Update time?

I haven’t written for AAGES on here! Just to quickly update on the license situation, I successfully gained my restricted and then my full licenses (as of the 16/05/16) the first try each, and so far I haven’t crashed (or caused anyone else to crash) – long may that last! Scary thought is that now Braden can technically get behind the wheel since he has his learners license… funny story about this: Mummy and Braden were on their way to drive around the new development at westgate and as they were going around the Brighams Creek round about another car crashed into the front of our little silver Fiesta… so that driving lesson was over before it even began! I think the car will be fixed tomorrow so soon we’d all better watch out… two Palmer kids on the roads!

This year has flown by so fast! Last year I finished high school with my Excellence for Level 3 and gained 3 scholarship subjects (Stats, Geography and Biology) … Chemistry as we all know was a disappointment – after all that study and I missed the exam – how embarrassing!!! After much deliberation of what to do this year I finally decided to spend a year doing a gap-year type programme with Carey Baptist College in Ellerslie, called “Intermission.” I have been learning SO much and am LOVING it. It is all really different to the whole science scene I was focused on last year, but it is extending my thinking in ways I had never even thought about before, which is really awesome. It took some adjusting to get used to such early mornings, I get a ride in with daddy to town with him at 5:45am so that means getting up at 5:30… and somehow staying awake enough to focus on my lectures later in the day! I hang around his office till about 8, sometimes going for a walk/run/swim and read my bible etc. I actually love getting up and spending time with God in this way – it is less study focused which is good to balance the technical and challenging stuff I have been learning.

The first semester (which is well over by now) I had ‘Reading and Interpreting the New Testament,’ ‘Mission of God’ and ‘discipleship and worldview’ which were all really great papers, I especially liked learning about how to do exegesis of passages and also about the different aspects of Gods mission on earth. It really opened my eyes to the fact that we aren’t just here to ‘preach the gospel’ through words, but we are also to seek justice and care for our creation as well as a whole lot more. Sometimes I think we put a big emphasis on missionaries overseas, which is important, but we also need to remember that mission is anywhere, anytime to anyone. We can’t put God’s mission into a box – I need to keep reminding myself of that as I decide where to go next and how to live my life for him.

This semester has already half finished… crazy! It feels like it has barely started :O. ‘Faith, Communication and New Media’ is one of my papers and is quite interesting to be thinking about how we communicate, how we use media and how our surroundings communicate things – soon we will be looking at how to engage these things with faith and how we share it, which is going to be great!
My lectures with Bridget are awesome! They are some of the most challenging things I have ever thought about ‘Faith Engaging with Social Issues.’ There are so many problems with this world and this paper has been opening my eyes to so many of them! In fact, this whole year is really about us learning and thinking for ourselves about the issues around us – it is really making me think about how I am going to live my life. How will I respond to the things I am learning? Will I let it actually touch my heart and change the way I do things? I really pray it will, I just don’t know how… there is so much going on and it is very overwhelming to think that I am just one person in this huge earth full of these massive problems!

Some of the things we have done so far are: Poverty, Injustice, Violence and Conflict, War and Peace, and Environmental Justice. We have more to come which I am looking forward to as well, but some of these things have really touched my heart… there is so much poverty everywhere, even in New Zealand where we think we are pretty well off (which we are!!!). How can I go on living with so much and do nothing to help change other peoples situations? We have also learned about living radical lives for Jesus – like the organisations like Urban Vision and UNOH do, would I be willing to change my way of living? Is that what God is calling me to do? It isn’t just the poor that need to hear the Good News, everyone does! What am I going to do about the injustice that so many face? The slavery that people are born into and cannot escape – how is that fair? Which is most important, to actually preach the gospel or to live it out through supporting organisations that care about bringing justice to people… how do I balance these things? I feel like I shouldn’t just choose one and ignore the other, that isn’t what Jesus would do.

“Learn to do good. Seek justice. Help the oppressed. Defend the cause of orphans. Fight for the rights of widows.” – Isaiah 1:17

On Wednesday and Thursday Intermission went to Raglan to learn about ‘extreme zero waste’ which is an organisation started up to make a change in their community to reduce the amount of waste going into the landfills. It is so exciting to see the efforts that people are going to to look after the land that God has given us! But some people just don’t care, and that makes me really sad. God gave us the beautiful things around us and we were supposed to look after it, but what have we done? Trashed it! Part of our mission on earth is to care for this creation, what are we as Christian communities doing to implement that? Do we think about how much we throw away and where it actually goes?

