by the time we got back.

Here I am at the top of a 23 meter rock climb. I LOVED rock climbing here.

This is the same climb just more showing how high it was.

This means nothing to you, but this picture brings up SO many memories for me. One night when we were at PB's house we each drew a letter before dinner. I drew an 'R' and some others drew as 'S'. The R group was the 'Rice' group while the others were the 'Steak' group.

Since I was in the Rice group, we had our dinner outside on the porch. We ate, you guessed it, rice. and that was it. We cooked it on a camp cooker and didn't have utensils so we had to use our hands. We sat in a big circle and while it was cooking we played games and tried to make the most of it.

The Steak group got steak, and tons of other food. They cooked the steak right next to our group and weren't suppose to talk to us. They got dessert and soda (we got water) and it was hard not to get jealous. You could tell they felt bad and it was eye-opening to see this is how much of the world is. Some living in abundance while others get barely anything.

This is the rice group doing the steak group's dishes. Another part of our groups responsibilities.

This is the rice group. Even though our group missed out in a lot of ways we actually had way more fun than the steak group that night. We played tons of games that were hilarious.

After dinner the "experiment" continued. The steak group got to go back to the lodge to sleep while we were given cardboard boxes and newspapers to walk to where we would sleep.... which was under a bridge in Cambridge. It was crazy. This is me and Heather and we shared some boxes that night but were SO COLD! We barely got any sleep and our backs hurt so much the next day. It was incredible to get a glimpse into what homeless people experience every day.

I think what made the whole thing even more crazy was this was shortly after the earthquake in Christchurch and for some people, they had just lost everything. I will never forget all that I learned this night, nor do I ever want to.

This is on the last day of a 4 day backpaking trip we went on. It was really hard the 3rd and 4th day. We hiked about 6-10 hours each day and one day it was mostly uphill the whole time. I jammed my finger when I fell as I was crossing a river which was not fun and it still is a little sore which is just another fun reminder of ABS.

The thing about this trip was we had no clue how long it was. We had kind of figured out with the amount of food we had that we were going home on the fourth day but then Matt, one of the leaders, told us we were meeting the vans in town to get more supplies and then heading to our next destination and we ALL believed him. When we got down to the vans that morning and PB told us we were going to the lodge we all freaked out. Some people were even crying they were so happy since it had been such a grueling hike.

This is our white-water kayaking trip. These are our tents that we used on all of our trips and you can see, we got really good at setting them up each time. It's crazy because they are totally open but since we went in the summer, alot of the time it was really nice to have a breeze. I never thought I would like camping like this but it wasn't bad at all.

Here's Matt working with a guy in the lake near the lodge and helping him learn to roll. Matt is the leader who worked with me the most with rolling and with being comfortable in a kayak. I had a really hard time with being upside down under water. Matt was super helpful and I even started crying I was so scared when I was learning. It seems dumb but it's that mental block that you have to get passed. God taught me so much about trust and not fearing through kayaking.

Here is my team going to the drop off point to go white water kayaking.

The water where we were was SO blue! Although I was nervous at first with kayaking I really enjoyed myself.

Here I am! I HAD to have a picture of my kayaking after all the ups and downs I went through with it. This is actually just after I tipped and ended up exiting my kayak so I had to get all the water out my boat and get back in. I only tipped twice (once each day) but that mostly had to do with the fact that I had a big kayak and I took the easy ways down the rapids...but still the fact that I did it and enjoyed myself was accomplishment enough :)

This is a random picture of me cooking with Christina (our one Danish girl). I loved helping in the kitchen!

This is a picture showing off my sweet face FULL of bug bites. It was after our solo trip. We each got dropped off on different parts of these farms near the lodge and we could only take a bible, notebook and pen for reading stuff. We of course couldn't take a watch and some food for 40 hours of being by ourself. We also took 2 tarps and some string to build a shelter which I wasn't very good at. This is the HARDEST trip for me. I had a hard time not knowing what time it was and it rained the whole second day and poured that night. I put bug spray on my face at night (because I definitely wasn't sleeping) but they still attacked me. I can look back on it now and be thankful for it but when it was over I was an emotional wreck. God used it to teach me a lot about myself and about using everyday as an opportunity to praise Him. I feel like I understand Paul in Romans when he talks about being content in want and in need.

Happy birthday to me!! (and Zander, a kid who shared my bday with me) We got surprised with cakes after we went indoor rock climbing!!

Super fun bolder room

Heather, Rachel and myself on my bday. I would say I was closest with these girls on ABS

Who could as for a better bday party right? Haha, this was the kid part of the rock climbing place and it was SO FUN! I really did feel like I was a little kid having a really cool bday party.

This is our last night on ABS. We had a formal dinner and got all dressed up. It was really nice technically was still my birthday :) After dinner we had one more surprise where we put wetsuits on and lifejackets (2, one on top and one like a diaper) and floated down a stream at night that had glowworms all around. It was also a clear sky so we could see TONS of stars. It was the perfect ending to ABS.

The ABS crew with our t-shirts and Matt our leader who also wanted to be in the picture. Matt was really really cool and it was his last ABS because him and his wife moved back to Austrailia sortly after ABS was over. I'm really glad to have had him as a leader.

Another fun thing we did the last week was a mini triathlon. It was so cool to push myself and I was in WAY better shape since we did morning exercises everyday for 6 weeks on top of all the other activites we had.

I'm so thankful that I could have done ABS. It was physically, emotionally and spiritually stretching but I learned so much. I was humbled over and over and I grew so much in my relationship with God. All that being said, I'm also glad to be back at Monavale :)