Israel and beyond

Once again I have been less than timely on posting things to my blog! Right now I am currently in Germany enjoying hard Brotchen, bratwurst and lots of pastries. Germans take their food seriously! I will try and sum up what has happened over the last month as DTS has ended and aftertravel began. After Uganda my team went to Dahab Egypt for team debrief. Relaxing by the blue green waters of the red sea was just what we needed after 2 1/2 months of outreach. The conclusion of our outreach was a good one with all of us leaving with good memories and all of us had grown in our identity in God. The last few days with my team were really good and also sad realizing that this time that had made us so close was ending. In a few hours we would meet up with the other 34 members of our school and disperse amongst them. A real highlight of debrief was that another team was at the same place and my 2 good friends Melanie and Grace were on that team so I got to see them a little earlier! I didn't realize how much I had missed them until I saw them again. On the 2nd of August we made it to Israel no problem with the border thank God! We arrived in the old city of Jerusalem and met up with ther rest of our school! To be honest, I was really overwhelmed by everyone when I had been used to us 9! Over the next 12 days we toured Jerusalem. We saw the garden tomb and the Holy Sepluchure 2 places where they believe Jesus died and was buried. I personally believe it was the garden tomb but ultimately it doesn't matter, it happend regardless of where! It was amazing, sureal and incredible to see all the Holy sites, where Jesus actually was. We went to the Mount of Olives, Mount of the Beatitudes (where 5 others and I recited the sermon on the mount by memory) , saw capernum where Jesus spent a lot of His ministry, some were baptized in the sea of Gallilee, and on the 13th of August we graduated on the Mount of Olives where Jesus gave the great commission to the disciples! Wow. It was very interesting to be in Jerusalem. The tension between the muslims and the Jews is palpable at times but I never felt unsafe. Once we went into a muslim shop and he just randomly started saying hateful things about the jews. It was out of the blue and I was really shaken up by some of the hatred from both sides. Neither side will give in so there will never really be peace until Jesus comes again. Melanie, Grace and I stayed for the wedding of 2 of our classmates and then we headed to egypt to see a friend. Just a forewarning, don't ever travel during ramadon!! All of the muslims are not allowed to eat or drink during the day yet they go about their normal business! They are more angry and prone to violence during this month and we decided to travel into a muslim nation! We got to the border of Isreal fine but ended up staying in Eilat for the night because we couldn't get a visa for Egypt. The next day we got through the border then caught a van ride to Cairo. Unfortunately, our driver was muslim so he was fasting. He was driving like a maniac and finally had to pull over for food because he was falling asleep! Thankfully God was watching out for us because we arrived in Cairo in one piece. The spiritual atmosphere of Egypt is heavy with a mosk on every corner and hearing calls for prayer 5 times a day and readings from the koran in KFC! you can't get away from it! We were in Egypt for 5 days then on the 28th we headed to Rome, Italy! It was such a nice change to be in a western nation and instead of mosks there were churches on every corner! We did all the touristy things like the colloseum and the vatican and just enjoyed relaxing. Venice was amazing also. No cars in the city! That was so nice! On the 7th of Sept we headed to Germany: Frankfurt, Munich, Dresden and Hamburg. All to stay with friend we met from Mercy Ships! We have only had to spend one night in a hostel out of 10! Much easier on the pocket book! Tomorrow we leave for Ireland which has been a dream come true for me! If only I wasn't so tired of traveling! A week in Dublin and then home!! I will offically be home the 27th of September and I look forward to seeing all of you and telling you in person all I have expirienced in the last 7 months and 18 days since leaving home. Please pray for travel mercies for my friends and I. God Bless!

