love feast elves

last saturday of each quarter, ywam has a celebration called 'love feast' . it is your typical fancy dinner with a dress up theme and a talent show. we had ours last week, and the theme was 'white christmas' which was convenient because it sure did snow!

they had it at our other campus, 'eagle rock' which is up in the mountains.

the night was fun, but not overly eventful, except that some girlfriends and i had planned a secret dance involving a santa and 4 of his elves. we had kept it a secret for about 5 weeks, so we were dying to show everyone! we sewed little elf costumes and everything! it wasn't a particularly good dance, but it was funny! especially watching sarah trying to do it with her broken wrist!

here is a video we made of the dance:

it's NEGATIVE 27 degrees right now.

and my bedroom window has iced shut...

click here for the news report: (keep in mind, these details are FAHRENHEIT) 

when the snow is not so soft...

this past week has been a crazy week. we have had so many visitors in and out of our base. 

on monday we had a memorial service for those killed in the shootings exactly a year before. about 150 people came to the worship service and midnight candlelight memorial, where it snowed like crazy, just like it did on that night a year ago. 

the families of the victims and the gunman were there - and were united in their loss... never have i heard so many testimonies of how faithful God is, even in a time of utter tragedy. 

"for God works all things for the good of those who love him"

the night after that all the students went to a theatre to watch a documentary that had been filmed on the snowboarder's dts. we are praying that it gets released nationally, if not internationally. 

snowboarding

yesterday, we had our phase II snowboarding day - which was my first encounter with snow sports! and wow. snowboarding is harder than it looks. it took me 3.5 hours to complete one run... i know. it's embarrassing, but i spent 75% of that time on my butt. 

here is a video to give you a little taste of what i did for most of the time: 

"everything hurts!"

i woke up this morning, and muscles i didn't even know i had were aching , it is so hard to move! but despite all that, it was so so much fun, and i am so thankful that i didn't get seriously hurt (like my friend sarah here who broke her wrist when she tripped over a little boy)

winter time

in the past month i have been introduced to so many american traditions: ( i know i've already mentioned a few of these, but i thought i'd elaborate )

October 31st: Halloween

i have spoken to alot of christians about this holiday, which i think seems a strange thing to celebrate in the most 'christian' nation in the world. mostly the christians celebrate it as a 

'harvest festival' where they participate in the less creepy aspects of halloween, like dressing up and trick or treating. 

my friends insisted i go trick or treating, so on halloween night, we made a pathetic attempt to dress up like robots in cardboard boxes and aluminum foil! we then trekked out to the richest neighbourhoods with our pillowcases to collect all the lollies. i didn't think people would really give to a bunch of 20 something year olds, but they were impressed with our efforts and the fact that it was my first halloween ever...

November 20th: Thanksgiving

we had a 4 day weekend for this holiday, so that people had enough to fly home if they wanted to spend thanksgiving with their families. 

i and 4 other from the base were invited to my friend whitney's house, who lives here in denver. it felt alot like christmas to me - a big lunch on a ping-pong table that had been turned into a table with alot of autumn decorations around the place. 

i was informed that turkey was manditory for this meal and there was so much shock

 when i confessed that i had never tried pumpkin pie before. lucky i liked it, cause all eyes were on me when i was eating it! 

it snowed alot on thanksgiving day, which was so much fun! later that night, we tied sleds to the

 back of a friends truck and he pulled us around the church parking lot next to the base. i have never seen so much snow! 

November 21st: Black Friday

this day is similar to our boxing day, i guess. it is basically a public holiday where the shops sell everything at a ridiculous discount - and the crowds come out in their multitudes to find the best deals. 

a few of us lined up at some shops before opening time in the snow, and then fought through the crowds for all the 75% off bargains. i didn't really buy much, but it was fun to watch and be a part of. 

but, humans will be humans when it comes to this sort of thing - one shop attendant at a wallmart in denver was crushed and killed by the crowds when she opened the front door to let them in. crazy. 

anyway - i am really enjoying the winter weather. the snow in denver is sporadic which means you get a bought of it followed by a few days of warmer, beautiful weather - it means you never get sick of the cold or the snow. i love getting bundled up every time we go out (yes, it's still a novelty i guess) and i love the crunching sound that snow makes under your feet. i have had a couple of funny falls, but it's always a soft landing :) 

my close girlfriends and i love to go and sit on the swing sets when we have a free day - this is one of the things i'm really going to miss. 

phase II

Hello everyone! 

