Christmas in the sun

So another couple of weeks have past and the pace is beginning to slow as we approach Christmas and the Australian summer break. There are fewer camps booked for the next few weeks which means Katie and I will be doing some catch up bookwork and training. We have a final week on camp followed by a couple weeks of training which takes us up to our Christmas break from the 24th of December to the 6th of January. We are very much looking forward to our training, as we will be back out to Stanwell tops to be assessed in our vertical rescue techniques in abseiling that we completed our training in last weekend. We will also be on a 4 day hike through the blue mountains, to complete our next section of training in navigation and bush hiking. We will also be doing our sail training but to what extent we will be involved in the learning process I am not sure. I say this because from last week Katie has decided to be both surprising and awesome and having not done any official lessons in sailing or ever taught it before, she is now taking groups of students out sailing and has even done an assessment on one occasion!

This last week has been a great week because God allowed me to experience the love he has for the youth of Australia. I was able to spend quite a lot of time with one group this week, as opposed to changing groups throughout the week, which meant I could begin to build a bit of trust with them. We had 2 Christian discovery discussion groups together and I asked God to speak through me to my group. I encouraged the students to tell me everything they struggled to believe, didn't like, were angry about and just didn't understand about God and Jesus. This led into some really great discussions in which the students began to understand different aspects of living for Jesus at their own levels. The best aspect about talking to the students is that I never know what to say, and by allowing them to ask honest questions means that I have no choice but to trust in God for how I should answer their questions. I really felt God speaking to them as we discovered together that to trust and have faith in God in the big areas of our lives, we often have to recognise God’s answers to prayer in all the little areas of our life in order to build our faith. I have no idea what they were really thinking and how our time together will affect their lives, but as I felt God encourage me to pray for them individually this morning, I really felt Gods love for them and knew that he will continue to be with them in their lives. We are so blessed to have the opportunity to build relationships with the students out here and chat so easily with them about God! Awesome!

Over to Katie to tell you about wildlife and our plans for Christmas. I miss England still very much and hope you are all doing really well.

Hey hey everybody! We wrote our first Christmas cards tonight and on the front were two cool looking Koala bears in Christmas hats, sitting in a Eucalyptus tree decorated with baubles. It kinda summed up how random and different Christmas feels over here! It’s nowhere near as hyped up as it is at home which we kind of miss, and it’s just a bit bizarre that it’s summer, but we have some great plans and we’re really looking forward to it.

We’ve been blessed so much since coming here not only by our awesome friends Sam & Lex (from Samos), but also their amazing parents Andrew & Keena who have helped us feel so at home. We’ll be spending Christmas with their big family. We’re really looking forward to it and feel so blessed for being invited to share it with them. After that we’re heading up to a place called Wagstuff, where we’ll have a week with them in their holiday home. Really looking forward to just chilling out after being so busy lately, and we’ll hopefully get some sailing in.

         Speaking of sailing – on boxing day we’re going to be on their family yacht in Sydney Harbour, watching the start of the big Sydney sailing race to Hobart! (Tasmania). I’ve been checking it out on google and still can’t quite believe we get to do that, it’s going to be incredible seeing all those awesome boats!

        

Some quick highlights from the last week;

- Seeing a 2 metre long diamond python snake slithering up a tree in front of us at work and coiling itself around the branches

- Seeing 2 lorikeet birds land right in front of me on my way to work. They look like mini parrots – bright green, purple, yellow & red, and they always seem to fly in twos, which I think is nice. (check them out on google images)

-We were invited to help at a recent Church youth event on Cronulla beach, where they were being taught to surf by Sam and a few others in the sea, and a guy from Christian Surfers came to speak. We got fish & chips afterwards and watched possums climb the trees.

-I joined in the Church choir practice this week to sing Oh Happy Day, which was pretty fun. Reminded me of choir days in school with Mr. Williams

- Last weekend we went windsurfing! No-one’s into it here, but we found that one of the boatsheds in work had some very retro looking kit, so we put it together and had some fun. The board is the longest I have ever seen, but Sam still managed to plane on it!

- Much to our delight and after a few weeks of looking around in the shops, we found scrabble!

Thank you for all your support and prayers – we appreciate them so much! We miss home a lot, I guess especially now that Christmas is coming, but we know that this is exactly where God wants us for now. Please keep praying for us, and particularly that we would continue to feel more settled in Church and at home there.

