hello again! so, this will be my last post in i don't know how long. for the last 2 weeks i've been at base having lectures. the first week i had lectures on the fear of the Lord and that was good and convicting as far as asking ourselves questions on how we act and what we do if they're done in the fear of God. it was good in that we addressed some of the ways the guys are acting around the girls and if that's done in the fear of Him, if it's appropriate. same vice versa and we covered some other things like if the music on our ipods was bought or stolen, llike we didn't pay for it. alot of people ended up deleting alot of, if not all, their music off their ipods. last week we had our lectures on relatioonships, with other people and with the opposite sex. it was so good! our speaker was this pastor that lives in brisbane but he's from malaysia and he was funny but at the same time made some very good points on why guys and girls are different and how christians are different from non christians. very good overall. it was also good for the fact that i was dealing with some tough things from my past and from things going on currently and i talked to him about it. it helped to have someone listen, and the fact that he's a couselor helped. you see, i had this fear from way back when come up and for almost a week i had this immense fear of, well, guys. don't ask me how or why but i did and it made it hard to go to lectures or just hang out with my group. it came to the point to where i was trembling with fear because i was scared. bless my leader and one-on-one for they stuck with me and helped me. i wanted to tremble in fear before God, not GUYS! it's taken me what seems like a lifetime to push thru this but now i can at least talk to guys and be near them without feeling the need to run. this was really something that i needed His help in and He's gotten me so far. i love rising from the ashes because it gives me great pleasure to shove the enemy's face into the dirt and laughing my victoriuous laugh "bahahahaha!" ha ok, so maybe that was alittle too much, but that's what makes victory in Him so sweet ;)
so now this week is here and it's going by so fast!! we had lectures these last 2 days on the authority we have in Christ and how to use it. it was encouraging considering all that's going on. these days my days are filled with doing piles of homework our leaders gave us to finish before outreach, work duty (i'm the base director's assistent), and trying to do all the things i want to do before i leave. after our outreach meeting last week i'm actually excited about going to indonesia! but these last few days have made me stress out even more and i'm starting to wonder if i can finish it all. i know that this is the enemy attacking me and trying to discourage me and i;m trying to fight back as much as possible. i'm having some difficulties with my finances and today we were told that there were some things that cme up and we hve to pay an additional $500 towards our outreach fees. so needless to say i can see my team starting to get a bit stressed as well. but, it could be worse, and we've prayed about it and we're now just concentrating on getting in what we can.
today we also got some more news. one of the guys in my group, a student, told us in sydney that he was going to go to and felt God calling him to move to indonesia. so after dts he'll move there along with my leader and some more people from this base. but then today we got some more news. there's a training course going on in indonesia that preps people who are going to be "working" in islamic areas. this course will actually be in english, which happens rarely, and we were told today that this guy in my group won't be coming back with us from outreach, but will stay in indonesia and do the course training. that means he won't come back to brisbane and back home. so he's definately feeling ALOT of emotions and has alot of things to do and pray about. So our team has alot of things to think and pray about and just trying to stay sane is impossible.
in less than 48 hours i leave australia (thursday night for you guys back home) and i don't really know what to think. i have tons to do, i have alot of outreach funds to get in, and don't get me started on my room. lets' just say that our suitcases exploded and clothes are EVERYWHERE! but that's expected i guess ;)but thru all of this i am happy because even though it took me a loong time i'm finally at peace with the fact that i'm going and i'm also excited. right now my main focus is staying sane and keeping my team spirit up. sure, we're having some financial issues, but hey, this is outreach! it wouldn't be outreach without bumps and potholes and cliffs along the way. we're in His hands now and we have to prepare ourselves to trust Him with things that we can't control, especially in a foreign country.
i honestly don't know what else to say. there's a team leaving tomorrow morning for the solomon islands so we're saying our goodbyes tonight and possibly tomorrow. depends on if i want to get up that early. vanuatu, malaysia, and indonesia teams are leaving on friday so we're going to be running around like crazy tomorrow. wish me luck! i've really enjoyed being able to write to you, to keep you updated on what's going on. it actually helped keep me sane and it's cool looking back and seeing all that i've done and the way i've changed. i'm sorry for the fact that it's taken me so long to write to you, especially the last one. who knew i'd be on the road more than on base for over the last month. but anyway, it's been fun and i love hearing what you have to say about what i write. it's so encouraging to me!! when i write i feel like i'm just rambling and not making any sense whatsoever, and then next thing i know i get feedback that what i said was encouraging and really helped you. it's nice to know that someone can read my rambling :) i'll write when i can, but i won't promise anything. i love you sooooooooo much and thank you for all of your support! it's what's gotten me this far and it's about to take me so much farther. i'll miss talking to you, and if anything you can ask my mom what's going on :) keep me and my team in your prayers and we'll do our best to make you and God proud!
talk to you later!
