First Post of the New Year

[Iure]

I miss mountains... In Belfast I my window looked out on the Black Mountains, and when I got back home in NL the first thing I thought was 'It really is boring here without mountains'. So I asked for mountains in NL for Christmas and my birthday, but still no mountains

I thought I had only 10 more minutes before I had to leave for school, but I just got a text message saying the meeting has been postponed to 11:30 AM. Oh well, this way I can read all your posts

[Erutanie]

cooleo...

Maybe you should ask next Christmas too, maybe then you'll get it.

[Iure]

I hope that'll work...

I bought a book with chinese designs, and copied a few of them to practice my aquarel techniques (which I don't have, but I won't be hampered by mere details)

[Erutanie]

rofl....What are aquarel techniques?

[Iure]

watercolour. first you colour it with these special pencils, en then you go over it with a wet brush. My pencils aren't the best quality ever (= bought them in a packet with all sorts of pencils for €2), but they are nice enough.

[Erutanie]

cool. I've never tried to do watercolor like that.

[Iure]

I bought new henna packets. THe normal red ones (3 packets), one brownish and one superred. I'm curious about what colour I'll get

[Erutanie]

next week is girl's camp for me! I'll be gone from Tues to Fri.

[Iure]

whoohoo! I haven't gone camping in a really long time. I've never been to a girl camp or anything like it (okay, maybe when I was 4 or something, for just one night) but I loved to go camping with my parents.

Have fun!!

[Erutanie]

I love to go camping with my parents too. Although this is the last year I get to go, it's only for girls between 12-18, unless you are a leader.

[Iure]

With campfires and singing and stuff? Nice! What other activities do you do there?

[Erutanie]

I was a Youth Camp Leader (one of seven YCLs, and there were about 75 people total, including leaders and YCLs.), so I got to help run the camp (I'm still trying to catch my breath, lol). This year there was a treasure hunt (I was solely in charge of this, and I was running around with it the entire time!), we made beanie baby frogs (every year there has been a craft of some sort), sanded and painted blocks (again, we usually do some sort of service project, a couple years ago we made quilts), we played knight games (we had marshmallow guns and used waaaaaaaaaaaayyyyyyy over 10 bags of mini-mallows), star gazing, a fireside (special program/meeting where we have people talk to us, leaving us with a message, and the YCLs had a program where we talked about the 7 young women values and related it to the theme of girl's camp.), testimony meeting (I'll admit, I cried....), a water fight, early morning scripture study (6:30 the first day and 7:30 the next morning), and a lot of other things that kept me so busy that I never got to help cook meals and was late for every single one (I did cook breakfast the last day....we had cold cereal, lol). Since Tuesday when I woke up (at about 7:15 AM; mon I went to bed at 11) I have had 28 hours of sleep. Last night, I had 13 hours of sleep. To run (literally) for four days with 15 hours of sleep isn't easy, but it's fun. I was so busy I had a half hour of free time once, by the time I made it to my tent so I could change to play in the creek, I had less than five minutes...I'm still trying to figure out where the other 25 minutes went (I wasn't asleep, but...you guessed it...running, lol).

[Iure]

It sounds like you've been busy
But what is testimony meeting?

[Erutanie]

Girl's camp is a church sponsored camp. Testimony meeting is where you bear your testimony. A testimony is something you feel strongly about, it's what you believe. A testimony typically includes things like "I know this church is true," I know Joseph Smith was a true prophet," "I know that Gordon B Hinkley is a true prophet," "I know the scriptures are true." A lot of people say how much they love their family and sometimes share a story about what they have learned in the past week. Something I usually talk about (and it was almost a theme at our testimony meeting) is the power of prayer and that I know that God loves each of us.

Do you understand?

[Iure]

Yes, thank you. I am not from a religious family, so I am not really familiar with those things. But I do think that, even when you're not religious, something like a testimony meeting can be really thought provoking...