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!