Bucket List Challenge # 1.... Build a 2 metre Sandcastle. Complete!

Ashley Mountfort... A wonderful friend who always sees the positive and the good and possibility and grace in every situation. Someone who has a playful childlike spirit in a world of adults who have stamped it out... You're beautiful.

Your bucket list challenge for me was to build a 2 metre high sandcastle with the little popcorn bucket you gave me. Today I did it!  Well, we may have picked up some tools from the Hardware store so that it didn't take 5 hours to make!
With the help of Tegan and some friendly kids on the beach... We had a fabulous time in the sun and wind! Feeling like a child again, playing in the sand, listening to the gulls and breeze and waves.
Thank you for giving me a challenge that made me be a kid!

Here is the photo evidence...

Starting out.... With our handy tools from Mitre Ten Mega and the trusty popcorn bucket



This, my friends is why you build a moat first! Because of the rouge waves!



The waves were AMAZING today!



The these two kidlets joined us! Moved to NZ from NY just 5 days ago, they're loving the beach!

Okay, so they tried to help.... but mostly just threw sand around and broke the edges cause they couldn't get close enough... But we appreciated the company!



The finished product!  With the moat round the edge and the bucket on top, it would have been pretty much 2 metres tall but definitely 2 metres long and wide.

The. Bucket. List

This year I feel that God is going to do something really exciting in my life... I'm going to go on more adventures and exploring and rick taking than before. I'm going to learn to love more extravagantly than before. I'm not going to waste as much time inside my comfort zone this year.

So for my birthday I asked those who were celebrating with me to each bring a bucket list item and I would do my very very best to complete ever single one of them before I turn 22 next year...

I thought this would be interesting and fun but I had no idea what I was in for!  I love it because each of these challenges represent a bit of the person who gave it to me... their excitement about something or a bit of their passion or interest and I love it!
All of the ideas were amazing, I was blown away by their creativity and ridiculousness.

This is a photo of the original list, but I will type it up too... And as I do each of them I will write about it and post some photographic evidence of me doing it!
The name of the person who issued the challenge is written beside each one too.

Thank you everyone!
This will be an exciting year!

1. Create an artwork in a public place - Chloe Palmer
2. Dress up as a vegetable for a day - Lauren Sharp
3. Gather a group of people together at uni and make a human pyramid - Ben Campbell
4. Pick a recipe book and work your way through it - Jennie Verstappen
5. Mid winter Swim - Kirsty Foster
6. Take a photo every season in your favourite place for that season - Carlie Paterson
7. Learn how to do the splits - Amber Pemberton
8. Write your own worship song on guitar - Emma Ross
9. Take a photo in 5 iconic Dunedin places and do something creative with it. Bring people you haven't gone to those places with before - Nicola Jacobs
10. Have a day where you only eat food starting with the letter A - Kerah Bruce
11. Find a love for something you don't already love - Abby Williams
12. Make a 2 metre sandcastle and then wash the bucket, put popcorn in it and watch a movie with a friend - Ashley Mountfort
13. Make Sock Puppets - Ashley
14. Squirt 20 unsuspecting people with a water gun - Ashley
15. Have a dinner party with random utensils such as a whisk, beater, potato pealer etc - Sarah Greaves
16. Where a onesie everywhere you go for a day
17. Go to the supermarket and buy groceries for the person in front of you and yell as loud as you can "You are AWESOME" - Garrett Chin
18. Go busking with your guitar and film it until a stranger gives you money - Mum
19. Complete one of the "Great walks" with your dad and others of your choice - Dad
20. Go skydiving - Grace Boston
21. Go bush in Fiordland - Tegan McNeish
22. Find something everyday that takes your breath away and tell someone about it - Sophie Aldersley

22 things to do before I'm 22..... Lets get started!!

Get out of the armchair people!

The other day I was talking to a friend in the evening and asked how her day had been...
The reply went something like this, "Oh, it was okay... pretty boring. Just another day, you know."

And it struck me in that moment how absolutely tragic this is... Not just her, but for the thousands of students in this city that go home everyday and say something similar.

Another day lost into the canyon of boringness and nothing and apathy.
Friends, we only have a limited amount of these days, we can't keep pushing them off the edge like this!

