I Finally Tried Vegemite

After 5 months of being in Australia, I finally tried a staple of Australian breakfast cuisine- Vegemite. It was actually not as bad as I thought! It was on toasted bread spread along with butter. It's not like a jam or peanut butter where you slather it to all corners, but a thin layer of it gives a nice taste- salty, but not as yucky as I thought.

Service has been going well, very busy and very tiring, but always fulfilling. Most of the people in the office are going to be going on holiday breaks, which means I wont have work to do, so I will be guiding at the Temple for a couple weeks; it'll be good to directly teach the Faith again and brush off my teaching skills- actually meet people! :) I really want to go into the city for New Years Eve to see the fireworks off the Harbour Bridge and around the Opera House- since I'm here and I'm so close and it's one of the best fireworks shows in the world, why not attend?! It's also the first part of the world to celebrate the new year :) It's going to be so exciting...and so packed, but so epic at the same time! I'm stoked.

Challenges here have been in abundance for me- things about my family and with friendships and where I'm going in life and revelations from those topics have been hard to juggle with. All these tests come at the same time and I get overwhelmed! What's been happening these past couple weeks is that I'm so exhausted after work and the day, but so many thoughts are going through my head that I stay up writing until 1am to get some kind of clarity and just to clean my brain....and then I'm even more exhausted haha. What I pinpointed early on is that I have to faith that I will be ok, that my situations will be taken care of, I will be given guidance, and I will become stronger because of these new findings and tests. We, as Baha'is, believe that tests and difficulties arise in our lives because it is conducive to our spiritual a(nd other dimensions') growth, and that we wont be tested beyond our capacity, so all tests we are able to overcome and grow from- “I know of a certainty, by virtue of my love fro Thee, that Thou wilt never cause tribulations to befall any soul unless Thou desirest to exalt his station in Thy celestial Paradise...” (Test and Difficulties prayer). I've seen faith and trust work here, andI need to be patient, and I do believe that this pain, sadness, anxiety, fear and heaviness that I feel will all work itself out and disappear.

The house is almost full- we have 7 girls now. 2 from the US, 2 from Canada, 2 from Australia and 1 from China (there's no way I'm getting that Aussie accent now...) It's so weird to think I've already been here for 5 months and that soon I'll be on a plane ride back home....it feels like I just landed, exhausted, anxious and teary eyed! I cannot believe it's almost 2010. Life seriously is passing by with a twinkling of the eye. We are having a youth conference coming up in January that I'm pretty excited about- seems like there will be a lot of talks and workshops on the role of youth and young people in relation to world topics today. I'll be running a workshop on youth year of service, so wish me luck on that!

It's been a while since I've put up pictures, so here's a little taste of what's been happening :)