Wednesday, February 17, 2010
Thursday, February 4, 2010
the flame goes forward
wow, it seems everytime i start to write i have to apologize for not writing in so long. so sorry :) believe it or not, things have never been this carzy here on beach to bush, and although i was warned about it before hand it still took me by surprise how much we were moving around! since i last talked to you i have been in straddie island for survivor week, been back at base for not even a day and i was off again for canberra for ywam's 50th anniverary celebration, then to sydney, the blue mountains, mudgee, and now i'm finally back on base for 2 weeks before outreach. needless to say, me and the bus have gotten pretty close these last few weeks.
so, last i talked i was headed off for survivor week and i was FREAKING OUT! i had heard horror stories of what other teams had to do ( wake up in middle of the night and hike for 4 hours only to walk alll the way back. no toilets- it's a hole in the ground. no team member could be more than ameter away from you- even when you used the restroom. this and so much more) so i was about to just pack my bags. the anticipation was killer. monday we had the whole entire day, literally the whole day, lectures about missions, how we should behave ourselves, an intro to how to remain clean, a squatting lesson on how to use the toilet in developing countries (a hole in the ground. let me tell you, it takes great skill, one which i have yet to acquire), and so much more. the next morning began our first day of "mission impossible" as the leaders called it. how encouraging... anyway, the night before we had gotten a packing list of what we could bring, that and only that. no razors, no make-up, no hair products (shampoo & conditioner only), and the list went on. ha you can imagine how the girls reacted ;) the next morning we got up and with our backpacks we entered Bagistan, the madeup country our base staff came up with. the base was made into some kind of middle east airport and country. we had a mock airport where we had some people get detained for having guns (they were planted) and others had their passport taken away. it was overall a good job done by the base staff. i even converted one of the "beggers"! my first one! ha he wasn't really a begger, but it was cool all the same :) from there we had a mock church service, were given ice cream (last bit if heaven before we hit hell) and then put on buses. we drove to a ferry which took us over to stradbrook island, aka straddie. we got off the bus on the island and had lunch. each outreach team was given something that would be eaten in that country. the asian countries stayed together and we had rice with tofu, chicken, and.... chicken feet. i'm not going to lie, i avoided those feet with everything possible, but i know i ate some pieces for my i felt sick for the rest of the day (it's a good thing they gave that to us though. a team from another base is in a remote village in asia and chicken feet are very popular there). from there we drove to a camp site and set up tents and "bought" food with our paper money. unfortunately my team didn't have enough money for showers so no showers for a day or two :( we bought our food and on went the survival week. we had to make our own food according to what country we were going to. south africa had sheep's brain, peru had chicken heart, but other than that it was good. i ate with my fingers for the first time (rice with fish and veggies) and that was interesting. my fingers smelled of fish for so long!
the first night the staff let us go to bed early so that "we could be fully rested". ha whatever. i knew something was going to happen and i was on edge laying there in my tent. true enough, at 1am my team and i were woken up and we made our trek through the woods. it was like an obstacle course were you had to do certain activities and eat things. thank goodness for project graduation; the stuff we did there actually helped me. some things we did were like our team had to eat a raw onion and half a tub of peanut butter, eat sardines with crackers and drink cherry cream soda that tasted like cough medicine, answer trivia questions, and some team building acticities. then came the worst one of all. this activity had a swamp and the point was to get to the other side of the swamp. there was a rope that ran over the swamp so you could shimmy across. so some people walked through the swamp (which was deeper than it looked) while most shimmied across. then it was my turn. i was crying sitting in the tree looking at the rope and knowing i was going to die. but i tried it anyway and i maybe made it not even a quarter when i started to fall. so, i fell into the swamp, hiking boots, jeans, shirt, heavy sweater and all. it was great. the more i walked the more deep it got and i could feel bugs getting into my clothes. we had to go through the woods so more and we came to the beach (did i mention this was on/near the beach?) and our group had to do 300 push-ups then run half a mile if not more down the beach. now, this wouldn't have been bad except for two things. 1) after i got out of the swamp i emptied my boots then just tucked my laces into my boots. i was running top speed across the beach thinking i was doing pretty good. then tragity stuck and my laces from one boot got caught on a hook on my other boot and i went down face first into the sand. think of a skidding motion with my face in the sand. looking back i laugh thinking how stupid i looked, but at the time it was painful. 2) running down the beach in floppy wet socks (i took my boots off after the fall) and wet jeans is pretty hard, especially when you have to use the restroom and there is none to be found. i actually had to stop running and make sure i was going to make it. finally after about 3 1/2 hours i was able to go to bed. no shower but at least clean dry clothes.
the rest of the week (til saturday) we played competative games against all the other outreach teams. by the end of the week i had NO clean clothes and i had sand everywhere and the clothes from the swamp smelled like something died. ha as soon as we got on base i made a bee line for the washing machines. we didn't have much time since it was lunchtime by then and the next morning we were leaving for canberra, a 16 hour drive south to australia's capital. the drive was off to a good start, i guess, if you can say that riding in a packed bus with no a/c is good :) this trip we were making with the sports dts so we had more people than usual. after 4 hours we took a lunch break and we were off for the next 4 hours. wrong. after driving for 15 minutes we get a call that the other bus broke down so we had to turn around, get dopped off at a mackers (mcdonalds), and wait while the bus got the other people. so for an hour we hung out at mackers and while we were all there (about 50 of us) this massive storm came and knocked out power and blew signs down. i guess it was a good thing we weren't driving thru that. anyway, we hung out outside of mackers (we got kicked out because th power was out) for about 6 hours wondering what we were going to do. we had one bus that worked and carried only 25 people and we had 50 people. the bus was really broken so at the last minute the leaders decided that instead of us all spending the night at a campsite they put all of us girls on the bus that worked and we drove thru the night to canberra. the guys and 3 girls stayed at a half-way house and waited on the bus.