Uganda

So I am sorry that this is so late! Thank you for being interested in what I am doing! So Uganda! We arrived on the 12th in Entebbe. It felt a little warmer than South Africa but not as much as we were expecting! We were picked up by youth working with African Renewal Ministries and driven to Gabba a neighborhood outside of Kampala the capital city. We stayed in a beautiful guesthouse all to ourselves and had our own chef! Flo actually went to school to be a chef and wants to open her own cooking school! Needless to say we felt really spoiled! The next day however, we left for a little village called Bugono about 5 hours drive away. Now this was the Africa I was picturing! Huts with grass roofs, no running water, women carrying things on their heads, and 50 children swarming around us when we got there. We had about 15 of the local youth from Gaba come with us to the village for about 6 days. We slept in the church, had crusades( evangelistic programs) every night, went door to door, prayed for healing, did programs in schools, and discipled the local church. The youth that went with us are amazing! They have such a passion and zeal for God and to see everyone saved! These were people our own age taking a risk for God. It was awesome to be a part of it. While we went door to door it was humbling because many people had never heard the gospel and to be able to share that with them was amazing. Hundreds of people came to Christ through the door to door ministry and the crusades. Alot of people listened just because we were white and had come all the way around the world just to share that God loves them. It was so cool! Many people also recieved healing while we were there also. Even while I am typing these things I don't want to be fixated on the miraculous but just on how good God is! We were really convicted as a group to continually seek God's face and not His hand. Even if I never see another healing or other signs, I will be satisfied because I am focused on God's face and just loving Him. We came back to Gaba tired but amazed at how God had used us. We spend the next 4 days in Kampala going to slums, praying and handing out food to people, and sharing the gospel. It was really nice to meet their physical needs as well as spritual. The last part of our time in Uganda was spent with Bethany village. This is a Christian children's group home that also provides sponsorship for these children. There are about 180 children in 12 different homes. Each home has a "mother" and they do devotions every night. We were able to be a part of that. During the day we ministered to the kids encouraging them and praying for them. It was a special time. Some of the children's sponsors had to drop them due to extenuating circumstances. If you feel lead to sponsor a child through African Renewal Ministries, I can personally vouch for them!! We spend those 4 days just loving on those kids they are incredible! Also while I was there I vistied the clinic where one nurse takes care of 700 people! So who knows, I may find myself back there helping her out any way I can. God willing! That is Uganda in a nutshell. On the 29th we left uganda for egypt for team debrif and had a wonderful 3 days relaxing in Dahab by the red sea. It was gorgeous!
Prayer points:
-Bethany village and all the children there, also that they would recieve the nurse they are praying for
- Bugono village: that the new Christains there would have followup and discipling; that God would send people to plant churches in those villages that many have reiceved Christ
-For the youth at Gaba community church that their faith would grow and continue to be an impact for their community and country
God Bless!

South Africa!

Hello from the beautiful beaches of Cape Town South Africa! As I am writing this my team is preparing to leave the beautiful city of Muizenburg. No more team meetings on the roof where we can watch the waves of the indian ocean, no more drinking water out of the tap, no more western toilets and we will no longer be surrounded by 100 other ywamers at the base. Sad day! We have been VERY spoiled here with being able to flush toliet paper and having hamburgers and all the other western conviences! I have to keep reminding myself I am still on outreach. We arrived on the 26th after being in a jeep, 4 planes and 5 airports! Boy were we tired! We stayed at the YWAM base in Muizenburg which is a township of Capetown for 2 whole weeks. The longest we had been in one place was 10days. It is so exciting to be able to unpack for awhile. We worked with an organization called Catalyst 9 that stemmed from Mega Cities from Perth, Austrailia. 4 cities are chosen every year to be impacted with ywam teams and this year Capetown is one of them. The world cup is going to be held here in 2010 and ywam is trying to coordinate a huge outreach as 4 million people from all over the world flood South Africa. It is really cool because African South Africans can't go all over the world but now the world is coming to them. It is a huge opportunity to reach people for Christ! Who knows maybe I will be back here exactly a year from now! Over the next 3 months 34 ywam teams will be coming and partering with local churches to disciple and motivate them to catch the vision for 2010 and reach the people around them. My team worked with 2 different churches over our 2 weeks. Both different with different focuses and mostly "colored"(it is an ethnic term here and not offensive: a mix of the black african and the Dutch that settled here)/Black African. We lead their church services, prayer walked, did door to door evanglelism, discipled youth, and just got to know the people in their congregations. It was really good, challenging, and exciting. It is fun when the people catch the vision for finishing the great commission! We are leaving today for Uganda where it will be less comfortable and probably more intense. We will be working with African Renewal Ministries in a village discipling youth and getting to know people there. I am almost positive we won't have internet! So this may be the last post until Israel! Thanks so much for the prayers! I love you all!
Prayer points:
For the 2 churches we worked with Shiquina ministries and New Hope Church
Pastor Collin and Pastor Josi
The youth of New Hope- that they would be a powerhouse for God
The drug problem- it is HUGE
Travle mercies for my team and that the soil would be ready in Uganda

India!

