The Last 2 Days

The past 2 days have been so much fun!  Sunday we all went down to the market and walked around for a little while.  I think I said this before but it is pretty much like a farmers market with crafts and other trinkets.  While we were down there I saw a guy with the coolest bird!  I had promised myself that I would take more pictures so I happily skipped over to the man and asked for a picture of his bird.

We then went down to The Strand where we spent the rest of the afternoon.  It was a very interesting time including Andrew painting his tooth with nail polish.

(Why?  I am too afraid to ask)

I also learned to play two hand rugby which is a slightly confusing game with way too many offsides.  The rest of the time was just hangin' out with awesome people.

When we got back it was dinnertime and we had fish and chips!  I had never actually had it before and I am sure they are nothing compared to the kind that you get at a restaurant but despite all of that I actually quite enjoyed it.  They were not very fishy which was wonderful as well.  After we did kitchen clean up about 7 of us spent the rest of the evening in the cafe just hanging out.  I had brought tubes of henna with me to Australia and so I gave a couple of girls hennas.

The best part of the evening though was definitely figuring out that I could make popcorn in the microwave.  Life changing.  The second best thing of the evening was piercing one of the guys' ears.  It was pretty great!  One of the best part was after we did the first ear Vlad came in (one of the staff who is kind of like a groundskeeper), the look of pure horror on his face was priceless.

Yesterday we started our next topic for the week which is identity.  I am very excited to get into it especially since the speaker is amazing!  In the afternoon me, Court, and Suz took a nice long walk.  After dinner a group of us walked to McDonalds for 30 cent ice cream and then came back to the base. The rest of the evening was spent making popcorn and talking about cannibalism and cremation.  I have no clue how we got on the subject.  Over all as I said it has been a wonderful last two days!  

I am off to small groups but here is a question that I have been pondering (Selah) lately.  What makes Christians any different?  If I was to go out with a group of non Christians and people were to see all of us what would make me stand out?

A Day Late...

Wow!  A lot has gone on in the last few days.  Thursday for class instead of sitting in a class for several hours we took a "field trip" to Castle Hill for our lecture.  This weeks topic was "Hearing the Voice of God".   Once we were up the hill, okay more like less than half way, we stopped in a small clearing and Fiona (our DTS leader) gave a talk on hearing the voice of God and things like, ways you can hear from God, and ways that prevent us from hearing God.  When she had finished she gave us about 15 minutes to pray by ourselves.  It was awesome to be able to pray up on the hill and be in nature, I miss being in nature!  We then came back for lunch and free time until 2:30.  During our free time we walked to Toy World where a few people bought longboards for getting around.  It took us a little longer than we thought so on the way back we were booking it!  In the afternoon class we found out all of our placements for everything.  My ministry placement (I actually found out the night before) is dinner clean up, so every night me and 5 other people get to wash all of the dishes and put away all of the food and clean the whole kitchen, fun stuff!  No, its actually pretty cool, we are getting into a groove on who does what, and with blasting music everything is always better.  My I guess project is camps, so pretty much me and 4 other students will be helping to plan a camp for the kids called 5DE (5 Day Escape).  This camp is actually 7 days but 2 of them are traveling.  We will be taking kids from several cities and traveling 18 on a double decker bus to the Goldcoast where we will do everything from amusement park days to shopping to game days on the beach.  I am so stoked to be able to be part of this!  For our Saturday Youth Street my group that I will be part of from 2-5 is Saving Grace.  Together, as far as I have gathered, we will be learning to worship together as well as learning what it really means to worship.  I am SO stoked about that one!  Then for Youth Street Live which is from 5-10 I believe that I will be setting up and tearing down for 180hr as well as doing something else that I cant remember.   As you can probably tell I am pretty excited about my placements.  After we finished class and had dinner and we cleaned up from dinner a group of 10 or so of us walked to a nearby shopping center/mall called Castle Town.  We just walked around looking in the shops, some people stopped for coffee, and then we went to Wollys to buy snacks which was grand.  