Big love from us both x

Another 3 weeks in the land of Oz

3 weeks have gone since our last update. It has definitely been a busy 3 weeks with lots of work, training and fun.

Over the 3 weeks with regards to work, we have been doing a lot of shadowing, learning how each instructor conducts each session, evaluating what they do well so we can develop our own skills in the best ways possible. We have been recommended to make the most of these times as it won't be long before we have our own groups and are running sessions by ourselves. Some of these sessions such as 'bush cooking', 'pool canoeing', fishing etc. don't need any specific training or assessments, and so after seeing them run once or twice, Katie and I have been leading them ourselves! In addition to these sessions there are activities that need a relative amount of training and several assessments for us to be able to run by ourselves. Initiatives (SK and KK), and Low Ropes (SK) are two of which Katie and I have now passed respectively. Other activity sessions such as Archery need extra assessments so we are half way through some of those. Then comes the more skilled activities such as leading abseiling, climbing, and bush hiking which demand a more extensive training programme before we can lead these ourselves. These however are definitely some of the more enjoyable.

With regards to training in these we have had 2 days hiking followed by a 3 day hike in December. We have yet to complete any training in rock climbing but have now had 2 sessions of abseil training which has been great. Last weekend we had 2 full days of abseil training, during the first day we went over different set ups as well as learning how to self belay and different rescue techniques. The most complex skill we learned was how to demonstrate an emergency prussik system halfway down our abseil. We had to demonstrate on our second day that without instruction we could self belay down a 12m vertical cliff stop half way down and switch our system over to allow us to ascend rather than descend. We then had to demonstrate that we could prussik (climb back up the rope using several ropes and knots) back to the top of the cliff. One of the best aspects about our abseil training was where we got to do it. The first day was in and around the centre and the second day was at a location called Stanwell Tops, an area of the National Park about 20mins from the centre. While we were debriefing and filling in our abseil booklets we were lucky enough to see a tiger snake slither by about 2 metres from where we sat, very exciting.

Christian Discovery (CD) has continued to be an exciting part of working here. One specific small group that Katie took with 15 10 year olds after a CD was particularly exciting. The beginning of the week looked difficult with none of them really being interested in it all, to many of them being excited about God and wanting to take bibles home with them to read! One girl even said to the group "I think it would be a great idea if we all trusted in God when we get home"! Amazing. They all agreed, and started to voice personal things like everyone to be praying for.

A few weeks back we got to do something really special and went to see one of my best friends from secondary school in York - Luke Woodroffe. He was down from Cairns with some friends doing some white water kayaking, so we met up for dinner in a place out west of Sydney called Penrith. We are hoping to stay with him in June between when we finish work and fly home.

The weather is slowly getting hotter as we approach Christmas and summertime in Australia. At the moment goes from hot, humid and still with no rain, to cool and windy with rain in hours so you never really know what the day will be like. For me this is the perfect weather because you get regular breaks from the hot sticky days. As well as the weather the sea is slowly warming up but is still pretty chilly when sat waiting for the right wave. Katie and I had a great afternoon recently at a beach in the National Park called Garie, which is also a popular surf spot. I caught a couple of good waves on my new board but still have a lot of improving to do. Speaking of water sports a few of the staff get together on Thursdays to have a sails and ales evening after work with a race and a couple of beers, a fantastic idea! We have raced in some chilled out North Easterly winds and some epic fun Southerly winds - both make for some challenging race conditions. I am trying to get out sailing regularly so that I can return to the UK a much better and experienced sailor.

We are getting on well with the staff here and spending time with them is great, we had an awesome dinner in Wollongong with Scotty B (a guy on Katie's team) and his wife yesterday which was really nice. Wollongong is about an hour from our house so we took an afternoon to drive along the coast road through the National Park stopping at some amazing views and some great little beaches, one of which was called Scarborough. We are really looking forward to our time off over Christmas and New Year, but still don't really know what we will get up to or where we might go.

Thank you all for your prayers - we appreciate them greatly. Katie will be re-doing her timed 400m bronze medallion swim this next weekend which she is quite nervous about, and would appreciate prayer for time and motivation to get out and practice her strokes before the weekend. We have been discussing our future a little bit over the last couple of days which is an answer to our prayers that God would begin to guide us in our next step. We would also like prayer for finding time to be with God both praying, listening and reading the bible.