Yes, i know, it has been a while! 

At the moment i am half-way through my second school in back in Denver. It is called 'Phase II' and it is a leadership school that goes for three months. So far, it has been great. very different to DTS, but so so good! We have had teachings in topics like effective personal ministry, spiritual leadership, worldviews and public speaking. 

My favorite topic was this week's teaching on 'Peace under Pressure' which was a breakdown on the different areas of the christian life that we are tempted to compromise in... It has been very challenging and edifying. 

Other than teachings, we have had numerous projects to work on - two of them have been outreach projects designed to teach us how to lead outreaches and initiate new ministries on the mission field. There is alot of work, but it is all such quality stuff. 

My class has 19 people in my class - again we are a very versatile bunch, which makes for some interesting times of fellowship! 

us girls have bonded well and have done a lot of fun stuff together :) It is fall here right now, so we've had a lot of 'harvest celebrations' - things i've never done before!!

Next week is thanksgiving, and i'm going to spend the day at my friend Whitney's house - apparently i'm going to get the all-american experience! hahaha...

vancouver

i have just ended my time in vancouver. the last two weeks i have been staying with a girl from st. john's shaunessy who has been housesitting, so we've had a lovely big house to ourselves. 

i didn't have alot to do during the day, so i spent most of my time exploring the city, writing letters, studying for my next course at YWAM and baking. i made a few good friends from the church there - a couple of girls in particular. 

vancouver has been a lonely time for me - it is weird finding yourself in a place where you do not know anyone at all... but it was a blessing to have alot of 'down' time and to meet a couple of beautiful girls! 

border crossings

hello everyone! 

after a painfully long day of flying, i made my way toward can

ada from kansas, via atlanta and seattle. i stayed in seattle for a couple of nights (one of which i spent sleeping on a sidewalk... and no, i'm not joking...[i'm going for ambiguity to encourage people to comment on my blog... go on. do it!]) with one of my friends from DTS. 

after that, i've spent the last two weeks with my parents (yay!!) in the lovely vancouver, BC. well, kind of. we actually slept in a cottage just across the border in point roberts, washington, and made our way into canada everyday for all our sightseeing. as a result we have  become quite the border crossers!

for the first week, we saw all the sights around vancouver (stanley park, downtown, ferry trips to vancouver island) and travelled a little up to whistler and down to seattle. we were so lucky with the weather - it was absolutely beautiful! all these rumours of rain are lies! 

for our second week, we planned a 3 night trip to banff and back. sightseeing-wise, this trip has been the best i have taken all year! (and that is a big claim!). we saw alot of northern hemisphere animals like wolves, squirrels, chipmunks, elk, and a black bear that just waltzed across the highway in front of our car! but best of all, the scenery was absolutely breathtaking! here is the proof:

elk... we think. we aren't sure. but we ARE sure that they were about to charge...

oh, i'm going to miss those sights!

while we've been here, we have had alot to do with the anglican church here - st.john's shaunessy - because of dad's moore college friends who work here. i have been helping out with the youth group and music stuff, while attending all their regular gatherings. it is so much like our sydney anglican churches, so it has all felt very familiar and comfortable. 

mum and dad left on friday for a cruise through the alaskan islands, so i am now staying with a girl who also leads the youth group at church. it is such a blessing to have 2 weeks to be able to just relax, catch up on reading and writing letters and all that! traveling is so fun, but can be taxing after a while...

untill later, when i have more fun things to report.

kansas is toto-ly oz-some!

this past week has been spent walking down the yellow brick road, clicking my red heels and staying away from tornados. yes, that's right, i've been in wichita, kansas. the state of sunflowers and miles and miles of long rolling... nothingness!

