today i found out about this pastor in Iran - Yousef Nadarkhani - who, as we speak might be living the last few hours of his life because he refuses to deny that he's a christian.
this man has a wife, he has two children, and his family is being torn apart over this.
it seriously broke my heart.

sometimes i think we might be missing the point of christianity a little bit.
I mean we talk about not being Sunday christians, and so we go to church and then we try to live our lives as best as we can monday to saturday before returning to church on sunday content with our efforts.
but there's people like Pastor Yousef all over the world every day, being murdered or abused, or risking their life just so that they can believe in God, and bring glory to him, and most of the time we don't even know about them.

don't get me wrong, i think its awesome, and have so much respect for the people who stand up in their schools and make a difference, or the people we hear about who have the faith to step out and say their testimony at school, or pray for somebody in the common room. and its seriously amazing!! But every day in the world there are these people who stand in front of authorities, and risk tearing their family apart, or losing their life. All for Jesus. all behind the scenes. all where nobody knows about it. they are the ones that inspire me.

when i was in Vietnam in April, i went over to help them, but soon realised they had a lot more to teach me than i could help them with in a week.
i remember lying in bed listening, as the missionaries at YWAM where we were staying had to shut all the windows, and all the doors before singing praise and worship songs in case somebody heard them and they got reported.
i remember hearing about how they weren't allowed to teach people about Jesus directly, but they had devoted their entire lives to serving others in the hope that people would find Jesus not through their words, but their actions.
i remember listening as one of the missionaries talked about a tribe who found Jesus, but had this awesome, unique way of worshiping God because, though they were now christian, they'd been brought up doing certain things and that was their culture and their identity. but they managed to find Christ through that.
it's crazy to leave that poverty stricken environment, and walk back into church. it's awesome to be home, but its important to never forget.

he is everywhere. and its really easy to forget how big the world is, and that though our life is so important, so is everybody elses. our God is good, but its too easy sometimes to turn a blind eye to whats going on in the world.

and i am no way saying that we're not doing a good job living for Jesus.
i'm just saying.. its really easy to become so focused on our own lives, that maybe just sometimes... we do miss the point of it all.

second blog in a day. what i do for some people... :)

leadership is awesome, but with it comes a lot of responsibility. its crazy to think that when i look back on the year, the times lifegroup has been booming has generally been the same time i've been loving life, pumped about elevate and mega in love with God. and the times its been semi average are about the same times i've been tired, or flat or just not as pumped as i could be.

its a scary thought, an exciting thought, but a stressful thought that your life actually can and does influence others.

the craziest thing about looking back on the year, is that in those times i wasn't trying to lead well. i wasn't trying to impress anybody, i just knew who i was, was passionate about people and God and it all flowed from that.

i seriously love life. i love elevate. i love my friends. i love my leaders. i love school. the tricky thing about being in an amazing place in life, is that its really easy to stay stationary. to not step out, or not move forward, because the place you know is beautiful and comfortable.

but sometimes, and probably more often than not... the hardest things to do are the best things.

2012.

two thousand and twelve is approaching much faster than i'd like it to.
i am so so excited about next year. to move out of home, to live in a hostel, to make new friends, to learn alot, to grow, to have more freedom. there's like a billion amazing things to look forward to.
however there's just one thing that's stopping me from being mega pumped, one thing that makes me wonder why i'd even consider moving, the one thing that almost makes me throw it all out the window and enroll at vic instead.

but seriously i am ridiculously sad about leaving church, about leaving people, about leaving elevate.
me and annalise were talking about it the other day, and those people are seriously irreplaceable!!

like i tell myself that i'll move and there'll be just as awesome people down there. but then i think about it, and before Wellington there were awesome people but not as amazing as the ones i have now. i seriously dont think in the world i will ever come across people as amazing as the ones in my life at the moment.

