Good - bye Australia

I leave in approximately 4 hours for the airport.. so stoked! yay!
See you all in a few more months!

Tears

Said goodbye to a majority of my best friends here today. Started at 3 am and went until 9 am.. I can't wait to go on Tuesday.
This has been the slowest day of my entire life. There is no one here.. and you can hear a pin drop.. when you're standing outside. It's so sad. Tonight will be good though. My outreach team is getting together and hanging out and then I think a bunch of us are going to get some icecream at Hungry Jacks (Burger King) for 50 cents! 1 last soft serve cone for memories :)
I love you all - and I'll be backing away my lap top tonight so I won't be on too much for a while .. depends on internet availability in the Philippines and Australia. But ya, I'll talk to you all laterrrrrrr. PEACE

Good-byes

Our good-byes started this morning. First Philippines team left at 5 am this morning. Emma's on that team so we said our goodbyes. I was really happy though that the first 2 teams that left were Philippines teams because I'll be joining them in 3 days. the hard part starts tomorrow morning at 3 Am when the Fiji Mexico team leaves :(.. I started getting teary this afternoon when the second Philippines team left and so tomorrow is going to be rough considering that my best friends are pretty much all leaving tomorrow .. I hate this. :(

Shop 'Till You Drop

So I went out today and got the rest of the straggly things that I needed for outreach - you know like the always necessary deoderant :) and all that. Plus I'm also in charge of the hospitality aspect of our team so I bought the little treats and stuff for the people that are hosting us. I guess one of the bases that we are staying at have less people that all 4 teams (39 in total) collectively going to stay there lol I have no idea how we are going to live so that'll be interesting. Anyways, so I'm ready to get going .. just waiting for my plane to take off now!

(I'm definitely looking forwards to the days and days we'll be driving lol. pray for me to survive the large amounts of counry music that will no doubt be playing in the vehicles we'll be driving in. Tears are already welling up in my eyes thinking about it.)

Commissioning Night

All YP (my school on stage singing Human by the Killers as our intro type thing)

Time to eat food .. cheesecake, cracker and dip, these crisp things and yummy juice.

My outreach team!

Christian (staff) and I

Most of the guys I believe

Me and Ibz... or Iben as most know her by.

Yay - dance party!

Nick being full of awesome - not that he isn't normall just at this moment he was especially full of awesome.

Wednesday night was our commissioning night. All the DTSs that are running at the time and headed for outreach are all brought up on stage individually, a few students give testimonies of lecture phase and what they learned and got out of it and so on. And then at the end all the schools go up and all the base leaders and any audience members that want to go up and pray for our teams. It was amazing - the Holy Spirit was definitly present!

It was a lot of fun a lot of pictures and a lot of facebook albums have been created because of it :) lol. And of coures after all good YWAM events there was a dance party after.

5 Days

Only 5 days until we head off. Everythings coming together so fast. We've been working on dramas (the clincer and lifehouse which you can find on youtube if you want to take a look) they're both amazing. Lifehouse will be for the Philippines and the clincher will be Australia.. so it's going to be great. I can't wait. I've got nearly everything I need - just need to grab some laundry detergent so I can have clean clothes once and a while haha. And I'm good. Anyways that's just a quick update. Won't have solid or stable internet there probably so I won't be posting or emailing too too much the next 12 weeks but for sure after :).
Have a good one.

Trip Agenda

We leave Perth on Tuesday March 31st at around 5:30 pm Perth time so around 4:30 am Ontario time. It's two 5 hour flights to Manila (on Luzon - an island) in the Philippines and then we wait 5 hours in Manila and then fly to Cebu City (on an island between Luzon and another big one Mandonao or something). So we are in Cebu on a YWAM base for a month. April 1st to May 1st and then the 4 teams living there leave for 15 days. So I'm flying back to Manila and then straight up to the top of Luzon. Then on the 16th we all come back to Manila (all 4 outreach teams that had been seperated) and we all do ministry in the big city Manila and area. So I'm pretty pumped. So the rest of the 8 weeks are spent there and then we all leave to our seperate countries. So I'll fly back to Perth and then we'll drive up the coast going North to small towns and do youth ministries there. I'm so excited I can hardly wait. I have pretty much everything I Need for outreach and I can only pack 25 pounds of stuff for 3 months .. holy goodness. I'm excited though - it'll definitely be an unforgettable experience :)

Guys Night

Thankfully with a lot of help from our leaders, we got to do our guys dinner which was a blast. These are a few pictures from it. I was in charge of servers and set up so this is us getting the tables all ready.

Holly welcoming our big strong men and telling them why we did this for them (the bless them and thank them for who they are to us)

Their dessert.. amazing.

