Blessed Events in my First Week at Home

After one week at home, enjoying time with family, sleeping in, doing nothing, and spending time with my boyfriend, I was blessed this weekend to be a part of two amazing events with dear people from my church.

The first one was a pampering afternoon for the ladies and girls, thanks to Girls of Grace [With A Mission]. It was SUCH a privilege to spend time with the lovely ladies and girls who came!

To set the mood...

Thanks to Miss Mikayla and Miss Brooke... mini cupcakes!!

Lots 'n' lots of sweets - just what every girl gets excited about ;-)

Chocolate icing, of course! - with colourful butterflies :)

Coffee and laughs, while enjoying a foot bath!

Gorgeous girls - Amy, Hannah and Jordan

Alicia - all smiles, with her freshly painted nails!

Elyse always works wonders with nail polish!

Prepping for more foot baths!

Alicia lending a helping hand to Gabby =P

Claudia getting treated to a hand massage by Mikayla

Family!
R-L: Sarah and Kathryn (sisters), and Kathryn's daughter Christina

The second awesome event was our monthly youth service. We hold youth services every last Sunday of the month, and I am SO happy that I got to be here for this one!

A few of us stayed at the church all afternoon, and others joined a little later to help set up. 

And set up, we did!!!

All musical equipment moved; new lights; posters; chairs moved... Such fun!!

Setting up for youth service = ...

... CHAOS!!!
There were a lot of busy little beavers running around all over the place! =P ha!

Pretty lights :)
These make me happy!

The service started with a fun skit =D
I wish you could've been there to see it!

Our amazing worship team.
Nathan, Daniel, Brento, Kim, Gabby, Chris and Aaron [on drums]

Worshipping

Gabby led worship for the first time, and was a superstar!! Love that girl :)

My amazing boyfri-....... uh, I mean, the youth pastor preaching and challenging us: "What is Your Life All About?"

I am SO happy to be home! As I continue to settle in, I am just so grateful that God has called me here for this season.

I can't wait to see what He's going to do in and through the young people in my church and beyond - and I am super-excited to be involved in this!!

~Rachel

One Year Later

Hi!! :)

So... I have had a blog for just over 1 year. It actually feels like I've had a blog for a lot longer than that! I don't know why, since I haven't been blogging much lately :S My apologies for that! There has been a lot going on; a lot to think about--and to be honest, blogging hasn't really entered my mind!


A lot has happened this year, so far. Want to know some of them??

2010 SO FAR

• New Year's Eve celebration at my church with church friends and family--it was an awesome night of fun, with very dear people!!!
• My best friend started a courtship... More later :)
• Kim's cousin Kaylin visited over the summer holidays, from South Africa :D It was great getting to know even just one person from her extended family
• Met Alicia and started planning for Girls of Grace (more on that later as well)
• As an aside... At the end of 2009, I finished working at Flow FM. My traineeship finished in October '09, but I kept working until the end of the year. I wasn't too concerned about not having work--I figured something would come up soon enough! I took January off, and in February started looking for work
• Played in the Gawler Tennis Tournament, and won the doubles trophy for my division :D Woohoooo!
• House-sat with Elyse--watched movies, went for walks, went to the beach...
• Had a beautiful girl, Bec, stay with my family. She is from Switzerland, and a lady from my church organised for us to meet. She is the one person I know that is the most like me in every way! It was crazy how much we were alike!
• Youth Camp in Sydney: DARE 2010. What a great camp! I was a small group leader and a team leader, and LOVED it! I have never been a "leader" at camp before, and I think the timing was perfect. I learned a lot from the other leaders, which was awesome
• Had picnics, BBQ's, and time with family friends (summer holidays are GREAT! And it was awesome not to be working in January and be free to do lots of things with family and friends)
• Waitressed at a wedding with Jewelz, Elyse and Josie
• Started working in the office at Simply Elegant. I have been working on marketing our products, and my boss is very happy with what I've done so far :P
• Have entered a new phase with one of my closest friends... It's so exciting how we have both opened up to each other and are learning more about each other
• Started giving Amy and Jarryd piano lessons (for a few extra $$ ;P)
• You may remember me posting about my dream of starting a girls group. Well, that dream is now reality, and I am so thankful for God's timing and for the last more-than-a-year of waiting and praying!!! Girls of Grace started at the end of February
• Went ballroom dancing for the first time in my life, and I am determined to go again!!!! :D
• Visited Northside Baptist Church
• Had a job interview at Adelaide College of Ministries--aka ACM (not successful)
• Youth Group started back for 2010. We now have a leadership team of 5--Peter, Brad, Alex, Kim and myself. Term 1 went really well, and I'm looking forward to Term 2. As leaders, we are all learning, which can be interesting!
• Started netball training and coached and umpired the younger girls
• Slept over my grandparent's place for the first time in AGES!!! Such a lovely time spent with them :) We went out and ate Indian food... mmmmm!!!
• Had an interview and tests at Hays Recruitment... That was very successful!!! More on that later, as well
• Had a wonderful birthday week, from April 5-10 :P It was so awesome having a whole week of different, interesting things :) On Easter Monday April 5, I had a "family" birthday party; about 60 people would have been there, and it was so lovely! On the 10th, I had another party at home, with about 20 friends, which was also an absolutely beautiful time :) If I can figure out how to post photos on here, I might upload a couple. But they will definitely be on Facebook eventually :P

