El Finito!!!

… I’ve decided that since I’m living in Mexico City for 2 months I should start to learn Spanish.

So as far as the el finito goes, lecture phase is over.  It’s been such a crazy, amazing experience.  I can’t believe that I”m leaving Australia in 4 days.  I remember getting here 3 months ago, and thinking it was so far away, and now it’s here.

We do a weekly journal as part of our school work here, and one of the questions for the end of lectures was what has God taught you over the past 3 months?  It’s a crazy question to actually try to answer, because he’s taught me so much, but I figured I would put some of it up on here so that you know a bit of what God’s been teaching me:

 God has shown me over and over again every week how much he loves me. It sounds like a simple thing, and it’s something that I thought I already knew, but I’ve really been realizing how much more there is to it than I ever knew. God’s really been showing me more of the depth of his love.  Whether it’s in his constant forgiveness for me every time I mess up, or about how he loved me as my father, as my dad, way more than even my dad ever could love me.

God has been telling me so clearly that I need put him first above anything.  For me it hasn’t been about huge thing in my life that I had been putting before God, but lots of little things that I didn’t even realize.  For example, when I would play sports or be in classes at school, or at work, I would just forget that God needs to be there with me.  It wasn’t about turning against him for me, but more just about forgetting that he is constantly there.

God reminded has a perfect plan for my life. I’ve always known that, but it’s become so much more real to me while I’ve been here, because now I’m not just going through high school, doing whatever I need to do to get through school or whatever, but now it’s about living a real life for me. about me actually being able to make the decisions about what to do with my life, about how to live out the time God’s given me here. God’s plan is amazing, and is not to harm me. He has the absolute best in store for every moment of my life, all I need to do is follow him, and listen to his guidance.  It makes me so excited about my life, and about how God’s going to use me so much to bring glory to him.

Thank you !!!!

Thank you so much for all your prayers and support!  In just over 2 weeks, my school has seen God provide about $130,000.  It so amazing, God has built up the faith of everyone in my school so much, and its so exciting to know that outreach is actually a reality now, and that we’re actually leaving in 2 weeks for Mexico.  I can’t wait for all the things that God is going to do through my outreach team, over the past few weeks, I’ve just really been realizing how God is looking to do such huge amazing things through us both in Mexico and in Bangkok.

Almost time…

So we’re leaving in 3 weeks for outreach!  We’ve been praying a ton for both the locations, as well as been hearing from some of the contacts that YWAM has there that we’ll be working with.  I can't wait to see the amazing things God is going to through us in both cities.
In order for our school to be able to go, we need about $35,000 before lunch tomorrow (which is about 8 pm tomorrow for all you guys in Canada).  Personally, I still need approximately $3500 to be able to go.  I you guys could pray that my school would see this money come in that would be amazing.
Also, if you would like to give, that would be amazing.  The easiest way to have it actually here tomorrow is to give online.  If you go to https://www.ywamperth.org.au/007/payonline.asp.  When you're here, if you put my name under the line that says 'recipient name', and then under school payment select "Discipleship Training School - October - Sports", and then select 'outreach fees'.

Thank you so much for your continued prayers and support as we go out on outreach in the next couple weeks.

Mexico City and Bangkok

So we found out our outreach teams and locations last week.  Everyone is going to Mexico City for 7 weeks, and then after that we’re splitting into 2 teams, going to Sydney, Australia, and Bangkok, Thailand.  I’m obviously on the team going to Bangkok!  I can’t wait for this.  In both Bangkok and Mexico City we will be partnering with the local churches in doing evangelism, and really just mobilizing the local church.  As well, in Bangkok we’re going to be working with a YWAM base there, specifically working with their programs in the slums, as well as with children-at-risk. 

Bangkok is the largest human trafficking port in the world.  The average age for kids to get sold into this industry is 4.  I can’t wait to be able to go there, and give these kids hope, and a joy in life. 