Well it looks like I will be doing an update for every country. Sorry it is so spiradic but between the power outages, ministry and having to pay for internet, It just doesn't get done. so India...Well we arrived in Kolkata on the early morning hours of the 4th. As soon as we stepped out of the airport a lot of us felt a heaviness that wasn't just the humidity! So picture this, 9 exhausted sweaty white people trying to get taxi's while hanging on for dear life to their luggage so they don't have to pay someone for helping. All of this while 20 other indians with nothing else to do just stand and stare at you. Not a great first impression. We finally got to our place in one piece. We had to split up and some of us got to have A/C and others didn't. Nice. We had to stay in Kolkata an extra day due to unavalability of train tickets. It turned out to be a good thing. we saw some other YWAM teams at the Mother Teresa house and we got to encourage and pray for them. The train ride up to siligry was a fun expirience. We were late getting our seats so we were running through the train with our HUGE backpacks and hitting everyone along the way! It was an overnight train so we had beds, we took turns watching our bags and sleeping. We finally made it to Kalimpong where we found out the next day we would leave and do a mini DTS near the border of Bhutan! What?! The students became the teachers! It turned out to be an amazing 4 days. We taught lectures for the first 2 days and then had an outreach day. During this time we saw at least 75 people be healed through our nightly programs and open air. The deaf heard, the blind saw, it was amazing that He used us in this way. Once we got back to Kalimpong we were exhausted but excited about what He is doing in a small village. Oh, side note, we also got to step into Bhutan where it costs 200/day to get in and we took pictures! The rest of our time in Kalimpong constisted of rest, doing a cultural show, and taking part in their DTS graduation. On the 14th we left to go to Darjeeling. We stayed in a lovely apartment and some of the things we did were; praying over the city, meeting and spending time with locals, teaching "moral values" at a drug rehab, doing childrens programs, praying at buddist and hindu temples, ect. It was an amazing week. Now we have our "vacation" for a couple days and them we head to Cape town, south africa. we should be there by this next saturday. It is nice that one of our school leaders Will Rosenburg is here with us for a few days. He is an encouragement to us and he also brings news of other teams. I hope this filled you in a little. It is hard to put 2 weeks of outreach in one post!
prayer points: continued health of our team
-travel mercies
- that the seeds we planted here would be watered and harvested
- helen- a woman that has been hanging out with our team, she isn't a christian, but she is lovely-that she sees that she can have life abundantly.
- the ywam team here and the local nepalis close with them specifically, anup and joseph
-that the men the the drug rehab program realize where their hope lies
thanks!

Team Blog

Hey! If you would like to know more about what we are doing, here is the team blog which will probably be updated more often than mine! Love you all!!
http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog/erincastillo/4/tpod.html

Thailand!!

Sawadee Kah! Hello fromThailand! So we finally have internet after 10 days. Yeah! I will give you a brief update on how things went. We arrived in Bangkok on the 17th of May and stayed at the YWAM base for a couple nights. During this time we explored Bangkok and had orientation. Then we took the night bus up to Chang mai where we stayed at another YWAM base called the Lighthouse that works with prostitutes in the red light district. We were able to visit the redlight district but we did not do any ministry at the time. The next morning we headed out to the mountains! We arrived in Musagee last thursday after a 6 hour tuk tuk ride (this is a pick-up truck that has a covered bed with benches). We met our translators Tei Tei and Tanin. The girls stayed in a house and the boys stayed in a room in a house with some of the school boys. This place is a center for kids to go to school in a Christian atmosphere. Some of the kids are orphans, some are abandoned and others just don't have a school near where they live. Tei Tei is the wonderful Christian woman that runs the center and God has blessed her ministry abundantly! These kids are well fed both physically and spiritually. Tanin is the young man in charge of the children. He is in charge of the nightly worship/teaching sessions and he is so good with the kids. When I told him that, he just said, "I love them." Simple as that. He is 23 and loves God passionately. He reminds me of David, a man after God's own heart. We stayed in Musagee for 10 days taking over the worship/teaching sessions every night, visiting schools, working in the rice fields, planting trees and peanuts, teaching english, praying for the sick and generally just being with the kids. Thai children are so beautiful and amazing! They will make you cry when you hear them sing because they worship with their whole heart. It is incredible. It didn't matter that they didn't speak the same language when they sang, they helped me worship God. It was a relaxing , fulfilling, amazing week and it was incredibly hard to say goodbye. The children did a program for us last night and thanked us for coming. It must be so hard for them to have people coming and going from their life. There were many tears on both sides as they said "I love you" and "God bless you" in broken english. Thank goodness hugs and smiles don't need translation! Now we are back in "civilization" and i want to go back to the mountains! Tonight we take the night bus to Bangkok and then fly to Kolkata, India on Wednesday. In India we will be working in Kalompong and Darjeeling for a week respectively.
Prayer points:
-Musagee village-for the leaders Tei Tei and Tanin that they will bless the kids' lives
-Travel -We will be traveling ALOT in India, pray that everything goes smoothly
-Spiritual protection- India is pretty dark spiritually, pray for the armor of God over our team and over any spiritual attacks
-Health- Everyone has been pretty healthy but Erin is struggling with stomach issues and fever and I have a cold.
- Those we will meet in India- softening of hearts
In Chirst,
Alison