I know that is a huge list, but all of these things (no matter how small they may seem) are all significant things to me. They all involve things and people that are very dear to me and close to my heart.

I will be blogging more just over the next couple of days, so you will get a little bit more of a glimpse into what is happening in my life right now--and hopefully some more details on a few of the things that have happened this year :)

Many blessings

~Rachel

1 week

Hello again!

Well, it's almost one week since my last post... It's harder than I thought to get into this whole blogging thing... Might take a while!

Last weekend at CWCI was great! Mum and I drove down (the others left in the morning) to Victor Harbor at about 1pm. We went straight to the house we stayed in, and ohmygoodness!! It's better in real life than in the photos! It was one of the highest houses on the hill... In other words, right at the top of the hill, with total view of the harbor!!!!!!!! Us girls all decided we wanted to live in Victor Harbor :P
There was a service for the Convention that night at 7.45pm, but firstly Mum and I visited friends in Victor. We actually picked up my friend from work (at Moo Yoghurt... YUMMY!!! She gave me a cup of yoghurt, and then Mum and I both got this massive tub that we shared... What pigs!! But SO worth it!), and then went out to her place. They live on a farm outside of Victor, and my friend has a gorgeous Thoroughbred horse, which she shows, mainly jumping. My friend showed me what her and her horse, Bella, can do, and it was so great to just watch them work together! It's at times like those that I miss having my horse :'( And I really want to ride again!
Mum and I went straight to the night service after our visit at the farm, and the service was really good. All of them were good... Although there was one that didn't really apply to us girls--it was mainly about parenting, etc. Mmm, not quite there yet! Anyway, the part I loved about the services was the singing!! There was a few ladies that sang all the time, and their voices were just amazing! Their harmonies were just absolutely wonderful. I would LOVE to be able to sing like they do; and one of the ladies played keyboard, led (just announcing which song was next) and sang... I would love that to "be me" someday :).
Aside from the services, we hung around the house, the girls read, I tried to prepare for Girls of Grace (Girls Group), ate chocolate (more on that later), watched Fireproof (really good movie!), talked and went out for tea on Saturday night (yummy!).

Overall the weekend was really good, and I enjoyed spending time with everyone there :)

About the chocolate... Julia, Elyse and I have made a pact not to eat chocolate, lolies, ice cream or fizzy drink for one month. Julia and I were talking on Saturday night, after going out for tea and then coming home and eating chocolate/slice/junk etc, and we were saying how we were so full and felt a bit blahh :S. After talking about it for half an hour, we decided to make a pact not to eat any of the above for one month. We figured we could be accountable to each other, and it's way more healthy not to eat those things anyway! And we roped Elyse in as well (we had to twist her arm, though!), and Mrs. Packer is also doing it, to make it easier for Elyse :)

After that was decided, when I got home I realized that for the next 10 days, our church is doing a Daniel Fast. If you know the story of Daniel in the Bible, it will make a bit of sense to you. Basically, the idea is to eat only vegetables and drink water for 10 days. We've expanded it a bit, so we can eat vegetables, salad, fruit, brown rice, and of course, drink water. I started on Tuesday, so today is my third day. It's going well so far, but I AM missing meat! It's just vege's... a bit boring :(. But I guess it's a good experience!

I'd better go; my lunch break is finished. I hope everyone's week is going well :)

God bless.

~Rachel