bye London town.

So in 1 day I say goodbye to London...this part of outreach is done. We ve already said most of our goodbyes and as usual, I got too attached to people and had a really hard time with this. They say in ywam it gets easier over time, but its been almost 3 years for me now and i have yet to see that happen! But, I think if Im sad to leave it means I had a really good time, so I guess Id rather be sad to leave than glad. Sunday night was our last night with the guys at the homeless shelter. The last couple weeks Ive spent most of my time there with a couple guys from Lithuania. They dont speak much English, but google translate is an amazing tool! We were able to have such good talks. They opened up so much about their addictions, and I was able to tell them about my God who can set them free, and share a little of my story. One of the older men promised me if I was able to get him a Bible in his language he would read it. The next day my friend Jiles had already bought 2 Lithuanian Bibles! We all signed them and Jiles will give them to the guys next week at the shelter. I am praying that the words will bring life to their souls, like they do to mine. I would say the work at the night shelter has been the most life changing experience of this trip so far. God really opened my eyes and gave me a piece of His heart for these people who are so lost. I cried a lot when we got home after saying goodbye. So overwhelmed by the brokenness in my new friends, and so sad to not have a chance to share and pray with them more.
The last 3 Saturdays we held a seminar on discipleship training here in Newham. I taught on the topic of Lordship, and was able to share a bit of my story with the class about my journey to making Jesus Lord over every area of my life... As i prepared to teach, my excitement was renewed like crazy for what God can do with my life, if I give it FULLY to Him. Some areas can be so hard to let go of-but so far I ve always missed out when Ive tried to do it on my own. So, ya, that was super fun to teach and our class was amazing! The presence of God was very heavy on the room and I was very impacted by the whole experience as we covered different topics like Gods Father heart, making Jesus Lord, repentance and forgiveness, etc. Met some really cool people and felt so priviledged to have a chance to teach and share.

Today, a friend had us over for high tea!! It was the most beautiful set up I ve ever seen, and i think now i wont need to eat for a week.
Leaving for Thailand on Monday morning, followed by a 20 or something hour bus ride to Cambodia!! SOOOO excited to get there!!! Will keep you posted on the going ons as best as I can!

London photos

sight for the 2012 Olympics

The girls!

 Here are a few quick pictures of my London outreach!! My time here has been amazing. Lots of ministry that I have loved...unfortunately no photos of that. Our ministry times have been with children and people we work with at the homeless shelter, so obviously not really appropriate photo opportunities. But here are a few of one of my days off..hope you like them. London is SO cool.

me, double decker bus, and Big Ben

the tower bridge is soooo pretty at night!

LoNdOn....

greetings from London!!
Its been almost 2 weeks now since I attempted to board the plane in Perth to come here to London, only to be told that my flight had been unexplaineably cancelled. And yes, just my flight. So, I waved my team off and went back to my dorm in Perth, and headed off to the beach with my friend Courtney. And yes, I still made it to London, just 1 day late. I guess God knows that I consider flying to be my alone time, and it is pretty much the only alone time I get in this crazy life, so that worked out! So, after 2 days travel I finally made it here!! My leaders and friend Marlin picked me up at the airport, and we made the long treck to our little home. We are living in a very, very old Kenyan church in a bureau called Newham. I love it. I share a room with only 1 person instead of 25. It is bliss. There are 7 of us on our team, all girls, and they are all really wonderful. As soon as I arrived, we began reading through the Bible, in shifts, all day and all throught the night, from Genesis to Revelation. It reminded me a lot of my SBS, reading through whole books at a time, and I loved it. We do this as a way of claiming the ground where we are living for God. Then we started prayer walking throughout Newham, meeting with pastors, going to church services in partial Swahili, Portugese, and English (who needs to leave London to experience muli culture?!), and in general trying to narrow down what areas of ministry we feel led to focus in on. This weekend we will be serving at a night shelter at our church, as well as helping out with kids programs....should be crazy! today was our day off and so me and 3 friends went into central London to see all the main attractions. I think we walked for like 9 hours or something. But we saw a lot´- Big Ben, London Bridge, the London Eye, parliament, Westminster Abbey....to name a few. I will put up some pictures soon....it was an amazing day, I LOVE exploring. So thats the latest, I will give you some more details as soon as I know them! thanks a million to all of you wonderful people who helped me to get here...I am loving it. god is at work in a HUGE way in this little bureau, and I am so blessed to be a part of it. In other news, I'm getting extremely impatient to hear news of my new neice- my sister could be having her 4th baby at any time now and I am dying here!! so excited!

27...

