New Life.

We lift up our eyes

We lift up our eyes

You're the Giver of Life.

~Matt Redman

Those words have never had so much meaning before in my life.  Giver of Life.

I've been here on the oval for 2 weeks now.  It has definitely gone by very quickly.  This week we got into what our daily routine will be for the next 3 months here at the base.  Our days consist of breakfast, then lectures, worship, or a time of prayer, or all 3.  Then lunch and work duties.  I have the great privilege of getting to prepare dinner every night.  It's a good time.  Though the downside of that is I smell like food all the time.  That's not so nice.

There are some other things that are a part of our daily lives here on the oval as well.  One is small groups.  This is a time when we can come together with a smaller group of people and just talk about the week and how we are doing etc.  I always love small groups.  They're great and I think this one will be great as well.  We also get to have workout!  I really do love workouts every monday, wednesday and friday morning.  It's nice and short but it works you.  I've been sore pretty much all week.  But it hurts so good. Another big part of our time here is one-on-ones.  We are each paired with someone else on the oval and this person we get to meet with once a week or whenever just to talk about anything, how we are doing, what we are struggling with, what we are excited about and just really anything.  It's so great to have someone here that I can talk to and get things out and it really helps that I have pretty much the best one-on-one ever (praise the Jesus).

The topic of the lectures this week was discipleship, learning what it means to be a disciple.  I really enjoyed this week and I feel like it's just the beginning of what God wants to do in my own life and in the lives of everyone else here on my DTS.  There was so much to think about and I'm excited to look back over my notes and learn more.  That's what I want to do, I want to learn more.  It was also great this week to have a time one night to get to hear everyone in our group's testimonies and how they all came to be here in Harpenden.  It's so crazy how God works in bringing everyone here at this time.  God knows what He is doing and His timing is perfect.  I think God is really creating a close community with us here and that's really great.

Every tuesday night we have a community meeting where everyone on the base comes together for a time of worship and prayer and have a little message.  At last week's meeting, I truly felt that God has brought me here to give me new life.  My whole life seemed to be taken away when I moved and now I think God is finally beginning to put something back in it's place.  I was remembering what it meant to feel loved by God again.  This is a safe place here and I'm so thankful for that.

This week has definitely had it's up and downs, good moments and not so good moments but I know that this is just the start of finding this new life that God has for me.  It's going to be hard, it's going to be scary at times and it's going to require all of me.

Needless to say...I like it here.

You alone can rescue

You alone can save

You alone can lift us from the grave
You came down to find us
Led us out of death
To You alone belongs the highest praise.


   

New Adventures Pt. 1

Dancing is good for the soul.  Seriously.  

I feel good on this cold, cloudy Saturday.  We just finished our first week of lectures and we went out with a bang - quite possibly the greatest dance party I have been a part of in a very long time.  3 hours.  Non-stop.  Yep.  It was great.  Real great.  Though this morning, I am sore.  Incredibly sore, to the point of finding it very difficult to sit and stand and walk. Workout in the morning plus dance party at night equals hurting legs and butt.  However - totally worth it.  It’s so great just to dance.


A small group of us went on quite the adventure today in the town of Harpenden.  It started off with just a nice walk in the park...

We then decided to keep on walking and found this...it was pretty cool.

Then we decided to keep walking, though it was getting colder.  We stumbled upon a very large estate house.  We may have trespassed a bit but in all fairness, there weren't really any signs to tell us otherwise (except maybe some common sense).  We were about to turn back when someone saw something large and white sticking up a bit above the trees.  So naturally, we explored and stumbled upon a very large (slightly inappropriate) statue in the middle of this big opening.  Then we saw another pathway and explored and finally got out of the most likely private property...

OOPS.


We kept walking around and found the main part of the estate, the front part, the part that you're allowed to see...

We just did our little tour a bit backwards.




  

The Process

"For I know the plans I have for you," declares the Lord, "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future."

Jeremiah 29:11

How on earth do I even begin to describe this last week without writing a novel?  There are just so many things that have happened this last week that it is so hard to narrow it all down to something that would be somewhat comprehensive to anyone else.

As you can see in my previous post, I live in a pretty sweet place.  It's real pretty.  And it's cold - I love it.  If you still don't know, I'm doing the Discipleship Training School (DTS) in Harpenden, England.  There are about 20 other people that are a part of this DTS as well.  All from so many different places.  We pretty much have the whole world covered.  This last week has pretty much just been an introduction to all things DTS and YWAM and to some of the things we will be doing and learning about in the next 3 months during lecture phase. 

 New? Yes.  Different? Yes.  Exciting? Yes.  Overwhelming?  Most definitely yes.  

There have been a number of times this week when I find I ask myself, what in the world have I gotten myself into?  Can I really do this?  Am I ready?   

A couple weeks before I came here, I locked my keys in my car.  Great.  So I was there holding the flashlight standing in the frigid air as I watched my dad and uncle attempt to break into my car.  The whole time, all I kept thinking was that I just wanted to skip to the part when my door was opened.  I wanted to skip past all the waiting, all the hard work of finding a way into the car.  I feel that same way with a lot of things, especially right now.  A lot of times I just want to skip past all the hard things and get to the part when things are ok, when things are good, really good.  I don't always want to go through the difficult process of it all.  As much as I struggle to believe this most of the time, what is the point of skipping through the things that will test and grow you and strengthen you the most?  That's the beauty of the process, as ugly as it may seem, right?  I feel like there is a lot in my head and in my heart that is in need of going through this process, no matter how terrified I am about it.

