I'm A Survivor!

Hello,
Well this past week was our week out at Stradbroke Island one of the most gorgeous places ever! Little to our knowledge though this beautiful place was also the place for our "survivor week". So what happened was once we got there we set up camp then had lectures from Rhoda Weibe (my one on one leader and the fiance of our school leader Stephan). Afterwards we got into our outreach teams and started some of our games. We played a lot of mini games like relays against the 2 other outreach teams. It was a lot of fun. So the next few days we did the same everyday. From 10a.m.-12:30p.m. were our lectures except from Tuesday-Friday Adam Marshall was our lecturer on The Church. Then from 2-5:30p.m. we would do other relay games. We did a lot with running across the beach while dragging people with tarps. I was the smallest on our team so of course I was nominated for all of the carrying games which was very good for me (lol). But it was a lot of unity building games where we had to get comfortable having others carry you and drag you places. Then we would have dinner and then at night we would have other games from around 7-8ish p.m. A lot of our night games were like 3 way capture the flag where we had 3 t-shirts inside of a circle. One team would be guarding this area and the other 2 would be going after the flags. The only hard part being once you grab a flag you had to run a fair distance on the sand back to your base. Another game was a scavenger hunt. So at night we were let out to go around the beach and rock part to find different clues and some with parts of flashlights near them. It was a lot of fun except it took quite a long time and after losing it was pretty disappointing because we were thinking we would have victory but since we found clues out of order we somehow missed one and got in last. lol. Another fun game during the day was you had to pick 2 people from each team and you had 45 minutes to dress them up as islanders and cheoreograph a dance for them to do in front of the school. I was nominated with Will so we were dressed up in grass and flowers and ended up winging our dance. It was funny, the whole week Stephan our school leader would just look at me and laugh because I am "one of the most girlie girls and pickiest eater here" and 2 of the days we had to make our own meals that we bought from the leaders after the scavenger hunt. We bought potatoes, kidney (which we thought was red meat until it was taken out of the package, wow do we trust our leaders to much), onion, eggs, bread, and peanut butter. All of which I absolute detest except the bread and peanut butter. lol. But I did manage to eat all 3 meals without complaining and without throwing up. So every game had points and at the end of the week we added up the points to find out who the Survivor CHampions were. Unfortunately we were tied for 2nd after being disqualified from 2 games because we only had 5 students and not 7 and so we had 2 leaders who were not supposed to give any imput but they unfortunately mistakenly gave input on 2 games. The last night however was the hardest. After a 40 minute game of a game sort of like armagedon that we play at camp except we tagged people instead of pulled flags we went to bed all exhausted only to be waken up at 12:00 a.m. on Saturday morning. All of us were so frusterated as we only had 5 minutes to get dressed in clothes that were able to get dirty and meet on the beach. So the last night we had "Mission Impossible". So all 3 teams were to go with one of the leaders (20 minutes apart from each team)through the trees of the island where the campsites ended. There was a trail for parts of it but for others just glow sticks to try to keep us on track. Every so often we would come to a challenge where we would have a plank where we had to balance and all 5 students had to rearrange places or some kind of quiz about Australia and the Bible. Or better yet a eating challenge where all members of the team had to finish 1 can of baby food and 1 whole onion without spitting it out. We had to eat the onion as a apple and all of us took apple sized bites. EWW! Fortunately the Iguana's got to the dog food before we did! Another challenge included crossing a swamp (with lilly pads and brown water) using a rope that you would grab with your hands and feet and use your strength (that I lack) to cross the swamp. However the rope was fairly low so while crossing your back was in the swamp and if you fall in it was about to your shoulders deep. If you cross it by just walking through without the rope is one point, crossing the swamp with the rope was two points and crossing the swamp with the rope all the way to the tree that it was tied to you got three. Surprisingly when it was my turn I went across the swamp and my leg was so cramped and my arms obviously hurted but the guys told me to keep going because I could make it by the way I went across the swamp so I made it to the tree! I was so pumped! This must have been one of the biggest achievements I made this past week besides not complaining and eating all the food I had to. Kristina and me were the only girls to make it across so I was so proud of myself. I am also the weakest and the 2nd smallest on our whole DTS so I was proud. Kristina was known for beating everyone in arm wrestles and I was known for totally avoiding them so I was so pumped when I was done the game and found out that the other "tough girls" never made it. (I know pride comes before a fall but I was so happy!). Only 7 in total made it out of 21 5 which were guys. After climbing the rope we had to cross a place where the ocean water was enclosed by sand and we had to run through that to the other side and do 400 push ups as a team. That didn't feel so hot after the rope game but we made her. I am so glad that Lordship week was 2 weeks ago and it talked about "dying to yourself" or I bet my attitude wouldn't have been that joyful as it was. After the pushups we got all of our 12 clues from the 12 stations we went to and we had to run a km to the rocky part to "convert the vegimite tribe". Vegimite is a very disgusting spread to go on bread. We thankfully do not have it in North America but here they do. It was more gross than the onions that we had to take huge bites out of. If they did sell it in Canada it would probably only be used for the use of games like this one. But once our team made it to the rocky area we had to climb it to see these 3 guys who were dressed in grass and who couldn't speak English. As a team we had to decide how to tell them about Jesus with no verbal communication because they couldn't understand. So we decided to do a play but of course once we greeted them they had to squeeze a lot of vegimite into our mouths as a greeting. I started gagging and didn't recover for around 3 minutes and I didn't even swallow it because it wasn't possible. So I had to take it out of my mouth while gagging and smear it on the rocks. I feel sorry for the guys who got a good pile of it in their mouths! Our play worked and that was the end of the game. Afterwards we all went to go have showers and get our clothes that were soaked in swamp water off. Fortunately for that game I had my bikini top on so my shirts were saved. The other teams took longer than we did and we did, and we finished in two hours and seven minutes. However we didn't win the "Mission Impossible" as the balancing game with the plank we forfeited because we didn't want to spend more time on it because of the difficulty. Overall it was a amazing week. The games really helped out our team unity and we learned the importance of communication. We also got to really know each other and their strengths. Our team really connected and we were complimented a lot about our unity and strength as a team. Especially the "mission impossible", the guys were so encouraging and they volunteered to do the hard things but us girls wanted the challenge to so it was sweet. The MAD DTS apparently tried this and they didn't last one day of games they hated it. The other B2B DTS' as well apparently had horrible attitudes and it rained last time and so some of the girls were actually crying and swearing during the game because they hated it so much. But we were said to be the best DTS that has completed it with good attitudes throughout the week. So that was very encouraging! It was very stretching but I made it through. Lectures were very good as well and they really challenged me. God was really speaking to me about my future and His goals for my future so I am pretty pumped as it is becoming more clear to me as the days go by. I will hopefully have my pictures up on photo bucket soon and I have a short video of me on the Island (before the Mission Impossible)that you can all check out. These next two weeks we'll be at the base so I should have another update coming within these next two weeks. I hope you all are doing great!
Daneille