“The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it.” – Genesis 1:26

“And I brought you into a plentiful land to enjoy its fruits and its good things. But when you came in, you defiled my land and made my heritage an abomination.” – Jeremiah 2:7

Guess what?! It is so exciting!!! At some supermarkets and Warehouses there are now plastic bins for soft plastics – things like plastic bags and glad wrap… pretty much any plastic you can scrunch in your hand can be recycled in these bins. You just collect it up and take it there and then they ship it over to Australia to a company that turns it into other products like park benches and blocks and awesome things like that! If more people get on board, they will be able to roll it out more widely throughout New Zealand and get a factory here so we don’t have to ship rubbish all over the place! At our house we now have a soft plastics bin as well, so that means that we can reduce the amount of stuff that gets buried and toxifies the land, win-win situation J

Anyway, the zero-waste plant – its really cool because a lot of what they do there is repurposing and reusing items that come in, there was this super cool chair that they had made out of old books and as well as things like that they make things out of old cabinets etc. and sell it back to the community. Of course they also sort all the recycling into the different plastic types etc. I loved being there, maybe I really could be a Rubbish Girl?!

One sad thing I learned about while we were down there was the garbage islands in the pacific ocean – this is huge areas of ocean that are covered in rubbish because it is where the tides and currents meet and swirl around…. There are 5 of these huge areas! Some of them the size of Texas… that is uncomprehendable – all that is rubbish?! What are we doing to Gods creation?

Some people would argue that it doesn’t matter so much about how we look after the environment, we should care more about people. Yes, I agree we should care about people and their wellbeing, but it is also true that the environment that people live in affects this wellbeing. When people become trapped in poverty, they often will go to any lengths to survive (completely understandable) but this can in turn lead to the further deterioration of our resources and land which causes the cycle to repeat and get worse. As well as the cycle of poverty being very difficult to break, so is this environmental cycle as the issues become so big and so intertwined with everything else – where to even start fixing it???

As well as all this thought about the problems of this world and how small I feel and powerless to fix them, I still want to make some sort of difference wherever I can. This is something I am struggling with as I try to decide what to do next year. I have considered staying at Bible College – I really love it! But I think that in order to be most effective in mission of any sort, you kind of need a skill, so for that reason I have been leaning towards going to university. There in lies my next problem… what to study? I have thought about healthcare of some sort for a very long time, but even this is such a huge field with endless (it feels endless anyway) possibilities! I could be a nurse, a paramedic, physiotherapist, Doctor or some sort of specialist… those are my top options at the moment, but even that is not very specific or narrowed down. In fact with these possibilities I haven’t even narrowed down the university to go to! (If I would choose based on their website it would definitely be AUT – I really don’t like Auckland’s site J)

Part of my trouble in deciding is the length of study and my other future ambitions and the things that are important to me. If I was to be a G.P. or specialist this would require a very long time of study, and the intensity would be pretty crazy and stressful as well as hours being pretty random which would not be fantastic for if I wanted to have a family at some point. Having said that, being a doctor or specialist would be really useful for if I ever did some sort of overseas mission – but then again I guess you can do anything. I also want to be involved with youth group still and music at church as well as still trying to wrestle with how I can act on the challenges of what I have been learning about the injustice in the world. I’m not sure if making such a big sacrifice of time and energy for study and work would consume me and make my spiritual life suffer, I really don’t want it to. But I also know that there have been many famous doctors like Ben Carson who lived and worked in medicine and for God as well. Argggh!!! I just don’t know!!!

“But I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord. Plans to prosper you and not to harm you” – Jeremiah 29:11

“Trust in the Lord with all your heart; do not depend on your own understanding. Seek his will in all you do, and he will show you which path to take” – Proverbs 3:5-6

“You saw me before I was born. Every day of my life was recorded in your book. Every moment was laid out before a single day had passed.” - Psalm 139:16

I am so grateful that God knows my heart. He knows my desire to serve him and he loves me, and always will no matter what I choose to do. It is amazing to think that even though all he has created is so huge and expansive, God knows each of us personally. He has a plan for every minute of our lives and has known since before we were even born – how crazy is that?! Thank you God!!!