For Mother's day this year my brother's and I brought my Mum 3 Chickens! She absolutely loves them and to be honest so do I. They are so funny to watch and they follow you around like obedient children which is cute. The Chickens, who are named: Barbie, Tikka and Nando love having people outside in the garden and get so excited when we go and say "Hi". We have now had them for a couple of months and they are starting to notice when someone inside the house is coming out to see them, the other day I just turned the key in our back door and they all went mad they started running up down the coop, clucking really loud and flapping their wings. However what was really funny to watch was how Nando got so excited that she just ran straight into the fence at full speed! Crazy chicken, I can see where the saying " run around like a headless chickens" comes from.

The reason I am writing about my favourite chicken Nando is because I would like to use her crazy, exciting life as an illustration about how we can sometimes act when we are getting all buzzed up before a big event.
Here are Nandos life lessons:

1) Let yourself get excited when you hear the key! - We should all be seriously excited because we are all going away together and we are going to spend 4 days seeking, worshipping, learning and soaking in God's presence and the idea of doing this with our friends should excite us so much that we just have to run around, scream and shout.

2) Be careful when your flapping your wings not to hurt anyone - When we get proper excited the immediate problem can be that we forget about the people around us because we are so focused on being excited. So remember to tell your parents that you love them before you leave, remember to thank the leaders that got you to RN, remember to thank anyone from ALC for hosting this fantastic event and remember to be a support for friends so that they can be excited with you - excitement isn't fun on your own.

3) Don't forget about the fence! - Nando got into a little problem when she forgot about the fence and ran into it, as she tried to regain balance and dignity she lost some of that excitement! let's make sure that we don't forget about anything, for example:

• Parental Consent forms 
• Lunch for the coach ride tomorrow
• Setting an alarm to be at Kerith for 8:30am tomorrow morning 
• Bibles, Notepads and pens - If God is gonna speak, your going to want to write it down

If you forget these types of things it will hinder the fullness of the experience you can have so don't run into the fence and don't leave anything behind.

I am so excited about Rocknations! and the main reason I am excited about RN is because we all get to spend four days together just having a laugh and falling in love with Jesus all over again. I am so looking forward to just chilling out with everyone that is going. I seriously love the Kerith Youth!

Much Love
Liam