Yesterday we started off the say with a time of worship in the chapel.  Afterward we had morning tea (which was apples, oranges, and popcorn, YES!)  and then went back into the chapel for our last session of "Hearing the Voice of God".  We did an exercise where we each put our name into a hat and then after they were mixed we were each given a slip of paper with someone else's name on it that we were not allowed to look at.  We then had 20 minutes to pray and try and figure out what God was saying to that person.  I didn't feel like God was speaking anything in specific so I just put down two of my favorite verses which are Isaiah 40:28-31 and Psalm 55:22, both verses have to do with being weary and having your strength renewed.  It turned out the name that I had was one of the leaders Krystal who is super awesome.  It was kind of cool because after I gave her the verses that I had wrote down she said that God has been convicting her lately about resting and spending time with Him.  After class and lunch we had a short break until 2:30 when we all were recruited to help with the Building Blitz.  I did everything from move packing pallets to power washing the carports and street.   We finished around 5 something, had dinner, cleaned up, then had an improv worship session which was pretty cool.

There were no classes today!  I was able to sleep in until about 8:30 and then took a shower and headed to the cafe.  Of course the one day I wanted to Skype my computer decided to not let the internet work, fail.  Eventually I was able to Skype with Jakey and it was so awesome!  He is the first person that I have talked to other than on email since I left.  At 1 we had a short meeting to get ready for our Youth Street groups.  After we had met and before Youth Street was starting I was asked if I wanted to play in the band tonight,  I was SO stoked!!!  I have been going through withdraws not being able to play the piano.  Anyways once 2 o'clock came and Youth Street was starting we realized that we only had one kid in our group, because of this we decided to have him join the music group and we would all go and put together a set list for the night.  We ended spending 3 hours in the office looking at songs, talking, and watching blimeycow videos on youtube!  It was awesome.  Playing in the band when pretty well (for having never raven heard all of the songs except for one) and the kids were so energetic.  Andrew was the speaker for the evening and shared his testimony which is a crazy story of Gods faithfulness, in short he should not be alive today.   At Youth Street I met a guy named Josh.  He is actually the one kid who came who was part of my group, anyways his is a very very talented musician and one of the most passionate Christians I have met!!!  He also has an amazing story starting with a plethora of health issues and then being healed from many of them, including seeing his own leg grow in front of his eyes.  The coolest thing is how positive he is and after he gives a testimony of God's goodness he will exclaim, "All glory to God!"  Towards the end of Youth Street he came up to me very excited and said, "You know Victoria?  Well she really hurt her foot and couldn't walk and I went over and prayed over it and she was healed!"  Victoria came over a minute later all smiles and says, "My foot was healed!  I couldn't walk or even have a shoe on and now I am going to go dance!"  It was amazing!  All glory to God!  Anyways after Youth Street a large group of us went to McDonalds (Maccas) for a midnight snack.  Good times. Tomorrow we are headed to the beck for the day, should be fun!  

Getting Familiar

The first day and a half of DTS has been even better than I could have imagined!  I woke up at 6 to get a shower in (there are about 30 girls sharing 2 showers) and got ready for our first full day.  Breakfast was at 6:30 so I went over there with some other people and had a wonderful breakfast of cereal and an apple.  At 8:30 we all gathered in the chapel for a short time of worship, after we finished we were directed into lecture room one for the first part of our orientation.  It was pretty long but part of what we had to do was learn some of the values of YWAM, so instead of just reading through all of them we split into 6 teams and were each given a value and a song that we had to sing the value to, then we also had to make up a dance for it.  My teams value had to do with all of the YWAM bases being different but at the same time they are all one together, and our song was Lord I Lift Your Name on High.  Some of the other songs were Baby by Justin Bieber and  Gangnam Style, it was hilarious to see what people came up with!  At 10:30 we had "morning tea" which is this lovely thing where everyone on the base gets together and has a snack/meal together and just hangs out (this is a wonderful addition to the schedule for someone who is always hungry like me!).  After morning tea we went back to orientations till 12:30 when we had lunch.  Once lunch was over we had a free afternoon so some of us walked to a nearby thrift store (which is called an Op Shop here which stands for opportunity shop).  One of the girls (Bet) found a skateboard for $5 at the op shop!  We then walked to the mall, stopping for pizza on the way because Court was hungry, and walked around for a bit.  Around 4 we headed back to the base and hung around showing each other pictures of our families and friends until dinner at 5:30.  After dinner we had an impromptu game of ninja and another game that is kind of like sharks and minnows, it was great.  At 7 we were kicked out of the auditorium because the Pacific DTS had to have a meeting.  We left the room and some people decided they wanted to go to the beach so 6 or 7 of us headed down to the strand.  It was a 50 minute walk through town and we had some great times.

