I think this rain is absolutely fantastic, hence the title of this entry, sorry I mean post, hey I have to get back into the jargon. I must admit though it is making me not want to leave the house tonight and drive all the way to Marrickville. Tom I must really like you.

Today is my day off so obviously I didn’t have to go to work which is always nice. Martin didn’t go either as it was raining too hard so we hung out together all day which was also very nice. We applied for a loan for a car but the system crashed while we were doing it and the lady said she would call me back and she didn’t, that’s so typical I finally get a reliable computer but I am stuffed around by the bank’s computers that don’t work. I am starting to think they sense my dislike of them.

I am quite excited about buying a car but kind of nervous. They are so expensive to buy and then run and repair and insure which means that we will probably be in Australia a bit longer than I had planned saving up to travel and return to Peru but I figured I can’t spend all my time here living for there and a car would make our lives, especially Martin’s, so much easier.

Oh no I am blogging when I should be socialising. I didn’t plan to get back into it so much so fast.

Today at work one of the doctors asked me how I was and I said that I was great. He then looked at me with a strange face and asked why? I said no reason and he gave me an even stranger look. Later in the day when he was leaving he asked me again, so really why are you great and I again replied that there was no particular reason and I asked him does someone have to have a reason to be great and he just gave me another strange look and said well it’s not very normal and he left.

I suggest everyone try replying with I am great when someone asks them how they are.

I have been talking for a little while about returning to the world of blogs. I seem to have a bit more time on my hands these days now that I am holidays from uni and I am not organising a wedding or having to entertain mother in laws. I am also a lot more relaxed so I won’t be talking about how stressed I am all the time which could get a little boring and now that I have a punching bag I am able to take all my stress out on that so I don’t have to do it here.

Mind you after saying all that I am going to say that I am feeling a little uptight and a little nervous right now as I have to go to Monday Club and although I love Monday Club I find it so hard. Like most of what happens at Rough Edges everything is always so chaotic and no matter how much effort you put in you always come up against criticism and nothing ever seems to work out how you planned. I guess I just have to try to see the significance in what appears to be relatively insignificant, see that it is not about me and my plans but about Gods.

Some days suck and today was one of them.

Today at Monday Club two people in the club were quite abusive to eachother verbally and a little physically so they were asked to leave. One left swearing never to return and the other, someone who I have always had a really good relationship with, went up the road and started saying that he was going to kill himself. I went up to find out if he was serious to decide if we needed to call the crisis team and tried to talk to him. All he kept saying was ‘you have to let me come back I can’t handle rejection over and over’, I tried to say that wasn’t my decision but that of the club and anyway it was just for today not forever’ but in the end he said he was going to kill himself and then he shouted out that he would kill someone. At that point I went and asked them in the office to call the crisis team and of course as usual they couldn’t come and by this stage he returned to Rough Edges and had a table in his hands swearing to throw it at me so I said call the police. This was probably a bad decision but I didn’t know what else to do, I was scared and I felt really helpless. I guess I had come up against my limitations and I hated it. I so much just want to try and serve people and so often I feel like I just make things worse.

Now here I am at uni about to hand in an assessment that that I think really sux but I don’t really know what else to do with it.

I don’t know how to find the time to blog more. I imagine it would be easier if my computer wasn’t so stupidly slow and I wsa a faster typer and if my hands sisn’t go numbe from the cold when I was typing like they are now, I think i will go and look for some gloves.

Okay I am back with gloves Yay.

So life well quite a lot has been happening really. Lots of assessments in thae last couple of weeks. I got one back and passed, the professor ticked all the very good boxes so that is good. There are two more thatv I haven’t got back , one I know I did quie well in but the other I am very worried about, It was a Psychology exam and for some reason I just can’t seem to get myself together in exams. I mean I felt like I knew the stuff but I ended up spending 45 mins on tghe first question and then had only 45 min left to do the other three and when I read back over it I thought that is not what I wanted to say. I think I might visit the study skills unit and ask them for some tips on how to do exams. Luckily most of my course is assessment and not exams.

My friend MAria was also out visiting Ryan and I and another friend called Jason. We had some fu together especially on Ryans birthday. Maria and I also took the ferry to Manly walked on the beach and had dinner. We had a bit of a discussion in regards to Ayni and some of the things that went on in Peru and I got the feeling she was pretty angry with me abouit some stuff. I don’t know if she has fully moved on but I am really happy that we managed to get it out in the open adn begin the process of sorting through some of it even if a lot of it was a bit hurtful to me. I think I have to start learning not to take things that aren’t personal, personally, especially in regards to Ayni. I tend to be a bit to protective of it and the things that I did in Peru but the truth is that we are all learning as we go along adn some things work and some don’t, we have to take the mistakes with the good things and that’s just that. I remember returning from that TEAR conference adn feeling best about hearing about other peoples struggles. I remember thinking that all othe organisations seem so good adn look at all the great things they are doing, there must be something wrong with me that so much doesn’t seem t work in Ayni and then I realised through sharing with others that many people doing this stuff have similiar struggles to me and that was very comforting and challenged me to keep going despite the difficulty.

Sometimes been disorganised really pays off. I thought that I had an assessment due tommorrow so I finished the one that was due today a couple of days ago and I have worked really hard to get the one for tommorrow done and I almost there. Now I just found out that the assessment isn’t due until next week. How good is that. I can go to sleep for a bit today. I have had the flu for almost a week now and I have been unable to shake it, it is driving me crazy. Sleep would be good.

Well I said I wan’t going to do this but it appears that the excitement has finally gotton to me and I have to do something.

Yay Martin will be here in 25 days. (not including today)

And I haven’t smoked a cigarette in 3 months and 7 days.

I think that is all I can think of that I am counting at the moment.

In the woman who works the street,
In the man with blistered feet
I seek your face.
In the battered wife who bleeds,
In the husband she can’t leave
I seek your face.
Jesus, I seek you, I seek your face.

In the enemy I despise,
In the hatred I can’t hide
I seek your face.
Where addictions have all gone wrong,
In the ones who don’t belong
I seek your face.
Jesus, I seek you, I seek your face.

In the memories of a child,
In the fears that run so wild
I seek your face.
In the longing to be free,
Amid all the frailty
I seek your face
Jesus, I seek you, I seek your face.

This is a song that we sing at St John’s sometimes and I love it and I really need it now.

It has been a really stressful week for me and I am exhausted. I have been confronted by a lot of my personal ‘enemies” for want of a better word, both people and things and I have struggled to be loving, to be trusting, to be forgiving. I have struggled to seek Jesus in these people, these things and the most difficult of all, (not mentioned in the song, but also important), I have failed to seek Jesus in myself.

I hope that I can.

I just tried to call Martin and his stupid phone isn’t working and I am annoyed. Silly Peruvian phone company, I think it breaks down more than Cityrail. Well maybe not that much. This morning I had to get up at 7.00, yes 7.00 on Sunday morning to drive mum and Keith to the airport because there is no trains on the wekend. Oh well at least getting up means I can have a siesta. I am bringing back the siesta. Well I am bringing it over and I am trying to have one most afternoons.

On that thought I am not so frustrated. Yay