Their dinner.... also very well done.

Getting thier dinner ready

some guys waiting for their food i believe.

more guys.. clearly Tanner was the most excited to get his food :)

And then after they ate they watched a video Anne and Louisa made of us saying a few things that we've been blessed by by each student and staff member so it was really good they love it and we loved doing it. So it worked our really well.
Then ater that we went around and gave everyone hugs and then it turned into the school of Male Modeling.. brought to you by Jason and Nick :) lol. it was hilarious
We all stood in an oval pretty much and the guys all did a run way strut and posed at Jason Cho (amazing photograper/student on YP) and they all did something different - it was an amazing night.

PRAISE GOD

OH MY LANTA!
Okay, so every morning like I've mentioned we get up at 6 and pray for finances and stuff and this morning my team still need almost $4000 dollars in order for us to book our tickets. God short of showed me while we were praying that I wasn't serious enough about it and that I needed to ask forgiveness for doubt and unbelieve and just slacking so I did and I felt a lot better and I was actually surprised at how much different it felt but anyways. So THEN we are sitting in class and Landry (leader) comes up and says that of the pool of money that we've raised (around 36 grand JUST the 90 YP students in like 3 ish weeks) was divided up between everyones till needing money and now my team is totally done.. no more outreach fees needed.. and there are only 5 more people left in the entire school.
Let's get a bigger picture at God of what God's done shall we? So 4 weeks about we needed 120 000 dollars just YP and then we brought that down in 1 night to just under 100 grand and then NOW like omg .. we need a couple thousand.. between 5 individuals.. I'm still in shock.. God is so.... I can't even find the words - He's just that good .. wow.. I am stunned.
Anyways ya so flights are getting booked today and that means we're ditching this joint next weekend! yay!

Guys Dinner

So probably about 2 or 3 weeks ago Holly mentioned doing something like a dinner for the guys just to thank them for everything they've done for us. We got all the girls together and talked about it and so we planned to do a dinner. After many many talks about what we would serve them we decided on roast, cold veggies to dip in ranch dressing (which we never get), baked potatoes, gravy, and then of course all the toppings for the baked potatoe.. and since they are guys we decided to do chips, salsa and mashed avocados - I know what its called but I cant spell it lol so I won't try but its like their favourite thing. So ya they loved it. Like absolutely loved it. And then for dessert we had icecream, tim tams, chocolate sauce and a whole bunch of random toppings like chocolate candy stuff so it was amazing. They loved that too and then we played the video that Anne and Louisa made that had 2 girls per every guy (so we each did 2 or 3) and then said something nice about them and how they are encouraging to us and when it was over we all got up and just went around to everyone and hugged them and said thank you .. so it was awesome it was a really good night. It actually ended with a mini dance party haha.. it was awesome. Oh haha they also had a male modelling party.. where the guys strutted themselves down the gap between .. it was so funny.. they all did something different - they are really good guys. Actually like brothers and some of my best friends. It's going to be hard saying goodbye next weekend but I can't wait to hear their stories of how God used them so it'll be amazing seeing them again.

Few Outreach Details

*Departing 28th or 29th weekend
*Apon arriving, we stay in Manila and leave a day or two later and fly to Cebu City (massive 2nd world city apparently)
*Staying in Cebu for 4 weeks I believe? I can't remember exatly.. possibly being a part of the YWAM conference there during week 4
*all 4 Philippines teams from my school will be staying together (near eachother really) for those 4 ish weeks
*leave for 3 weeks and go just our individual teams into other areas
*come back after 8 weeks to Perth for a few days and then up the coast (north) to small village towns to work in high schools and with youth I believe

Other than that i don't know too much else.. except what we're allowed to wear. And since I don't have the proper attire and money is on a shortage considering I'm starting my life as a missionary haha, trying to go affordable if you catch my drift, so any prayers about clothes put in our Salvation Army bin (a bin of clothes that any one can put anything in or take anything out of if they need stuff - find really cool stuff in there. I found a dry fit T today, black jeans that are super adorable, Nike Fit sweater and a light T so that was awesome haha) so anything that actually works for outreach.. skirts etc would be awesome.. since I have like none. So ya
I'm getting pretty excited, we're practicing skits so its getting pretty real :)
miss you all have a fabulous week.