Well I am off!

In a little less than 15hrs at 5am tomorrow I will be leaving my home away from home, Oxford, and leaving for Thailand!! It is crazy! I am feeling a little overwhelmed but very excited about starting outreach and giving away what I have learned. This has been an amazing 3 months and I can't wait to see what God has in store for my outreach team. Oh by the way all of us in our class are going on outreach! The money came in by the grace of God!! So cool. I covet your prayers as I and my fellow classmates begin this journey for the next three months. I am not sure when I will have time or access to keep up my blog but I will try to as much as possible. I love you all and thank you so much for your support!

Bits and pieces

Well, I thought it was time for an update! It is hard to explain what all is going on because most of it is in the heart and not tangible but I will try and tell you about some highlights over the last couple weeks.
1)April 20th-25th was our Holy Spirit week. One of our leader's mom came and taught it. She is a leader of a healing room in San Franciso. She was so full of energy and how much she loves God just shined when she spoke. I learned a lot more about manifestations of the Holy Spirit and their place in the church. On Tuesday I got baptized in the Holy Spirit and started speaking in tongues! No I didn't fall over! Tongues is more of a prayer language between you and God. Once I realized that, it was easier to accept and be open. It just felt like a warm presence and once I started speaking in tongues it was like I had a clear connection to God. I didn't get distracted like I sometimes do during prayer. It is something I have done when I can't think of anything else to pray.
2) The next week was Marc Parker speaking about Lordship. Wow was that an intense week! Marc is so dynamic and animated that we had no problem paying attention to what he was saying it was amazing! All week he talked about making Jesus the true Lord of our lives and what that means. On friday we had a chance to do that. For almost 11 hours we had a "day of worship". We went through the steps of thanksgiving, praise, giving of a fellowship offering (an offering to God that is not a sin confession such as: laying down our futures, selves, money, plans ect and giving that all to God to do what He wills not us) a sin offering ( we all confessed our sins publicly in front of the whole school! when you speak it out, the shame and guilt lose their power on your life); I did speak out about sins I had been struggling with and I felt so much freer afterwards! After all of that we had worship and communion. By 7:30 we were all exhausted but joyful. We had all layed aside something on friday and in turn became very close as a class. On Friday I truely made Jesus Lord of my life. I had already excepted Him as my Savior a long time ago but now He is also Lord. I will go where ever and do whatever He wants of me. That is a scary statement because I really believe God wants me to be a long term missionary not just shortterm! ahh!!
3) I can't believe we are leaving on the 17th already for outreach! I am with 9 wonderful people. 2 leaders and 7 students. Please pray for them all! Our leaders are Lindsey and Shannon then the students are Heather, Phil, Carsten, Kari, Erin, Kathryn and me. We are going to Thailand first flying into Bangkok and then traveling inland to a village and working there for about 10 days, on the 3rd of June we will go to Kolkata, India and travel to Kalampong and Darjeeliing. We leave India June 26th and fly to Capetown to work with Mega cities ministry. On the 13th of July we go to Entebbe Uganda to work with an orphanage, then we fly to Cairo Egypt for team debrif on July 29th and then we land travel to Israel and our whole class has a debrif for 1 1/2 weeks in Jerusalem and surrounding areas. wow I am so excited yet nervous!! Please pray for us as we prepare for outreach, safe travel, for the contacts in each country and divine appointments with people in each country.
4) Unfortuneatly, today we are realizing that barring an awesome miracle from God, some of the people in our class will not be able to join us on outreach due to insufficient funds. My heart breaks because one of them is Heather on my team. This is such a woman of God and it is so incredibly sad that she will probably not be joining us on our outreach. I have to believe that God has something so special here for her and there is a reason the money didn't come in for her. Please keep Heather and Paige in your prayers as they transition to this developement.
Thank you so much for your support! I love you all!