And I decided in that moment that I would never lose another day into that terrible place again... That every day I would search for variety and something new to do. That I would push for interesting conversation and plan for the unexpected to happen. That every day I would venture outside those ten foot thick walls of my comfort zone.

We've sat too long in the lazy boy of our comfort zone that we didn't realize it had turned to boring and expecting nothing zone and now we're trapped in it!
It's time to get off the armchair people!

We have a certain amount of 24 hour lots. Lets' stop throwing them away.

Sunday is Coming. Hold on.

Friday happened.
Jesus, the God man was beaten and murdered so that we could know God again.
To destroy sin and death and the distance between heaven and humanity.
The mob happened, the flogging happened, the cross happened.

Then He died.
And the people went home.

And now it's Saturday.
Nothing has changed really. Jesus is still dead.
There is still blood on the ground, the people still hate each other, the tomb has been sealed up.
Death seems to have won this time.

Saturday is waiting. It's longing. It's hoping that maybe this isn't the end even though everything looks like it is.
Saturday is the time between the blood tests and the doctors phone call.
Saturday is the time between the funeral and going back to work.
Saturday is after the fight, walking away hoping desperately they'll come after you.
Saturday is when you're lonely at night and the computer is there with all the secret images you look at, the ones you wish you didn't want to see but do anyway.
Saturday is the time between burying the bulb and seeing it come up.
Saturday is when everyone thinks you've moved on and they stop asking you, but really its' still hard to get up in the morning and do life.

Saturday is the hardest.
Friday was pain and death and suffering and grief, but everyone saw it, it was obvious.
Saturday is the silence.
No one really speaks of what Saturday feels like.

But just like every Saturday. It will end and Sunday will begin.

Now Sunday is the day that death lost every hold it ever had on humanity.
Sunday is the day God said Give Me My children back!
On Sunday Jesus finished the battle of Saturday and rose to life again, ending Saturday forever!

Sunday is life.
Sunday is the moment you realise maybe you will get through okay
Sunday is forgiveness
Sunday is the first rays of the new day
Sunday is that laughter you didn't think you would hear again.
Sunday is leaving the hospital
Sunday is walking away from the graveyard knowing where that person has gone to and looking forward to the reunion
Sunday is the kiss of heaven and earth

Friend, if you're stuck in Saturday.
Remember, Sunday always comes.
Hold on.

Familiar Vessels

There's this account in the bible.. it comes after Jesus has been travelling around the area teaching, healing and loving on people. Everywhere He goes, the crowds follow Him wanting to get close to Him, to hear Him and be healed.

But now He's heading home to Nazareth, the back country hick town He grew up in, where everyone knows the local goss, where Mrs Miller still lets her dog poop on the neighbours lawn even after ten years, where Mr Granger sits on his porch to relay the local news to everyone who walks past and where if someone has an affair, the whole street knows within 24 hours.
 It's that kind of place.
After travelling around and gaining national attention with His miracles and teaching, you'd expect a decent homecoming.
Here's what happens.

'The next Sabbath, He began teaching and those who heard Him were amazed. They asked "where does He get all this wisdom and the power to perform such miracles?" Then they scoffed, "He's just the carpenter, the son of Mary and the brother of James, Judas and Simon, and His sisters live here amongst us." They were deeply offended and refused to believe in Him" (Mark 6: 2-3)

God was sending something the world had never seen before, the kingdom of God, the breaking in of eternity, the freedom from sin and death and He was RIGHT THERE WITH THEM.
And they felt it, they saw something different but they immediately rejected it because it came in the form of what was familiar. They knew the vessel that God was using so they rejected Him in the expectation of a glorious, fresh, politically powerful Messiah figure to break on the scene and make everything right.

How often do we miss what God is doing because it comes in the form of what we think we already know? The places, people and activities we're familiar with, do we reject them as normal because we're searching for something new and exciting? Do we miss what we're desperately searching for because it looks like that which we're used to seeing?

Being busy...

"I've been really busy sorry"
"It's just been such a busy week"
"I'll get round to it when I'm not so busy"
"I've been so busy I've barely had time to talk to them about it"

Being busy...
It's such a common term. Everyone is busy, it's an answer to the question of how we've been, it's an expected thing for every student, parent and worker.