the bus ride thru the night was..... super. a bus packed with girls who are trying to sleep is less than enjoyable. i fell asleep and woke up a few hours later feeling so proud of myself that i'd actually fallen asleep. i looked at a clock and i'd only been sleeping for 10 minutes! it was horrible! i actually started flipping out. i finally, after a few hours, got to sleep and i didn't care that i had people's feet in my face. in the end i got 4 hours of sleep on the 12 hour drive, but i have to say that watching the sunrise across the BEAUTIFUL new south wales mountains and vallies made it almost worth it all. we got in canberra and lucky us there was a cold front that was coming thru, and i had only summer clothes. we set up the tents, but it must have been entertaining to watch because most of us were dillusional after getting next to no sleep. we got there at around 8am and finished the tents around 9ish. even though the meetings had started we were allowed to sleep that morning. the ywam base in canberra is so beautiful! it's big and spacious and i loved it. each day we had a meeting in the morning and evening from monday to friday. we were given work duties and we had double duty since the other bus didn't get there til mid-week. (the other bus is still in the town it broke down in. a fuse or something broke and to fix it will cost a ton of money. so we rented a bus for canberra) it was a fun time for we were there to celebrate ywam's 50th anniversary and the theme: the flame goes forward. bases from adelaide, gold coast, townsville, sydney, newcastle, and others were there and it was good being able to see alot of familiar faces and friends. mid-week loren cunningham and his wife came (they're the founders of ywam). they were so cute! i canonly hope to be that cute and adorable when i'm old :) they spoke about the things that they've been thru and how God has provided over and over. it was truelly inspiring.
we also took some time to see the pariament house in canberra and that was cool. the next day i was reading a book when i was told that we were having an emergency meeting. i'm freaking out waiting for our staff to get back from wherever thinking someone got hurt or someone died. after what felt like forever the bus pulled up and we're all asking what's going on and one staff was like "oh, there's no emergency, we just found this animal and need you to take of it. i'm tried of having it on the bus to just take it". and what comes off the bus? JEN! oh my goodness, i was in such shock to see her standing there that i started to cry. i was so angry! i thought someone was hurt or died, but it's only jen. i hugged her but told her that i was angry that she did this to me! so i went and cleaned toilets (my work duty) and tried to calm down. but i did miss her and was super excited and happy to see her!!! and boy did she miss us. she couldn't keep her hands off me and sara ;) it's good to have her back!
after canberra we drove 4 hours north to sydney and stayed at the island breeze base. island breeze focuses mainly on the islands (fiji, samoa, papua new guinea, solomon islands, vanuatu, etc) and also the aboriginals. it's so intersting! remind me to sing you a song i learned :) anyway, at the base there we took some time to just hang out. the first day we went to see hillsong which was awesome! the next day we went into sydney and me, sara, and jen kind of got lost since we missed our stop on the train, but it was all good. i found some clothes for outreach and i saw the sights of the city, and i have to say that i was just in awe of the fact that i was in sydney! the next day was australia day (their fourth of july) so we went onto the city to celebrate! we went to the opera house, the sydney bridge, and ended with the sydney harbour that night watching fireworks and listening to the blaring singing. i honestly felt like i was at the olympics or new years instead of australia day. it was a day i won't forget. anyway, that week we also had lectures and the speaker was actually the guy who wrote the classbooks i used in my senior Bible class. it also happened to be the best class i ever took due to those books, so the week was interesting to say the least. we learned alot about islam so i have to say that was the highlight as far as the lectures go.
after sydney we went to this town called katoomba and went to see the three sisters, it's a famous australian place and it's in the blue mountains (it was only beach to bush, sports went somewhere else). i was so excited to see them, but when i got to the lookout point to where they were there was in it's place this HUGE fog blob so i saw nothing. this great natural wonder and i can't even see it! so disappointing. but as we left the fog magically disappeared and the sun came out, so we took a hike down a trail that let us look out at wonderful views of the mountains. we left afterwards and went to the blue mountains in this national park and went camping. we drove up and down steep hills (i honestly feared for my life. i thought the bus was going to fall down the mountain). we ended up camping far far away from the entrance and far from civilization. i'm still kind of new to this camping thing and when i saw that our toilet was an outhouse and our only source of water was at the entrance, which was 15 minutes away, i really wondered if i would make it. but after putting up the tent and sitting by the fire i actually enjoyed myself, except for the whole toilet thing. i only went when absolutely necessary. there were bugs in the toilet that came out every time you opened it and no water to wash your hands. thank goodness for handsanitizer! anyway, we camped out for 2 days and i did like it. we just hung out and relaxed. i saw a goana, this huge lizard thing that walks like a kamodo dragon. he hung around our campsite and we ended up catching him in a tent. there were also kangaroos that were outside our tents the last morning so that was neat to see. next we drove to mudgee to get the sports dts and after spending the night in a church (they had real toilets!!) we drove for 12 hours back to brisbane. it was a long drive, but i was so happy to be back! i hadn't taken a shower in 5 days (5 DAYS!!) so you can imagine i was happy to be clean again. the next 2 weeks we had lectures.
