So, part two: picking up from my last post - I believe I had to stop right when Katrina and I heard the call of a frantic leader from the other side of the tent divider, hey? So we jump up, trying to find a torch to figure out how to unzip the divider, listening to her yell that "the door is broken". Katrina unzips the thing and right as we're about to go through, the poles on our side of the tent twisted inward (the poles were shaped at an angle) and the wind began to blow the entire side of the tent INTO the side of the tent we were going over to. I jumped at it and began to hold it up against the wind (which was the STRONGEST WIND I've ever felt in my LIFE- Aussie storm season is not one to be messed with, apparently) while Katrina went to help with the door. The whole zipper of the door had been torn away by the wind and, as there was no tarp just then, rain was coming into and onto us and our tent in heavy sheets. As this was in the middle of the night, it was not cool rain, but COLD rain, and we were not at all prepared for it in our pajamas!
We had to switch positions after a bit because, no shame, I was the only person in the tent tall enough to hold both sides of the door up while also trying to zip it back up from the bottom... Basically, it was a nightmare. One of my good friends back home would have described it something like this: "Doors be breakin', rain be poorin', people be yellin'." A startling bolt of thunder struck just in the field next to us- suddenly, a quite loud and very clear "moo" sounded from one of the surrounding areas.
At this point in the story I'll make a quick excerpt to elaborate on the fact of wild cows: they were everywhere in the Valley. They would roam through our tents, up to our lecture tent/shed, grazing through the fields and such. Obviously I have a deep love for animals and so this fact excited me quite a bit.
My excitement got the best of me and I yelled at the top of my lungs "COWS! ITS THE COWS! I'VE BEEN WAITING FOR DAYS TO SEE THE COWS!!!
Everyone in the camp who was not awake yet was certainly up after that.
After quite a while of running about in the rain, putting tarps up, breaking out those emergency towels I told you all of before (thanks, dad!), we eventually got to the point where, as the wind and rain subsided, we just put up with our damp clothes, beds, and bags, and just went back to sleep.
The next morning we all showed up for breakfast in damp clothing accessorised with puffy eyes and aching muscles. We sang praise to Christ that morning with more fervour than I had heard yet that month.
My tent mates and I were brought back together and given a new tent- a six man, praise the Lord- and it held up the rest of the time. Not much excitement in the way of weather after those first few nights.
That's the end to the first major story; I'm sure I'll be mentioning others for the next couple of weeks but for now I'll let them lie. Thank you for praying for me as always. For those of you who may not have known, a cyclone has just swept in from the sea and has hit the island next to us along with a couple other areas- we received heavy rain but no damage was done. Thank you for praying! May God bless you all!
Random fact of the post:
There were so many spiders during camping. For one, there was a Bird Eating Spider hanging over my head once (about 6 inches long, maybe more?) which was great. There was also a lethally venomous one crawling on my leg- though I didn't realize it at the time and so I flicked it off with my fingers. Looking it up later, I realised my mistake. Another time, I was changing in my tent and asked my friend to hand me a pair of my shorts from the line- She did, and as I was turning them around, there was a Huntsman spider climbing rapidly upwards onto my hand due to my disturbing its sleep from the underside of my shorts. Huntsmans, though not incredibly poisonous, can still do some serious damage- the real reason I yelped in fright and threw the shorts down, though, was simply because they're big. They can grow to the size of a man's stretched out hand and bigger. This one was about the diameter of a grapefruit. SO MANY FUN TIMES.
Thank you all again! Lord be with you!
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