Les Soirées Noëls

wow check out my restraint, i've reigned myself in with the blogging malarkey bigtime. Or maybe I just have nothing much to write about... hmm.

I figured I should update a bit about the end of term in Belgium and what went on :) no photos though sadly!

The lunchtime group at Woluwe had a christmas lunch thingy instead of a Bible study the last week. This was more social for the group itself than evangelistic, I was required to contribute butter and a knife. I took butter and two knives. It was nice and chilled, there weeere 9 or 10 of us. And I think one of the students was doing a fast for the WHOLE of advent, or at least until 7pm each night or something... so she only has one meal a day (she didn't eat with us)... but yeah. golly.

Then the evening Woluwe group was cancelled because nobody was planning on coming, so I went to the ULB group (after spending the afternoon inbetween christmas shopping and absolutely FREEZING as the temperature fluctuated between -1 and 0 degrees allll day.

The ULB group was doing a testimony/sharing soirée with a meal. It was really lovely, at one of the student's homes, the food was amazing... we had something that sounds like "ben-yay", like doughnutty ball things... amazing. And it was nice to hear everyones testimonies, i gave a somewhat abbreviated and disjointed version of my own in french... but yeah. Was cool, we also shared favourite bible passages, and sang along to some english worship songs from youtube lol... notably... days of elijah! haha... amusant! There were maybe 12 or 13 of us there.

Tuesday night we had our IFES team Christmas meal and secret santa. We had to spend less than 5€ each and write a poem about the person!! (Nightmare.. but quite worth it lol!) Emily had me and gave me some wooden spoons.. the help my cooking (because i'm always going on about my lack of culinary skills when i have to cook for team meetings lol) and some coloured paper for cutting up and sticking (with reference to my epic bible verse on my bedroom wall which took far longer than anticipated), and a kit to make a phone holder/pouchy thing... :) woop! And she wrote me a poem/song to the tune of summer lovin' from grease... très amusant! They thing i say "mmhmm" all the time, and yes... it was funny.

I had tim and wrote what i thought was a not very good poem, but the others seemed to appreciate so i was pleased about that. I thought it'd be a bit of a lead balloon you know? lol! I'd put it up if i could but it was hand written, finished on the bus on the way!! Also too many private jokes i think, but i'm quite proud of it now lol!! I got him a crying chocolate reindeer :P lol!

Wednesday was the biggy, with the GBU Central's evangelistic christmas meal. Sadly no one i or lucy invited could make it which i was sad about for several reasons. But it was GREAT that FOUR of one of the leader's non-c friends came!! There werrre i think 11 of us? So that's more than a third non-C, and Lucy gave her testimony really well and people were asking questions afterwards and stuff! The food was good, I bought a white chocolate tart from the bakery which was immmmmmmmmense. Sadly you can't get mince for mincepies as i had planned, in Belgium.

I came back on Thursday via Eurostar, just before all of the kerfuffle. Really God's providence right there because I'd planned on coming back Friday, but the tickets were quite a bit more expensive by the time i booked than Thursday or Saturday. So I went for Thursday rather than Saturday, but if I had gone Saturday... I'd probably have only got back Monday or Tuesday! Nightmare... was shocked by how many people I know from IFES or on year abroad with uni were stuck and stranded in various places too!! Think everyone seems to have got back now though so... :)

Christmas is nearly here! :) And I went to see Avatar today in 3D, on my own again. More awkward than my first solitary cinema going, mainly because it wasn't intentional I think. And I finished my christmas shopping!! :D