A Bit of Struggles!

Hello!!
I just got back last night from Church Service Week. My DTS broke off into our outreach teams and we scattered across the south island to bond as a team and also to bless different churches. My team went to Nelson, which is a 6 hour drive to the top of the south island.
It was absolutely gorgeous there, with the beach on one side of the road and snow covered mountains on the other! The girls on my team (Kenzie, Izi, Heidi, Nathalie and myself) stayed at Pastor Alan's house. The two guys on my team (Cesar and Tyler) stayed at another member's house about 5 minutes away and the church that we served was called Atawhai.

It was a pretty tough but rewarding week overall, for us as a team but also just for me. We left the base Monday morning and after a very longgg car ride and a couple bouts of motion sickness, we finally got up there in the evening. The rest of Monday night we settled into our 2 houses and chilled out with our hosts. Then on Tuesday we got to work. Our main project during the week was to build a float type thing for the church. They are going to use it in the annual Christmas parade in the town, which normally has no religion to it at all. It turned out to be kind of like a Chinese Dragon idea.
 It is a 27 meters long  tunnel and has hoops in it so that the people could hold it up as they walked, and we spray painted scripture on it so that it would resemble the River of God. Like I said, Tuesday we started it and finished it Thursday. Our normal day during the week was meeting at the church at 8 or 9 and working until about 4:30ish. Then we would go eat supper at 5:30 and then go to some kind of social activity in the evening. Once the float was built, we shoveled a pile of dirt from one side of a cement patch to the other. Also, we weeded a big patch of land beside the river that runs along side the church. By Saturday, we were all pretty worn out. Then Saturday we helped to set up the main room for the service on Sunday, setting up chairs and sound equipment.
This whole week really humbled me a lot because a couple of us came into it with a lot of expectations of how we would bless the church and what kind of work we would do. But God had us shovelling dirt and weeding, which at first was very frustrating, because it felt like our gifts weren't being put to use at all. On Saturday evening, we finally got a night to just relax and chill out with our team. We went to the beach and me and Heidi took a walk down the shore. God really spoke to us that all the frustrations and disappointments during the week were lessons that He had for us, to really just humble me and show me what serving is all about. I learned that I can't bless people in the way that I want to bless them. I need to bless them in the way that they need blessed, and sometimes that may not be what I expected or what my strengths are. I came into the week thinking that I would be able to use my gift of working with people to help the church, but God literally had me do the complete opposite, down in the dirt with no one around but my team. It was only on Sunday that I realized how much that simple act really did mean for the church.

Another big thing that happened last week was on Wednesday evening. I "preached" for the first time!! The church held a Light Party (complete with black lights) for the youth in the community. It was a pretty awesome night full of laughing and dancing, and near the end everyone on our team got around 3 minutes to share with the youth what walking in the light means to us. I was super nervous, but as soon as I took a step up on the stage when it was my turn, the Holy Spirit totally took control and gave me the words to speak. It was awesome! We got a second opportunity to practice our preaching skills on Sunday during the service. We were all told again to talk about what the River of God was like to us. This time was a bit more scary, because I was standing up in front of not only people younger than me but people of all ages. It went really well, but afterwards I was attacked with doubts and started comparing myself to the others in the team, which is horrible. Don't ever compare yourself spiritually or physically to anyone, anywhere!! God made us all different and sometimes when I find myself wishing for that huge breakthrough that someone else had, I have to remind myself that He has a special and unique plan for me. But anyway, a lady named Ingrid came and said that God really just laid something on her heart and she started telling me that He doesn't want me to worry about being as loud or impactful a speaker as others, and that she feels like I just need to break out of that comparison. She prayed over me and everything she said was so spot on, it was awesome! Moments like that are so amazing because you can just feel God's presence literally surrounding you.
It is so good to be back at the base though and be surrounded by the members of my family that I missed during the week.
This week holds a whole lot of new struggles and revelations, but I'm pretty excited to figure them all out!!

On the drive back to the base I got close to a seal!!

A Whole Lot Of Change!!

Hey Everybody!!

Tons of huge things have been happening over here lately, it's hard to express it all in words!!

