Thursday, November 27, 2014

Back to the land down under.

When I came home from Australia, I had horrendous jet lag. Everyone said that it was worse going from Australia to Canada than it is Canada to Australia. I experienced pretty mild jet lag on my way there and was prepared for it to be worse. But I was not prepared for what hit me. It took me out for almost two weeks. I couldn't do anything. I felt awful. I didn't want to get out of bed. Let me tell you, I am excited to experience that again.

About two weeks after I got back my brother graduated from high school and then I was straight into camp. This summer I was working as the Assistant to the Volunteer Coordinator. Which isn't a very established position, but a needed one. I helped coordinate staffing, worked in the tuck shop, and was a part of the Full-Time staff team for the summer. It was a great summer. We had some amazing camps and some amazing speakers. We had a couple of speakers who (independent of each other) felt called to speak on the whole bible. They told the big over-arching theme of the bible rather than focusing on small parts of it. It was fantastic. Both did an amazing job and kids and staff were greatly impacted.

Throughout the summer I was plagued with the question of what I was going to do come September. I prayed all summer for direction and tried to focus on being at camp rather than worrying about the future. I was also dealing with being back in Canada after being away for six months. However, as the summer came to a close the stress was inescapable. My options seemed to me to be: try to get hired back at the mill, move back to Cranbrook and find a job, find a job somewhere else and move there, or stay at camp. But what I really wanted to was go back to Tasmania. But that may have been how I was dealing with being back in Canada. 

In the end, I decided to stay at camp. That may seem like the easy decision out of that list. And for a while I was concerned that I was just trying to take the easy way out. But that is not what I did. My position here at camp is largely a volunteer one. There is no paid Assistant to the Volunteer Coordinator  position. I am only paid for small, other jobs around camp. Like cooking for rental groups. The bulk of what I am doing is resulting in no income. I have also moved to the middle of the Crowsnest Pass and I live in a tiny little duplex cabin just off the highway. Not the easy option. I am here working at camp because I love camp, believe in the work being done here, and am convinced that this is where God wants me to be for the time being. I believe that even though there is no actual job or position I am filling, I am doing work that needs to be done. 

I am trying to make the point that I did not simply take the easy way out in deciding what to do this fall. I am not trying to make it sound like it is miserable here. It most certainly is not. The people who live and work here are fantastic. I do live in a tiny little cabin off the highway. But I am surrounded by wonderful people. Also, with some hard work I have turned my place into quite the cute little space. 

So the question that must be cropping up now is, how am I possibly going back to Tasmania when I have only a few months ago returned from a six month trip and I have just laid out in the preceding paragraphs how broke I am. That is a very good question, dear reader. So now on to part two: how I ended up with plane tickets back to Tasmania.

There had been talk for a while of Ginny going to Tasmania this winter. Camp was excited about the idea. I was excited for her and thought it would be perfect if I went along with her. This would have required me to choose one of the life options for the fall that included working. When I decided I wanted to stay at camp I figured that Australia was out of the question. I expressed to the camp staff that my ideal year would include being at camp for the fall, going to Tasmania with Ginny, and then coming back to camp until summer. I was throwing out wishes, not plans. But I wanted camp to know that if some way for me to go to Australia did come up, I would take it. To my surprise, the answer I got was, "actually, if you are going to stay and work with Ginny, you probably should go to Australia with her." 

From there the plan changed. Everyone was happy for me to accompany Ginny, the only problem was money. There was a bit of hope that camp would cover airfare and then there was a lot of waiting. After some meetings happened in the fall I was asked to submit a proposal for my trip to the board. I was told that the board thought it was a great idea for me to go, but camp would not be able to give any money towards my airfare. This seemed like a reasonably shut door. And I was okay with that. I had been praying about it the whole time and knew that if God wanted me back in Australia, He would get me there. And if He didn't, that was okay too. I had about a week where I was sure I wouldn't be going. I was starting to plan for the winter here. I figured if I couldn't go to Australia I would stay here and snowboard and everything would be okay.

Then I received an email from the camp board. It was an email that was sent to the whole CLBC association. It talked a bit about Camp Clayton and the relationship Crow has been building with them. It said that the board and staff would like to send Ginny and I to Camp Clayton for January and February and would love to be able to cover our airfare. It invited anyone who was interested to donate to camp under the designation "Tasmania Exchange." Suddenly the door was open again. 

It was a hopefully few weeks. I was trying not to be expectant. To continue to be content if I was going to be here through the winter. About a week or two ago we found out that enough money had come in that we could start looking up flights. And now here we are. Tickets booked. We arrive in Devonport at 4:40pm on Thursday, January 1st.

So by this series of events, I can tell you with reasonably certainty that it is God who wants me back in Australia and is taking me there. And I am beyond excited. There are so many people I am looking very forward to seeing. And I cannot wait to be back beside the ocean and in the land of wombats. I have learned that Tasmania now has an echidna that shares my name and I am very much looking froward to finding and meeting it.  

Currently here in the Crowsnest Pass we get about 4-5 hours of sunlight a day. And often that sunlight is just slightly brighter grey clouds. Something about knowing I get to spend two months in full out Australian summer makes the winter so much more bearable. 





1 comment:

  1. What an amazing journey raiah, looking forward to having you here again. We are trying some new ideas this summer that we got from Crow so it will awesome having you and Ginny here :) See you soon yaya!

    ReplyDelete