There are places and things on Earth that are so beautiful, they make me ache.
It's hard to explain if you've never experienced it before, and I'm not sure if anyone has, but if you have, you know what I mean. I'd just be siting on the coach, listening to music while most others were sleeping, and looking out the window. And then we'd drive past a lake. Or a small town. Or a collection of green rolling hills with cows, backdropped by a colorful sunset. It didn't even matter, it could have been the simplest of things or the most grandiose landscape, and it would have such an effect on me.
On this day, I didn't get to snap many pictures of these kinds of things that made me feel this way, but you'll definitely see some in future posts.
Our first stop today was church! The East Grinstead ward, to be exact. Since our church's General Conference was going to happen the next Sunday, this meeting was going to be testimony meeting! This made me incredibly happy. What better way to get an inside and intimate look at the culture and mindset of a group of people than listening them testify of their love and beliefs?
One woman stood up to bear her testimony and some of the things she said left me in tears, which doesn't happen to me in church very often. Her name was Korin and she herself was FROM Idaho, where most of our group went to school! She, too, traveled to Europe for a college trip, realized life made more sense to her across the pond, and she moved to London over ten years ago. Everyone in our group was enamored with her... because we wanted to be her! She also bore a very powerful testimony. Here's what she said that stood out to me:
- Heavenly Father rewards bravery -- This was kind of ah-ha moment for me. God realizes that not everything we are going to be doing in our life is going to be easy. But he has us experience them anyways, because if we're brave, if we do the hard things with our trust in God, he'll bless us for it. Maybe this stood out to me because just weeks before this day, I'd turned in my application to serve an 18 month proselyting mission for my church! Either way, it was powerful.
- "We often may feel that we've lost something or that something has been taken away from us.. which may be true, but it's okay, because God wants to then bless us with even more." On the surface, this may seem like a "duh" statement. But, to me, it wasn't! It made me think of things that had been taken away from me. Things that I thought were true, but weren't; things I thought I'd be able to hold onto forever that were now gone. It helped me deal with those things by knowing that I could let go of some of the bad feelings I had and realize that in the future, I will be blessed with so much more than what was taken away from me.
After church, we got a new traveling buddy! A new coach driver, in fact. Remember Bart? Our jolly Irish driver? One of his lifelong buddies, Damien, also from Ireland, would be joining us as an additional driver! It was so fun to see these guys interact and tell stories from their childhood and about Ireland. here's a picture of both of them with Trish, the woman who took care of all of our hotels, flights, etc. She's a champ. Damien is on the left, and Bart on the Right.
There was a lot of traveling for the rest of this day, which was fine with me. We got to see a lot of Europe! Our first stop was Dover. Ever heard of The White Cliffs of Dover? Apparantly it's a movie from the '40s. It may be a song, as well. Or a poem. I'm not cultured enough to remember.
Either way, I got to see them in real life! It's where we boarded a ferry to cross the channel.
(Photo credit: Kyle Treasure)
The ferry ride was terribly short, and terribly windy. Like, TERRIBLY windy. It was mostly terrible, because I was wearing a skirt. A dear friend lent me her leggings, that way a tragedy would be less tragic, should the wind or my skirt act up.... literally.
Two things happened on the ferry ride:
1. A lot of card games were played.
2. Me and Bri, who can beatbox better than most people I know, decided to write a rap about our adventures on the trip. She heard me in a freestyle battle earlier that day (no, I'm not kidding) and we decided we would make a good team. Stay tuned.
More pictures:
Anyways, we landed in Calais, then hopped back on the coach, which had traveled on the ferry with us. We drove through France, Belgium, then landed in Amsterdam. Yes, my friends, that is four countries in one day.
More driving ensued. I think that this was the day that we began our Harry Potter marathon... we started with Deathly Hallows part 1. Bart bought all of the DVDs in London, so we got through most of them over the course of the trip. It was honestly really exciting to watch Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone. Really exciting.
That night we got to our hotel pretty late. 8 girls in one room, people. I believe there was a room with 9. One mirror, one toilet, one shower. It was a character-building experience, that's for sure. One of my favorite parts of this hotel/hostel is that the windy staircase was SO steep, that I could be standing on the floor and touch the 11th stair with my hand. I kid you not. I slept well that night.
No comments:
Post a Comment