so, last i talked i was headed off for survivor week and i was FREAKING OUT! i had heard horror stories of what other teams had to do ( wake up in middle of the night and hike for 4 hours only to walk alll the way back. no toilets- it's a hole in the ground. no team member could be more than ameter away from you- even when you used the restroom. this and so much more) so i was about to just pack my bags. the anticipation was killer. monday we had the whole entire day, literally the whole day, lectures about missions, how we should behave ourselves, an intro to how to remain clean, a squatting lesson on how to use the toilet in developing countries (a hole in the ground. let me tell you, it takes great skill, one which i have yet to acquire), and so much more. the next morning began our first day of "mission impossible" as the leaders called it. how encouraging... anyway, the night before we had gotten a packing list of what we could bring, that and only that. no razors, no make-up, no hair products (shampoo & conditioner only), and the list went on. ha you can imagine how the girls reacted ;) the next morning we got up and with our backpacks we entered Bagistan, the madeup country our base staff came up with. the base was made into some kind of middle east airport and country. we had a mock airport where we had some people get detained for having guns (they were planted) and others had their passport taken away. it was overall a good job done by the base staff. i even converted one of the "beggers"! my first one! ha he wasn't really a begger, but it was cool all the same :) from there we had a mock church service, were given ice cream (last bit if heaven before we hit hell) and then put on buses. we drove to a ferry which took us over to stradbrook island, aka straddie. we got off the bus on the island and had lunch. each outreach team was given something that would be eaten in that country. the asian countries stayed together and we had rice with tofu, chicken, and.... chicken feet. i'm not going to lie, i avoided those feet with everything possible, but i know i ate some pieces for my i felt sick for the rest of the day (it's a good thing they gave that to us though. a team from another base is in a remote village in asia and chicken feet are very popular there). from there we drove to a camp site and set up tents and "bought" food with our paper money. unfortunately my team didn't have enough money for showers so no showers for a day or two :( we bought our food and on went the survival week. we had to make our own food according to what country we were going to. south africa had sheep's brain, peru had chicken heart, but other than that it was good. i ate with my fingers for the first time (rice with fish and veggies) and that was interesting. my fingers smelled of fish for so long!
the first night the staff let us go to bed early so that "we could be fully rested". ha whatever. i knew something was going to happen and i was on edge laying there in my tent. true enough, at 1am my team and i were woken up and we made our trek through the woods. it was like an obstacle course were you had to do certain activities and eat things. thank goodness for project graduation; the stuff we did there actually helped me. some things we did were like our team had to eat a raw onion and half a tub of peanut butter, eat sardines with crackers and drink cherry cream soda that tasted like cough medicine, answer trivia questions, and some team building acticities. then came the worst one of all. this activity had a swamp and the point was to get to the other side of the swamp. there was a rope that ran over the swamp so you could shimmy across. so some people walked through the swamp (which was deeper than it looked) while most shimmied across. then it was my turn. i was crying sitting in the tree looking at the rope and knowing i was going to die. but i tried it anyway and i maybe made it not even a quarter when i started to fall. so, i fell into the swamp, hiking boots, jeans, shirt, heavy sweater and all. it was great. the more i walked the more deep it got and i could feel bugs getting into my clothes. we had to go through the woods so more and we came to the beach (did i mention this was on/near the beach?) and our group had to do 300 push-ups then run half a mile if not more down the beach. now, this wouldn't have been bad except for two things. 1) after i got out of the swamp i emptied my boots then just tucked my laces into my boots. i was running top speed across the beach thinking i was doing pretty good. then tragity stuck and my laces from one boot got caught on a hook on my other boot and i went down face first into the sand. think of a skidding motion with my face in the sand. looking back i laugh thinking how stupid i looked, but at the time it was painful. 2) running down the beach in floppy wet socks (i took my boots off after the fall) and wet jeans is pretty hard, especially when you have to use the restroom and there is none to be found. i actually had to stop running and make sure i was going to make it. finally after about 3 1/2 hours i was able to go to bed. no shower but at least clean dry clothes.
the rest of the week (til saturday) we played competative games against all the other outreach teams. by the end of the week i had NO clean clothes and i had sand everywhere and the clothes from the swamp smelled like something died. ha as soon as we got on base i made a bee line for the washing machines. we didn't have much time since it was lunchtime by then and the next morning we were leaving for canberra, a 16 hour drive south to australia's capital. the drive was off to a good start, i guess, if you can say that riding in a packed bus with no a/c is good :) this trip we were making with the sports dts so we had more people than usual. after 4 hours we took a lunch break and we were off for the next 4 hours. wrong. after driving for 15 minutes we get a call that the other bus broke down so we had to turn around, get dopped off at a mackers (mcdonalds), and wait while the bus got the other people. so for an hour we hung out at mackers and while we were all there (about 50 of us) this massive storm came and knocked out power and blew signs down. i guess it was a good thing we weren't driving thru that. anyway, we hung out outside of mackers (we got kicked out because th power was out) for about 6 hours wondering what we were going to do. we had one bus that worked and carried only 25 people and we had 50 people. the bus was really broken so at the last minute the leaders decided that instead of us all spending the night at a campsite they put all of us girls on the bus that worked and we drove thru the night to canberra. the guys and 3 girls stayed at a half-way house and waited on the bus.
the bus ride thru the night was..... super. a bus packed with girls who are trying to sleep is less than enjoyable. i fell asleep and woke up a few hours later feeling so proud of myself that i'd actually fallen asleep. i looked at a clock and i'd only been sleeping for 10 minutes! it was horrible! i actually started flipping out. i finally, after a few hours, got to sleep and i didn't care that i had people's feet in my face. in the end i got 4 hours of sleep on the 12 hour drive, but i have to say that watching the sunrise across the BEAUTIFUL new south wales mountains and vallies made it almost worth it all. we got in canberra and lucky us there was a cold front that was coming thru, and i had only summer clothes. we set up the tents, but it must have been entertaining to watch because most of us were dillusional after getting next to no sleep. we got there at around 8am and finished the tents around 9ish. even though the meetings had started we were allowed to sleep that morning. the ywam base in canberra is so beautiful! it's big and spacious and i loved it. each day we had a meeting in the morning and evening from monday to friday. we were given work duties and we had double duty since the other bus didn't get there til mid-week. (the other bus is still in the town it broke down in. a fuse or something broke and to fix it will cost a ton of money. so we rented a bus for canberra) it was a fun time for we were there to celebrate ywam's 50th anniversary and the theme: the flame goes forward. bases from adelaide, gold coast, townsville, sydney, newcastle, and others were there and it was good being able to see alot of familiar faces and friends. mid-week loren cunningham and his wife came (they're the founders of ywam). they were so cute! i canonly hope to be that cute and adorable when i'm old :) they spoke about the things that they've been thru and how God has provided over and over. it was truelly inspiring.
