Catching up on life...

Ok, so as my Dad puts it I'm not the most 'prolific' blogger but I try my hardest I may write things a little bit late but I get there eventually...

At least Ive got a good excuse for not blogging much in the last month!

I'll explain and I'll try not to give too many gory details...

After Scripture Union camp I spent a week at home just chilling out, shopping, seeing friends and catching up on things Id miss while traveling. Then on Friday the 20th of January I flew on a tiny 12 seater plane to Nelson for the TSCF staff and families weekend. It was a really fantastic weekend, I was helping to lead on the kids programme. We were teaching them about Titus and they were interested and learning. The cool thing was were focusing on teaching them about memorizing verses and the plan for the weekend was if they each learnt a verse as a group they would be able to recite the whole of Titus, it was awesome to see the kids working hard to learn it.

Along with the kids programme there was other activities like archery and swimming in the lake. The lake had a big trampoline in the middle, canoes and kayaks and a big slide :D We were going down the slide in 2's, 3's and even 4's... Such rebels!

The other activity that was on offer was go karting...

Luke and I watched some others go speeding round the dirt track and then the time came for our turn. Luke got into the driving seat and I was the passenger (to be fair it was more like a buggy thing with a metal frame roll cage) we put on our seat belts and off we went! When I say off we went I mean it literally, about three quarters round the track the kart skidded on gravel, hit the kerb and flipped over onto my side, I don't remember but as a reflex my left arm went out and smashed the humorus bone to pieces and I severed some nerves as well...

About half a hour later a fire engine arrived with a paramedic and morphine, then the ambulance arrived. However they realised that it would be too dangerous to move me by ambulance so the helicopter arrived.... I believe an hour from the time of the accident we flew off.

That night I had my first operation where they cleaned the wounds and put in fixators to keep it steady. On the Tuesday I had my second operation where again they cleaned the wounds and did some other things to my arm.

On the Wednesday we flew to Lower Hutt Hospital which is the centre for excellence in NZ for plastics and ortho and incidentally Lower Hutt is where I live. We were moved from the hospital in Nelson to the airport by ambulance then flown in a small plane to LH, I thought of it as my private jet :P It was only Ailsa and I, the 2 paramedics and the 2 pilots on the plane, then we were transferred to the hospital by ambulance.

The next few days were spent relaxing, I mainly slept and watched tv. I had amazing support from my friends here so it made my time in hospital easier. The big operation was scheduled for the Saturday at 8.30am so I wasn't allowed to eat from 10pm the night before however, I wasn't taken into surgery until 8pm at night so I couldn't eat all day or drink so I was starving! It didn't help that I tortured myself by watching Master Chef and Come Dine With Me marathons.

The operation started at 8pm and finished at 2am...

Things they did:

Took a bone graph from my hip to replace the bone that had broken off at the accident.

Put metal plates and screws into the arm to hold the bones together.

Found the Ulnar nerve and reattached it again.

Found another nerve that had been severed and reattached it again too.

Pulled the skin back together and stitched it back up.

It went really amazingly and everyone seemed really pleased with the results.

After the op I stayed in hospital for 6 more days and in that time I had to come to terms with a lot of things and had to relearn how to do a lot of things. The nurses, doctors and my friends were an amazing support and I am so grateful for everything they did to help me.

Since getting out of hospital Ive continued to get better. Some things are really hard to cope with and there's quite a lot of things that at the moment I can't do for myself, so I find it hard to be dependent on others. Each day though I'm getting stronger and I go on the motto of "Do one thing every day that scares you" so each day I try to do something new.

Mum has come over for a fortnight so that has been a great support as well.

My life has been changed and my arm will never look the same again but as my Dad said my scars will never define who I am. People keep asking me if Ive booked my flights home now and are constantly surprised when I tell them I'm staying on till July. God has brought me out to NZ and He has a plan for my life and He's not giving up on me; I just have to stay strong, kia kaha.

x

Scripture Union...

I am a big fan of Su camps, they're really good fun and I have met three of my closest friends at camp so getting the opportunity to work with SU NZ was something that I couldn't turn down...

