this post took me two hours

i was reading briar’s blog & she does a way better job at actually blogging & not just listing events that happen in our life here at the capes. i can’t be outdone, so i’m putting more effort into blogging, since i don’t do it very often. i don’t know how long i’ll keep this up. right now, i have an afternoon free & briar’s napping… this’ll take a while. you might want snacks.

so, let me tell you more about outreach. starting on february 24^th, nine of us are going to the town of morley which is near leeds. we’ll be working with morley community church doing things such as assemblies at schools {because that’s allowed here}, youth events, kids’ clubs, handing out pamphlets, & interacting with the elderly. everyone in the school has been put on different outreach groups & are going to different places around the uk. & there’s a group that’s going to kenya. this week’s lectures & seminars have all been about outreach & how to prepare ourselves. we have begun to plan our events & lessons. we would very much appreciate your prayers. the devil doesn’t really like what we’re doing & he’ll be doing all he can to hinder us.  please pray for unity within our teams & for the people to whom we will be ministering. God is good & faithful, but it’s hard not to be a little anxious.

on a lighter note, i left a few things out of the last post. namely, cutthroat mafia. yes. the night before we left for our weekend in morley, most of the people had already gone & the castle was more quiet than usual. there were about fifteen of us up late & we played the scariest game of my life. a few people are chosen as the ‘mafia’ & we shut all the lights off & we walk around the creepy, dark castle & try not to get killed. the mafia just walks up & ‘cuts’ your throat & you have to fall down dead until someone finds you. when you’re found, everyone has to accuse & vote for who they think is guilty. briar lured me & arianna into a room & killed us both. you can’t trust anyone these days.

speaking of assaulting vending machines… a few weeks ago, we suddenly the urge to get some candy from the vending machine at the pool. {we’re like children sometimes} our favourite candy here is haribo tangfastics. it’s a bag of assorted sour gummy candies, & it’s the most delicious candy ever. we put our money in the machine & the bag got stuck. we shook the machine a little but we figured when we went to buy the next one, they would both fall. wrong. the first one fell & the next  one got stuck. we tried for the third bag {there were five of us in want of candy} & the machine just wouldn’t take our money. we tried over & over & over again. we shook it, we unplugged it & plugged it back in, we body-slammed it. nothing would work. i will say that seeing little jamie throw herself at the big vending machine was quite funny. it wouldn’t take our money or give us our candy. since we are young & nearly broke, we would not give up. finally our violent combination of shaking & body-slamming worked & we got our candy. the end. i think i didn’t tell this story before because it was a little shameful. but i realized it was too funny not to share. also, this all happened the one time we were skipping evening church on a sunday. lesson learned. & i’ll add that there is a security camera in the pool hall. i’d pay good money for that footage.

we turned in our final essay last week. such a relief. it was on apologetics & i think I did well. i passed my last two assignments with flying colours. literally, colours that fly. we had a memory verse test the other day that i think i might have bombed. there were ten verses that we had to know but we would only be asked to write five of them, without knowing which five beforehand.  i only really knew eight of them, but i figured i would do alright. what were the odds of the only two i didn’t know being the first two on the test? better than i thought. i got the others right but i don’t think missing two whole verses is acceptable. i’m bummed but i’m not too torn up about it. it’s the first thing i haven’t passed in five months of school. not bad.

last saturday, our day trip was to the nearby town of morecambe. it’s small town right on the water which sounds great unless it’s the coldest day of our life & every kind of precipitation is attacking your face the moment your step off the coach. briar & i didn’t even know what we planned to do there, we just wanted to get out of the house… er, castle. our faces were painfully cold after 3.5 seconds of being outside, so anything indoors was appealing to us. we went to see what was playing at the cinema. we decided on journey 2: the mysterious island. it’s pretty much a kids movie but the actor who  is playing our favourite boy in the hunger games movie was in it, so we thought we’d check it out. it was incredibly cheesy but we’re both so enamoured with josh hutcherson that it didn’t even matter. oh yeah, it was in 3D too. after the movie, we tried to find this alleged vintage shop we had heard about. it was nowhere to be found. it was so cold & windy that i actually had brain freeze, without the deliciousness of ice cream. we still had time to kill so we pulled a 500 days of summer {movie reference} & ran around the home furnishings floor at a home improvement store. we tried out couches, climbed into wardrobes, & chose paint chips. & we bought a cactus. it was only 99p & it’s just so darn cute. it was a day well spent.