we also took some time to see the pariament house in canberra and that was cool. the next day i was reading a book when i was told that we were having an emergency meeting. i'm freaking out waiting for our staff to get back from wherever thinking someone got hurt or someone died. after what felt like forever the bus pulled up and we're all asking what's going on and one staff was like "oh, there's no emergency, we just found this animal and need you to take of it. i'm tried of having it on the bus to just take it". and what comes off the bus? JEN! oh my goodness, i was in such shock to see her standing there that i started to cry. i was so angry! i thought someone was hurt or died, but it's only jen. i hugged her but told her that i was angry that she did this to me! so i went and cleaned toilets (my work duty) and tried to calm down. but i did miss her and was super excited and happy to see her!!! and boy did she miss us. she couldn't keep her hands off me and sara ;) it's good to have her back!
after canberra we drove 4 hours north to sydney and stayed at the island breeze base. island breeze focuses mainly on the islands (fiji, samoa, papua new guinea, solomon islands, vanuatu, etc) and also the aboriginals. it's so intersting! remind me to sing you a song i learned :) anyway, at the base there we took some time to just hang out. the first day we went to see hillsong which was awesome! the next day we went into sydney and me, sara, and jen kind of got lost since we missed our stop on the train, but it was all good. i found some clothes for outreach and i saw the sights of the city, and i have to say that i was just in awe of the fact that i was in sydney! the next day was australia day (their fourth of july) so we went onto the city to celebrate! we went to the opera house, the sydney bridge, and ended with the sydney harbour that night watching fireworks and listening to the blaring singing. i honestly felt like i was at the olympics or new years instead of australia day. it was a day i won't forget. anyway, that week we also had lectures and the speaker was actually the guy who wrote the classbooks i used in my senior Bible class. it also happened to be the best class i ever took due to those books, so the week was interesting to say the least. we learned alot about islam so i have to say that was the highlight as far as the lectures go.
after sydney we went to this town called katoomba and went to see the three sisters, it's a famous australian place and it's in the blue mountains (it was only beach to bush, sports went somewhere else). i was so excited to see them, but when i got to the lookout point to where they were there was in it's place this HUGE fog blob so i saw nothing. this great natural wonder and i can't even see it! so disappointing. but as we left the fog magically disappeared and the sun came out, so we took a hike down a trail that let us look out at wonderful views of the mountains. we left afterwards and went to the blue mountains in this national park and went camping. we drove up and down steep hills (i honestly feared for my life. i thought the bus was going to fall down the mountain). we ended up camping far far away from the entrance and far from civilization. i'm still kind of new to this camping thing and when i saw that our toilet was an outhouse and our only source of water was at the entrance, which was 15 minutes away, i really wondered if i would make it. but after putting up the tent and sitting by the fire i actually enjoyed myself, except for the whole toilet thing. i only went when absolutely necessary. there were bugs in the toilet that came out every time you opened it and no water to wash your hands. thank goodness for handsanitizer! anyway, we camped out for 2 days and i did like it. we just hung out and relaxed. i saw a goana, this huge lizard thing that walks like a kamodo dragon. he hung around our campsite and we ended up catching him in a tent. there were also kangaroos that were outside our tents the last morning so that was neat to see. next we drove to mudgee to get the sports dts and after spending the night in a church (they had real toilets!!) we drove for 12 hours back to brisbane. it was a long drive, but i was so happy to be back! i hadn't taken a shower in 5 days (5 DAYS!!) so you can imagine i was happy to be clean again. the next 2 weeks we had lectures.
Saturday, January 9, 2010
hippies, treasure, and thankfullness
it seems like forever since i last wrote to you! one thing about beach to bush that i've noticed is that weeks can pass by but when i get back on base it doesn't seem that way. so anyway, how are you? how was your christmas and new years? cold i'm sure :) a few days after christmas i left for byron bay and satyed there for 2 weeks. byron bay is the easterly most point of australia and is known for it's spiritualness, but not in the best way. byron has a ton of hippies and new agers and some pretty dark spiritual people there, but that's the reason we went. for 2 weeks many ywam groups came together and did this thing called impact summer which has to do with evangelism. the groups came from brisbane, gold coast, island breeze, byron bay, and adelaide. it was so cool being able to meet so many ywam-ers from all over. i was able to meet some germans which was super nice :)
we all slept in churches and in my church we had about 30 girls and 1 shower. one way or another it worked out :) every morning we had to pack up our stuff and put it away because in the church i was staying in was where we had our big meetings. at 10:30 we all met in the church and had worship and devotional time, along with the occational game (blood, sweat, and tears were shed for those games, literally). afterwards we had lunch then evangelism time until about 4:30. we would be dropped off in town and we could do evangelism in town or do beach ministry which is where we played volleyball most of the time. later we'd have dinner, an hour to rest, and then at 7:30 we'd have a worship time and then head out at 8 or 9 for panchai (pancakes and chai tea). we would go down to one of the 2 parks, rails park, and make free pancakes and chai tea and have some kind of entertainment going on too. so many people would come out and it gave so many opportunities to talk to the people. we had the option to stay in the park or go out into the town or beach and evangelize there.
