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