CEF camp

Hey everyone I just got back from CEF camp (child evangelism fellowship) it was so much fun despite the fact that I had a terrible cold all week. It was exhausting but I already missing my girls and all those lovely leaders You guys were awesome5! Anyway where do I begin? Well on Sunday afternoon a friend and I went down to the camp where a whole bunch of teens were gathered in slightly awkward circles waiting for everyone to arrive. When they all did we went inside and played some icebreaker games aka going round the circle saying your name etc. Then we played horses knights and cavaliers in which you had to pair up with a Guy (luckily I was paired up with someone who I consider to be an older brother) so with that person you had to do a series of three actions a horse, someone on there hands and knees and the other person sitting on them. A Knight, where one person was down on one knee and the other person sat on the other knee, and then there was the cavaliers where one person jumps into the other persons arms. And you had to do all three as fast you could with the director calling out the order -it was a great segregation breaker :) After that we had a devotional / challenge from the director, went through all the training stuff and eventually the director announced which leaders (teens) we were with, then we went to put our bags in the cabins, had tea and more training, with a little time to hang out before bed. The next morning we had breakfast and started decorating the cabins only to near that the bus full of children had arrived. Now there is nothing like the excitement of thirtyish leaders when the bus arrives. We all run outside wild with excitement and begin to unload their gear. Followed by morning tea and a safety regulations talk, the boy and girl campers get split and we find out who our "girls" are. I was in a cabin with seven girls and three other leaders. As the week progressed we got to know our sweet little girls, learnt the difference between just being nice and actually loving. You learnt how valueble encouragement is, what exhaustion feels like and you learnt that God has got this, and how important showers are for relaxing by yourself. How annoying head colds are, how fun air rifles are. You wonder how Jesus loved, how other leaders could be so constantly giving all the compassion they've got, how you could give more but in your own way, how food at home tastes worse than food at camp, how to be so tired that you have to think to spell your own name, what herding seven children outside at six o'clock in the morning feels like, because the fire alarm went off, what enthusiasm is after waking at sixish in the morning and getting.g to sleep at nine thirty if you're lucky, what giving every ounce of kindness within you 24/7, doing everything from acting to decorating your cabin in a cowboy theme, to getting complemented for that skull and cross bones that was painted on your cheek for pirate day, to getting home and sleeping from eight pm to eight am and still feeling tired, but most of all terribly missing every single moment of CEF camp Tiffany

Some fun

 So this is what I got up to today ;)
(second title: what you can do without a computer)

So I raided the dress up box and tried some steampunk... da da da ddahhh!! (drum roll)

                                            Then posed in front of the camera serval times...

                                                                heehee it was lots of fun!

                                                                         -Tiffany

Bits and bobs

I'm just writing down some interesting ponderings about stuff I learnt to day.

In search of truth.

Wouldn't it be nice if we knew somethings were absolutely true. I don't mean things like did God create the universe. But things like is being doggedly positive about everything Christian/Buddhism, Christian or Buddhism ;) get your head around that one. Ok I'll ease it up... Do you think "pain free births" are for Christians or is it an influence from an Eastern Religion? hmmm... I don't actually know... sounds Buddhist to me (as in everything is an illusion type stuff) but at the end of the day it isn't important (well definitely not for me ;D ) *

But it would be really nice if Jesus just said" Missy you're doing real well there.... and well this needs fixing." A kind of Rev 2 & 3 re-enactment. Well that might actually be kinda painful in the end... but a least you'd have some sense of direction!
(just paused to read an article about Buddhism and pain free births, wasn't that helpful in a philosophical sense but I gleaned one thing; *don't freak out* about labour pains and I have to admit that that's gotta help)

Anyway all that blah di blah was just a baby question of mine (pun not intended) and I guess everyone has questions about everything. Soo helpful. So last month I decided to go to a counsellor (someone fall over and die/scream or gasp) just to see what it was like -as it was free. It was like having a conversation, we didn't discuss anything big and it was a lady btw. We talked about fairly controversial topics like music and conflicting word views that you agree with (WHAT! somebody explain! ;) when someone on one side of the fence says blah di blah about singing and the other person on the other side of the the fence says blah di blah opposing their neighbours view... but when you analyse them they both make sense. Small problem) anyway we talked about stuff and one thing that I really got out of it was... don't worry if you don't get it right! well duh common knowledge... but for some reason I couldn't quite get into my head that you didn't have to know everything about God right away... I mean all he asks for is you to believe and receive that he loved you enough to die for you**... really? Is it that simple?! well apparently... But then life crashes in on you (btw I tend to be slightly pessimistic naturally) and you watch riveting videos about the promises in Revelation that are panning out in modern day Israel that urge you to study God's word (out of fear, I mean honestly who doesn't want to avoid bad stuff) but the problem is your bible isn't at all interesting and you want it to be interesting plus you've been raised on the book so you kinda know a bit. Ok a *bit*.
Anyway you go down the same old track of getting other peoples opinions and some say get to know God first then read his book and others say take a concrete pill/ build a bridge and get over it. Then you get really confused and round it goes again. Brilliant!
But life goes on... and you keep on struggling through it with highs and lows. So hopefully God will reveal himself more and somethings will fall into place before we're on our deathbed. ;D So I guess this is my little corner of rebellion. I hope it made sense. Probably didn't help one bit. But anyway it's a slice of a real teenagers life
-Tiffany

(and I manage to cover my favourite topics; midwifery and deep thoughts in one post and it's 11:10pm)





*Another unimportant, wanna be a midwife find;  apparently Vaginal Birth after C-section (VBAC) is safer than continued c-sections statistics for maternal death of VBAC mothers 3.8 out of 100.000 v.s the American populace of 13.4 out 100.000 (for non VBAC) also apparently Amish women have a lower c-section rate etc. read more here
**btw I only just realised that was all God asks for

A book!

In June I was reading a post on Writer's Alley, at the end of the post they asked the reader's what their favourite books were. So I looked at all the comments to see what books the other readers liked ( to get a good idea what to read ;D ) and typed in one of my favs, Mara daughter of the Nile.

A week later I was scanning through Writers Alley again and I saw my name it fairly big print. I stopped, and scrolled up a little and there was: Tiffany Jane won the favourite book competition. The prize being one of the Writer's favourite books. I was in complete shock. I didn't even know it was a competition!!! (If you go and have a look at the comments here you will see my remark of complete and utter shock)

 A few days and got a reply from one of the writers, saying yes I won it. But I had a small problem, I'm no from the States. So after a few days of emails going back and forth, the writer said she could still mail it. And today the book came!! I'm so excited, I haven't even read the back cover. I hope it's really good book!  It's called Wish you were here by Beth K Vogt. And it sounds very adventurous/thriller and romantic, a mix that I love!!