city church and raft races

FRIDAY eve i was invited by a friend from work to come to city church as they have a youth group that includes young adults, (people my age! at Bethlehem Baptist it's a really large church but there is a lack of young peeps or any groups for them) and since the younger kids were away at a camp, it was just my age group going out to eat and have drinks. i was a bit intimidated going but i've heard really great things about this church so i really wanted to check it out. i brought carmen and we went. and i was pleasantly greeted by some really cool people. people i can now call my friends. (and it's fb official haha) it just takes that little bit of courage sometimes and it normally turns out to be so worth it. we went to this REALLY cool restaurant called Astrolabe. it has an awesome atmosphere. there's a patio/ porch area and a camper van and astro turf and real mean decor such as possum fur hanging from the roof. i'm gunna go back :)

SATURDAY i worked in the morning at cafe eden and then headed to our youth day (with the youth group i am a leader at at Bethlehem Baptist Church or BBC). our event was raft races yiyiea! there were about 5 or 6 different teams and we all had about an hour to build a raft for our team from bamboo, tubes, and our particular group had an old cover for a hottub. and a twist was we were allowed to have ammo! the ammo ranged from eggs to rotten tomatoes to flour bombs to horse poo. so once one the water, the first 1/2 an hour or so was intense ammo showers and then war raged from raft to raft. our's got completely demolished. bois came and untied all our bamboo and, well, perhaps our raft design wasn't the best haa. but after about the first hour the cold set in and i mean COLD. and out of all the days of sun we've had (every single one since i've been here) it turned out to be a very overcast day. no sun. i stopped moving which was a bad idea but i was so cold that i couldn't really start moving again. but we had some real troopers on our team, much stronger than i. we ended up being in the water for about 3 hours. (we've dully noted that that was too long and for the next time we will shorten the length of the race) almost every team had to get towed several times to get us to the end faster haha. we had a feed at the end and then prizes were awarded. i was awarded the pity prize basically. haha, he intro'd it like, "this person endured hypothermia and blood shed and you'd think they'd be able to handle the cold as they aren't a kiwi, but canadian, etc" i just got made fun of really. a few of the leaders thought it was funny to slap my cut, they acted like they were feeling sorry and then they'd get close and just slap it! funny, yes. painful, somewhat. it felt SO good to finally get warm again after it all!

our raft team!

out floating craft we lovingly called "oh ship". thanks Avon. 

all heading to the river 

ammo!

we were sinking right from the get go..haha

what a well built raft really should look like..

several of the crews heading down the river

quite the contraption

sinking a tub HA

getting preeetty cold

getting towed by one of the saftey boats, what was left of our raft

what whaaaaat

war wounds

yummaaaay

SUNDAY was church at BBC in the morning then we had a leaders lunch, (which we have once a month) and then i wanted to check out the night service at city church so i went along with my friend jono (van's brother). it was really good. the service was good and i got to meet some more real cool people and catch up with some of the ones i met on the friday night. a crew of us went to get some food after at this mexican place, burrito brother's or something like that, which was great. i'm feeling super blessed at being able to meet so many welcoming loving people who really want to get to know me!