Thanks

Every morning for the last like.. I dunno, say 3 - 4 weeks we get up at 6 am which is normal and instead of exercise we pray for finances for outreach. And this morning as we were praying for the remanding 2 people that still are waiting on God for finances I just felt it necessary say thank you, again for the support you've given me, not even just financial. God really showed me this morning how big of a part you guys are to reaching the nations. There's a different role for everybody - not everyone is called to go out, we need supporters.. emotional, financial, spiritual. So this morning when God brought that to mind I was like wow, I am so blessed to have all these people behind me, fighting for and fighting for these nations. Again, thank you so so much for the encouragements, prayers and overall support of me being here. This is experience is probably the best thing that's EVER happened to me and I know God is going to bless those who followed His leading to back me up on this. I don't know how to thank you enough for what you've done. It means so much, thank you.. that's really all I can say.. thank you.

What Will You Do When Worship Is Over?

So ya, spiritual warfare is the topic this week. The speaker sounds exactly like Mr. Cairancross (sp? my bad). So ya it's pretty crazy ... well it's kind of a cross between him and Bob the tomato from veggie tale YA VEGGIE TALES! But anyways.. no crazy exciting news to update you with, although I did have this crazy experience today but I'm still going through it all.. so more on that later.

Anyways so last night, well yesterday was the due date for finances for outreach, and so last night we had worship and prayer (normally it's our free night but we did this instead). It was incredible. I have never in my life experienced worship so powerful. Chenaniah lead worship incredibly.. a lot of fun a lot of God .. a lot of awesome. i absolutely loved it.. every minute. As so I've always struggled with hearing from God and as we were worshipping I just prayed out to hear from Him and a little while later I got a few words in my head and I was like ... "okay well what does that have to do with anything.. is it for the group? just mean.. details please!" so then as we were praying in our outreach teams after worship I found myself repeating it as we all yelled out to God .. and I was like.. wow okay. So I said, "God is this You? Give me something .. please!" so Matthew stuck out in my head and then like as fast as anything I got 14:27 and I was like.. k this never works but I'll go for it. And it says "Have courage.. it is I... Don't be afraid" I read it like twice before I was like.. oh geez, it worked lol so then I was like "sweet okay so its you, but what am I not suppose to be afraid of?" and i was praying into that for a while and didn't get a lot so I was like.. I'll keep it on the DL for a while .. I found out what that reason was today - at least I think I did and it was terrifyingly awesome. Anyways so later on I was sitting in the corner just watching in awe of what God wad doing as we were all encouraging eachother and worshipping and I was like 'wow this is amazing' and then Zechariah of all books pops up and I'm like.. "wow random" right? So I open it up and the first verse I see is 1:10 and it basically says thats these are the ones I am sending into all the earth and I was like.. yes yes they / we are! and then I kept reading and it got a little negative so I continued hoping for some prophetic word to encourage someone with and by 14 or 15 it says that He was angry with some nations or something .. and that he was angry with otheres because they were living too securely or something.. so God just really layed it on my heart that we need to be willilng to be uncomfortable on outreach to be used in the way He intends us to be used.. So ya it was really neat. The last like 2 days have been 2 incredible God days.

Shout out to Aggie for helping me get through today..

anyways so my challenge - go make yourself do something uncomfortable - see how God's going to use you.

Random and Insignificant.. Except in YWAM

(our oatmeal usually looks better than this sludge.. but whatever)

OATS! We finally got our oats back - it feels like they've been gone forever. Okay so to clear up any quesitons, quick cooking oats (to make oatmeal in the morning.. or whenever we're hungry) is the driving energy force for YP. So for a long time we didn't have any - like 2 weeks .. so we were dying from straight toast.. plus in no way is it good for you so a lot of us just "fasted" breakfast .. skipped it really. Anyways, so yes we have our precious oatmeal back - so happy. I walked into our room and Iben said, "THE OATS ARE BACK!" and I literally left at that moment and got a bowl - I was so stoked. Anyways, yes .. well on a more significant note we had our FIRST small group in our outreach teams tonight - it was awesome.. loving the team.. getting pretty excited. Still waiting for approx $6000 to come in so if God is laying it on your heart to donate towards my team you can definiltey donate at ywamperth.org.au (I believe, or you can just type YWAM perth into Google lol)


Hope everythings peachy - I'm going to go bask in the feeling of a full stomache of OATS! God is so good, woot!


Peace.

Baptism

So this is a Jelly Fish. They infested the river we were baptized in. This was one of the "bigger" ones that I saw, or that came this close. It was probably around the size of a hand. The biggest I saw was maybe 2 - 3 hands.. ish. I dunno.. but they are hidious.

Here we have Holly (friend and room mate - love her!) and Landry (one of the co-leaders of my school) chilling before the baptism actually started. Landry I believe was testing out Holly wicked sweet new camera.

DOLPHINS! I so badly wanted to see them and then God was like.. here you go. It was so cool, they surfaced like this like 6 ish times, and they wre really close too. Like maybe, I dunno up to like 100 m maybe? not really good with distances. but the closest was like 5 m from the stone steps a little farther right. It was sweet. I was pretty stoked.