Faith Week!

So here I am back at the base, looking back at the week and feeling very humbled and amazed at God's provision. Last saturday my team (Catherine and Joshua) and I were dropped off about 10 miles out of oxford with $60 dollars and only knowing we were going south. None of us had ever hitchhiked before and we had no idea where we were going to stay for the night or when our next meal would be. The whole idea of this week is to rely on God to provide for every need. We weren't supposed to use the money on ourselves but use it to bless others. So technically we had no money! I was worried about sleeping outside because it is getting close to winter here so it gets a little cold at night. God came through and we never had to sleep outside! It would take forever to tell you everything that happend but I will try to summarize the highlights. We hitched all the way down to bluff which is the southern most tip of NZ without taking a ferry to Stewart Island. The first night was in Rolleston, then 2 nights in Dunedin with a Korean pastor and his family, then down to invercargill, then to Queenstown were 21 of us stayed in the same house, then to Timaru for 2 nights, and back home! We covered a lot of ground, ate at least one or two good meals everyday and only spent $2.00 of our $60 on ourselves. God is good. I learned a lot about God's timing. The first night after we had asked the Church, supermarket and pub for a place to stay and we were exhausted, that is when He came through and miraculously provided a place to stay. I think God lets us get to our most desperate and that is when we know that it is Him rather than ourselves doing the work. Every time He provided it never came in the way we expected and it was always better than we thought. It was so cool to see God come through in the litttle things like giving us KFC when we were craving it and sending a ride even when we weren't hitching because we had a long way to walk. I had to let go of a lot of pride that I didn't know I had! I am so used to providing for my self and it was hard to depend on others for a place to sleep and food. I felt like I was being a burden. I finally realized this is an 0pportunity to see God as my provider and how He can bless us through others and we in turn bless them by serving them. It was cool. On friday my group had the opportunity to just serve and bless a family that we stayed with for 2 nights. They were former directors of a YWAM base in Auckland so we had some great talks about God and advice they had for us. They told us not to waste the time we have here and to really press into God to find out what all He has for us. I came back from faith week a little tired but with a different perspective on God. God is so good!

Mat 7:11 "If you then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask Him!"

My travel buddies Grace and Melanie

A bunch of us where Narnia was filmed

Narnia!

Walking up to Narnia

fun times!

left:Fire dancer in the square
Right: me climbing!!


lower left: grace's birthday dinner
lower right: lecture room
farlower left: my small group tree climbing!

Faith week!

Just a note to let you know that starting tomorrow (Saturday), my class will be splitting up into groups of 3 and sent out all over New Zealand with just $20 and whatever we can fit into a backpack. It is a time to put ourselves in a place to see God provide for us. Sometimes we think that it is us providing for ourselves when it is actually God. Next week we will be able to see God work in amazing ways. I will be with a group of 2 other girls and we are traveling north. We will hitchhike, work for food/lodging and talk with people. We want to try and get to Auckland so we will pray God provides the money. Please pray for us that the week will be filled with God's blessings and for protection while traveling. We all have to be back next saturday. Thanks!

Week 6!

Hello! Well this week I bit the bullet and paid my outreach fees! That is a load off my shoulders! Thank you so much to those that gave toward my support. I really couldn't do it without you. If you still feel lead to give, write a check and give it to my parents and I will make sure it goes towards another classmates' tuition. There are still a few of the students who need quite a bit more money to go on outreach. The nice thing is that when you give an amount in USD in is almost doubled in NZD! Please search your hearts and pray about it. Contact me if you have any questions.

