Saturday, August 8, 2009

Love Every Moment


Good Morning!

Sorry it has been so long since the last update again! It's hard to believe that we just finished up our 5th week of lectures and that we have been here for over a month already. I have had a lot of people asking me what a normal day is like here so I will try to give you an idea of what our schedule is like each day.

5:30- wake up for exercise [running/aerobics/dance practice]
6:30- breakfast
7:00- quiet time
8:00- depends on the day but usually prayer or worship with the base
10:00- lectures begin
1:00- lunch
2:00- work duties [I'm in charge of the garden haha]
3:00- kidzone/ministry rehearsal [practice skits/dances for outreach]
5:30- dinner
7:00- depends on the night [sometimes community services or small groups]
9:00- prayer with all the girls
10:00- usually sleeping by this time! we go to bed so early here! we are usually tired by 7 :)

So that's a normal day in YWAM. There are random things like lunch or dinner prep/clean up or one-on-one meetings with our assigned staff person to talk about things happening during the week. So yes, they keep us pretty busy here but it's good to be busy. We are always so ready for the weekend to catch up on sleep and e-mails and to have time to just hang out with each other.

We found out this week that our outreach destination is Namibia. I've never heard of this place before but I guess it's pretty close to South Africa. We are going to spend the first part of outreach in South Africa traveling to different places and then we will go to Namibia. The best part is that our whole team is staying together! We don't have enough staff to split our group but we are all very happy we can stay together. It seems so weird if even one person is missing for just an afternoon here. It changes our whole team. The reason we are staying so close to S. Africa is because not even one person has enough money for outreach yet. We have started doing fundraisers on the weekends. Last weekend we spent most of the day selling hot dogs on the corner. We made a pretty good amount of money. Now, we are planning a concert to do at the end of the month so hopefully we can raise a lot of the support that we need doing that. There are some fundraisers going on at home as well. A few of my friends have started collecting pop cans to help me raise the money I still need for outreach. If you have some that you would like to donate you can call my friend Sarah (291-8960) and they will come and pick them up or tell you where to drop them off. There might also possibly be a fundraiser night at Applebees coming up but I'm not sure if that is going to work out yet. I will let you know!

The lectures for the past few weeks have been about relationships and worship. During the relationship week something that really stuck out to me was when we compared the hollywood version of dating to the Biblical version. It's not about finding the right person.. It's about becoming the right person. During the worship week the idea of worship as a sacrifice kept coming up again and again. The first story of worship in the Bible is when God told Abraham to sacrifice Issac. We also talked a lot about the character of God and things that get in the way of fully worshipping him.

Yesterday during intercession we watched the Invisible Children movie. Even though I have seen it a few times it really broke my heart this time watching it. There is a big difference watching the movie at home and watching it when we actually are in Africa. Even though there aren't child soilders walking around Jeffrey's Bay, there are still children that are invisible. There are kids who suffering for HIV/AIDS. There are kids who struggle everyday to get enough food to survive. There are kids who don't have a home and parents to go home to after playing with their friends. Seeing the lifestyle of these kids has continued to break my heart over and over again. A bunch of us from the base went to get ice cream last week and while we were sitting inside enjoying our ice cream, there were kids wrapped up in blankets laying by the windows outside just watching us. The look on their faces just broke my heart. I didn't feel right eating my ice cream in front of them knowing that they probably hadn't had food yet that day. It is hard to know how to help these little kids. A lot of the kids, some even younger than 10, are addicted to drugs and sniffing paint. Continue to pray for the kids as the spend the days and nights in the streets struggling to survive each day.

This morning my roommate Rachel woke up early to go for a run. We ended up just sitting on the beach praying together. It was so peaceful and refreshing. It is almost impossible to find any quiet places on the base so it was so nice to have no noice except for the waves around us. Praying with the girls every night has brought us so much closer together. We are already planning our trips to South Korea and New York to visit eachother when DTS is done. The staff were saying last week that they have never seen a DTS that is as close as ours. Everytime they ask us if everything is still ok and we say yes they think we are lying because most teams are starting to fight at this time. The unity in our group has been such a blessing!

This afternoon we finally have time to relax! A few of us girls are at the internet cafe right now. We came for breakfast which was so good. Today we are going to the new fruit and vegitable store that we found last weekend. All of the food that YWAM feeds us is full of carbs so we are all getting fat so we love finding stores with healthy foods.

Most of our team has been sick for the past few weeks. I was so sick on Tuesday that I couldn't do anything for the day but I woke up Wednesday feeling so much better! Please continue to pray for the rest of the people though. A lot of people have really bad headaches and colds. Hopefully after resting a lot this weekend we will all be back to normal on Monday.

On Thursday night we had the community meeting. We invite people to come during evangelism and then we have a time of worship with them at 7. This week we performed our 2nd dance that we learned. We all pained our faces to make it look more like an African dance. We decided that everyday in Jeffrey's Bay there are so many unexpected and random things that happen. You just never know what to expect. haha. By the end of the night every person in the room had paint on their face. Here are a few pictures from the past few weeks.. Thanks again for checking!





4 comments:

  1. I'm so glad things are going well and there is such unity in the team. That is a huge blessing! We have neighbors who lived in Namibia for several years. They loved it there.

    ReplyDelete
  2. hey, i know its nice to recieve comments on the blog so just wanted to say keep up the good work and keep writing. its great to hear how God is working in and through you!
    Shalom

    ReplyDelete
  3. Thanks for the update Katie. I'm so glad you have such a great connection with the girls in your group. I love the pictures! I hear there's video out there of you doing the African Dance. I'm gonna have to track that down!
    We're still praying for you!

    ReplyDelete
  4. Hey, it was awesome to read what you were up to. I hope you continue to have the time of your life, and continue to be stretched with each passing day.

    ReplyDelete