So Close...Yet So Far!

We are now 1/3 finished with major outreach, it flew by!!!  The first week we spent in Newcastle which is my favorite place in Australia.  The first day we were there we spent touring around the city, hanging out at the beach and getting to know the staff and students at the Newcastle base where we were staying. 

 During the week we went into a few different schools and put on programs for the students, we had a bullying seminar, a lunchtime program/hangout/talk about Jesus and half of our team was supposed to put on another one but when they arrived they found that the school had changed the time of the seminar without telling anyone, oops!  There was also a bit of painting involved in the week, half of our team painted a room at one of the schools and all of us helped to pain a community mural, ask any of us to pain some jungle foliage for you and it will look pro.  

My favorite ministry opportunity of the week was playing ultimate frisbee at a Uni (college), apparently a few weeks ago some people from the Newcastle base connected with some guys who play every week.  When we first agreed to go we all thought it would be a nice friendly pick-up game but no, nearly all of them were quite talented in the sport, though I have to say they were all extremely friendly and patient with those of us who weren't quite up to their skill level.  After the game we started to walk away but were called back and told that it was time for the "spirit circle", now for those of you who have never heard of this like me, it is where both teams stand in a circle and the team captains each complement the other team, it was actually a really awesome time.   

Friday morning we left very early to drive to Canberra for the National Leaders Meeting (NLM) and met up with the other half of our DTS.  Once we arrived we found out that our DTS would be in charge of the kitchen for the week, so starting Saturday we all became master chefs!

Cutting onions for 350 people is quite intense

My DJ station was a bit sketch  

I have to admit, this was one of may favorite weeks of DTS so far, being able to all hang out all the time cooking and singing was such an amazing bonding time.  From Saturday until Thursday we were making 5 meals a day (breakfast, morning tea, lunch, afternoon tea, dinner and some times dessert) for 200+ people, thats a lot of food.  It was really cool to be able to have all of the YWAM leaders around Australia who pour out so much time and energy and really be able to serve them and give them the best time that we could.  Another highlight was the weather, it was so beautiful!  Because the weather was so cool (compared to up North) I was able to go on a short run nearly every day which was heavenly and really helped to clear my mind.  

This week we were supposed to be going to Palm Island but sadly our housing fell through so we will be staying in Townsville.  Our agenda seems pretty exciting though, we should be doing more seminars as well as a Christmas program (yikes I can't believe we are coming up on Chritmas!), we will also be doing some street evangelism as well as going to some clubs to see what kind of people we can meet.  Tonight we will be staying on base and then the rest of the week we will be staying at a baptist church in town.  

5 weeks!

Life of a DTS Student

The past 3 weeks since minor outreach has been quite an adventure.  With all of the changes taking place our schedule and everything else has been very out of whack.  Out of the past 3 weeks we spent 1 week and a bit back in our old rooms, 5 days in the chapel (a small room inside the base) and 1 week on our medical ship that just came back from Papa New Guinea, the ship was by far my favorite.  There were about 35+ people staying on the old Japanese fishing vessel, the girls stayed in a portion on the bottom that consisted of a hallways with small rooms attached with 4 beds in each room, you had to put your stuff on the floor (a 2ft x 4ft area) and once we ran out of room on the floor the rest you would just shove to the top of your bed when you slept.  I loved the ship though, every night I would go sit on the bow and watch the moon rise and the lights from the harbor reflect on the water, it was truly beautiful.  

I am actually typing this blog post up from an airplane taking us to Sydney!  We are officially on major outreach now.  Our first stop is Newcastle (a 2 hour drive from Sydney) where we will be staying at a YWAM base.  I am not positive what we will be doing while we are there but I am guessing that part of it will be going to skate parks and other youth hot spots to hang out and do evangelism.  Next week we will be going to Canberra for a YWAM leadership meeting where we will be serving in different ways around there.  That is the first 2 weeks of our 6 week outreach.  It is so hard to believe that there are only 7 weeks left of DTS!  When we first got here major outreach seemed ages away and now here we are on a plane to Sydney, so crazy.  We have finished 15 weeks of DTS and all of our lectures.  Last week we learned how to study the Bible and the different approaches that you can use.  A lot of it was going through the book of Philemon and we studied it to figure out exactly what the book is all about.  

I typed the last part of this blog 2 days ago so I will just do a bit of recap on whats happened since then.  We arrived in Newcastle at 2am Sunday morning after having our plane delayed for 4 1/2 hours in Townsville.  Partly because of exhaustion and partly from the hour time change all of the girls ended up sleeping in until 10:30 Sunday morning (that is a first since arriving in Australia, normal wake up is between 6 and 7 every morning).  We had all of Sunday to relax and prepare for the week, and what could be a better way to do that then go to the beach?  We went to Newcastle beach and it was amazing!