So on the 6th of January I headed off to Wainuiamata to lead at a primary camp. It was such an amazing week working with the kids, getting to know them and hearing their stories. It was a moving and emotional week but amazing. The programme was the holiday club programme 'Going Bananas' so that was a blast from the past :P

The kids were brilliant, quite a lot of them were from hard backgrounds so it was special to spread the love of Jesus to them and seeing them realise that He really does love them.
Its a week Ill never forget.

Auckland....

The rest of my week in Auckland was fun :)

On one day Jono and I drove down to Pirongia to see my family, Dad's cousin, his wife and kids live here in NZ which is pretty cool and Ive never met them before. We had a really lovely drive down and then spent the afternoon with them. We had a lovely lunch and spent time just chatting about family and our lives. As a family they are very into horse and they own 2 so I got to go riding, I rode a beautiful white grey horse. We went on a trek up the hill, Jono walked the dog with Micheal. It was fun just riding again, trotting and cantering over the hills. Late afternoon we left and drove back up the road to Auckland.

On my last day in Auckland I did something that i never in my life thought Id do but before that we went to Kelly Tarltons which is like sea world... It was so cool; we saw starfish, sharks, seahorses, penguins, turtles, flatfish and many more beautiful sea animals. There was a really cool turtle that kinda just floated along letting us take pictures and posing for them :P

After being at Kelly Tarltons we drove over the Auckland Harbour bridge and parked at the bridge bungee centre... We registered then hung around for a while getting more and more nervous. They then spoke us through all the safety requirements and we signed for our lives. Next we put on harnesses and helmets and started dour ascent up the bridge...

Jono and I were terrified but we braved on thinking that it'll soon be over!

I don't think i have ever been so scared in my life but as i walked onto the platform and the guy held my hand and whispered "You'll be ok" I panicked and said "I dont want to do this anymore!!!" But by that point it was too late and I was pushed over the edge...

Best and worst most amazingly scary experience of my life. Id never ever do it again but Im glad I did it because now I can say I did a bungee jump!!!!!

My first day in Auckland...

I arrived in Auckland late Monday night, the city seemed beautiful at night with all the bright lights shimmering over the sky...

The next day was a crazy touristy day, it was the kinda day that you really try and pack as much in as possible and believe me we packed in as much as we possibly could!

We left Jonos house around midday, picked up Matthew and drove into the city. We started off at the Auckland museum, its such a stunning building, a very large grand stone building on top of a hill. Now I love museums and this one didn't disappoint.. 3 floors of New Zealand history. We spent a few hours wandering around; my favourite floor was the war floor with all the memorabilia from the first and second world wars. This museum had quite a lot of things from the German side like all the Propaganda medals and memories from the German side which was fascinating. They also had the walls with the names of the fallen soldiers from New Zealand, that really shocked me because id always heard that soldiers from Australasia had been called out but Id never realised how many there actually was and how many fell...

We spent a few hours wandering the museum and then left to head into the city centre. Auckland is massive. We parked and wandered through the park with a pretty fountain in it then went shopping... I was kind and didn't drag the boys round ALL the shoe shops and clothes shops... just a few of them :P

All the Christmas decorations were still up and on top of one of the buildings was this massive creepy Santa Clause and some reindeer, was weird. We grabbed a quick lunch and walked to the sky tower but we kind of got distracted by the reverse bungee. It was awesome :D

You get basically flung into the air while being spun at the same time, Jono and I did it together was sooo much fun. you get that feeling when your stomach jumps up and you get butterflies, but its such an awesome feeling. We watched the video afterwards an it was so funny seeing our reactions and my hair!

We continued up the hill to the sky tower, we took pics at the bottom and then went up! It kinda reminded me of the Eiffel tower because you take a big lift with a glass bottom to the top. We went to the viewing level and it was beautiful, you could see the whole city from all angles!

We took loads of photos and i even dared myself to stand on the glass panels eek it was scary!

Afterwards we walked back through the city towards the car and then drove to Mt Eden and One Tree Hill which are two old volcanoes which now have monuments on them, so that was cool.

We took Matthew home then drove back to Jonos, it was a lovely busy day...