I'm not very good with change, currently LOLing at the whole moving from Taupo to Wellington sitch, classic example... anyone who knew me post moving would back me up on that one. but this is different, i'm a very different person from the one i was 3 years ago. but WAH i dont wanna go.

but oh my i'm still pumped. though this is potentially going to be one of the hardest things i've done to date. but its going to be awesome, just one of those situations where i wish i didnt love people so much. like i was one of those people that just hang with whoever, that love people while they're around but just move on and make new friends with the snap of a finger.

i have no idea what exactly 2012 is going to hold. but despite everything i know its gonna be a beauty.

this has been a very contradictory blog. but i think with every big decision there are good and bad aspects. however with this one the good aspects just seem to be REALLY good so do the bad.

but, its gonna be awesome.

eeeeeeee. 

a new level of joy.

love is amazing, it's impossible to even comprehend it. anyone who thinks they can fully fathom it, doesn't know God's love.
I can't even begin to explain how much i love God, how much i love the Hutt girls, how much i LOVE LIFE! and to think he loves me more that that, blows my mind.
looking back on the past two weeks, i can confidently say that they have been the best two weeks of my entire life... and i know it's only going up from here.

i had the most beautiful, funny, uplifting, best night ever tonight. i could legitimately not ask for better people in my life, and i pretty much low-key get teary every time i think about moving because i cant imagine doing life without them. it's fair to say at the end of elevate camp in January i will be a mess.

also thoroughly enjoy Keturah Parton. she's a laugh... :)

i legitimately don't even look forward to the weekend that much anymore, i look forward to a monday morning. i look forward to walking into school, and just hoping that when the bell goes at the end of that day, that somebody even just smiled because of me, that something i said or did made someone feel awesome, that even just one girl's life changed a little bit.
i've grown up believing that to whom much is given, much will be required. i have been given so much by God, so much joy, love, passion, hope, faith, excitement. now its time to give, give everything.

39 more days at school in my entire life. i have an awful lot to do in that time. it's time to change a generation, it's time for girls to know how much their worth, it's time.

it just keep getting better.

ha. i laugh at my last blog. cause since then life's gotteneven  better, i'm legit like Jesus that enough seriously!
but then again i'm totally not complaining! :)
heck yes house music!

i am ridiculously excited about the hutt
i am so excited about Chilton.
i'm so proud of our teenagers.
even if I got nothing from conference myself, it would seriously have not mattered. just being in a room with like 500 youth who were all pumped about changing the world, was the most amazing thing ever.
honestly, when one person stands up and goes against what everybody else is doing, thats awesome. But when 500 teenagers do that, the stereotype of a whole generation can be redefined.

seriously?

i legitimately remember clearly in my head as i wrote down my expectations for conference last week that it was semi-ridiculous to be asking God for so much, like was feeling guilty about being so demanding haha. there was easily like 10 things on my list, and i would have been stoked if just one of them happened.
Sure enough every single expectation i had for the weekend was exceeded times a billion. its a beautiful thing walking into a conference knowing that something's going to change. knowing that it's going to be our best conference yet. and just knowing that thousands of lives will be changed!

i dont think in my entire life i've been to a conference or a camp where every single session did something for me. especially not recently, i remember after summer camp being so filled up, and being so pumped about seeing other peoples lives changed but thinking to myself that maybe camps and conferences aren't that awesome anymore as a leader cause you generally dont have as much that needs changing in your life. sure enough passionate and getsmart came around and dont get me wrong, they were seriously amazing!! But more for what i saw in other peoples lives, than my own.

but honestly conference, how do i start. i can't haha. every session, like there were 10 of them. how my life can change in every one? i seriously do not know. i realised a lot in the weekend, a lot about me. a lot about God. a lot about his plans.

haha i was standing in the session in saturday morning, secretly wishing that it wasn't so clear in my head what i had to do (and loling cause im pretty sure Liss wrote something along those lines after gs) and legit crying, partially cause of jesus, but mainly just cause i was so scared. but happy-scared. but honestly im so pumped. pumped to loose everything, yet gain the whole world.

i lay in bed on sunday. couldn't sleep cause i was too happy. couldn't stop thinking about life cause it was so beautiful. couldn't believe that mum was giving me the day off cause i lost my voice in the praise pit. couldn't even think or imagine how life could get any better... then i woke up to snow. was so beautiful, yet gutted it wouldn't settle. then sure enough today, our whole house and the entire beach was covered in it. its the most beautiful thing in the world, God never seizes to amaze me. never. every night i go to bed thinking that life legitimately cannot get any better, then the next day comes around and God whips out something new. tomorrow school is closed, so i will hangout with the awesomest people in the world, watch movies, make snowmen and go tobogganing. seriously. conference. snow. more snow. so much snow i get the day off.

