Quick Update

(This was written on Saturday)

The new building ("The City Campus") now officially belongs to YWAM Townsville!  Everyone is very excited for this next chapter of our base's history.   On Wednesday during the time that we would normally have base worship and lectures we went to the new place and cleaned it up.  It is a bit overgrown but with about 100 volunteers it was looking quite nice after 2 hours.  After we had cleaned we had a chance to run through the entire building checking out all of the buildings, its huge!  Once we had satisfied our curiosity we had a time of worship and prayer in the auditorium.  It was an awesome time worshiping with that many people and being able to pray for the future of the new place.  we finished up all of that around 12:30 and then had pizza for lunch and went home.

We have this entire block as well as up the mountain to the apartments.  

Tomorrow we leave for camping!  We will have 2 weeks up in the mountains with no internet or cell service (praise the Lord!).  I hear that the speakers are amazing and that God seems speak a lot to people while they are there.  

(Written Sunday)

Ah ahhhh!  Yesterday I had the best breakfast that I have had since arriving in Australia! (And that was July 5th).  My mate Suz happens to have connections in amazing places, and so because of this we had a proper Northern Irish breakfast!  It was amazing.  We had bacon, eggs, soda bread, potato cake, mushrooms, baked beans, hash browns, and orange juice.  It was phenomenal, and compared to the cold cereal that we have eaten every morning since being here it was out of this world. 

Stoked Suz about to eat a homeland breakfast.

My first Northern Irish breakfast experience! 

As I said I am leaving for camping today for two weeks!  I won't be able to post until I come back so I will update you all then!

Thank you all for your love, prayers and support!

Selah 

  

The Haps

(This was written a few days ago)
Whoa, as I love to say, "God is one crazy dude."  I had a revelation in worship today.  Lately I have felt a bit disconnected from God, not like He wasn't in my life, but just that He wasn't as close as He has been before.  While worshiping I realized I had been striving to win His love and acceptance and trying to do it all on my own.  We can do NOTHING on our own!  We can't even love God on our own!  That is a crazy thought, that we are so incapable that we cannot even love Him without Him helping us love Him.

God has really been speaking to me about the small things.  For a little while I was becoming to be a bit discouraged because my passion was not for the nations, to lead 100,000 person revivals, or to start an orphanage in Uganda.  Nope, my dream would be to get married, have kids, work with high schoolers and young adults in the church, and maybe someday even start a coffee shop like my dad once had.  Here at YWAM I was starting to feel like maybe that wasn't "good enough" since I wouldn't necessarily be changing thousands of lives, what a load of lies!  Everything we do, if we are passionate for making the Lord known, will be used for His purposes.  If every single passionate person went to China to be missionaries and start revivals, what would happen to the people in England?  What would happen to the kids in the US?  Now I am rambling, but I hope I got my point across. (If you have any questions or complaints please feel free to email 1beachluver95@gmail.com and I would be happy to answer any of your questions).  The bottom line is, God takes your passions and talents and uses them for His purposes, if you let Him.  

(This was written on today, Sunday)
I can't believe that we have already finished week 3!  Time has been flying to say the least.  This past week we our lectures were based around Christian lifestyle.  We learned a variety of things ranging from 3D communication to what it means to "fear the Lord".  I have understood for a long time, but it is sinking in even more being here, how blessed I am to have grown up in the family that I did.  Going through this weeks lectures I realized how much my family had talked about the bible and everything from the fundamentals of Christianity to the very hard controversial topics.  That was a tangent, sorry.

AMAZING news!  So for the last while YWAM Townsville has been seeking God on how to expand the base, looking at everything from building onto what we have to buying adjoining properties.  Well last week we signed papers on a totally new building!  The new building is in the heart of the city, perfect for reaching more people, and is SIX times bigger than our existing property!  We are so excited to see what God is going to do in this next chapter of YWAM Townsville.  Last week we got to go to the building and take pictures for the news, so now I can say that I have been in the paper and on the news in Australia!

Yesterday we had Youth Street, as we do every Saturday which I am sure you have figured out by now.  The dynamic factor for the day was dress up as your favorite movie character which was a hard one.  I forgot that we had to dress up until the last minute so I had to throw a costume together.  I ended up being Bethany Hamilton before the shark bit off her arm.

Not too hard ;)

During 180 we did something a little different.  A few of the crew (students) are going to Papa New Guinea on a missions trip this September.  They still need $4000 so we did a fundraiser for them!  We did a series of auctions where there would be a couple of staff per game and the crew would bid to see who got to do the damage to the staff.  A couple of the staff had their face turned into cakes with whipped cream, carmel sauce, and nuts.  I got to make lemonade in my mouth and spit it into a cup (meanwhile getting most of the water, lemon syrup and brown sugar all over me).  The worst was after 180 where we had 3 different staff stand on some tarps and kids could buy a variety of things such as, eggs, tuna, muscles, rotten food, cans of wet dog food, and flour.  After they had decided what they wanted to torture the victim with they went up and could slather their goods all over the staffs face.  It was nasty.  You could smell them from 100 ft away.  It was an awesome night and the crew had an awesome time.

Next week we leave for camping!  We are heading to Hidden Valley for 2 weeks I am super stoked.  Apparently it is some peoples' favorite time of DTS.

Over all this has been amazing time of learning exactly who God is and who He things I am,  learning how to love and serve others, and of course making amazing friends.

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

Billabong...No not the brand

Life has been picking up speed like no other here!  This past week of lectures was on identity which was an impacting time for pretty much everyone.  Our speaker, Joanne Blaik, was an amazing speaker who had everyone captivated from the beginning.  You could tell by the way she spoke and interacted with us that she cared so much about us and what she was teaching about.  One of the exercises that we did while in lectures was hilarious but at the same time very impactful.  One of the things that Joanne had been telling us about was that we look at people but don't really see them.  So to practice what we were learning in this exercise we had to go up to someone and for over a minute had to just stare straight into their eyes (don't worry there was music playing in the background to take away the sting of the awkwardness).  As we stared into their eyes we had to try and see how God sees them.  Once the, "oh my goodness this is so awkward please person try to stop laughing so that I can actually see your eyes" wears off and you are actually able to look into your partners eyes it is one of the most peaceful feelings.  You can practically see the venerability in the depths of their eyes.  Gods creation is so magnificent.  On the last day we gathered into a few small circles each with our list of lies that we believed about ourselves that we had written out the day before.  Each person, if they wanted to, would step into the middle and read off their list of truths off to everyone.  As we went the leaders who were in each group would encourage the person in the middle to do certain things such as shout their truths or do other symbolisms to bring the truths home.  It was definitely an intense time for everyone.

Youth Street this week was awesome!  My team, Saving Grace, was merged with the music team because last week we only had one crew show up.  We had two new girls in the group who had never been to Youth Street and they really liked it!  I was able help teach piano and then teach another girl guitar which was really fun.
I love to joke around that a homeschooler can spot another homeschooler from a mile away but its so true!  After only 2 weeks of Youth Street I have met three homeschoolers which is apparently very rare.   One of the core values of Youth Street is dynamic which means that we try and change things up every week by doing things such as changing the look of the room around or doing a dress-up day.  This weeks dynamic point was that everyone was supposed to dress up in their PJ's.  We had some fun with this one, to say the least.

On Sunday we went to the Billabong!  It was too amazing for words so I will just share some pictures with you.

I would love to write more but base worship starts in 3 minutes so I must be off!  I am so thankful for each and every one of you.  God bless your day.

Selah