We really miss everyone at home in the UK, Norway and in Seattle and pray you are all doing well.

Some pictures from our new home..

View from our balcony

Cockatoos hanging out on our balcony

Feeding the Cockatoos

Our living room

View of Sydney Opera House and the Harbour Bridge

Being tourists outside Sydney Opera House

Medallions, Sydney & God

Life is very good. In the last few weeks we have met so many brilliant people, learned countless new skills, passed assessments, assisted in activities, shared our faith with the kids that come into camp, settled into a brilliant church where we are already being challenged and growing in our faith, visited the sights of Sydney and generally have had a lot of fun together. A massive thank you to those of you who have been praying for us for those things – particularly for us to feel at home here in Australia, and for finding a good church - which has been so important to us. God has been answering your prayers!

            Work is pretty busy and tiring each day as we are constantly learning new things. Lately, we’ve each been shadowing the instructors on various activities and have just started to lead some of them on our own for the first time. Last week I got to go on a ‘big day out’ with our group of 11 year 9 kids for the day, starting with a hike through the bush, followed by canoeing down the beautiful Port Hacking river, to a spot where we pulled up and then climbed up to some cliffs in the bush that the kids then abseiled down. My highlight of the day was the abseiling. One boy had been adamant that there was no way he would ever abseil, as he was very scared of heights. The instructor was brilliant with him and encouraged him to have a go, and he completed it! Watching somebody face their fears head on like that and conquering them, is incredible. It’s the reason I love this job.

            We’re gradually getting to know all the people who work here (there’s around 50), but it’s been great having our own teams whom we spend each day with. One thing we’ve been impressed with is that each Monday morning all staff members (all activity teams, leaders, catering, office workers, and the CEO) meet together, to start the week in prayer and encouragement together. Then on Friday afternoons, we finish work 30 minutes early and all meet again at someone’s house on site, (for lots of food) and we all share how the week has gone.

            We had two days of training this week on our ‘Bronze Medallion’ – Australia’s lifesaving award. We had to swim 400m (of 4 different strokes) in 13 minutes, learned how to rescue unconscious, injured, weak and non-swimmers, and had to swim 50m to reach someone, and then tow them back 50m, all in 3 minutes. I found it a real challenge as I am not a confident swimmer (I’m quite the opposite), and have avoided it for years. I can’t even remember the last time I swam 50 metres, so I was really pleased to complete the 400m. However I took a bit longer than 13 minutes, so I will have to do the 400m swim again in a month in order to pass. Thankfully I have an awesome husband who’s trained in swimming coaching! - One of his many talents. He did so well at the big swim and passed everything in great timing. I also passed the timed tow, which was cool. We need this qualification in order to lead any of the water-based activities here.

            Next week we’ll do a 2 day first aid course. It’ll be cool to learn the Australian version, as it includes things like how to treat a child with a poisonous snake or spider bite, whilst out in the bush!

So this last weekend, we finally got our act together and got the train into Sydney! It was such a fun experience to see the city together. We spent a few hours in the amazing botanical gardens, which are full of all sorts of crazy native plants, trees and birds. Literally – some of them just looked bizarre. I was in my element with my camera surrounded by green things.

Whilst in the gardens, we saw no less than 15 weddings! Granted, it’s a very beautiful place and looks out to the Sydney Opera House and the Harbour Bridge across the water, but it was weird that they could each see the other bridal parties close by. A funny moment was when some Japanese students excitedly asked to have their picture taken with us. They must have assumed we were Australians, but actually they got a picture of tourists, with tourists.

            We explored the city lots and had an awesome (massive) meal together, before walking back to the Harbour for some Baskin & Robins ice-cream, and to see the bridge and opera house all lit up beautifully in the night.