i love life so much. i legit can't even contain it. its a beautiful thing to be back to that place.

numerous times this week i have gone to write a blog, or at least thought of writing a pre-conference one. but i just dont know how to put my expectation into words, how to even start to explain how excited i am. honestly i know for a fact that this is going to be our best conference yet, that i will not be the same person next monday, that our nation will be changed. honestly. i cant handle it, ill be lucky if i can sleep tonight. im pumped for a beaut day tomorrow, breakfast with the orans girls, school for a bit, lunch with the orans girls, school for a bit, then CONFERENCE! seriously that is a beautiful day, and considering its been amazing weather for a good 10 days i bet it will be sunny. ijn. the sunrise was beautiful today, as much as i dont enjoy going to school at 7am for house music almost every day at the moment, i thoroughly enjoy watching the sunrise as i drive to school. life is pretty much awesome. Jesus is pretty LOL, love him so much. sometimes im semi-gutted walking into camps or conferences when life's already awesome, cause I decide before i even go that i wont have an awesome testimony coming from it cause i dont have a huge battle or huge illness or something that needs fixing. but if we start good, and know that God will move, imagine how we will be by saturday night.
potentially never been more excited in my entire life.
big call.

humans.

today i spent a good 5 or 10 minutes just staring at this photo of me when i was like 2 or 3 years old. it just amazed me in so many different ways...

how it looked like me, but it it seemed completely different person.

how the brain that tells me every thought, and does everything for me is the same brain inside this little kid in the photo. and the heart that keeps me alive, is the same heart beating in her chest.

how our memories fade, i mean  i dont ever remember looking in a mirror and seeing a baby looking back at me.

i guess i just look at it, and see how much of life hadn't happened then, what i hadn't been through, what i hadn't learnt, what i hadn't experienced, just everything i am now, i wasn't then. like though it's me, its really not. and it got me excited about the future, imagine one day looking back at my 18 year old self and just saying, look how young i was, look what i hadn't done yet. i'm pumped.

babies amaze me. human life amazes me. the future is beautiful, and tomorrow could be the day that determines everything. wow. 

i think way too much.

life's awesome.
babies are cool.

smet gart.

oh my, so i've been thinking about a getsmart blog today. but i don't quite know what to write to be honest.

it was a beautiful week, its funny how much power is in the title of a conference. it was an amazing thing knowing walking into the start of getsmart knowing that i would encounter him in an unreal way, and knowing that i wouldn't be the same afterwards. not cause somebody had called it that cause it sounded cool, but because it was what God had placed on their hearts. in fact i remember thinking last year as i watched the promo for this year, that it would be an amazing week.

i remember on thursday night. just sitting there, with 23 of the awesomest people on the planet, in a room of thousands - so proud that i was from arise. Ps. John honestly was amazing, he's kinda like our church dad haha. it was cute.

oh man God is good. i love life. i love elevate, like so much. i am legitimately so so sad that i have to leave next year, but it will be good.

i am probably the weirdest person i know. not always, sleep deprivation does weird things to people. honestly.
that was the randomest three photos of getsmart. oh well. life's beaut.

well.

• I love Aimee Lennan an awful lot. she's very wise.
• it's time for a new list of secret favourites, i'm excited for this list, very excited!
• i love that even if you spend 23.5 hours doing absolutely nothing it can still feel like a productive day if you've gone for a run
• i legit love youth meetings. i've always been secretly mega gutted when they've been like GUESS WHAT? YOU GET A NIGHT OFF! i'm like what is this? i dont wanna hangout at home by myself.
• i need a break from people every now and then, but i think everyone does :)
• i think i'm tired, but i've been sleeping lots so i cant quite work out whether i truely am or not
• i think that i'm one of the most not-insecure people i know... however i bought Paul de Jongs book today and i feel that i'm about to be proven wrong... we shall see.
• getsmart is less than a week away, that makes me so excited
• God Is Able is a beautiful beautiful album
• i think the world has a messed up view of perfection
• i love the hutt so so much
• i'm pumped about Laura's dance concert tomorrow, oh man she's gonna be so good eeeeeeeep :)
• maybe i should plan to do no study tomorrow, then instead of procrastinating i could just enjoy life and have some sweet QT
• i love life. i really really do.