i have been staying with the gorgeous half-american, half-venezuelan Sabala family. their daughter, kendra, was in my dts and was one of my closest friends. it was great being able to sleep in and hang around with a few friends. life in kansas is pretty chilled out. the family took me around to see the sights and alot of wheat fields on the way :) i was also able to sing and play guitar at the Griffis' church (another family i was involved with through YWAM who also live in wichita) which was a blessing for both me and the church. 

hannah griffis - kendra sabala - myself

i was surprised at how much i liked kansas... and was sad to leave. yesterday i made my way from wichita to seattle, via atlanta. it was a long 16 hours of traveling, but i am now within 24 hours of seeing my parents, and i can barely contain myself!!

ps. that "tot-ly oz-some" phrase was actually written on a shirt i found in a kansas store. i laughed for hours.

i am a dts graduate.

in session.

our time in vegas didn't end up looking like anything that we had planned. god really has a funny way of doing that to any and all plans that i am involved in! it is hard to describe what we did during that week, because it was so abstract in a way - but i will try my best.

we did spend alot of hours cleaning up the old rehab centre, which turned out to be a long and silent job, as we were all so spread out through this huge centre... we also got to work in a warehouse with a church that collects all the factory seconds from wal-mart and distributes it to the underprivelaged. so we didn't do any ministry where we actually got to 'evangelise' or speak to people... it was all behind-the-scenes labours.

my initial reaction is to be disappointed that we didn't go out to the strip to talk to people, or work with the foster kids ministry that the YWAM has there - but god had alot more personal issues that he wanted each of us to deal with on our team. our whole team spent ALOT of time in personal prayer and queit time with god. there were alot of issues that came up with different people regarding their pasts, or anxieties for the lives that they had to go back to as soon as our outreach was over. we had alot of team time which was spent in confession and prayer and teaching from our leaders. we also spent one on one time with each person in the team to make sure that we had brought every relationship that we had before the lord and didn't walk away with any regrets.

it ended up being a time of intense character building and reflection. i learnt alot about who i am, and the way that i affect the people around me. god showed me the areas of my character that walk a fine line between being good and being destructive. i felt like i was in a phsyc session with god, where i had to do alot of self analysis (which, everyone who knows me well, knows that i HATE!).

anyway. outreach is now over. and i am back in denver - trying desperately to wrap my brain around what i have learnt and done in the last 5 months. i am dreading saying goodbye to my family, because that is what these people, this team has become.

vegas, baby.

well, here we are! it was such a relief to get to vegas after 34 hours of traveling... 2 planes and a bus trip. Of course, on the flights we had our fair share of crying babies and old men snoring!Ted, my leader, begged the team to not sleep during the drive from LA to here so we would be able to sleep that night to begin the fight of our jet lag. Within the first 20 minutes Ted looked back to find all of us asleep! His attempt to wake us all up failed and most only woke for bathroom stops along the way. ...now we are all still fighting jet lag!
saturday we began a full day of work with the YWAM base here in vegas, at their newest location called the Pier. the base here has a heart and vision to reach out to the people in need in vegas, so they recently bought a massive old drug rehabilitaion building located in west las vegas (aka - the ghetto). the building had been vacant for 2 years before they purchased it about 9 months ago, and during the two year vacancy many homeless used the facility as a home : sleeping, eating, and stealing various parts of the building... it's pretty creepy, with all the eerie hallways, a few trap doors and old lockers locked full of stuff belonging to previous patients!