In lectures this we are learning about the history of missions and what it is to be a missionary. My whole concept of what a missionary is has been shaken and expanded this week. It is a lifestyle rather than something you do. God was all about missions! Even though he made the Jews His chosen people, His plan was always to redeem ALL NATIONS back to Him. He wanted to bless Israel so they in turn could bless the nations but they didn't see that. Instead they only saw God blessing them because they were chosen. God wanted Israel to be the go between the nations and God. Israel was the only nation that could show the way to God! Instead they blundered it. They became ethnocentric. Once God realized that Israel wasn't getting it, He sent Jesus and now the church is the go between. Except like the Israelites we aren't doing such a good job! We need to be "world Christians" instead of just Christians. I learned about God's word, God's world and God's work. There are many passages in the Bible about telling every nation about Him. Matt 28:16 "Go and make disciples of all nations.." Isa 49:6 "I will make you a light to the nations.." ect. There are 2,200 verses in the bible about God's heart for the nations. That is obviously important to God so it should be important to me. In light of that I look at God's world. There is a area of the world called the 10/40 window between 10 and 40 degree latitude where 88% of unreached people live and where only 2.4% of missionaries go! How crazy is that! This area includes 1.3 million muslims, buddists, hindus and tribal peoples. Therefore, we have a responsibility to act. I went but there are other ways you can help. You can pray for countries, send and support others going, go yourselves, welcome those internationals in your own community and mobilize others to rise up and go to the nations. Who will join with me?

Video to watch!

Hello! In my last post I told you how we need to raise support for the whole school. Well here is a video that some people in our class made. The web address is www.vimeo.com/3933196. It tells a little bit about what YWAM is and what we are doing here. Please search your hearts about giving. I don't want anyone here not be able to go because of finances. Thanks!

Week 5!

Hey! Well on Monday we found out where we are going for outreach! yeah! I am going to Africa/Asia. The countries we will be going to are Malaysia, Northern India, South Africa and Uganda. This was my first choice and as there were 17 others that had this as their first choice, I feel like God really chose this team. There are 10 of us going including 2 leaders. There are 8 girls and 2 boys! poor boys! One of the guys Carsten said, "Well, I never had sisters!". Now he will have 8! It is a really fun team and I am really excited to see where God takes us these next 5 months. Please pray that we get in touch with good contacts within each country and that God will go before us and clear the way for us. I want to take this opportunity to ask you to pray about giving to the DTS team as a whole. I am blessed in the fact that I have pretty much all the money I need. As a school however we need around 150,000 New Zealand dollars to cover our outreach phase. This is equivalant to around 85,000 USD. I know this sounds like a lot of money but God is Jehova Jirah and He had each one of us here for a reason. With God anything is possible! If you feel you cannot give financially, please pray that this money will come in. We need it in the next couple weeks in order to get our tickets. If you feel led please go to www.ywamoxford.org click on the pay online button and give automatically. Thanks!

Invisible Children

This week we have had an emphasis on children. On monday night we watched a video called invisible children talking about those children who are child soldiers in Africa where a man named Joseph Koney has been terrorizing children and families for over 20 years. It is incredible that a man can get away with terrorizing 5 different African countries for that long. Uganda, Central African Republic, Sudan, Dem Rep of Congo and another I can't think of, are terrified of this one man. Over 3,000 child soldiers are being held captive and made to do horrible things. There have been peace talks since 1991 and they all have failed. On April 25th there will be a worldwide prayer walk and sleeping outside to advicate that something has to be done. This just broke my heart to see those children carring guns. No child should have to do this. Our generation has to stand up and say NO MORE! We will not allow this! What one generation allows, another embraces! Let's stop this now! For more information go to therescue.invisiblechildren.com. please watch the video, it is heartrenching.

upper left: some of us on a scavenger hunt in Christchurch (we had to take a picture in a tree),
upper right: Outreach in Christchurch on friday night, we had people paint what they thought Hope was.
bottom left: on the pier in Christchurch
bottom right: a group of us in Akaroa last Saturday

Outreach

Well on Saturday we handed in our preferences for outreach! It is comming up fast! To make the decision I decided to fast and pray on Friday of last week. There will be six different groups; Far East Asia, South East Asia, South East Asia/Africa, Africa, Middle East and South America. My choices in order were south east asia/africa, south east asia and middle east. They should tell us within the next week where we are going. The leaders Jeremy and Will really seek God in where to place each person so I really trust their judgement. Before I left I didn't know they would be making a trip to both africa and asia. They will be going to Northern India, Indonesia/Malaysia, South Africa and Uganda. I got really excited about this trip but I also wanted to seek God's will about it. I didn't get a "You will go here!" but I still really liked the idea of going to those places. I will let you know as soon as I do. Please pray for the leaders as they make the decisions in where to send us and us as students as we prepare for outreach. God Bless!