That was most of our day and then we came back to base for dinner.  The base and all of the people are so nice, it is quite different than our base in Townsville so it is fun to see the differences.  Today we helped paint a mural for the community, helped around the base and then after dinner some of the people on base took us to a Uni (collage) nearby where there was a game of ultimate frisbee going on, they were really good but also very friendly and it was a super fun game (Since I know you are all going to ask, yes my team won ;).  Tomorrow we head into some schools to do some evangelism and community work, it should be great!

Thank you all for your love, support and prayers!
Selah 

Food and Move(s)

Our week back has been quite wonderful filled with lots of wonderful food.  You never really learn to appreciate delicious food that is free until you are a missionary.  Last Monday as I talked about before we had the celebration with the merging of the bases and then on Thursday we had a new mexican restaurant opening up in town and for the first day they were giving out free burritos!  Let me tell you, after coming from home where you eat mexican food a minimum of once a day and then not eating it for 3 months (okay except for the one time in Brisbane a couple of weeks ago) having the free mexican food was nothing short of heavenly.  It was hilarious because that at base announcements that morning they told everyone about the free burritos and there must have been 100-150 YWAM staff and students that showed up. 

I have to admit I was a bit excited and after we had gotten our amazingly phenomenal burrito we hopped back into the 30 minute line and this time they let me get 2!   Anyways I will stop raving about my amazing burrito experience.  Though I have to say having a burrito for dinner and then for breakfast, lunch and dinner the next day was slightly epic.  

There are a lot of changes taking place here as I have been explaining a little bit in my posts.  We will hopefully be moving to the new building in a couple of months and so because of that everything is being packed up and moved around.  My school found out yesterday that 121, which is the girls dorm where about 40 people are staying, is being packed up so that photos can be taken.  So, this weekend we will all have our bags packed and will be moving on to the medical ship which will be coming back to port!  I am so stoked to have the opportunity to live on a ship for a week, thats not something that everyone has done.   On top of this (this happened since I started writing the post a day or so ago) nearly 30 girls have now officially moved into our chapel.  Yes we have all packed our bags, taken our mattresses and set up in a room until moving onto the ship on Saturday.  Though on Saturday since we have so much going on with Youth Street, each one of the Youth DTS girls has to pair up with a Pacific DTS girl so that they can take our stuff to the ship for us.  It is all a bit hectic!  Todays schedule looks like:  Move everything into the chapel and get ready for the day by 8am, 8-8:30 worship and announcements, 8:30-12:30 working around base painting, moving things, cleaning ect., 12:30-1:30? lunch, work again until community BBQ starts at 5, 5:45-6:45/7 dinner clean up, 7-9 lectures.  Yep, life of a DTS student.

It is a funny thing because I write a lot more in my blog in my head than I actually do on the blog.  That doesn't makes sense so I will explain.  I keep thinking that I have written about all of these things that happen here and then when I look back over my blog I haven't written about half of the things that I though that I did!  Anyways, last Monday we had a merging of 2 YWAM bases, a group called Island Breeze (mostly Fijian dancers) is now joining us here at YWAM Townsville.  Because of the merge we had a massive celebration which was super awesome and filled with tons of dance performances and speeches and amazing food!  One of the highlights for me was we had a whole roasted pig on a spit!  Talk about epic.

I must leave now for worship but an awesome thing for you to be praying for is that I am speaking this Saturday at Youth Street and I might slightly be freaking out just a bit on things such as what to talk about and what God actually wants in it.

See ya!
Selah

Outreach Debrief

Minor outreach, defeated!  The past 3 weeks have been an amazing time of growing, stretching in everything from character to faith and learning more of our spiritual gifts.  I have already recapped the first 2 weeks (Gladstone school seminars on week 1 and evangelizing in Townsville week 2) so I will just share some of the highlights from week 3.

We last Sunday with 81 students on a double decker bus and 2, 12 seater vans.  The drive to the Gold Coast ended up taking 23 hours in total so we reached our campsite around 11:30 am on Monday.

Tuesday was our first full day of adventuring during which we got to go to a beautiful beach for the first half of the day and go shopping at a massive two-story indoor/outdoor mall.  That night Andrew spoke on Gods love.  For the first few days there was a bit of a spiritual heaviness and the kids were a quite hard to handle at times and not too receptive, though there were a few really meaningful conversations.

Wednesday we went to Wet and Wild which is a pretty awesome water theme park and on Thursday we went to Dream World which is full of crazy roller coasters.  During these few days we were able to begin to really connect with the students and build their trust.  Despite the many dramas that went on the first 3 days or so we started to see some breakthrough and the kids begin to respond to what we had to say which was awesome.

