Catch Up!

Let’s play catch-up, my attempt at accounting for the events I have forgotten to tell you about:

Last Saturday when we were still staying in Edinburgh, my classmates and I visited Linlithgow and Stirling Castle, both significant fortresses in Scottish history. Linlithgow is place where Mary Queen of Scots was born. You can see pictures from these Castles on facebook.


The exhilarating train ride I mentioned was a personal trip I made to visit family friends – Caroline & Lee Howard - who live in West Kilbride, Scotland at the Seamill YWAM base. I had a wonderful time being able to see familiar faces I hadn’t seen in a while! I’m pretty sure I talked their ears off about my trip thus far and my life in general. We drank coffee and ate scones together, Caroline gave me a tour of the YWAM building, we chatted some more, ate a wonderful salmon salad for dinner, and then I took the train back home to Edinburgh.

On the way back I had a mini-adventure when everyone on the train was asked to exit the train one stop before Glasgow (where I needed to get off). The electronic sign read that there would be no more trains running from here to Glasgow “due to an earlier fatality” (whatever that means) and that buses were being ordered instead. After waiting in a mob of people for about 30 min in a random Scottish town for these “buses”, I was loosing patience; eventually my American nature overwhelmed me and I decided it was time to take a taxi. I ended up finding two other young girls who were sisters from Edinburgh who also had to go to the same train station I did, and so we split the ride which worked out well. No worries though, I still made the 7:00 train and got back in time for our group devotionals at 8:30 which was my deadline.


[See previous post for details about Monday-Wednesday]


Friday was our outdoor adventure day in the Lake District, which turned out to be much more fun than I thought, and included just as much rain as I expected. As a group we went to this adventure activities camp where we were outfitted in “wellies” (rain boots) and “waterproofs”, which were basically oversized rubbery clothes that made us look like a clan of teletubbies. However, I can’t complain because they kept me dry in a series of downpours. We divided into two teams, made “rafts” (with wooden planks, rope, and two canoes), and paddled out into the lake amidst the very green and mountainous scenery. Our team name was “MARK BRUCE!” (the name of our second ET professor who will be here the second half of the trip), which our English guide misheard to be team “Mongoose!” But either way, our team had the best team spirit as we rowed our canoe to the chant of “BRUCE…BRUCE…BRUCE…Mark BRUCE…etc.” We had a blast playing various water/canoe-raft games and then raced in for lunch. In the afternoon, half of us did orienteering and archery, while others ventured out into the continuously pouring weather to do ghyll climbing, which basically means climbing and sliding down hills I think. (Bet you can guess which one I did, haha.) Overall, it ended up being a great day of teambuilding for our group which I really enjoyed.

On Saturday I basically had what I call a “nothing day”. It started out with class in the morning, which I just rolled out of bed for, brushed my teeth, made tea and breakfast, and then sat and listened to my professor lecture on Wordsworth. The rest of the day was spent emailing and skype-ing until I got off my butt to go to a café where I worked on an essay that’s due Tuesday. I got most of the meat of it on the page, so that felt productive. It was mainly a day to connect with people back home, so that was nice.

Today – Sunday – was a pleasant day besides the rain. I went with a smaller group of students to see the home of Beatrix Potter. It was very small, quaint and semi-anti-climatic, but I enjoyed it nonetheless. Everything in the house was just as she had left it, including the 100-year-old wallpaper in her bedroom which supposedly hadn’t faded from its original color, according to the tour guide stationed in that room. After touring the house, we traveled to the town of Hawkshead to see the Gallery of Beatrix Potter – mainly a display of her character drawings; I was also able to see/tour the grammar school that Wordsworth attended as a boy, and ended the afternoon at a café with a few girls from our group as we continued to watch the rain fall.

Finally coming up to the present, I just have to add the fact that I lead a devotional for our group tonight and really enjoyed doing it. I’ve lead devotionals for Bethel Choir periodically throughout the last year, but leading this one now really showed me my own personal spiritual growth from this summer. I spent some time asking God what he wanted me to share, and felt like He brought certain things to my mind for a reason. I was really relaxed and comfortable, and even ended the time by leading a worship song (“Oh Lord to You”) for which I sang and played the piano. And if you know me at all, you know that’s a big, cool deal. God’s working in me and growing my confidence in who He’s called me to be and I’m so excited. The best part of it all might have been the fact that numerous people were still humming/singing the song around the kitchen and the main gathering area after we were done; it was like God’s love flowing back to me saying, “hey, I’m using you; don’t’ forget.” And I was happily reminded of how much I love worship; I could have kept singing for a while longer. Hopefully everyone who was there got something out of it.