Thursday, April 14, 2011

Aloha!

Hey everyone! I apologize for not writing on this earlier, we've been so busy I haven't had time to write on my blog yet.

Well... if you haven't seen from the pictures I made it to Kona, Hawaii safe and sound! This first week of being here has already been so amazing, I can't believe it has only been a week. First things first, I have the most amazing team. There are 51 of us (really big!) along with 9 leaders. Of those 51 on our team, about 7 of them are men, so they are a little out numbered. It makes it fun though, I can already tell that those men are going to be great leaders for our team. We have done a lot of team bonding stuff this week and have already gotten to know each other at such a deep level. We spent a few nights sharing "what we left behind" and "what we are walking into" with YWAM. Everyone on our team took their turn, so it took a few nights to complete this, but it was so cool to see how everyone opened up. I can already tell that our team is unique and I'm so excited to have all these people be friends for life. After each person shared we prayed for them and got a lei. Mine is right above my bed dangling from the shades. I occasionally smell the sweet smell of the flowers and it makes me so happy.

I will probably be all over the place with this blog, so bare with me.

I have such a multi cultural room! I live with 7 other roommates in a "cabin" style room. There are 4 bunks and I am on the top bunk right next to the window. Every morning I wake up I have an ocean view and the birds are churping. It's a great way to start out the day. Back to my roommates, I have one from England, one from Paraguay, one from Brazil, Canada, two from South Korea, and one from Georgia! The girl from Georgia is named Campbell and we both have the top bunks opposite from each other. We usually enjoy a good laugh by staring at each other on the computer. Our light between us currently "flickers" so we have a constant strobe light going on, and I'm just waiting for the time that everyone in our room breaks out in dance.

So a little bit about what we are learning right now. As far as an average day goes (well non have been average, they've been very different) but we wake up at 6:15am and go to breakfast. Class starts at 8am sharp and we have class till lunch time. I feel like my life here revolves around meals. We are constantly eating! Which is great, and we've got a laugh at how much we go to the cafeteria. After lunch we usually have free time until 3, (which has consisted of going to the beach) but on Thursdays we go to the prayer room where they play worship music for a good 2 hours. It's really awesome. Then we have our work duty! From 3-5 in the afternoon me and a girl named Natalie (who is on my team) clean the downstairs of a building. Fun stuff! It's actually been awesome to get to know Natalie and bond with her while we've been cleaning. She's from Wisconsin and is a really spunky and fun girl. Then it's back to the cafeteria for dinner and night time is either free or we have team stuff.

Gosh I'm almost out of time before we have our Ohana meeting, which is a weekly meeting where we sing worship and come all together as DTS students. There are 300 of us, so it's really awesome. Okay so a little bit about what I've learned so far, again, sorry that this is so scattered. This week we are focusing on "hearing God," and all of our classes have been revolved around that. We've had some great speakers, Christian Fox and Susi Childers. They have really got to me at such an intimate level with God and it's been super sweet. I can already feel that I'm going to be stretched in a lot of ways. At first I was a little nervous, but now I'm really pumped about the new ways that God is going to stretch me everyday. We have practiced hearing God by spending some alone time with Him and have just spent a lot of time with the Lord. Today Susi Childers (who is the founder of the PhotogenX DTS) talked to us today about her whole life, and she really got to me when she was talking about working with prostitutes in India. She had such amazing stories and it made me so excited for our outreach. Speaking of our outreach, we find out within the next couple of days where we are going. There are going to be 6 different locations that we can choose from, which means our group is going to be split in 6 different groups. They are going to tell us the locations and then we will have a half hour to pray about it and practice "hearing" God. We will write down where God told us to go on a piece of paper without talking to any of the leaders and without talking to any of our fellow classmates. Then that's it! So I'll definitely keep you guys posted where I'll be going, I can't wait to see what our options are. Oh! How could i forget, our leaders are AWESOME! Seriously, I couldn't have asked for better leaders. They are so loving, and just want to get to know you. I can't wait to get to know them more.

Okay got to go to Ohana Court! Love and miss you guys!

(below) Some amazing ladies that I already feel like I know so well!

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