On the left is Bet my bunk-buddy....yeah...haha just kidding she's awesome! 

Below from left to right my mates here are Ami, Court, Suz, and Andrew.

Once made it down to the strand we ran around taking pictures and found a gelato shop still open where a few of them got milkshakes and gelato.

These are some ginormous ants that we found on a pole.

We walked all of the way to the end of the strand and then went down to the water and put our feet in.  Somehow the topic of teens killing and hurting themselves came up, it seemed we all knew someone or know someone who had a friend or family member take their own life.  After discussing this for a little while we had an awesome impromptu prayer time right there on the beach.  It was such a sweet time.  A little while later a few other people from our base met us down there with their long boards and we hung out for a while just joking around and riding the boards.  I cannot believe that it is possible to feel so close to people that you have only known for a couple of days.  It already feels like a family.  We were back around 10:45 and then soon headed to our rooms to either go to bed or journal for a little while.  It has been an amazing time.  Here are some pictures of my bunk-mate Bet...she stole my camera and took these so they are going up on the blog!

 I hope you are all having a lovely time!!!

The Start

Whelp, I arrived safe and sound!  I made it in around 2 o'clock yesterday and was shown my room and where everything was.  Youth Street starts at 2 so everyone was leaving just as I was coming in.  My mom and I left again, after I brought my things in, to go to the store to buy laundry detergent and some snacks.  We were back by 3 and it was a bit sad leaving my mom (well that was a lot sad) and walking into the mostly deserted base by myself.  After I put my bag in my room I decided to try and find some inhabitants somewhere and so headed to the cafe.  When I got there I found 4 girls all playing Bananagrams!!!! For those of you who don't know bananagrams is one of my all time favorite games and my mom and I had been playing it nearly every day on our trip.  Anyways I introduced myself and found out that they were also in DTS, 2 are doing the Youth DTS and the other 2 are in the Pacific DTS.  People kept trickling in and I was able to meet quite a few of the other DTS participants.  At 5 the Youth Street kids got back from the park and started setting up the auditorium for dinner.  It was the best thing ever.  We were able to participate in Youth Street and hang out with the kids and it was SO much fun!!! After dinner the kids just get to hang out anywhere around base, there is the cafe where they can buy cheep drinks, there is a room with a wii set up, there is dancing and games, and there is a massive half pipe and other boxes and grinding boards for the scooter dudes.  (Seth you would be in absolute heaven here!!!)  At 7 they had an hour service with 3 super energetic songs to get the kids pumped and then a short talk.  At one point during the talk we had to split up into groups of 8 and discuss specific questions that we were given.  I was in a group with another Youth DTS member (Andrew) and 6 scooter dudes, it was so much fun!  There was a little guy in a green helmet named Jacob who was SO adorable!  After the service it was hangout time again and I had an awesome time watching all of the little dudes scooter.

(I didn't finish this post yesterday so the rest of this was written on Monday)

Yesterday was orientation!  We are officially enrolled in the July DTS.  It has been such a sweet time so far.  We started off with a few games, fun fact: I am the youngest member of my DTS by 1 day, and then Fiona and Shea (the leaders of the youth and pacific DTS's) gave a short overview of what the DTS's are about.  After this we went into a short time of worship, registered into school, and then it was dinner!

Everyone here is so awesome.  In 121 (which is pretty much the girls dorm) the Youth DTS girls have 2 rooms with 6 in one and 7 in the other.  I am in the room of 6 and all of the girls are super awesome.  On Friday which was the first night I was here I didn't know who were going to be my roommates and every time I was in there either no one else was in the room or they were asleep with their face to the wall.  Anyways I hadn't set up anything on my bed and all of my stuff was still on in and when I went to go to bed everyone else was already asleep!  So I lugged my huge backpack off and left everything else on the bed and jumped into the top bunk.  When I woke up in the morning I met my bunkmate, Bet, and later she told me that I had a cracker box that kept her up for THREE hours the night before!  She said she kept pushing it but it was making some "dripping" noise.  Ha well it turns out it wasn't even my box (I don't really eat Ritz crackers) and so she has a bad impression of me when it wasn't even my fault!  Just kidding we are buddies.  It was pretty great though.