Hello! Well I really can't believe how fast time is going! It is already the end of week 3! I pray that all of you are doing well. At this time, we are just about to leave for Akaroa which is a town about 2 hours away to do some kyaking and relaxing. I just wanted to drop a note and say that everything is good here. This week our lectures were on relationships. Relationships with God, ourselves and others. Of course including romantic relationships! Alot of it I already knew but it was presented in a different way. There are for "legs" to the table of relationships, love, honor, understanding and trust. If just one of those is broken or isn't there the table isn't steady. I am learning so much it is hard to write it all down in a blog! well I have to go but I will hopefully write another one tonight! I love you all!

Week 2

Hello everyone! Things are going very well here! This week in class we are learning how to be like Jesus. Now I thought, "oh that's easy, just follow His example!". True, but it is so much more than that. It is reflecting who Jesus is and understanding how He related to people. I believe I have mentioned before that on friday nights we go into Christchurch for outreach. I have always associated the word "evangelism" with standing on the street corners and shouting for people to repent. So as a result I never really liked that word. When I heard we would be going into Christchurch and doing "evangelism" I got scared. I am an introvert, I can't just go up to people and ask them if I can tell them about God! This week our speaker has been really pressing the point that evangelism is all about befriending people and taking an interest. It is not about how many people I can bring to Christ it is about relationships. I was making more of it than it is. It can be as simple as having a bunch of sidewalk chalk and drawing in the town square and getting to know people. The thing I have asked myself is how Jesus would approach people. He would come in just loving people and just take and intrest and let them talk. He wouldn't come in with an agenda of getting them to follow Him. He just loved them. That is my goal tomorrow night. Just love people.

1st week down

Well today I have officially been here for a week. It is amazing how fast time flies! The first week of DTS has been both challenging and fun. There are 29 girls and 14 guys in my DTS and 11 staff. Most of the YWAMers are from America which is a little disapointing because I wanted to be with some other cultures! Oh well. We do have some people from Canada, Korea, Ireland, Netherlands, New Zealand, and Fiji. It has been interesting learning other people's stories and how they got here. We have finally got into a routine. Just to give you an idea, our days on the base go something like this: 7am wake up/breakfest, 7:30-8:15 devotions, 8:15- 8:50 work duties (mine is to clean our free box area and organize the library), 8:50-1pm class, 1pm- 3pm lunch and free time, 3pm- 5:30 is another class period, small groups or community work day; 6pm dinner, 7pm- 10pm is either free time or an activity and 10:30 lights out. On fridays we go into Christchurch (the closest big city) and do outreach in the evening. The weekends are pretty much free to do what we want and various activties are offered. That is our week in a nutshell. It has been a little hard for me to get up in the mornings after working nights for so long! Our classroom times have been filled with learning about worship, intercession, inductive bible study, hearing God's voice and evagelism. I have learned so much and this is only the first week! Please pray for me that I will step out in faith and not in fear especially as we do more evangelism. Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and Courageous...for the Lord your God is with you." has become my theme verse for these next 6 months. God Bless!

Intercessory prayer

Today my whole image of prayer was shattered. In a good way. Our lesson this morning was on intercessory prayer. Now, I always believed in prayer and the power of it but I didn't really understand the meaning of intercessory prayer. It is incredible to think that in some ways God's hands are tied until we pray. God is still sovereign but He chooses to interact with us and require action on our part in behalf of others. In other words to "Stand in the Gap" between that hurting person and God to ask for healing, mercy, or even to stand in the way of Satan and protect others. Wow! It is so amazing that we have the power to help change someones circumstances just through prayer. We also have to make sure what we are asking for is what God wants to do. Sorry if this sounds confusing as I have learned most of this myself just today but it made me realize the incredible value of those of you that are praying for me. I appreciate this so much! I would ask that some of you become prayer warriors and lift this school, the students and me up as I go on this journey. Please let me know if you would be willing to do this. I feel as though we are going to be doing some pretty heavy spiritual battleing and this school and I will need all the prayers we can get! Thanks in advance!

I have arrived!