for the first week it rained every night so we didn't really have the chance to make panchai but we still went out and evangelized. to be honest, i'm not all that comfortable with evangelism. i don't like going up to random strangers and just start talking about jesus. it's just something i'm not used to. but i tried. so yeah, for the first week i went out every night and tried to evangelize, or if anything just did a prayer walk around town. like i said before, byron bay is filled with hippies and at night you have to watch out. the drug and alcohol use is so bad at night that i felt really bad for them. never in my life have i been asked so many times if i have any weed. people will come up and be nice and start a conversation like "how are you" "where are you from" and you think you're making progress. but then they ask "do you by any chance have any weed" as if they were asking "do you by any chance have the time". so normally do they ask. it caught me off guard many times. it was also frustrating as a girl to try to talk to people about christ when all that was on a man's mind 75% of the time was that they wanted a good time. the pick-up lines never ended either. but by the second week i was used to them.
the first week on friday we held a volleyball tournament and it turned out so well. we had it on january 1 and it was a good way to start out the new year, for the most part. at first we were hoping that some people would come out and in the end we had 20 teams with 4 people on them. we even had to turn people away because we didn't count on having that many people. it was fun watching and talking to people and swimming in the ocean was glorious. but the undertow was pretty strong so i left earlier. unfortunately i got the biggest sunburn of my life and was red and in [ain for almost a week. i thought i put enough sunscreen on, but i guess not- oops.
last week was a pretty tough week. one of my friends in my group, jen, got a phone call from her mom the day before we left for byron bay saying that her dad was in the hospital with pneumonia, a blood clot in his legs to where he couldn't walk, and he was unconscious. her mom told her that if he wasn't better by the next week she would sent jen home. it was so dicouraging for her since just 2 weeks before we had all prayed for her dad and he had been healed from a very rare form of cancer. but jen had faith and we all got together and prayed for her dad and for her family. the week went on and on thursday morning jen missed a call from her mom..... just thinking of it now brings tears to my eyes. next thing i knew i heard screaming and i knew that it was jen. as another friend of mine and i held a screaming jen down we heard her mom say over the phone that jen's dad had passed away. it was one of those moments that will stay forever in my mind. holding her while she was crying was so heartwrenching. it was awful hearing her cry and say that God had promised her that her dad would be healed and why would He go against His promise. i had to leave for about 20 minutes but then all of beach to bush was brought to the church to be with jen. one of the worst things was when she looked at me and was like "stephanie, what am i going to do? what's going to happen now without him?" even now writing this i'm fighting the tears so much. it killed me that i couldn't answer those questions for her. all i could do was look her in the eyes and tell her with as much confidence as i could give that it's all going to be ok. apparently what had happened was that her dad had heard how jen's mom was going to send her home, but he told her not to, that jen was exactly where she was supposed to be. jen's mom and brother went and visited her dad and he told them that he loved them and to make sure that they told jen that he loved her. jen's mom and brother left and a few hours later her dad had a massive heart attack. jen and 3 other beach to bush people who she was also close to left for brisbane that day and tried to get flights back home. she got one the next day on january 1. please keep jen in your prayers. she family barely had enough money to pay for the funeral due to all the hospital bills. jen really wants to come back to australia since back home things aren't going so well. she doesn't really have friends since they're mostly pushing her to drink and party. she calls almost everyday and we skyped her yesterday (yeah!) and she really wants to some back so badly! so, as beach to bush we thought that if we could maybe riase money to get jen back here. even if we just gave $50 we could get her back here and still have some money left for her outreach. but this is something that we're praying about and we're going to see what God says.
for new years beach to bush had off during the day to recooperate from what had happened that morning with jen. then that night we had to go out and do evangelism. to be honest i was in no mood to talk to anyone about God. i was still down from the morning and this was the last thing i wanted to do. we were put into groups and the one i joined wanted to go down to the beach. so we walked down to the beach and as we tried to figure out what to do next someone got the idea that we should walk down the beach to this big look out point. halfway there i realized this was exactly what i needed. i talked to God abit and hummed a few songs. the long walk gave me time to clear my head and at the top of the look out i was able to talk to God about what was really on my mind and how i was hurting. this was really what i needed and i'm thankful for that. we left for the church at 11 and brought in the new year with praise and worship. it was hard to sing while i was still thinking about jen, but i made it through.
this week the byron bay leader gave us something new to do as far as evangelism- a treasure hunt. this isn't just any kind of treasure hunt but a spiritual treasure hunt. what you do is pray and ask God to give you a location, a person's name, their appearance, something that they need prayer for, and then the unusual. you write down whatever God gives you and then you go out and find your treasure. one thing i've learned is that you need to write down whatever comes to mind because many times we ask God to talk to us and when something random pops up in our mind we many times push that aside since 'we're waiting for God to speak' and He jsut did. so for me it was:
location: by one of the round-abouts in town
name: gabriel
appearance: shaggy blonde hair, blue eyes, ear piercing
something for prayer: searching for something or Someone
unusual: bracelet
so i went out that day and tried to find my treasure but didn't find him. but no worries, my last treasure hunt lasted 3 weeks til i finally found the person. that night we had panchai and i decided that that night i would step out in faith and have no fear of man. so that night i went out with another girl and we invited people to panchai. it actually went pretty well. haha it's funny seeing people's faces, especially guy's faces, when they hear the magic words "free" and "pancakes". i saw so many times guys go "free pancakes?!" and then their girlfriend drag them away going "no, i don't want any". it's highly entertaining :) so after a few invites (and the occational lame pick-up line) i went back to the park and stood on the sidewalk and invited people to the panchai. i stood in line at the pancakes because i was delivering some to some people and i started a conversation with the guy infront of me. it was small talk like how are you and this and that. as he was about to leave he was like i'm sitting over there and so i joined him after my delivery. we talked for a few minutes and then he introduced himself as casper. as i shook his hand i heard the holy spirit go "this is your treasure". oh my goodness!!!! it was so hard to keep my enthusiusm in control. many times not everything in your "map" is correct so just listen to what the Spirit says. anyway, we talked for like an hour and then we got up and got some tea. one of my german friends from the gold coast came over and i exploded on him with excitment and told him how i found my treasure. haha i must have been some kind of sight to see. casper and i talked for another hour and we talked about some spiritual things. he had already talked to some ywam-ers and he knew about christ. i didn't pray for him or anything too deep just because i felt that this wasn't the time for it. he's talked to another christian who had come on very strong and defensive so i knew he still needed time. but i'm so happy i found my treasure!!!!