I realize that I'm being incredibly vague at the moment but things are still pretty vague in my own mind at this point.  There was a lot from this week that is floating around in my mind and so it's just going in 20 different directions right now.  But I'm sure of this - In my heart and in my mind I know that there is a change that desperately needs to be made.  I'm just not sure what exactly it is or how it's going to happen.  But I know it's coming.  

  

I Live Here.

Hello from the United Kingdom!!!

Here is just a little taste of where I get to live for the next 3 months...

More to come...

  

Bring On The Jetlag

Today is the day.

I'm leaving the country.

Today.

7:50 PM Local Time.

Oh geez.

Bags are packed.

(Well, almost)

10 hour flight approaching.

I'm ready.

I think...

I Will Follow

Where You go, I'll go

Where You stay, I'll stay

When You move, I'll move

I will follow...

All Your ways are good

All Your ways are sure

I will trust in You alone

Higher than my side

High above my life

I will trust in You alone

Where You go, I'll go

Where You stay, I'll stay

When You move, I'll move

I will follow You

Who You love, I'll love

How You serve, I'll serve

If this life I lose, I will follow You

I will follow You

Light unto the world

Light unto my life

I will live for You alone

You're the One I seek

Knowing I will find

All I need in You alone

In You alone

Where You go, I'll go

Where You stay, I'll stay

When You move, I'll move

I will follow You

Who You love, I'll love

How You serve, I'll serve

If this life I lose, I will follow You

I will follow You

In You there's life everlasting

In You there's freedom for my soul

In You there's joy, unending joy

And I will follow

Where You go, I'll go

Where You stay, I'll stay

When You move, I'll move

I will follow You

Who You love, I'll love

How You serve, I'll serve

If this life I lose, I will follow You

I will follow You

~Chris Tomlin

JOY

6 Days.  That's it.  S...I...X. 6.  I can almost count the days on one hand.  Yep, I'm most definitely freaking out.  As it draws closer and closer, I realize that this is actually happening...and soon.  Very soon.

In this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials.  These have come so that your faith--of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire--may be proved genuine and may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed.  Though you have not seen Him, you love Him; and even though you do not see Him now, you believe in Him and are filled with inexpressible and glorious joy, for you are receiving the goal of your faith, and the salvation of your souls.

~1 Peter 1:3-9

'Inexpressible' and 'glorious' JOY.  That is something that I have been missing for so long.  But I feel that I am beginning to find it again.  Last week, I was able to finally catch a glimpse of that joy, that joy that only comes from God.  All I can say is, oh how I've missed it.

I mean, just look...

I love snow.  That's no secret.  It is my favorite thing ever.  Seriously...ever.  I love it.  And to be able to experience it and play in it with people that I love in a place that I love, well I think I may love that even more.  Let me just tell you what happened...At the end of December, I got to go up to the beautiful Camp Del Oro which might be my favorite place ever.  It really feels like home to me.  It was a really great getaway for a bunch of family and friends.  It was so great to be able to go up to camp and see it in the cold winter time instead of the hot summer time and just relax and play games and enjoy the company of everyone.   (Oh and locking my keys in my car...but that's just a whole other story.)  The next morning we all got up bright and early and went to go ride down some mountain sides.  I was SOO incredibly excited the whole car ride there.  I loved watching as the snow began to build up on the sides of the roads and on all the trees all around us.  I was freaking out.  If anyone was asleep in the car...they were not asleep for very long when I started seeing that snow.  

It was so great to be able to play in the snow again because it was the first time in a year that I was seeing it.  That is a LONG time to go without snow...especially for me.  So needless to say, I was pretty happy.  Afterwards we went back to camp for some dinner and just more hang out time.  This was a great night for me for 2 reasons:

Reason #1 - The most epic Yahtzee game of all Yahtzee games.  Here's a little background real quick to help you better understand the situation.  My cousin, Claire, and I play Yahtzee a lot.  It seems that we are both equally skilled and equally competitive in all of the games we play against each other.  So our Yahtzee games are pretty intense all the time.  You will know when one of us gets a Yahtzee.  So this game we played was quite possibly the most intense and the most amazing game we have ever played.  Just writing about it doesn't do it justice.  All I have to say is me and my lucky cup did real good... 

Reason #2 - For me, the snow and the mountains and the trees, that is where I feel and see God the most, in the beauty of it all.  That is where I find the kind of joy that cannot be explained any other way than it coming from God.  It has been so long since I have been able to find that joy.  It is so incredible that this God, this God that created all of this beauty, loves me enough to create that for me to enjoy and find joy in.  I was finally able to really see and believe that God has everything under control and that through all the difficulties I've faced these last 2 years, God knew exactly what He was doing.  He has been preparing me for the crazy new adventure that I'm starting in England.

He knows the desires of my heart.