Kia Ora (Mauri for Hello) Well I just wanted to let all of you know that I have officially arrived at the YWAM base. As of Sunday we are officially started our course! I have already met some amazing people! The staff is really great and the students are eager! These first couple days have consisted of getting to know you activites, rules and orientation. I am living in an actual "house" that is about a block away from the YWAM base. There are 16 girls and 4 staff living here. I am living with 6 other girls in my room. 4 of them are 20 and younger! It is amazing how old 25 can seem. I think it is because I have been working for a while and I am at a different stage in life. But you can learn lots from youth also. DTS scheduales specific time in the day to have devotions. That has been amazing these last couple days, just to be with God and bask in His presence. I am so excited to see what He has in store for me in the next 3 months! I will probably blog every other day or so. I would write more but it is time for supper or tea as the New Zealanders call it. Cheers!

New Zealand!

upper left:
me at the bridal falls in Reglan NZ

upper right: sunset at Reglan

lower left: The group at one tree hill in Reglan

lower right: view from our Auckland hotel room. We ate at the sky tower restaurant and had a 360 degree rotating view of the city!

Fiji!

Melanie, Grace and I in the Danford village in Fiji

Below: Waterfall by native village in fiji. I jumped off the lower rock!

lowerright: Grace, Melanie and I driving up to the village

lower left: A traditional Kava ceremony made from kava root. It is only performed for special occaisions. It causes a slight numbing effect.

New Zealand!

Well, sorry I havn't posted! Things have been crazy since arriving on the 11th in Fiji. For those of you who don't know, my class doesn't acutally start until March 1st so at the moment I am living it up by first touring fiji for 4 days and now in New Zealand. I know, I have such a hard life! Fiji was wonderful and we even got to expirience villiage life with a traditional Kava ceremony. This is a drink made from the kava root and is only used for special ceremonies. It does have a slight numbing effect when you drink it though! My lips and tongue were numb for a little while. On the 15th we (my friends Grace and Melanie and I) left for New Zealand to tour around for 2 weeks with our mutual friend Sandra. We all met while working on the Mercy Ship in Liberia. It is so nice to be with close Christian friends! So far we have been in Auckland, Reglan, Rotura and now Toupa. Tomorrow we leave for Hastings for a couple nights at Sandra's parents house. To write about all the things we have done would take forever so I will tell you some highlights. Visiting Geothermal hot springs and mud pools in Rotura; snorkling in fiji, white water rafting in Rotura, Black water tubing at the Wytoma caves; participating in a hangi, a traditional Maori dinner cooked underground and just drinking in the countryside. I am hoping to have better internet access as the "vacation" part of my trip progresses but rest assured I will definetly be writing plenty when I get to the YWAM base. Please continue to keep me in your prayers as I prepare for the next 6 months. God Bless!

Here is my email address if you wish to email me!
rosycheeks_83@yahoo.com

Leaving....again!

Hello one and all! Welcome to my blog!
Well, I am leaving again! It seems like that has been all I have been doing for the last 2 years. First to work with Mercy Ships as a nurse in Liberia for 6 months, then to be a traveling nurse in phoenix and Palm springs. Now I am off to New Zealand! If you would have asked me if I would have done all of this before I turned 26, I wouldn't have believed you. God has blessed me with the financial and vocational ability to travel and I am thankful for that.
So, what is in New Zealand you ask? Well, while I was working with Mercy Ships, I heard about a program called DTS (discipleship training school) associated with Youth With A Mission YWAM). If you wanted to work more than a year on the ship you had to take a course such as DTS. By taking this course it would prepare you for missions and help you decide whether God is truely calling you to that. There are thousands of locations that you can take DTS and once I heard that two of my friends were taking the NZ course, I applied! Ever since I have been back from Africa, I have been interested in taking this course. Also over the last few months, I have been feeling a need to remove myself from the daily grind and really concentrate on God for a while. While I could do that here, it has always been easier for me to do that when I am taken away from what is familier and immersed in another place and in a program that is intended to help you learn more about God. So here I am 4 days away from leaving! Over the next 3 months I will be taking classes (it has been awhile!), doing chores around the base, and doing outreach in the nearby city. After that we will be split into 6 different groups and head out into 6 different areas of the world for 3 months. This will be our outreach phase. There we will be helping local missionaries, giving bible teachings to the local people and whatever else is required of us. The theme of this school is to "know God and make Him known". I am also trying to raise funds for this, so if you feel led to give please email me and I will let you know how to do that. Please pray for me as I embark on this journey and look for updates! God Bless!