Father Heart of God Week - Journal Feb 1-7

Sunday

Snow! I’d so hoped I’d escaped the stuff for a while, but about three quarters of an inch of it fell today. Allie was happy about that; since she grew up in Australia she’d never seen snow before today.
A bunch of the students and staff got together and Shea taught them how to play American football. I decided to skip playing in favor of taking pictures and going inside to write once I got too cold.
In the evening Peter and Paul set up a projector and screen in the Underground and we watched Remember The Titans in order to get all the different nationalities familiar with football.
Peter took all our pizza orders and I got half a jalapeno pizza from Papa John’s. Oh yes. It was quite enjoyable - eating junk food and watching the Super Bowl from 11pm to 2:30am!

Photos - Sunday, February 1

Monday

The first day of Father Heart of God week (or “’Gracious’ or ‘Generous’ Heart of God” the speaker says). Rob, our speaker, is a gifted storyteller - he uses stories to convey his ideas. His use of rich imagery truly puts you in the place and mood.
Right before Sport this afternoon I volunteered to be the one to carry out one of the plots us girls had thought up on Saturday. I snuck up the three flights of stairs to the guy’s floor (I had to scramble up into the prayer cupboard to avoid being spotted by Daniel) and set a tampon on the guy’s coffee table. We figured we’d start small in order to test the waters.
We all played football for Sport - in the snow. I was wearing Wellington boots, but I still managed to make a completion and throw a couple of good passes.
What was really a blast, though, was the hour-long snowball fight in the dark that happened on the walk back to the house. Alex and Deborah stuck their heads out of their window and were faced with a barrage of snow - they got so much in their room that they were able to gather enough snow to reply with a couple volleys of their own!

Photos - Monday, February 2

Tuesday

I’ve started sewing a knee-length skirt out of an old green pair of linen pants - we’ll see how that goes.
We had a “Theology Seminar” time when we were able to write down any questions we had and have Rob explain his point of view - it was pretty interesting; it reminded me of the couple of years where I spent way too much time debating theology. Don’t want to head in that direction again - it causes too much strife and not much good comes out of it (in my experience).
Today the guys finally noticed that there was a tampon sitting on the table in the middle of their room. Shea noticed it sitting next to Jonathan’s iPod and basically said “what’s with that?” then Gary picked it up and asked what it was - they chose not to tell him. At first the guys kind of kept it under the radar, asking around if there had been any girls in their room - eventually it got out what had happened and there were accusations flying thick and fast, but all of us denied having done it. Of course, once the guys were out of the room we were laughing our heads off at their expressions and descriptions of discovering the thing.

Wednesday

This morning at breakfast the morning people who bother to get up (Ketsia, Turid, Esther, Melody, Ruth, Alex, and I) were chagrined to find that there weren’t any spoons. We checked the kitchen, washroom, dining room, and Underground - not a single one. Then it dawned on us - the guys were getting us back.
Most of us were pretty sure that Shea was the culprit (his name does mean “spoon” in Norwegian, after all) but he kept denying it.
Turns out GertJan was the culprit, and Daniel was in on it. The sneak even came down to breakfast and ate his cereal with a fork to keep us from suspecting him. Oi.
Small group again today! We had more fun fellowshipping. We worked on memorizing the memory verse (or is it chapter?) 1 Corinthians 13, and we made a card for Rob, the speaker.
Esther, Ketsia, Ruth, Esther and I met in the Prayer Room to spend some time sharing whatever we needed to get off our chests and pray for each other - it’s been really great being constantly surrounded with people who want to share and hear what you have to say.
When I crawled into bed I found an anonymous card from one of the girls on the shelf beside my bed (I saw the other girl’s small group making cards - my powers of deduction are unparalleled). She just was saying how glad she is that I’m here and complimenting me on a couple of things - ‘tis a nice way to end the day.