The More that was In Store.

You may, of course, wonder how it was I woke up feeling so sick on the morning of WYD, but still managed not to get completely sick the next week. I wondered the same thing myself. However, in hindsight it would seem that my body was holding out for a more “convenient” time – like team debrief. For 5 days and 4 nights, the team ‘retreated’ to a lakehouse on the central coast of NSW, to place called Avoca (I’d been there twice before during out last holidays – once for the reptile park and another for a retreat with the Dominicans). It was a lovely house – comfortable, relaxing, beautifully located – but it was cold. And I felt ill most of the time. And it was stressful, quite honestly. This was a time for the team to air out any “concerns” from the past 6 months, and to state opinions on how to move forward. As you can imagine, both very good and very bad things came out of this time away.

One nice thing was a day trip to Hunter Valley, New South Wales’ prime spot for wineries. I had never been in a winery, no less 6 in one day, so it was quite the experience – it was all so rich! However, this was the day I was feeling the most sick of all, and since I have made a personal commitment not to drink this year, even though I figured it would probably help the pain, I didn’t take a sip of alcohol. Which made my tagging along a bit silly. However, I actually did enjoy just wandering around the wineries, looking at all the different things they had to sell other than bottles of wine, and even studying their method of displaying those prized wine bottles. My efforts were not in vain though because our last stop was a very delicious chocolate store! That was more up my alley.

After this day away from a few days away, we closed the debrief on a fairly positive note and made our way back to Sydney to prepare for Rachel’s farewell party – she was leaving the next Wednesday! However, I was quite sad because at the same time, I also had to say farewell to my dear friend Jovina – she was setting off for Spain on a once-in-a-lifetime pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela – the place of the body of St. James. She was flying to London to see her sister, then along with another friend, traveling to Lourdes in France to begin an 850km walk across the top of Spain, following which she would go to Fatima and then back to London before coming home to Sydney. Length of trip: 2 months. AH! Jovina, who I spoke with or messaged nearly every day, who I saw at least once a week if not more, who I just love so much: GONE for two months!? As I write this, those two months are finally drawing to a close, and I am so thankful – they were definitely the hardest two months of the year thus far! (not *just* because Jovi was gone but I think it had an effect!) It’s ok though because we stayed united in prayer.

So we had Cecilia’s 25th birthday party (/my staying party….riiiight.) and then on Rachel’s last night in Sydney, we drove around the Olympic Park (she hadn’t gotten to see it her whole time in the city!) and took crazy pictures…I guess that’s the best you can offer when you’re on a mission team! The next night, we made it a girl’s event to take Rachel to the airport and spent the time until she boarded with her, just sharing some last laughs and a cup of Starbucks tea. And then she left.

And we left the airport, and carried on with life. Strange, really.