            Sunday was another great day blessed by God. We had the best time in Church as we were so challenged and encouraged by the guest speaker, and went up for some prayer afterwards. We feel re-ignited in our faith and passion to live our lives completely and fully for God. We went back to Church again last night for a seminar by the same speaker, on ‘how to reach your life-goals, with a Biblical Perspective’. Lately we’ve really been praying into our dream of one day perhaps having a centre of our own in Britain – a facility that will build people up, and encourage a love for the outdoors. As a result of last night’s talk, we’re keen to pray into exactly what God’s vision for our lives is, and how He wants us to get there. We’re committing it all into His hands, and want to always be sure we’re seeking His will. Please pray with us that we will seek God’s heart and plan for our lives. We are pretty excited about the future and returning to Britain next year for the next step – whatever and wherever that will be.

            But for now, Australia. Please pray for us this week as we will continue to lead different things for the first time and may have some assessments. Also, we’d each appreciate prayer for relating well and comfortably with the kids in our groups. Sam’s camp tends to have younger kids, whereas as mine tend to have more teenagers, and we’re both a lot more comfortable the other way around.

We’d also love love love to have the Internet in our house! We’re desperate to Skype many of you and it’s continuing to be a pain trying to get it sorted.

We won’t be using our British mobiles whilst out here, but do have Australian ones. My number is 0415597170 and Sam’s is 0426830918. Sorry for still not putting any pictures up! As soon as Internet access is sorted, it’ll be easier to do so.

Big love from us both x

Almost a month in..

Dear all, after being in Aus for nearly a month now we’re starting to feel quite settled. This has been the first week we’ve spent entirely at our house, and working on site each day in our teams. It’s been really good to be in one place, get to know our teams and different sites. However, this week’s been quiet, so have mainly been doing odd jobs around the place that we feel like we know our way around now. I had fun using the blower clearing all the leaves from the paths.

The week before last we spent at Shoalhaven – another of Youthworks sites, about 2 hours drive away. At Shoalhaven we had a few training days in abseiling, archery, low ropes and how to lead ‘Christian Discovery’ and small discussion groups. There was lots of theory, lots of practical, how to run sessions, health & safety, standards & procedures ect. We’ve since had a few assessments on some of them. There’s still a lot to learn but our training from now on will be more spread out over time, so we’re looking forward to working on site, assisting the leaders, and gradually leading activities on our own once we’re qualified.

There was a funny moment on our way back from Shoalhaven after stopping at a petrol station, I (Katie) walked out the shop and opened the car door, moved a strange looking bag to sit down, and a complete stranger turned around in the front seat and said hey. I quickly apologised, got out, and ran over to where our car had been moved to.

I (Sam for this paragraph) spent Thursday and Friday of last week assisting on a Youthworks advanced sailing course and assessment for some of the staff. It was great to get out on the water and help the staff learn more about sailing and try to get them excited about it. They all did a great job picking up man over boards and trying to get their head around how to use a conventional spinnaker. The two days ended with a great race out on the river. It was great to be able to introduce some of my own and some of the RYA’s techniques, the best of which was the 5 Essentials! Awesome. It has been good to see Katie out on a boat too and she is looking forward to getting out and learning as much as she can while we are here.

           

Sam has just returned from a ‘Rathane’ team day off/social in the Blue Mountains. He spent the morning canyoning, jumping from rocks/cliffs into icy pools and abseiling down a 25m waterfall. The afternoon was spent grass-karting, pretty much summer sledging or simply flying down a big grass slope on 4 wheels and some metal. Quite an awesome way to spend a day off.

           

On the weekends we’ve spent a fair bit of time at Cronulla beach, last week we watched the a big Christian Surfers competition event where Sam was able to try out a demo shortboard and chat to people about what he was after. Having been pretty nervous about going out for the first time in Aus he came back pretty happy even after he had to swim back against the rip to get in. This weekend he brought a 5’ll shortboard and tried it out yesterday. The waves were pretty small, but he did pretty well considering the board is tiny! I can only really surf bigger boards and most places don’t have any to rent until the summer starts, so I’ll have to wait a little while sadly! The weather’s been quite random since arriving – lots of heavy rain but also lots of sun. It’s generally sunny enough to get burned, but the wind’s pretty chilly, so it’s not always as warm as it looks.

           

This last weekend was particularly exciting as our good friends Sam and Lex (whom we also worked with in Greece) had a baby boy! Maxwell Samuel Hudson. They invited us to visit in hospital and Max is adorable, I think it’s an absolute miracle how God designs and creates each of us! They’re all doing well and think they’ll be heading home today or tomorrow. We feel so fortunate to be in Australia at this time with them, and to see Max lots for the first 9 months of his life. Sam and Lex are awesome and have been an incredible blessing to us since being here.