near reception in the castle, there is this pole that runs up the wall that must have hot water running through it or something because it’s always so warm. & we are not in this beautiful, drafty home of ours. we call it dave & we like to give him a snuggle whenever we walk by. briar & i warm up with him, then bolt up the stairs & dive into her bed when we’re cold. last sunday, we were especially cold & her bed just wouldn’t cut it. our friend diane {who just so happens to be briar’s roommate}, however, has a heating pad in hers that she had left on. suffice it to say, we spent half the day watching movies in diane’s bed until she kicked us out.

our evening service on sunday this week we did something called ‘paper testimonies’. we all got a piece of paper & on one side we wrote one word that described us before we met Jesus. on the other, we wrote one for after we met Jesus. there was music playing & people just walked up front & showed one side, then the other. it was really powerful. God is so unfathomably good.

since i’m just filling you in on random things that i have previously overlooked, i will tell you about ‘dump & dash’. we get the dishes of food from the front of the dining hall & bring them back to our tables. sometimes at meals, we get something particularly delicious, like fries. this is when we dump the contents of the dish onto one plate & dash to the kitchen to get a refill. the staff has requested that we don’t do this because it’s a little rude… we’ve developed what we like to call the ‘scoop & scurry’. we all serve ourselves quickly & walk to the front at a moderate pace for a refill. it seems the staff has no qualms with this method.

we did a survey for the yearbook with ‘best…’ or ‘most likely to…’ sort of things. the best ones were all the koreans being voted most likely to eat noodles & the two students who had been together for years & got engaged over break being voted most likely to get married. I can tell this will be a quality yearbook.

i believe i mentioned the letters we sent to the guys in sweden. well, rob whittaker often goes there to lecture & he always offers to bring letters from us if we have friends there. we wrote letters to our new friends to send with him. when rob came back, he came bearing letters for us. we got the best responses in the entire world.  the guys thought it was funny & didn’t think we were insane, so they wrote us back equally cheesy letters. it’s the funniest thing ever.

this morning, i accidentally pulled out my nose ring. it’s easy to take out & not so easy to get it. i must have been holding my breath as i forced it back in because i was overcome by a sudden wave of nausea & ended up with my head in the toilet bowl ready to vomit my guts out. so classy. i stumbled back into bed until my friend eliana came & jumped on me & dragged me to breakfast. it was worth it. there was wheat bread. but the ground was unbelievably icy. it was ridiculous. i saw five people biff it on the way to the pool hall to do my duty. you laugh until it happens to you. on the way back to the castle, i wiped out ever so gracefully. the scrapes on my palm & foot can attest to that. you’re really living on the edge when running late to class becomes ice skating late to class.

i can’t believe winter school is almost over. we have about a month left & we’ll be on outreach for ten of those days. it’s unreal. i want to do it all over again. not so that i can change anything, just so that i can spend more time with these people in this place. i’m so excited for spring school & some of my favourite people are staying, but it won’t be the same. time has flown & it’s only now when i consider having to leave in four months that all this seems real. it’s such a good reminder of how constant God remains through all of the changes in our lives.

well, that was a lot of words. good on you if you made it all the way through. i forgot how much i enjoy talking about myself & my crazy life. i love you all more than you know & just because i love it here, it doesn’t mean i don’t have those moments when thoughts of you make my heart ache a little.

the end.