Wednesday 26th December, 2017
We woke up to a promising day of sunshine and warmth, which we had been praying for. With the rain clearing out and the sun smiling down on us, we began our day with worship, then breakfast and then prepared ourselves to leave for white water rafting at Penrith. I was really excited because this was the first time I had ever done anything like this. We had been told that we would leave camp at 10am, but of course, as we proved, young people can have timing issues. There were people missing, cars missing and cars that couldn’t start, but in the end we finally got everything in order and left camp officially at 10:40am. The car ride down to Penrith was short because I was asleep for most of the 1 hour and 30 minutes, but for the rare moments that I was awake I heard lots of laughing and happy, excited conversations about music which were mostly in Spanish–which I couldn’t understand, by the way, but it was fine because I was asleep! We arrived at our destination just in time to get changed and start our 12 o’clock booking. Everyone had full smiles, and we were super excited as we sorted and signed forms. Then the real fun began. What I had imagined in my head was not what I experienced; it was ten times better. The water was not cold, the boat was fast, rough and so fun! I was in a boat of nine people where 2 people sat side by side and one other person sat at the back of the boat and shouted directions to us. At first we were out of sync which was funny because our choir conductor was leading us in the rowing rhythm, but after our first go round the course we were much better. It was so hilarious! Some people couldn’t get back up, feet were stuck between seats and our boat kept rotating backwards as we went down. My favorite part of the whole experience was when we were trying to ride the boat like we were surfing. The idea was for all nine members to balance the boat on one wave. People were falling out of the boat and had to be rescued and falling back in straight after. No one could stop laughing, but best of all we managed to not somehow flip the boat upside down! I had never held on to something so tight. After our one hour, we had a beautiful lunch and headed back to camp. For me the biggest lesson I learned was that rough waters are always easier to overcome with others.
~ Bec Amani
