Today's news in three main points...

OK! this blog will be set out in specific categories. The first order of business is class, and general news, as is ordinary for me.
        This week was triple lectures again. We focused on biblical worldview, which is about how our culture, personality and surroundings affect how I view the world and the Bible. Our speaker was a Canadian with hilarious jokes, And it made me realise that no matter how frustrating i thought it was to sit down and study the bible during school, it influenced me in a good way. (Keep going Mom!)  
       Strengthfinders was about what each of us as an individual had strength in naturally, and how our team dynamics would work. It's funny, because most of my team are relators, and I am almost purely intellect driven! Positivity isn't anyone's top ten, but we are all fairly upbeat people. WOO! Our teacher on this one was Dave, the base Director.
     The next classes were how to write a sermon, along with writing our updates, reports, and things of that type. It was really good to learn how to work with a translator, what to avoid when speaking, and how to respect the audience. Angel is such a good teacher on this, because she had to learn it. It wasn't just a natural "I'm a good talker" thing.

      To the second Part!
Outreach is in about 2 weeks. Right now Team Japan is working on preparation.
Skits- writing, acting, props, translation ease.
Dances- Practice, practice, practice for ALL of us !
Kids ministry- age appropriate games, crafts, stories.
Speaking- each person writes and practice to perfection two sermons and a testimony, each with three different versions for timing.
Finance- PRAYER. We are about 10,000 AUD short, so we are working like crazy fundraising, emailing and praying for provision. I totally trust that God will come through in this!
       The first week- prep for a Hard Rock fest and various other outreach and volunteer positions.
(we will spend the first week helping Team Australia, then head out for Tokyo/Osaka for some children's and art outreach.)

The news part of this is that tomorrow we are doing a fundraiser, Movie in the park. :) We went all out for this in a beautiful way.

       The third part is fun!  I somehow managed to get one of the guys on base to shave his beard and have just a mustache for a day. He looked like a creeper and it was awesome.
My small group went to a chocolateria and consumed more chocolate that I usually eat in a year! I guess splurging once in a while isn't bad, but I won't do that often!
      The MAD DTS is celebrating all the  birthdays with a lip sync competition!
All the work we do over here might be a lot, but it really evens out with the fact that our base knows how to celebrate!

       Just a few prayer requests, Can I ask that you pray for good weather this weekend, that finances would come in, and that our team would be healthy and zealous to do God's will? Thanks for the support! God bless!

I don't even remember anything interesting about this week...

As the title says. We had triple lectures, so I spent my time in class or doing homework.
Spiritual warfare  was about the authority given to us over everything, and the power we have in Jesus Christ. Sonship was about our adoption into God's family and our role within that. Biblical worldview was about how we thought about the world and how our belief in the bible affects that.
Beach to bush got back from outreach, And I'm pumped to hear the stories!
I helped out with a youth group and decided I am better equipped to survive in the forest than in a youth group, even now! It was good , just crazy :)  I found a Huntsman spider, and a green and blue on found its way into my hair.  Right now Team Japan is planning the best fundraiser EVER, and I shall update you on how that goes next week.  One day I will post pictures of what I have been doing Art-wise...
Update me guys! I feel out of the Canadian loop!

the Night of the Norwegian Ninjas

          It was a calm and uneventful day. I woke up, did some shopping and adventuring. Talked to people who enjoy my company, (or laughing at me, I can't tell) did a small amount of homework, got interrupted by a very tired Daniel, as well as The Emperor's new groove, and then... disaster struck! As I entered my seemingly peaceful dorm, I was stopped by an anomaly suspended in the air surrounding me. As I walked into the depths of the room, I was pressed back by an unknown force! Stepping back, I observed the cause of this barrier.

       String. It was on the beds, the closets, the windows. It hindered every step! So I made up my mind to determine the cause of this Ninja training prank. After some small questioning and pondering, I found the culprits. Dear me... Have our very own friendly Norwegians turned against their own room? And was their motive simply too much coffee? Yes, for facts cannot be denied. They are guilty.

In other news, this week was chill. Our speaker reminded me of what Dad would be like if he was a Brazilian guy who liked Salsa dancing. our topic was the Holy Spirit, and it was really neat to see the practicality of it all. I found out It's hard to desire God more than food. I also found out that I have quirks I didn't even know I had, and apparently they are quite endearing. I asked a lot of questions to myself.  One more thing is our dear Ida is going home for health reasons. We will miss you Ida!!!

wise words

    Lordship week is sweet. Our lecturer is an extremely passionate Kiwi who enjoys telling us to SHADDAP and listen to God.
     This week has been slightly crazy. I sang TFK's song 'Look Away'  in front of people in order to face my  fears. (while crying, so you know how that worked) As scary as it was, It was beautiful. You feel free when you are fearless! It was a pretty busy day, so a few of us stayed up 'till 3 just talking and processing life.
   The next day was a silly day. We sat around and made up 'wise words' meaning things that sound smart but make no sense. As in "When the trees grow green, the cows are beautiful." Yeah, that sounds smart right? Then a large amount of us girls had a tickle fight with 8 people on one small bunk bed, which started by the Norwegians drawing smiley faces on one of the napping girl's toes. I got a snail drawn on my shoulder.
I gave away some of my art to one of the beautiful ladies on my school, and wished a Happy birthday to my beautiful 14 year old sister (from the future), AND wrote and began illustrating a story, which I want to share when it's finished.
  I joined a flash mob, and tried Sushi for the first time, neither of which need expansion on the story.
I also deleted all my pirated music and ate Skittles. All of this blog happened in the last three-ish days.
The new BLS students came this week, so we are working on remembering names and guitar chords.
Uhm... so that's life. Right now I'm chilling with the film guys, playing Munchkins and hashing stories and blog ideas.
So good night.