as the end of the week was coming to a close a very important anniversary also came. on january 7 was the one year anniversary of my car accident. it's so hard to believe that a year has already passed yet i remember everything like it was yesterday. my friend from gold coast told me happy anniversary and wondered if i had gotten emotional yet and i told him not yet ;) the day seemed to drag on and that night at panchai i had a conversation with a german backpacker and i left feeling frustrated. so i ended the night with a sit on the beach and lookingout at the ocean and stars. the next morning i woke up at 4:50am and went to the lighthouse that was in byron and watched the sunrise at the easterly most point of all australia. it was definately a sight to see.
i leave tuesday for straddie island for survivor week in prep for outreach. but in closing i want to thank some people in connection to my accident. looking back i realize how much it changed my life forever and without it i probly wouldn't be in ywam australia. through all the struggles and hardships i faced i guess i'm thankful in that it's made me a stronger person and it's made me closer to God. there are 3 people whom i would like to thank for when it seemed like my world was crashing around me they were there and helped me until my mom could get to me.
mr. eric colvin, mr. billy oram, and mr. dustin wells: you have no idea, no words i could ever say or write could fully express my thankfullness and gratitude for what you did for me that day. other than the ride to the hospital you were there for me and it was such a comfort to me. as i'm writing this i'm crying for the kindness and love you showed that day, i'll remember it for the rest of my life. you were there to help me in my time of need and that means more to me than anything. you helped mareike and lucas when i felt like i couldn't, and with tears falling down my face, i thank you eternally. may God bless you and your families and may He always fullfill your needs. i love you guys and thank you.
~stephanie~
we all slept in churches and in my church we had about 30 girls and 1 shower. one way or another it worked out :) every morning we had to pack up our stuff and put it away because in the church i was staying in was where we had our big meetings. at 10:30 we all met in the church and had worship and devotional time, along with the occational game (blood, sweat, and tears were shed for those games, literally). afterwards we had lunch then evangelism time until about 4:30. we would be dropped off in town and we could do evangelism in town or do beach ministry which is where we played volleyball most of the time. later we'd have dinner, an hour to rest, and then at 7:30 we'd have a worship time and then head out at 8 or 9 for panchai (pancakes and chai tea). we would go down to one of the 2 parks, rails park, and make free pancakes and chai tea and have some kind of entertainment going on too. so many people would come out and it gave so many opportunities to talk to the people. we had the option to stay in the park or go out into the town or beach and evangelize there.
for the first week it rained every night so we didn't really have the chance to make panchai but we still went out and evangelized. to be honest, i'm not all that comfortable with evangelism. i don't like going up to random strangers and just start talking about jesus. it's just something i'm not used to. but i tried. so yeah, for the first week i went out every night and tried to evangelize, or if anything just did a prayer walk around town. like i said before, byron bay is filled with hippies and at night you have to watch out. the drug and alcohol use is so bad at night that i felt really bad for them. never in my life have i been asked so many times if i have any weed. people will come up and be nice and start a conversation like "how are you" "where are you from" and you think you're making progress. but then they ask "do you by any chance have any weed" as if they were asking "do you by any chance have the time". so normally do they ask. it caught me off guard many times. it was also frustrating as a girl to try to talk to people about christ when all that was on a man's mind 75% of the time was that they wanted a good time. the pick-up lines never ended either. but by the second week i was used to them.
the first week on friday we held a volleyball tournament and it turned out so well. we had it on january 1 and it was a good way to start out the new year, for the most part. at first we were hoping that some people would come out and in the end we had 20 teams with 4 people on them. we even had to turn people away because we didn't count on having that many people. it was fun watching and talking to people and swimming in the ocean was glorious. but the undertow was pretty strong so i left earlier. unfortunately i got the biggest sunburn of my life and was red and in [ain for almost a week. i thought i put enough sunscreen on, but i guess not- oops.
last week was a pretty tough week. one of my friends in my group, jen, got a phone call from her mom the day before we left for byron bay saying that her dad was in the hospital with pneumonia, a blood clot in his legs to where he couldn't walk, and he was unconscious. her mom told her that if he wasn't better by the next week she would sent jen home. it was so dicouraging for her since just 2 weeks before we had all prayed for her dad and he had been healed from a very rare form of cancer. but jen had faith and we all got together and prayed for her dad and for her family. the week went on and on thursday morning jen missed a call from her mom..... just thinking of it now brings tears to my eyes. next thing i knew i heard screaming and i knew that it was jen. as another friend of mine and i held a screaming jen down we heard her mom say over the phone that jen's dad had passed away. it was one of those moments that will stay forever in my mind. holding her while she was crying was so heartwrenching. it was awful hearing her cry and say that God had promised her that her dad would be healed and why would He go against His promise. i had to leave for about 20 minutes but then all of beach to bush was brought to the church to be with jen. one of the worst things was when she looked at me and was like "stephanie, what am i going to do? what's going to happen now without him?" even now writing this i'm fighting the tears so much. it killed me that i couldn't answer those questions for her. all i could do was look her in the eyes and tell her with as much confidence as i could give that it's all going to be ok. apparently what had happened was that her dad had heard how jen's mom was going to send her home, but he told her not to, that jen was exactly where she was supposed to be. jen's mom and brother went and visited her dad and he told them that he loved them and to make sure that they told jen that he loved her. jen's mom and brother left and a few hours later her dad had a massive heart attack. jen and 3 other beach to bush people who she was also close to left for brisbane that day and tried to get flights back home. she got one the next day on january 1. please keep jen in your prayers. she family barely had enough money to pay for the funeral due to all the hospital bills. jen really wants to come back to australia since back home things aren't going so well. she doesn't really have friends since they're mostly pushing her to drink and party. she calls almost everyday and we skyped her yesterday (yeah!) and she really wants to some back so badly! so, as beach to bush we thought that if we could maybe riase money to get jen back here. even if we just gave $50 we could get her back here and still have some money left for her outreach. but this is something that we're praying about and we're going to see what God says.