 Thursday night we had a band come, Selahphonic, and they were awesome!  They played a few songs and then since they are also film makers they showed a 15 minute video that they had made (they played the background music and narrated a bit live).  The video was a metaphor of how the world views God and how He views us back.  Going back to a little earlier, around dinner time SJ and I were able to have a great conversation with 2 students about the purpose of life and the place that God can have in our lives, that really pumped me up for the night!  The conversation was cut off a little bit early because we had to go pray for the evening but what was awesome is that while we were praying I had a picture of our campsite and all around was a slight mist or fog, all except for a perfectly clear circle above our facility.  We had been praying heaps all week for breakthrough and I felt like this was God saying that we had finally broken through and that on that night He had a clear sky to come meet the kids.  Now going back to the night time, after the band played a few songs the lead singer shared his testimony and then invited up to the front anyone who wanted to accept Jesus and their Lord and Savior.  I couldn't believe what happened next, 48 out of the 81 all rose up in unison and walked to the front!  My eyes opened so wide and all I could do was look around, jaw dropped, not believing that this was possible.  The change in some of the kids was so clear, I couldn't believe that the same kid that was one of the biggest trouble makers was now much, much more docile and asking Jesus to come into his life.  It was a phenomenal time.  After the students went up there was a major dance party happening which was also epic.  When things wrapped up on the part side of things some worship music was put on and we were able to connect on a more personal level with some of the kids who had accepted Christ and tell them more about what it would be like, how to start the relationship and pray with them.  The next day, Friday, we packed everything back into the bus and then headed shopping.  We went to a massive outdoor mall for a few hours before taking a train back to the church that we went to the first day, but this time for dinner.  The bus ride back, though this time only about 19 hours, was quite long and boring.  Now we are back and have started lectures again!  It is about dinner time so I must head out but I hope you are all doing well.

Selah

"Go into all the world and preach the gospel to all creation..."

The past two days we have gone out for a couple hours of street evangelism.  Yesterday being our first day of this kind of thing we were still getting the hang of it so we took cans of Coke and Sprite with us to give away as conversation starters.  We were all down at the Strand together but for most of the time I was paired off with SJ and we had quite a few nice conversations.  One conversation in particular was really great, we talked to a man about Jesus and the misconceptions that people have about Him and the Bible.

Today we started off by spending an hour and a half in prayer for the day and over each other.  This time we went to the City Center which is pretty much just the downtown of the city.  I paired off with Suz this time and we headed up the street.   As we walked we prayed about where to go and who to talk to, after a few minutes we decided to go to the train station but had no idea how to get there!  As we decided this there was a couple next to us so we asked them where it was and to our surprise they said, "It is right over that way and we are going there right now!"  We ended up walking with them to the station and were able to tell them about what we were doing in Townsville.  After the short walk to the station we left them there and headed back down the street.  We ended up talking to an elderly man named Elf who had grown up in Townsville his whole life.  He was quite a lovely man and we got to keep him compony for a little while as he waited for a lift.  The next person that we talked to was a roaming guitarist named Paul.  He was quite a nice guy and after chatting for a bit he told us that he wanted to be a famous musician.  Since we had been talking about Jesus a short while before he also said the he had used to be in a praise and worship band and started busting out some worship songs for us!  He had some great oldies and made us sing along with him, let me tell you thats one way to get out of your comfort zone!

Not knowing what to do next we headed back toward the main street.  I decided to go to the bathroom when I came out I noticed a man standing around and we said g'day to each other.  As I walked past I really wanted to talk to him but wasn't sure what to say, so Suz and I continued down the block.  While we were walking I started to pray aloud just asking God to highlight people that He wanted us to talk to.  No more than a minute later we stopped at a cross walk and there was the guy that I had exchanged a greeting with outside of the bathrooms!  We smiled and said hello and then he asked, "So what are you two up to today?"  I laughed, "Well!  We are actually part of a missions school here in town and right now we are on outreach and are going around talking to people about Jesus and asking what they think about Him."  Thats always an interesting conversation starter.  He was a bit of an agnostic and said that he didn't talk about either politics or religion much because of all the fighting.  After a few minutes of the three of us walking and talking he asked, "Where abouts are you guys from?"  "I am from California and my friend here is from..." Suz spoke up, "I am from Northern Ireland!" Then from absolutely no where this lady appears next to us and states, "I have been to both of those places, but I am from Darwin."  We ended up talking for 5 or so minutes after that as we walked, me with the gentleman and Suz with the lady, and we had some great conversation.  It turns out that the lady that Suz was talking to was a Christian who had been to hell and back with everything from her daughter being hospitalized over 100 times and herself having had cancer I believe and ending with her now only being in Townsville because she was traveling with a friend who is going to die in the VERY near future.  Suz was able to just be a friend and comfort and pray for her during this time.

