Week Two

I left off last in the middle of Thursday if you recall. Thursday night’s activity is the Edge (high school aged youth group). The topic was a question “Does worship only happened in certain places?” We decided that it would be cool to do something that young people would not usually think of doing in a church sanctuary. The west church a few weeks earlier had just got a nice new projector and screen installed. We decided to play the Nintendo Wii in the sanctuary on the projector. It was brilliant. We ended up playing an Olympics game essentially the whole night except for a little bit of singing in room where not many people would think of singing in. It was quite a lot of fun.

Fridays are usually a mellow day. Nothing too urgent to plan for so we usually discuss a book that we have been reading. We are just getting done with a book by Rob Bell called Velvet Elvis. A very good book. We do that over a time called Friday Coffees, which is always good fun, and see lots of people. It is from 10am to 12 noon. There are people who volunteer to serve coffee, tea or juice and have prepared little goodies to eat. There are a lot of stay at home moms in Banchory who come and bring their little children so it is always nice chatting with them and seeing the little guys and gals. After that I don’t do much but got home and occupy myself until 4pm when Tony and myself go to the Secondary school’s game hall to play football (soccer) with the teachers. There are no proper goals because we play 5 on 5 and use a cone type thing that is called a “skittle.” A goal is scored by knocking the skittle down. I did not mention in the last email that I broke one of the janitor’s wrist. We both went up to win a header and he kind of just bounced off me and tried to brace himself from the fall by putting his had down when he landed. So this past Friday when I showed up the teachers were poking some fun at me and seemed like everyone that worked for the school all the sudden knew who I was. On Friday it snowed a good amount, which was fantastic for the next day.

One of my friends Peter Brodie and I woke up super early on Saturday to go skiing. The drive up was beautiful. Every tree had frosty white covering and the lakes were aqua blue because of the ice. We got up after being behind jokers who didn’t have a clue how to drive in the snow. At a standstill they figure that the faster they accelerate the better chance they have to get going so they absolutely punch it, putting their foot to the floor and kicking up an unreal amount of snow. If you have ever seen an artificial snow maker the spits out snow, that is what it looked like these jokers had under their tires. Once we got to the base of the mountain I saw things were different. There were no big four or six person lifts. The best they had was a two person T-bar. The snow was fine although there were instances that required taking off our skis to walk over bits of runs (usually at the top) with a 10-yard field of stone. The visibility was not the best other than those two runs where the sun broke through the cloud cover just enough to see the differences in the slope. Some people joke when they ski that it takes longer to get up than to go down, in this situation it was most certainly the case. All in all it was an experience and I was glad to go up but would never travel to Scotland to go skiing, that’s for sure.


In the previous email I wrote about how it was such a blessing to be able to rework my sleeping pattern and that it was so easy to wake in the morning. This wonderland that I was living in was derailed by the Super Bowl. As you could imagine having the Super Bowl at a convenient time for everyone in America to watch makes it so people in the UK get screwed. The coverage started at 11pm and ended at 3am. I had come home from our bible study that meets on Sunday evenings and was shattered. Was just ready to get into bed when Ian (my host dad) reminded me of the game and how we had a few brave souls coming over for the long hall. We came out with the caffeinated drinks and munchies to fuel our journey. I am not going to lie. I slept through most of the third quarter, but was alert for the rest. The frustrating part was that half the excitement about the Super Bowl when one doesn’t really care the victor is the commercials. They were nowhere to be seen or heard. During the times where there were meant to have commercials they had these three suits put their two cents in. A major let down to say the least.

Monday was a horrible morning to wake up. Once I eventually got up we planned a bit but didn’t have a whole lot to do. When evening rolled around I got picked up to go to a basketball game. Instead of going to the University aged bible study I decided to go to my basketball game. A decision I was ok with but soon changed. I got picked up and was driven to Aberdeen, 40minutes away. Got to the gym and saw our opponents. Very small guys and two girls. I later found out they were 16 year old boys and two girls. Don’t get me wrong, I think it is great for girls to get involved in sports but I don’t care to play against them especially at what is suppose to be a competitive level. I was jumping for our team, when the ball was in the air I jumped and the guy from the other team jumped and he reached maybe as high as my elbow. At that moment I asked myself what I got myself into. I am not the best athlete or the tallest person but I was faster, stronger, could jump higher and was about 6 inches taller than anyone else on the other team. Let me say also that they were not good basketball players. I continued to play thinking I could get something out of this experience but after getting two nice scratches courtesy of the girls on the opposing team and the score keeper jerking my chain around saying that I was not on the score sheet so I was disqualified from the match I ended up getting two technical fouls and was relieved to not have to play any longer. I have a game tonight (Firday), hopefully it will be a better all around experience.

I realize this update may be longer than the last so I will try to shorten the descriptions of the next days. Tuesday went well with the Rock. Lots of fun. Wednesday we went into a fifth grade class and let them ask questions about Christianity (were loads of good questions and was brilliant). Later in the evening we went to a thing called the Guild (a group of older women in the church) and told them about what we have been doing with different programs. Then on Thursday Sean (host brother) left for his trip to Fiji to coach soccer for five weeks, we had the school group at lunch 2020, was good and then the Edge in the evening which was great as well.