           

We think we’ve found a church that we’ll settle in for our time here – thank you to those of you who’ve been praying for that. We’ve been twice now with a couple friends and really enjoy it. It’s quite big, very multi-cultural – most countries seem to be represented there! We felt challenged that it’s the kind of church you can’t really sit back and cruise along in. People there will always ask what God is doing in our lives and how they can pray for us etc. It is a church that will challenge us, where we can serve and where we will be supported.

We were touched (and quite amused) to see a Welsh flag at half-mast at Cronulla yesterday! We were very gutted to see them out of the World Cup, but it was great watching them.

            Still don’t have internet sorted in the house but really hoping to over the next couple days. Looking forward to skyping with some of you soon!

Thanks for reading.

Lots of Love

First week in Australia

I’m currently sitting in the Australian sunshine on our balcony, looking down through the numerous gum trees onto Deer Park centre where I’ll be working, and the Port Hacking River beyond. And my wonderful husband is out here with me playing the guitar. We’ve just been feeding about 10 different cockatoos on our balcony and taking lots of pictures of them, they’re incredible! They’re as common as seagulls and eat right out of your hand.

We arrived in Sydney last Friday after our long flights from Heathrow and Hong Kong, to a whole bunch of Youthworks people who came to meet us at the airport which was really nice though a bit overwhelming, and were taken back through the Royal National Park to our own little wooden house, that we don’t share with anyone! We’re so grateful to finally have our own home after 6 months of just having a room wherever we went. It’s such a blessing to have our own space, a living room and a kitchen! That first weekend we went to our friend Lex’s baby shower, and then borrowed a staff car to explore the area a bit.
Then since Monday we’ve done a full week of our training, which they refer to as Boot Camp, and rightly so.  There’s three other guys doing it with us. We’ve had loads of orientation, admin stuff, a couple days in a house in Kangaroo Valley learning leadership and facilitator skills, a couple of days doing our bushwalk training and camping, and have just spent a fun though very very wet weekend camping at a Christian music festival, running a portable climbing wall, advertising Youthworks. It’s been fun but physically and mentally very tiring, as we’re only just getting over our jet lag too.

The 2 day bush walk was epic, we navigated our 30k route through bush, and along the most breathtaking coastline I’ve ever seen. The bush is full of gum trees (‘sribbly gums’ are my favourite) and loads of crazy tropical plants. After walking through streams, past waterfalls, up and down hills, through paths that are so overgrown and above your head that you cant see where you’re stepping, occasionally getting a glimpse of the Sydney skyline across miles and miles of bush, the sun went down and just before reaching the campsite in the dark, we walked on mud that literally illuminated as you stepped on it! Reminded me of the film Avatar. The next day was mainly coastal paths of beautiful ripply sandstone, more bush, and amazing golden beaches. At one point we stood on an overhanging cliff top shaped as an eagles head, looking out to 180 degrees of sea, and down on huge red cliffs, with three big waterfalls along it. Only thing missing was a great whale coming out the water and splashing his tail. One day. I mourned my lack of camera throughout the trip, and mentally took some awesome pictures and made a beautiful album up in my head. It was a tough hike, we had hot weather and I spent the whole of the second day limping on both feet with painful shin splints and bruised toes. We both got really excited about the thought of leading these trips on our own, teaching kids compass and map reading skills. We found a dead snake, had a wallaby jump passed us in the bush, saw possums, wombats and lots of lizards. We’re always aware that there are plenty of snakes and spiders around but we’re learning to not live in fear of them as we’d never get anywhere otherwise.

            This weekend at the festival was great training and experience of belaying the kids and adults as they climbed the wall. Though it did tip it down most of the time and it got a bit flooded. We’ve been surprised at how cold it is here! Since coming it’s been pretty cold and rainy and have spent a lot of time struggling to warm up! We got to hear a bit of Mike Pilavachi from Soul Survivor who was there speaking.
From tomorrow we’re away all week again doing training on the ‘Christian Discovery’ ministry that we’ll do with the kids on camps here, and also getting training in leading archery and abseiling, then we’ll get next weekend off.