During our days here, we will be working at the pier. Our team began a deep clean yesterday and it should take another 3 or 4 days to finish cleaning and moving everything in. Our evenings will be downtown Vegas doing street evangelism and prayer on "the strip". Please pray for energy and passion for the team! Everyone wants to finish the outreach strong, but the jet lag is kind of hitting us hard right now.

we do have one very serious prayer request about a student. while we were on the island swimming most of the students were fine with the amount of sun we got, but one student (Garrett) got a very bad burn. In fact we took him to the emergency room yesterday because we had never seen anything like it - even the pre-med student on our team said you only see that sort of thing in the medical books! The doctor says he has a 2nd degree burn, an infection in the burn, and sun poisoning. Today we are taking him to a burn clinic to get it taken care of. He is in a lot of pain so we have all been banned from saying "i told you so" anymore...!

we just spent the last 2 nights on an island called Samet. it was such a blessing to be able to have all that time off together in such a beautiful place. we didn't do alot other than swim and read and eat alot of gorgeous tropical fruit salads. it felt like an old familiar family holiday.

here are a few photos:

i will be on a plane back to the other hemisphere in 8 hours!

we have a week left of outreach which will be spent in Las Vegas doing street ministry and working with the YWAM base there. i am not sure what that will look like yet, but pray that God does big things in these last few days!

fourteen days in sisaket

the team has just returned back to bangkok from two weeks spent in a small village called sisaket. it is a beautiful little village nestled in the middle of miles of rice fields with dirt roads, wooden houses and alot of animals... it was nice (for the most part) to be totally secluded, away from all the noise and business of the city.

we have been working with a new ministry called "we love isaan" which was started by a fellow denver YWAMer married to a thai girl who was born and raised in sisaket. their vision is to set up a centre for the kids in that village - a centre that provides education and a safe, loving environment for kids who really have no where else to go and not alot of love.

since the ministry had barely any facilities when we got there, OUR job was to build them.

literally.

build a building.

the projects that we worked on were: priming and painting, tiling and grouting, building a sidewalk, building a new kitchen, roofing, plumbing and cementing. mostly i worked on building the new sidewalk, which doesn't sound like much, but really was a lot of work! we leveled, laid rocks down and mixed cement and filled it in.

i also did alot of tiling and grouting. and i found out that i am quite the grouter! it reminds me of pancake batter when i mix it, and leaves my hands feeling dry and cracked and sore when i'm done for the day. so we have kind of a love/hate relationship.

i worked on the grouting for the new shower, toilet and main room. this is me in the toilet - a very very small confined space in which i spent MANY hours!

aside from manual labour, we also worked alot a the village school. we taught english, ran games and performed dramas for the kids. we were already quite worn out with children's ministry after the last place that we had been at. we found the kids in the village to be less friendly but very demanding of our attention. for some reason, our whole team found it very difficult to play with the children voluntarily, and really choose to love them at every moment. there was deffinately alot of oppression in the village, which Casey had acknowledged when we first got there. but it was really difficult getting up every day and remembering that there was a spiritual battle going on that was fighting over our attention.

there was an incident at the school, where each child was told to bring a kilo of rice as payment for our teaching services. of course, we hadn't asked them to do this, and we found out that the teachers had kept the rice for themselves. my first reaction was to be furious at what the teachers had done, in giving us a bad reputation umong the community as being demanding and indulgent rich foreigners. but as we prayed about it i realised that God was giving us another opportunity to love - to love the teachers even though they had hurt us. one week later, after we had continued to serve the school, the principal asked us to teach about jesus. she said that we could teach them what ever we believed in, because we were good people and she wanted her students to turn out like us. isn't that amazing?!

here are some of the photos of the kids and our ministry times with them:

our whole team had alot of trouble sleeping there - which, after it was happening too regularly, was also attributed to the atmosphere within the village. i woke up frequently in the night for no reason, feeling an urgency to pray for our team and the village, while others would have nightmares about terrible things happening to us while we were there. it was a new experience for me - not that i have never been in places like that village, just that i wasn't as aware of the stronghold that satan holds over communities like this. on the last day that we were there we did a prayer walk around the village, and spent alot of time walking around the buddhist temple that was right in the middle of it. while we had been there we would often wake up to the drumming or 'sermons' that were blasting from a loudspeaker from the temple.

please pray for the village of sisaket - we have seen the desperation in the eyes of the people, and we know that it can only be filled by coming to know jesus. also pray for casey and pirat (his wife) and their new little baby. they are struggling with village life, which can be so incredibly lonely at times.