AIRLIE

How long has it been since I updated? It seems like a long time.
Let us start with the last week of Lectures. Gwendy spoke about Fear of the Lord, and explained that fear is part awe and respect, part obedience, and If you do that, the afraid aspect isn't as scary. We also talked about brain/addiction connections and chose something we each want to change about our thinking. things like not judging, not complaining, not speaking ugliness and the like.  Christmas. We decorated the base, had an awesome Christmas party, did the secret Santa thing, and I spent my Christmas day on the beach eating BBQ kangaroo (tastes like wild beef) and wishing I knew how to surf. All in all, I had an amazing Christmas, even though I missed home a little bit.
At 4AM that weekend we headed off to Airlie Beach for a week of Impact Summer. On the way there, I was in the bus, and I slept most of the way. that is a really good thing, because it has no AC, and it blew a tire... I slept through almost 16 hours of it. We were working with two other YWAM bases running the Chai tent. I spent a lot of it talking to these four travelers from Sweden and France about anything from God to art and tattoos. They are some really cool guys. We also took shifts praying for the town, cleaning, praising and all the other goodness like that. Crazy thing, one time there was a bunch of us randomly doodling during prayer, and three of us drew the same thing, A tent with a vortex of fire and guardian angels protecting and inviting the way to Heaven. Later that day,someone read about the tent of meeting (Exodus33). IT WAS AN EXACT DESCRIPTION OF WHAT WE DREW!  How sweet is that?  The way back was uneventful, except for minor sunburn and I wrote a story. uhm... yeah. not much else is happening. I still learn so much every day, and I encourage you to ... ya know... message me!

 Fireworks

 Robin and Robyn

 ocean breeze

 Xmas tree!

 giant picture

 live art

 Daniel made heart pancakes!

 Japan brekkie

 A few of my favourite things

 what we DIDN'T see in theatres...

 on the way to Airlie

Touristy pics for Mom. 

praying Mantis, reindeer and not a lot else...

Christmas is coming!
This means that everything I am excited for is yet to be done.
there's an ugly sweater contest, a Christmas party for the base, AND... I'm going camping on some remote island with a bunch of friends for Christmas holidays!
Beach to bush is on their way to Saipan, Guam, India and some other place I don't remember for Outreach phase, so the base is crazy with prep and cleaning lately.
One of the girls from MAD is also going home... Prayers for safety are on my mind.
As for me, I still love it here, but often try to dissapear into the Cafe for the sole reason of Air conditioning.
Yesterday I was in Brisbane city and saw live Reindeer, and I caught a praying mantis who then refused to get off my arm. What else? uhm... Lectures are about relationships and then we had conflict management . It was good, and kinda funny to realise that we, as the human race, are immature. you don't see animals holding grudges or trying to get revenge!
And then art focus afternoons. wow. Kalli, the teacher is amazing at gauging what I can handle, and brings me to just before that. Live model large scale drawing, live model painting, surreal story art, (both also large scale, she loves challenging me) it's amazing. I didn't know how powerful art could be!
yeah, so not much else. sorry guys!

so much!

Authority and submission,Worship and sneaking out of a partially my own party.

      Yep. That’s what I have been up to.

        Cory, my team leader and a man who has earned my respect from both the orangutan dance and his Godly leadership (yes, it’s possible to do both) was teaching on this topic for Friday. Thursday and Wednesday, we had a 24 hour worship session. Not many people get to praise God crazier and more genuinely than an insanely hard partyer. I felt like I should stay for the whole thing, so I did the math and it turns out I went about 50 hours without sleep. And yet, having my heart in that position, I wasn’t tired.  We later on went to the graveyard to watch the sunrise. It’s beautiful!

        Maggie has been matchmaking, and or likening people to movies, and she claims I am Meg from the Disney Hercules, and keeps telling me who my Hercules is.  Uh, no. And don’t worry, there are no red headed British guitarists who make good coffee here, so you have no chance to tease me with that either. XD

   The past few days I have been doing a lot of learning. I got history lessons from the Norwegians, Colombians and Aussies, and I was taught how to shoot hoops (mostly laughed at but that's OK.)  The next thing that happened is the December Pyjama birthday party! There's at least 7 of us born this month.  In this time I realised that large amounts of unwanted/ unexpected touch scares me. Yeah, slumber party games. In said game they kicked the players out of the room, decided what we were going to be, brought us back into the room, and then I was immediately bombarded with large amounts of being petted. Turns out they thought I was a fluffy kitten. I… Kinda ended up in the fetal position in the corner. So as soon as that was done, I disappeared to the coffee shop where I chilled with the film guys and talked about sound people and white balance, and which celebs we would date. Unfortunately, at least three people decided to play with my hair. And Ben kept playing with my feet so I decided he wanted to be a footstool. Yeah… this happens. YWAM is also likely the only place where it’s acceptable to Limbo in worship.

I woke up around three today, I couldn’t sleep. so I prayed.  Good news though, Grandpa is out of the worst, and is arranging wheelchair races with the nurses. 

     It turns out I have a spiritual gift. When I draw, I look in the person and often know what they truly are. So I drew myself. I can’t do anyone else’s honestly without knowing myself. My soul and personality is a bit contradicting. I have so much joy it almost drowns out the depression, so many thoughts it almost drowns out the foolishness, so much to say that I’m not saying. A childlikeness, and an ancientness. It’s like quiet and noise are warring in my soul. God and darkness. And yet I have come so far.