            Soon boot camp will be over and we’ll start working with our teams at our separate centres (we live on my site – Deer Park, and Sam’s site, Rathane, is a short walk away). School groups will come in for 3 or 4 day camps and we’ll start assisting leading in bushwalking, climbing and abseiling, archery, high & low ropes courses, sailing, canoeing, raft building, waterslides, obstacle courses, and bush-cooking. Camps will be tailored for the different things schools request to learn out of the activities, such as trust, confidence, team-building, sharing, responsibility ect. So in each de-brief we’re taught to faciliate discussion in what they’ve learned, and they can apply back at home, or with their relationship with God. It’s an awesome thing. We’ve been very impressed by the professionalism, quality and organisation that Youthworks show in everything. Tons of people work here in the various sites, and we’re looking forward to getting stuck in and stepping out of our comfort zones.

Sorry haven’t had a chance to write sooner as we’ve been away from internet the whole time, and will be for another week.

We miss the rugby world cup! No-one seems fussed about it here and we’ve been working each evening so have missed a lot, but we’re loving the scores we’ve heard so far!

Our postal address here is

Sam & Katie Knott,

Youthworks Outdoors,

Rathane Road,

Royal National Park,

PO Box 705,

Sutherland,

NSW 1499,

Australia.

Landline number in our house is 0285253152…not sure of the code you’ll need to call Australia sorry. Hoping to have internet in our house soon, but for now we’re using the office.

Much love from us both x

WE HAVE A VISA!

Today is a very good day. It was Sam who discovered the wonderful email awaiting us in our inbox, and he ran into the kitchen and jumped in the air to tell me. Wahoo! We are so excited and relieved! And amazed to look back on everything that God has been doing in us in these last few weeks of limbo. He is so faithful and we want Him to have all the glory.

So after nearly three weeks of numerous prayer, doing van-runs for Besom, playing hours and hours of competitive scrabble, backgammon, monopoly, getting up early to watch virtually all the rugby games, learning to shoot hoops in basketball, Sam building impressive k'nex structures, reading lots of books, and even playing conkers...we are hoping to fly to Australia on Thursday (as flight prices sky-rocket after then) and start our next adventure on the other side of the world.

Thank you all SO much for all your prayers and support, we are so grateful and blessed by how God has placed you in our lives! 

Awaiting our Visa

The latest on awaiting our visa application...

     Katie and I are still waiting for our Visa to come through and still have no idea wether it will be approved today, or in 2 weeks or more. We should have started work 2 weeks ago today but have obviously been stuck in the UK. Youthworks (our employers) are very understanding about us being late and have been really supportive in reminding us not to worry and to trust in God. God has been amazing in providing for us, through many people providing money that was able to be used for cancellation fees, and homes to stay in to both wait it out and simply spend a weekend on our own, feeling like a married couple again.

What has God been teaching us?..

     While we have been in York, staying with my parents, we have had loads of time to pray and seek after Gods own heart again. It is both amazing and frustrating to live each day not knowing how long we will be in York before we fly to Sydney. We have to trust God everyday to guide us in what he wants us to do because our situation doesn't really allow us to plan.
     A real blessing for us has been the time each day that we have been able to pray for and give our time to Besom (a local charity our worked for in the 2009/2010 winter). It is a blessing for us to see and experience God evidently working in so many peoples lives around York, and to be involved in praying for individuals, and seeing so many answered prayers. It has been amazing to be reminded of how personal God is, because when he provides for the needs of individuals who are struggling, it is so often not just what they need to cope but what they will enjoy, and meets their needs specifically.
     Obviously God has been teaching us patience through our situation but he has also taught us so much more about how to pray and how much God wants to dwell in our hearts uncontested. The less we hold on to, the more God is able to dwell in us and work through us. I personally have really struggled with the need to explain why we are in the situation and place we are in now...What is God teaching us? What do I need to do before God will allow the Visas to come through? Do I need to pray more? Do I need to learn something through this and if I do what is it as i need to get it done now and quick so we can get to Australia?!...I am really learning and fighting to be in a place where I can trust God completely without him giving me any clues or answers or reasons for anything. To really learn what it means to trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding (Proverbs 3v5). Now that I think of it I have been asking God for a while that he would challenge me and teach and give me wisdom. The title of Proverbs 3 happens to be 'Further Benefits of Wisdom'.

God is Awesome!