QPAS

Back home from QPAS yesterday. It was fantastic and I am always amazed at how quickly it goes... like the first two days drag on and you feel like you've been there for weeks and then after about Tuesday, it flies by so quickly!!!

I loved drama this year!!! I always do, but the drama not only taught us all something, but it challenged people who saw it and was heaps of fun. Jamie and Matt rule!!! LOL

But I think the highlights were firstly doing the mission elective and secondly bible study. For mission we handed out light bulbs that had scripture on the side and I was amazed at how skeptical people are in just accepting a free gift, like as though it is a scam or something. Many people thought we wanted money and couldn't grasp the concept of a free gift. At first I saw no point to the light bulb thing, but then our leader explained to us that there are 10 rungs on the ladder so to speak in becoming a christian. Effective evangelism (or mission) is moving a person up one of those rungs. So by handing out 100 light bulbs, we saw that 100 people have been moved up one rung on the ladder simply by reading a part of the Bible and coming into contact with Christians.

Bible study was great because we got to journal. For me, that is the most effective way in extracting meaning from the Bible, so to be given 1.5hrs everyday to do that was just great, and then to share what we wrote was even better. It would be really hard to say what I got out of all of it, coz there was a lot... but one thing that stands clear in my mind is attached to a story...

Luke16:10 was a verse I found and chose to remember. It says "Unless you have faith in smaller matters, you will not have faith in large ones" so I read this and think "ok, sure I can understand that"... Saturday night was the concert and I had a bag with all my toiletries, makeup and things I needed for the concert that was seperate from my other bags. I said to Megan "this definately needs to be in the car with us" as I put it next to her car. She said it definately went in... we arrive at the Halliday's house and it is not there! I freak out big time and call Cameron who also took some bags... he doesn't have my bag... then we have to go to BCT and I am stressing big time and this verse comes to mind. I share it with Emma, Bec and Megan on the way to church and we decide to pray because there is about $200 worth of stuff in it and I need all of it. So we're talking about this stupid bag and I have now been searching for it for about 1.5hrs and no luck!!!

We arrive at BCT and Georgie doesn't have it... nor does Ben whose stuff was near ours. An announcement is made to the whole camp, no luck. I am really scared now and nearly screaming and crying but I hold it together and just go "God's got it covered"

About an hour later Emma says "Cass, is that it?" and sure enough, my lovely lovely bag of treasures is sitting there... it had been accidently taken up as lost property before the cars were packed and Luke brought it back... when he heard the announcement he thought "hmm, I wonder if that is it" and yeah. So, I don't know if I had faith that it would turn up, but it did and I hugged my bag and I cried over it and then became so much more relaxed. So I learnt a little of my memory verse!!!

Camp was good. Being away from my life was good, but I am back now. I hope the things I gained from camp stay with me. Life is hard, but I can do it.