Home Away From Home

Hello everyone - It's been quite awhile. We finished our Capernwray duties about ten days ago (to be exact). It was a lovely experience - so lovely, in fact, we are going back for a week two days from now. Since leaving the beloved place, we have been to Aberdeen, Edinburgh, Billingham, and now Manchester. We spent a lovely week with Molly's relatives in Aberdeen. They were so lovely to show us the area and just take us in like I was apart of the family. (And Gretchen made some delicious home made meals!) We saw many historical buildings, and I think our favourite was Dunnoter. It is a castle ruin right on the sea cliffs. SO beautiful. It actually started to drizzle rain, so it really added to the overall ''ancientness''.

Next, we move on to the story of Edinburgh. It was... well, an experience. We were in a room with who knows how many other people. And well, they decided to come into the room at three thirty in the morning - slamming doors, laughing and talking. Not cool - the second night that happened, the girl we met from Finland actually shouted, ''Shut UP!''. I was secretly cheering her on in her outburst, because I was dealing with my own rage and trying to keep cool and not start yelling, screaming and throwing stuff - haha. Besides this MINOR detail, Edinburgh was so full of history, we decided to take a three hour walking tour. This was a very smart thing to do, because you see alot and are told so much history about random things. For instance, there is a heart carved into the sidewalk/cobblestone on the main road - just random - and apparently people will spit on it for good luck, because this is where the old tollbooth used to be (for collecting taxed) and the townspeople would spit on the door of it, in disgust obviously (not sure how disgust turned into good luck...)

A few days later we ended up south of Newcastle, hanging out with our friend from Capernwray New Zealand, Adam. He works as a volunteer in Billingham at a church. Molly and I got to hang out with the youth group kids - what enthusiastic children! A day later we decided to treat ourselves to a B & B in Windermere. This is in the Lake District AKA beauty. We went on a little hike and then decided to walk to the next town for a little bit of hot chocolate and bananas. Ps: Swans are not all pretty and graceful - they like to stalk Ericka Brown, don't know why.

After a good sleep and delicious breakfast, and of course, the pandemic of swine flu resting on our shoulders, we set off to our 'home' in England. Because of some miscalculations of train passes we weren't able to go some places and had extra days - why not spend it with friends in a castle?

So now, here we are at The Hall once again, hanging out with our friends we made and meeting 110 other new students now here. It's quite amazing how you can meet someone and become so close so quickly - it's really a blessing from God. I can't believe the friendships both Molly and I have begun, and I know they will last for quite some time - actually, forever. I will leave you with this picture - it was from a few weeks ago, but it's just fantastic.

Left to Right: Andrew, Belinda, Martina, Janine, Luke, Me, Molly and Tamara

Bizarre Border Lady to Bizarre Hair Day

CONNECT: Kid's Camp
(i have dreads, sort of- and molly has teased her hair)

Wow Folks - It's been a long time, and we do apologize. We arrived at Capernwray on the 20th of March - after a struggle at the border. The border patrol lady didn't quite believe we were volunteering at a Bible School and apparently we didn't have particular documents needed (we were unaware that we were supposed to have these). She called us unorganized and basically stupid and then cause us to miss our train to Carnforth. PERFECT! After a long trip, we got to Carnforth - here we thought we might have been forgotten because no one picked us up for about an hour.

Over the next few days we got to know some of the former students that were working over their one month break. --- insert picture of lorea and hannah ---- These two are Lorea and Hannah. Molly and I bonded very quickly with these girls. They were just ridiculously welcoming - and quite hilarious too!

(molly, hannah, lorea, and ericka)

Lorea and Hannah ended up leaving the first week because they went traveling. By then we got to know almost everyone else on staff. Our favorites: Belinda Nyabako (student - Zimbabwe), Martina Bukovska (student - Slovakia), Janine De Waal (kitchen staff - Holland), and Andrew Wilson (receptionist - N. Ireland). And of course there are many more. --- insert photo of all of these people ---

(Belinda, Molly, Ericka, Andrew, Janine)

Let's explain our living arrangements. Ericka is in the castle on the upmost floor with four other girls, while Molly is in a van down by the river!!!!!!!!... just joking. Molly is down yonder in a building called the conference hall. She lives in the rooms underneath it with five other girls. Our jobs have changed since the beginning of our stay here. At first, we were both part of housekeeping. There were no guests here at Capernwray for the first week, so the 20 or so of us as staff did 'spring cleaning'. Basically, hardcore cleaning of every single room....and there are a lot of rooms here! The weekend following we had a women's retreat. Eighty women were here, so Molly became part of the dishwashing crew and I became part of the Kitchen crew. Haha - I feel like I'm at Haggen again, minus the fact that I actually have fun working here. Then the next weekend was a second women's retreat - one hundred and eighty women!! It was crazy. But, the ladies were blessed and refreshed. (Mom- I think you would have enjoyed this women's retreat). Right now, we're in the third week and there are 161 kids here, between the ages of 10 and 14. They are just a delight! Both Molly and I are slightly involved. We are room leaders - so, we hang out with about ten girls each from 10:00 pm to 10:20 pm. We just talk, play games and get to know eachother. It's also a time for us to discuss with them the talks of the day about Jesus. It's a lot of fun!

(John Dewitt and Martina)

We've been doing some other crazy things during the few days here and there when we don't have anyone staying at Capernwray. We've played lots of games like sardines and hide-and-seek in the Castle at night- it's perfect because it gets really dark and there are so many rooms that it's kind of creepy. We've also started up Ultimate Frisbee - WOW, we are out of shape!

It's sad to think we only have a week and a half left, because we developed such amazing friendships already with the staff here, but we hope that these friendships are for a lifetime!

--and now that I've become really cheesy in my writing, we will now hold hands and sing to Michael W. Smith's song, 'friends are friends forever' and kumbyah it up ---

PS: This is our friends Jeremy and Brie-Anne in line for a Disneyland ride!