This is Cailtyn (friend and roomie) getting dunked... or baptized whatever you prefer. This was a split second decision for her so I'm tres proud! The Samoan man is out speaker Peni Patu (leads Island Breeze in Kona for YWAM) and then Quenton (faithful leader of my school) is in the reddish shirt and Chenaniah/Chucky is in the yellow (school staff).

Today way really good. I got baptized as well - it was amazing. After I felt so good, so close to God .. just so awesome :). Thank you to my staff and David for talking me through it because I was talking in circles, but I'm so glad I decided too! I love God.. I'm committed - why not show it?

Father Heart of God Lived Out

Peni is fabulous. He's awesome.. He's like a massive teddy bear.

Anyways so this weeks topic is the Father heart of God. So instead of just talking about what that means, he is living it out. And so last week he had been praying about us individually. Through that, I guess he got words from God - so he wrote / typed them up and had bible verses designed for each of us. Most of the girls started crying, the guys just either got a little choked or they were like in awe of how exact it is. It was seriously crazy though how bang on the letters were to us. They were exactly what we needed to hear - well at least mine was - so dead on. My passage was Isaiah 40: 26 - 31.

Look up into the heavens. Who created all the starts? He brings them out like an army, one after another, calling each by its name. Because of his great power and incomparable strength, not a single on is missing. O Jacob, how can you say the Lord does not see your troubles? O Israel, how can you say GOd ignores your rights? Have you never heard? Have you never understood? The Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator of all the earth. He never grows weak or weary. No one can measure the depths of his understanding. He gives power to the weak and strength to the powerless. 30 Even youths will become weak and tired, and young men will fall in exhaustion. But those who trust in the Lord will find new strength. They will soar high on wings like eagles. They will run and not grow weary. They will walk and not faint.

So I'd write down what the letter said but its a mix of I'm too lazy and some other stuff so I won't, but basically it's about God being there, God guiding and speaking to me and it's just fabulous so I love it.

1/2 hour of Amazing!

We had an offering taken up during class today initiated by our speaker, Peni Patu. at the start we had $112 705 collectively as a school for outreach. All that money is due this week or next, I can't remember anyways. So we are really just stepping out and trusting God for it.

So they counted up the offering after less than 1/2 an hour of waiting on God for direction on donations and they counted it up and told us after class that $28 642.70 was raised. That's right, just under 90 people, in half an hour plus God's ability to multiply and spread that farther raised just under $30 000 for outreach. Who's worrying about anything when a God that faithful has their best at heart. Not I....

You In?

Week 8 - Kristin Williams. He was amazing. I can't even believe how changed I feel inside and the frustration that I feel from wanting more of God. Feeling the Holy Spirit physically on you is the most motivation, powerful, peaceful, intense, ... words don't do justice - it's just so unbelievable. I want it 24/7.. only not because then it woulnd't be as valued I guess. But anyhow, you get the point. If people could just feel it and see for themselves .. they couldn't not believe.
A few things that Kristin had talked about really hit me last week about how we, as young people behave. A lof ot if was about why young people are they way they are:
* we don't have short attention spans, we're allergic to boredum because God created us to find excitement in Him. Highs only last for a short time - God last FOREVER and that's why its never enough, that's why material things don't satisfy, because they aren't nearly as exciting as God's plan is for us. Give him a chance.
* frustration towards injustice - abortion .. stats say that 1/3 of my generation were killed in abortion, if that doesn't upset you.. read it again and again until you understand how many people that is.
* we were built to fight for what's right
* we were built to have a relationship with God - that's why so many young people feel like somethings missing - because something is missing - GOD. No wonder so many young people have problems that are going unexplained.. there's a massive missing ink.
* there are many more things .. but basically we are built to warriors of God, we were built for relationships, we were built for seeing justice, we were built to stand through the hard times (he explained it like turbulance.. its not normal but we will survive)
Another thing that was funny / motivating was how he described the devil and that he should definitely be mad, because he got thrown out of God's presence, he can't ever get that back because of one mistake.. so really, he's trying to torture us and get us as far from God as possible, but God banished him to be tortured by us -- so go for it, torture him by choosing God everytime.
I'm just.. overwhelmbed by how obvious God is. Nature is screaming at us that Jesus is coming back. The earthquakes.. the floods.. the trees.. clouds, wind - EVERYTHING. I dunno, I was just really inspired to go out and let these people know why they are hurting and striving towards finding an answer they can't find yet. I'll bring them the answer, who else is in? Anyways, there is a lot more where that came from.. but take it as an encouragement - fight for it. He is worth it.