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!!