Fisrst, its getting warmer and warmer here everyday, but its still as gorgeous as ever!
The last couple of weeks have been AMAZING, and we have had life changing speakers. Since my last update, Josh Cole came with his friend Marty Emmet and taught us on Intimacy with Jesus. It took pretty much every piece of knowledge I've ever learned and completely blew it away. That was a week of alot of breakthroughs, and not only for me. There was TONS of crying (which I found out isn't a bad thing) and a lot of forgivness going around. One of these times that really stuck with me was when one of the girls was struggling with forgiving the guys in her past. All of the girls gathered around her, and of course we were all bawling. :) Then every guy in our DTS got down on their knees and asked for our forgivness on behalf for every other man in our lives that might have hurt or wronged us. I don't know if i can explain it right, but the feeling of unity that we had was so amazing. A lot of us were healed of anger or self hate that we have been hanging onto for years. Then to top it all off, the guys did the Hakkah (it's a traditional New Zealand war dance. Look it up, its super cool!) for us girls and it sounds corny, but it was so awesome because because it was their way of saying that we were worth going to war for, and it helped all of us to find some of our self worth again. So in short, that week pretty much hollowed me out of everything so that we could start all over. It was so AWESOME!!

We went on a Friday night outreach to Christchurch and split into groups of 4. Me and the girls I was with went to a dance mat where we could hook up an ipod to huge speakers and started blasting worship music while holding cardboard signs that said "Need Prayer?" I confess that I was super skeptical and nervous about it, but after a little bit people started to walk up to us. It was soo awesome to just talk to people about the weather, their day or things as deep as marriage and the future. I got to pray over a bunch of people and it totally opened my eyes to the need and desperation for God all around me. It was so awesome and I'm so excited to get out there again!!
Last week our speaker was Mark Parker. A short description of him would be the craziest, bluntest, most amazing 57 year old man I've ever met. He taught on the lordship of God. Probably the biggest thing that I learned from him was the difference between your spirit, soul and body and going from a personal relationship with God to a King/Lord relationship (ask me to explain when I get home because it will blow your mind). Then on Friday we had a Tabernacle experience, which was a day that I will always remember. We started at 10 in the morning and finished at 11:30 at night, but the whole day went so fast! The very general order of the day was thanksgiving, praise, Burnt Offering (which was laying things down like your family, future, etc.) guilt offering (repenting, laying things down that make you stumble...), baptisms, holy spirit, communion, and some more worship. Some highlights of the day (the whole day was a huge highlight though...) was laying A LOT of things down that was holding me back, getting confirmed in the coldest water I've ever been in, and dancing around in a field with flags praising God. Also, the Holy Spirit overwhelmed me like never before, and through me, God healed my roomate's back problems. I've been checking up on her almost daily since then and she hasn't had even a smidge of pain since!! It was one of the best days of my life and I can say that I came out of it a completely different person than when I went in.

 Right now we are learning about the Holy Spirit, which is sooo crazy!! My mind is being blown all over again! The speaker is Josh Menning and he is amazing at it! Holy Spirit (I feel like I can call Him by his name now, instead of THE Holy Spirit :) ) is definately becoming more real to me every day and I feel like now that I am beginning to understand Him, God and Jesus feel more relatable also. If that makes any sense.
Last week we also finally found out our outreach location options!!! There will be four teams, each with 6-8 people in them. The options are..... Thailand, Bangladesh, New Zealand or Nepal!!!!! And just tonight we found out what country we will be going to and what our teams are! I will be going to BANGLADESH in December until March!!!! God blessed me with an incredibly amazing team of 5 other students and the most amazing leader I could ask for!! I am soooo stoked to get over there! I will keep everyone informed once I know more about what we will be doing and where exactly we will be. I'm SO excited!!

And next week we will be gone all week with our outreach teams for Church Service Week. We found out today also that my team will be going to Nelson, New Zealand which is about 6-7 hours away. It will be an awesome time to serve the people of New Zealand and to start bonding with my team!!
I thank God all the time for everyone at home who is praying and supporting me over here. Its so amazing to know that i have such a great support group. So thank you all so much!! I was talking to my mom the other day about how it will be weird in a way to come home because I am already a completely new girl than I was when I left. And it's only been one month!! God is definatley wrecking me for the ordinary and I'm loving every minute of it!!

This was at Castle Rock which I talked about in my last entry.