Australia day, repentence and forgiveness, beach adventures...

This was a erally great week. There is so much to write about. I think I will start with Australia Day.. January 26th. I don't know exactly what they celebrate.. I guess when all the convicts came...? But it was really fun. We all got decked out in Aussie colours - red, white and blue or green and yellow for their sports colours. I think we were actually more dressed up then the real Australians. We all walked down to the river where apparently hundreds of thousands of people gather to watch the fireworks. We just hung around for a couple hours, ate McDonald's waiting for the fireworks. The fireworks were amazing! Some of the best I think I've seen! And it was just really fun being in another country for their independence day or whatever. I think I had more fun then on any Canada days. Maybe not, but it was a good time!

In classes this week, we were learning all about repentence and forgiveness. It was quite intense because we were really forced to look at our lives and figure out areas where we have really fallen short. We had a whole day on Friday to basically confess and get things right with God. I didn't expect to feel that much of a change, but it was actually very freeing to say things out loud. It's like I could really feel God's forgiveness. It was pretty intense because people were sharing things that hurt, but in the end I think we all came away feeling the freedom we have in Christ. It's only been three weeks but I can already sense so much spiritual growth in my life. I am so excited for what is to come. This next week's topic is worship and intercession - should be good! We also get to find out the countries we can go to for outreach. I can't wait! We will have a couple days to pray and think about where we should go and then hopefully in a week or so we will know our teams and countries. So stoked!

I'm loving life right now. I am surrounded by such a great group of people and we just have a lot of fun. Yesterday a group of us went to the beach at around 9:30pm. We all jumped in the water to have a late night swim.. so good. There was supposed to be a cyclone (which I think is like a tornado or something in the water) so the waves were massive! It was really fun; something I definately want to do again. The weather the past couple days has been almost unbearable hot. Everyone pretty much just hangs out in there rooms or where there is air conditioning. But I guess the heat is better then rain and cold..

Anyways, thanks for reading! I hope everyone is just great!