Last thing I promise!  When we got back to our van we were sharing stories and Court and Andy had a crazy one!  When we all split up Court and Andrew prayed together asking God if He had anyone specific that God wanted them to talk to.  Courtney got a picture of a purple button down shirt and Andrew got a picture of a bend in the road, weird enough right?  Well they were just walking along and all of the sudden Andy starts running down the street!  Not knowing what was happing Court ran after him.  Andrew had seen some lady on a bike get hit by a car!  It didn't end up being anything bad it just knocked her over.  Anyways as they got there Courtney looks at the lady and she is wearing a purple button down shirt and she is in a bend in the road!  A bunch of people stopped to ask if the lady was alright but Court and Andrew were the only two that actually stayed to help.  It was really cool because the back wheel of her tire had fallen off and Andrew was able to fix it while Courtney talked to her a bit.

All in all it was a great time and though we didn't see any crazy conversions, who knows what these conversations sparked in people!  If you could keep my team and I in your prayers in this last week and a half of outreach that would be awesome.  Specific prayer requests would be for tiredness and endurance of people since there is no chance to ever get away from them, I mean people are great and all but the only place that you don't see one of their faces is in the bathroom and even then you can have them knocking on the door.  Ha the best is when you are in the shower and someone starts talking to you in the stall adjoining yours.  Anyways I hope you all have a lovely week!

Love,
Selah  

One week down, eight to go.

My goodness, we have already finished our first week of outreach and are into the second.  Only 7 1/2 weeks of outreach to go!  The AusLife seminars that we put on in Gladstone were so amazing.  During a seminar there are tons of different things that the kids do, one of which is small groups and the way these small groups are supposed to happen is there should be about 4-5 students and one leader.  WELL, it didn't really work that way...The first day I had 16 grade 8 boys in my group.  Yep.  Grade 8 BOYS.  Fun stuff!  No it actually really was and all during the week me and the other leaders were able to make awesome connections with the kids.  While during the time there we didn't see any huge and major breakthroughs we did see a lot of openness and we were able to plant a seed in their hearts about who Jesus was.

This week of outreach is all in our hometown.  Starting Monday (yesterday) until halfway through Wednesday we have been/will be working at our new city campus getting it ready for use.  It is hard work!  

Yesterday some people were painting while others, including myself, were digging up roots and working on the hill bringing all of the sticks and branches into the bin.  Today will be another 6 1/2 hour day so I am praying for some strength!  The other parts of our outreach this week will include things like sports ministry at the Strand, ministry at the skate parks, and possibly even spending and evening evangelizing at the clubs downtown.  

This is Johnny and the dance crew (M3) that we took to Gladstone with us.

It has really begun to hit me lately that I am almost halfway done with my DTS.  The first half has felt like the end would never come but now when I break it down it is really going to be flying by!  We have 1 1/2 weeks left of outreach, head into 3 weeks of lectures again and then have 6 more weeks of outreach and we are done!  Crazyness.  So far it has been such an amazing time.  God has been teaching me so much about himself and I have been learning about myself as well as many other valuable life lessons.  

My madre bought me tea!  Yes, my parents are the bestest. 

Love,

Selah

And We're Off!

Tomorrow we begin our minor outreach!   We have to be ready to go by 5am so needless to say it is going to be an early morning.  From there we have a 12 hour van ride to Gladstone where we will be putting on AusLife which I believe I explained in my last post.  I can't believe that we have already pretty much finished the lecture phase of school and are finally getting to start on outreach.  Our minor outreach is 3 weeks and then we have 3 weeks of lectures and then it is a 6 week outreach.  

This past weeks lectures were by Dean Sherman and he spoke on spiritual warfare.  It was actually a lot about relationships (he spoke 5 times as much on relationship than Steve who's topic was relationships) and how everything starts falling apart when relationship falls apart.  Dean spoke for the first 3 days and then one of the school leaders on base, Shea, did the last 2 days of lectures.  

Summer has definitely arrived in Townsville!  It has been quite hot and humid and even at night you can still be in shorts and a tank top and still be warm if not hot.  At 8 o'clock in the morning today it was 74 degrees fahrenheit with 85% humidity....this is their almost spring weather.  Thank the Lord that we will be down South on outreach for most of the next 12 weeks.

I will try to be posting every so often during the next 3 weeks but I am not too sure what my schedule will be like.

Prayer requests:  -- Energy!  We will be super busy with not a lot of sleep.
-- Unity within the team.
-- For the kids that we will be teaching and hanging out with.

Thank you all so much for your love and prayers!
Selah

Our big social event is going to Woolys....the grocery store.

Wolverine joined our DTS!  His civilian name is Grant. 

We had some fun camping, there were a few amazing sing-offs that happened.

We defeated the mountain!  This was a very last minute trek, I had just gotten out of the shower and Jacen says, "Hey Selah want to come on a hike? Please?"  I went and turn into a massive sweat and dirt ball by the time we reached the top, it was worth it though.  Oh and I saw a brown snake.