for new years beach to bush had off during the day to recooperate from what had happened that morning with jen. then that night we had to go out and do evangelism. to be honest i was in no mood to talk to anyone about God. i was still down from the morning and this was the last thing i wanted to do. we were put into groups and the one i joined wanted to go down to the beach. so we walked down to the beach and as we tried to figure out what to do next someone got the idea that we should walk down the beach to this big look out point. halfway there i realized this was exactly what i needed. i talked to God abit and hummed a few songs. the long walk gave me time to clear my head and at the top of the look out i was able to talk to God about what was really on my mind and how i was hurting. this was really what i needed and i'm thankful for that. we left for the church at 11 and brought in the new year with praise and worship. it was hard to sing while i was still thinking about jen, but i made it through.
this week the byron bay leader gave us something new to do as far as evangelism- a treasure hunt. this isn't just any kind of treasure hunt but a spiritual treasure hunt. what you do is pray and ask God to give you a location, a person's name, their appearance, something that they need prayer for, and then the unusual. you write down whatever God gives you and then you go out and find your treasure. one thing i've learned is that you need to write down whatever comes to mind because many times we ask God to talk to us and when something random pops up in our mind we many times push that aside since 'we're waiting for God to speak' and He jsut did. so for me it was:
location: by one of the round-abouts in town
name: gabriel
appearance: shaggy blonde hair, blue eyes, ear piercing
something for prayer: searching for something or Someone
unusual: bracelet
so i went out that day and tried to find my treasure but didn't find him. but no worries, my last treasure hunt lasted 3 weeks til i finally found the person. that night we had panchai and i decided that that night i would step out in faith and have no fear of man. so that night i went out with another girl and we invited people to panchai. it actually went pretty well. haha it's funny seeing people's faces, especially guy's faces, when they hear the magic words "free" and "pancakes". i saw so many times guys go "free pancakes?!" and then their girlfriend drag them away going "no, i don't want any". it's highly entertaining :) so after a few invites (and the occational lame pick-up line) i went back to the park and stood on the sidewalk and invited people to the panchai. i stood in line at the pancakes because i was delivering some to some people and i started a conversation with the guy infront of me. it was small talk like how are you and this and that. as he was about to leave he was like i'm sitting over there and so i joined him after my delivery. we talked for a few minutes and then he introduced himself as casper. as i shook his hand i heard the holy spirit go "this is your treasure". oh my goodness!!!! it was so hard to keep my enthusiusm in control. many times not everything in your "map" is correct so just listen to what the Spirit says. anyway, we talked for like an hour and then we got up and got some tea. one of my german friends from the gold coast came over and i exploded on him with excitment and told him how i found my treasure. haha i must have been some kind of sight to see. casper and i talked for another hour and we talked about some spiritual things. he had already talked to some ywam-ers and he knew about christ. i didn't pray for him or anything too deep just because i felt that this wasn't the time for it. he's talked to another christian who had come on very strong and defensive so i knew he still needed time. but i'm so happy i found my treasure!!!!
as the end of the week was coming to a close a very important anniversary also came. on january 7 was the one year anniversary of my car accident. it's so hard to believe that a year has already passed yet i remember everything like it was yesterday. my friend from gold coast told me happy anniversary and wondered if i had gotten emotional yet and i told him not yet ;) the day seemed to drag on and that night at panchai i had a conversation with a german backpacker and i left feeling frustrated. so i ended the night with a sit on the beach and lookingout at the ocean and stars. the next morning i woke up at 4:50am and went to the lighthouse that was in byron and watched the sunrise at the easterly most point of all australia. it was definately a sight to see.
i leave tuesday for straddie island for survivor week in prep for outreach. but in closing i want to thank some people in connection to my accident. looking back i realize how much it changed my life forever and without it i probly wouldn't be in ywam australia. through all the struggles and hardships i faced i guess i'm thankful in that it's made me a stronger person and it's made me closer to God. there are 3 people whom i would like to thank for when it seemed like my world was crashing around me they were there and helped me until my mom could get to me.
mr. eric colvin, mr. billy oram, and mr. dustin wells: you have no idea, no words i could ever say or write could fully express my thankfullness and gratitude for what you did for me that day. other than the ride to the hospital you were there for me and it was such a comfort to me. as i'm writing this i'm crying for the kindness and love you showed that day, i'll remember it for the rest of my life. you were there to help me in my time of need and that means more to me than anything. you helped mareike and lucas when i felt like i couldn't, and with tears falling down my face, i thank you eternally. may God bless you and your families and may He always fullfill your needs. i love you guys and thank you.
~stephanie~
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