So...this week I celebrated my 27th birthday. 27. Officially can't get away with saying I'm in my mid twenties anymore ;) apparently we've moved on to late...so strange!!! But each year of walking with the Lord is more exciting and full of surprises than the last, so I look forward to this year with much anticipation.
My birthday itself was a little crazy, but really amazing. As many of you know, I'd been praying and believing for God to provide me with $5000 so I could go on outreach to London and Cambodia next week. The tickets were being held until 1:30 pm on December 22, which happens to be my birthday. As of my birthday morning, I was at peace with the fact that I wouldn't be going. By 11 AM, I was racing around from ATMs to the finance department and back, paying for my ticket! Because, friends, God gave me a birthday miracle. I am officially going to London on Thursday to be a part of Mega cities and all the amazing ministries they will be a part of there. I still can't believe that I'm going, but I guess I have to start packing soon, so I better get used to the idea!
So, ya that was the craziest part of my day.

In the evening I went out to the city with some friends for cake. I like being 27, each year gets better and better and I have a feeling it's going to be an especially good one!

one season over.

Okay, so we are in week 11 of the FCM. Week 11. I feel like I just got here, but next week is the final week of lecture phase here in Perth. Why is it that just as I start to settle in and open up and really start to love this base, the season is ending? Last night we had “Commissioning night”, which is where all of us students who are at the end of our lecture phase of school, get prayed over and commissioned onto the next phase-outreach. It was such a beautiful night, each school got up and talked about what the last 3 months had meant to them. I have to say I was feeling pretty sentimental. What I love about YWAM Perth, is that it’s not as big as YWAM Kona. What this means is that you actually get to know pretty much everyone on the base, to some degree or another. There are only 80 something students this semester, which makes it so much easier to get to know people in other schools. So, even though you can’t possibly get to know everyone super well, you still end up feeling like one big family. Last night each person in my counseling school was asked to choose one word which describes the previous 3 months of study. My word was restoring.  It’s really the best word I can think to sum up how God has been at work in my life. Restoring the walls that were broken down…or more like broken down, stomped on and thrown to the wind with no real faith that they’d ever be rebuilt. But the cool thing is, they were! I’ve never known this side of God so clearly- He is my healer. The more I meet people of every age, culture, and background, and the more I study the area of counseling, the more I realize that we are all more or less broken-which is why we need Jesus so desperately. Because He’s the only one who can truly heal and restore. I love that I get to pursue counseling in a way that really keeps Jesus at the center.

So, here are some photos from our commissioning night last night, hope you like them.

so nice to have Jenny here in Perth

my ywam experience is never complete without a few Koreans.

An uplifting study session... ;)

Courtney and I enjoying an afternoon at a local coffee shop. We had to laugh when we noticed our very depressing topics of book choice. In our defense, they were for our research project. 

this is how we do in FCM.

on Saturday...

So, as a Counseling school, we leave for outreach to London and Cambodia in 4 weeks, and have roughly a million dollars to raise before then (slight exaggeration). We are trusting God to do it, as He always does, in His own way. It has been a great lesson in faith, and continues to be. However, we in ywam also believe in doing our part. Asking God what He would like us to do to see this outreach take place, and to receive break through in the area of finances. We prayed as a class, and someone had the idea of a pizza making/selling fundraiser. So that’s what we did for most of the day Saturday, made/sold/delivered pizzas. It ended up being really fun, everyone loved our pizzas, and I think God really blessed our efforts! Here are some pictures of the blessed event for your enjoyment:

always important to wear matching outfits while baking bread dough.

Then, because we felt we hadn’t done quite enough fundraising for one day, my friends Courtney, Cody, and I decided to embark on a pancake selling adventure. You see, our dorm is about 10 steps away from the Stadium where all the concerts all held here in Perth. This is pretty cool, as we can often hear really well known bands from right outside our door. So, this particular Saturday night, Kings of Leon was performing, and we thought there might be some hungry concert goers. We finished cleaning up all the stuff from the pizza fundraiser at 8, and then had about 1 hour total to prep our own little fundraiser. So it was a mad dash to make a million pancakes, and find a cardboard box to make a sign out of (we had to make do). Then, we walked over and began the pancake sales. I will say it ended up being one of the most hilarious experiences I’ve had in a while. We met the most random people, some of whom really didn’t believe that we were actually fundraising to go overseas to counsel women. Apparantly it’s not all that common for 3 young girls to sell pancakes at a concert to raise money for a missions trip. J I even had one guy say to me, ‘ you know, that sounds like a really wholesome thing that you’re doing, and I’d love to believe you….’ In the end though, who cares if he didn’t believe me because he still bought pancakes. It was awesome, and Courtney even scored a t shirt from a grumpy old man who seemed to be willing to do just about anything to not have to buy our pancakes!

We had a great time, I haven’t laughed that much for a long time, and we did our part, which is what its all about.

Hope you like these photos of the evening:

my very ghetto sign