anyway, all in all, our time there was a great blessing for the ministry there and for our team - i spent alot of time in the mornings with God (when the roosters start to crow, you realy have no choice but to get up!) and he has taughe me so many things about himself and the importance of abiding in him every day.

our team has four more days till we fly into vegas for a week of mission there. in the mean time we are going to stay at the beach for a night or two as a little treat. i know, i'm as surprised as you are!

the villages

first of all, sorry that my blogs are delayed, internet is so sporadic here!

the last two weeks or so, our team has spent all our time working with a church in a small town called Selaphum, in the north east region of thailand. We stayed with a pastors family, who's daughter, Tik, is our translator for our whole trip. (she is adorable, and we have become good friends.)

we were involved in a whole bunch of ministries:

- the selaphum church nursery, which cares for toddlers who are waiting for compassion supporters - these kids all come from underprivlaged homes (this was definitely my favourite ministry that we did. the kids were adorable)

here are a couple of photos of them:



- the leper colony the leper village was located right behind the church where we were staying, and the pastor has a longstanding and fruitful ministry with them, so we didn't do a whole lot more than talk and pray with them.

- primary school ministry, where we visited all the local schools and performed evangelistic dramas and ran game sessions for them. we visited 4 or 5 schools.

- english teaching, we taught ALOT of english classes in one of the primary schools which was really challenging. but we all developed good relationships with the kids. i took 6th grade most of the time, which was a bit like pulling teeth sometimes, because they were all so booksmart, but couldn't speak a word of english to save their lives.

- after school kids camp, for middle and highschool kids. this camp went for 4 nights and was a combination of english teaching, games, drama teaching, and eating together. the church runs this every year as a way of keeping track of all the kids in the area - compassion uses it to run health checks on them as well.

tik's family were wonderful hosts. her mom organised our schedules and cooked for us. we did praise and worship times with the family and other staff members in the morning and taught them how to play dutch blitz and rummy at night :) the living conditions have been surprisingly good. we sleep on concrete, which is painful for the back. and the showers are outside, so it's always a struggle to keep one eye open at all times to make sure the array of bugs don't crawl up your legs or attack you. so that has been fun, especially for some of the girls who have never really experienced anything like this before.

anyway. that's a little about the last 2 weeks. it has been great, and was really hard to leave the people there. we are now in an even more remote village called Sisaket. but i will tell you more about that when i have more to tell!

bangkok

hey everyone!

so my team has left bangkok after a week of doing ministry with the YWAM base there. they have been lovely hosts, and luckily we've had really nice accommodation! thailand is SO much like indonesia, all the smells and sounds and tastes are so much like what i grew up with. i have been enjoying the fresh fruit juices, making sure that i make the most of how cheap and available they are here!

here are a few photos:

(temple in bangkok) (buddhist statue) (me and dao, a little thai girl) (my birthday cake :)

.

the ministry we have been involved in most of the time is called MST (men in the sex trade) which has been extremely intense. this ministry involves going out to the red light districts of Bangkok at night from 9pm-1am and communicating with the foreign men that are there. we have surveys and informations packs that have information about aids, christianity and other stuff. in preparation each night we do at least 2-3 hours of prayer and worship, because this is such a tough thing to do - especially when we are all so tired. our team has dealt with it well but it has been pretty emotionally draining, which leaves us a little snappy with each other during the day. but i am learning so much about spiritual warfare and the way that god teaches us things through this all.

the YWAM base in bangkok asked me to write a story about one of my experiences in one of the more crude districts and this is what i wrote:

"...as soon as i stumbled out of the song tau (traditional thai truck) i could feel the weight of where i stood and i was hit with a wave of exhaustion. I looked around and found myself right in the middle of chaotic patpong, one of bangkok's many red light districts. The main street was a jumbled mess of markets and go-go bars and nightclubs and the people reminded me of ants, how they scurried through the maze. I found it really hard to concentrate on what i was doing and why i was there because i could feel the heaviness in the air pressing down on my body and my heart. With every step that i took, a thai pimp would shove a small laminated piece of paper with a list of sex shows on it in front of me. It was so hard to smile when i said "no thankyou", but i was trying so hard to remember to love the people despite it all. Our team decided to split into smaller groups and i found myself in a group of 5 people, who all felt that we needed to prayer walk around the area instead of direclty approaching the men. I had not had a lot of expericence with prayer walking, so i wasn't sure what to pray for. There were a thousand things scrolling through my overwhelmed brain, and i found it hard enough to keep my eyes open, let alone string a coherent prayer together. I tried to look at the faces of the girls in the open go-go bars, and i noticed that they all wore the same half-smile, that so obviously gave away how bored they were with their acts. I desperately wanted to walk right in and offer up my hand to help them down from their stages and lead them away. As i kept walking, the simple sunday school song came to mind: "Jesus loves me this i know..." and i sang it through in my head. As i got to the line, "they are weak, but He is strong" i had a vision. All the walls of all the bars and clubs folded down in to the ground, leaving all the interiors exposed. All the girls on their podiums and men in their chairs were totally exposed. Then i watched them all kneel, all of them. They knelt right there on their stages, and in their cages, beside the beds and behind their bars, dressed in their bikinis and their suits, and they all started singing with me, "yes, jesus loves me, yes, jesus loves me...". It was a beautiful conetxtualised vision of the truth that i had always known: one day every knee will bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord. (philipians 2:10-11). It was hard to believe that that vision could ever be realised, and that i was actually making a difference during that prayer walk. It was even harder not to believe the lies of the enemy that told me i was just a crazy person walking around in circles, talking to myself. But i know that Christ is in me, and that His very presence in me, in that place was more powerful than i will ever understand in this life, and i have every confidence that my God could indeed tear down those walls and redeem them. "

next post, i'll tell you all about the children's ministry that we are doing at the moment (it is so so much fun!!)

please pray for my team - for unity and discipline and strength. i know that god will do big things through us here!

the last two months.

i am SO sorry that it has been two months since my last post! there really is no excuse for my slackness!

last week we wrapped up our lecture phase in Denver. my school (all my fellow DTS-ers) were busy preparing for our outreach to thailand and all the other schools were getting ready to graduate. we had a farewell party which they call a 'love feast'. this one had the theme 'back to childhood' so we all dressed up as little kids. we had a jumping caslte, slip-n-slide, macaroni necklaces and water pisotls. here are some photos:

it was sad saying goodbye to all the friends from the other courses, and it is weird to think that they won't be there when we get back.

my thailand team is greath though, we have 13 people including our leaders, 6 girls and 7 boys. we've been through alot of orientation stuff, and we are are really close - so i am excited to travel with them! this is our thailand team brochure:

i will write again soon about all our thailand adventures.

all my love.

x

hi! i thought i'd let you know which church i was going to over here... 

it's called foothills community church. i just joined the worship team, so i'll get to know it alot better soon. 

here's the website: http://www.foothillsonline.org/

one of the thing's i've noticed about denver is how vast and spread-out it is. when you get out onto the road you can see these flat plains that stretch out and then hit the mountains on the horizon. it makes for some beautiful sunsets. 

all the buildings are huge, and spaced out. the houses are gorgeous and all the stores are super stores... kmart super, target super, king soopers. hah. it kinda feels like i'm in the countryside... the city just keeps going even thought it feels nothing like a 'city'. 

it's beautiful though, nothing's crowded!  

and it is so dry. SO dry. my nose is always peeling, i'm surprised it's still there! (now i know why nicky was so adamant about bringing lucas paw-paw ointment with me... and i'm almost out of it, wink wink nudge nudge) and every time i touch something metal i zap it, so now i've developed this nervous habit of tapping a doorhandle with my finger before i open it, to get the electricity out...  and my hair is always static-y. 

but i love it! the air feels so much fresher (maybe cause it only has half the oxygen...but still) it is the perfect place for a season away :)

i know these are random observations but they are the little things that make life different here... 

i am the vine

last night we started a new street ministry. as in, it's literally a "street" ministry: 

 

(joshua&jose&me)

we are warriors.