But today God started to teach me that being busy is not necessarily a measure of how much we do during the day, but more of an attitude, a state of being, a way of experiencing life.
Sometimes we don't even realise how busy we are, but the people around you can be pretty accurate judges. If you are a busy person then even when you're not doing anything, you carry the "aura" of busyness with you. And the people you do life with can feel it... they feel how when you're talking with them, you're already thinking about what you'll do after them. You're usually never fully present when you're spending time together and your life has a quickness and rush to it even if you're sitting still or walking slowly.
Busy people will always apologise for being busy, being frantic and always having to rush away... but it's not what they're doing, it's who they are.

I was trying to work out the relationship between being a busy person and doing lots... because there is one, I just don't think it's how we thought.
I think that maybe busy people tend to do a lot because it's hard for them to relax, they feel wasteful and useless and nervy when they're not doing something. Maybe this is a deeper issue about where their self worth lies, I'm not sure. But as a result they fill their days up with lots of jobs and people and errands and activities because then there is a reason they feel busy, it becomes an external circumstance rather than an inner issue.

On the other hand there are people who are responsible for a lot, work long hours, have young children or organise lots of people... yet there is a calmness about them, a stillness about their life. When they're with you, they are fully present, fully engaged. These are the kind of people who if you walk into their office, they will put aside their work to put your presence and need first, then get the other work done later (coincidentally these people also have wonderful time management skills!)

And today, I felt God was saying to me "I don't want you to be busy this year"
My first thought was that I have a lot on this year, that it was always going to have been a busy year.
But He said "You will still do all those things, but I don't want you to be busy in the midst of it. I don't want that for any of My children"

"Busy is a drug lots of people are addicted to" - Rob Bell

Tramping misadventures

So this last week my friend Tegan and I went tramping from Arrowtown to Wanaka over 3 and a half days... we originally planned to go back as well, but when we got to Wanaka we reassessed our fitness and how much we ACTUALLY wanted to climb back over that mountain, then decided to hitchhike back instead.

We decided that tramping is also supposed to be fun as well as challenging. Not just plain hard all the time. (even if you do feel accomplished afterwards)

It was an excellent trip and we had heaps of fun, but lots of little things happened which made it more interesting that I thought I would mention on here and highlight the fact that trips don't always go completely to plan and can still be great anyway!

The very first day there were 22 river crossing before we got to our first campsite, this meant that our boots were wet for the rest of the trip almost
Lesson: Plan to get wet.

We tried to dry out our socks over the fire we lit that night while eating dinner.... the result = 2 pairs of charred cooked socks.
Lesson: Don't let Aliesha oversee sock cooking

We left at 5 30 am the next morning to try and get a headstart on the hill before the sun caught us, but while trying to pack my stuff in the half light we left (well, I left...) Tegans' knife hiding in the grass while we started climbing the mountain.
Lesson: Don't pack in the dark, no matter how much the mosquitos like the head torch.

Halfway up the mountain I stepped in a massive mud patch and sunk up to my knees in it...leaving mud all through my socks and boots and legs. Tegan actually had to pull me out because the suction was too strong to pull out by myself.
Lesson: watch where you're walking. All the time.

We were thinking it was about time to see the hut soon so when we saw a little hut down by the river side we decided that instead of following the track which seemed to loop inconveniently up the mountain, we made the decision just to climb down the cliff and follow the river to the hut.
However 20 mins later upon arrival we see that this is a locked construction hut that we cannot use at all! Following this is a 250 m  rock climbing/grass pulling/ vertical uphill climb back to the track...
Lesson: Don't leave the track. it's there for a reason!
(just for the record, we saw the real hut about 4 hours later.... a LONG time after our original ETA)

At lunch we decided on an alternate route following a four wheel drive track (we thought) rather than going over the next mountain, but instead going around it.... After we reached it we see a sign that said something that we interpreted as "Don't you dare walk on this track you filthy trampers... if we see you we'll shoot first and ask questions later"
So in fear of death we decided to follow the river to Wanaka which isn't owned by anyone.
This however, turned out to be a very long windy pathway...
Lesson: Check with DOC before choosing a path to see if it is actually a path and not a road through a private sheep station.

There were plenty more tramping life lessons I could include in this but it's getting long so I'll finish up... It was a great trip though and don't regret anything!
Lesson: We live in one of the most beautiful nations on earth, get off the couch and explore your backyard!

This was our muesli breakfast half way up the mountain after our 5 30 am start