Sorry this is a ton of random stuff with no pictures or anything but my brain is in a whirlwind and so this is the best that I could get out!

The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy;  I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full. -- John 10:10

As Promised

I have transportation overload at the moment.  Even sitting here on my bed now I feel like I am still moving.  After 50+ hours of flying (this is not travel time through the airports this is JUST flying time), driving for countless hours around the Australian countryside, taking an all day boat ride, and spending a total of 9 hours on buses I can say I'm pooped!  I am so excited to just settle into the adventures of school life.  Ha watch our first team bonding exercise include 12 hours of driving.

Alrighty now as promised here are some pictures.

This is White Haven Beach which is named after its white sand.

This is my most beautiful mother who is very annoying when it comes to letting people take her picture.

It was cloudy but oh so warm! 

My new anklet :) 

These little (huge) guys joined us for lunch.  There are 3 of these guys that apparently are always hanging around and they each have a name.  

This is the one palm tree on the beach which just so happened to mark the pathway to the bathroom.

This is the view at the lookout that we hiked to.

These are from the snorkeling that we did.

I took a picture of some random girl...I thought it was a cool shot! 

The biiiiiig fish! 

I am officially off to YWAM!  It is crazy that the moment that I have been preparing for, now for nearly a year, is here.  Thank you to everyone who made this dream a reality by all of your love, prayers, and support.  Also thank you to the special someone who made it possible for me and my mom to have the most wonderful before school mother daughter trip!

This is now the part where normally I would put some inspirational verse about the next chapter of my life or something, but I packed my Bible already and there is no way I am going to crawl through the tightly packed backpack to find it.  

I love you all so much! 

Selah   

Randomness

DEVASTATION!!! I had an entire blog post written up but then since I didn't have internet it didn't save and then something went wrong and it all went away...like rain down a gutter.  Hah can you tell there has been a lot of rain lately?  It rains a lot here!  But its great.

Anyways!  Right now we are in Airlie Beach, it reminds me a bit of Santa Barbara but not quite as big or beautiful.  We arrived on...goodness I have lost track of the days...  ..... ......on Tuesday by the afternoon Greyhound bus.  On Wednesday we walked to town (our hotel is about a 20 minute walk from the main downtown area) and spent a few hours looking around in the shops and walking by the beach.

We have noticed here that most people don't go in the ocean!  They have what they call "lagoons" which are just really big pools that everyone hangs out at.  There is sand going into the lagoons and grass all around on which people sunbathe, its quite interesting.

The thing is, the beaches are really not that great, sand wise, a lot of the beaches around the ocean are half mud.

Today was awesomeee.  We went on a boat tour which took us snorkeling, to White Haven Beach for an Aussie BBQ, and to another part of the island for a short hike.  There was a bus that picked us up at 8:20 which took us to the marina where everyone met and we left for the day!  The boat left at 9 and we went to one of the islands to snorkel.  The water was not too cold which was nice and it was also nice and clear!  I have to say it was not as clear as Guam (for those of you who went) but it was still very nice.  There were lots of fish and the coral was beautiful.  I saw a few of a certain fish, I am not sure what they were called, but they were really cool!  They were about 4ft long, kind of thin, maybe 3ft tall, and a blueish green color.  Terrible description but I hope to have pictures up soon I still need to upload them.  After snorkeling we went to White Haven Beach which, as you might have guessed, have beautiful white beaches.  The sand apparently is 98.6% silica or something like that, you can polish your jewelry with it.  After relaxing on the beach for an hour we had a delicious Aussie BBQ and then headed back to the boat.  We then went to another part of the island for a short hike to an amazing lookout of the ocean.  Needless to say it was a wonderful day.  There were two Israeli families on the boat who had the cutest kids ever!  They were almost half hippie and the two dads had long hair and one of them REALLY looked like Jesus.  At one point my mom said, "Well at least we know our boat wont sink with Jesus on board."  It was fun to watch the interactions with each other, you could tell they had very close families.

Enough rambling.  Here are some pictures of some spunky rock wallabies to brighten your day!

Mr. Wallabie just chillin' on a vertical boulder.

*burp*

The scout! 

I am not quite sure what to say about this one....

I hope you are all doing wonderfully amazing! 

Selah