If you guys could be praying for us as we go out on missions, that would be awesome.  The one thing that keeps coming up right now is team unity.  Just because we’re living in such close proximity, and are all together all the time, having unity is a huge thing for all of us.

Also, if you could pray for support to come in.  I need to raise about $4500 to be able to go to Mexico City and Bangkok, so if you could just pray for that to come in, that would be awesome.  As well, if you would like to help in this way, that would be amazing.  You can either If you would like to support me in this way, you can either go to the YWAM Perth website: https://www.ywamperth.org.au/007/payonline.asp. If you are donating this way, you can put my name the line that says ‘recipients name’, then where it school payment, go to Discipleship Training School –Sports – October (if you have any questions you can email me, or talk to my parents). The other way you can pay is to send a cheque to my home address (34915 Champlain Cres., Abbotsford, BC, v2s 5p3), and make a cheque out to either me or my parent (Mel &Monika Dick) and they can put it the rest of the way to YWAM from there. Because this is with a school, it is counted as education, not as missions, so it is not tax deductible.

Thank you so much for your continued prayers.

Perth City Evangelism

So every month the base picks an area of town to do evangelism in one night a week.  This week s Perth City, which means about a 2 block area of downtown, where their mall/shopping area is. 

Today was the most amazing evangelism I’ve ever experience.  Way better than even any of the evangelism nights we did in LA.  We went into the city, and started with a time of worship, basically the whole point of it was to show the city that church isn’t boring.  So we sang a bunch of camp songs, the banana song, the funky chicken, it was great.

After we went out into the city, and were told to just pray and listen to whatever God told you to do.  So some people ended up talking to the people sitting around the city, other people bought meals for people, stuff like that.  I went out with 2 girls from my school, and we felt like God was telling us to just kneel and pray for the city.  So we did.  People stared, and took pictures of us, called us idiots.  I’ve never felt so good about being called an idiot before, it was such a freeing feeling.  It was so amazing to actually feel God come over the city.

1 Month Down, 2 To Go

 

This is Perth.  It’s looking away from where I live, but this is it.  Actually, I don’t really live near this at all.  I live kinda the direction that the river is coming out of the screen.  But still in the city, which you can see in the middle.  The city is huge.  They barely have any tall buildings like in Canada, but its incredibly spread out.

I’ve been here for a month now.  Classes are amazing.  So far we’ve had weeks on The Character and Nature of God, Hearing God’s Voice, Sin and Repentance, and Intercession and Worship.  I’m trying to pick a favourite, but I don’t think I have one.  I love being able to go to school everyday, and learn about God, not about things I don’t really care about. 

Also, we found out the first part of our outreach location.  We`re in Mexico City!  At first I was sort of bummed, but then I heard more and more about what was happening there and I`m really excited for it.  There`s a link on my facebook that`s a report on what`s been happening there through YWAM Perth over the past year and its amazing.  There have been healings, and salvations every day.  I can`t wait to get to be a part of that, it`s going to be so amazing.

Rain Rain Go Away, Come Again Every Morning!!!

 

So apparently things work a lot different here than in North America.  At home, when it rains, it’s a normal event.  Apparently here it’s a huge thing an shuts down the whole world.  We woke up this morning for morning exercises, and it was raining outside… not a big deal.  But because of the rain, they cancelled exercises.  Which I was pretty okay with because it means an extra hour of sleep, but it was so weird.  Can you imagine if things shut down because of rain in the valley?  Nothing would ever get done, it would be so funny.

Midnight Basketball!!!

So yesterday we started doing outreach with sports.  We're volunteering in a Saturday night basketball league for the inner city kids, so that they have something to do on a Saturday night other than party.  My job is coaching a team, which is super exciting.  For all of you who have ever been to camp, imagine the worst camper you've ever had, and then multiply it by 9... that's your team.  The kids are all kids who have really bad homes, and so act up so that we'll notice them.  But they're still some of the best kids I've ever met.  When they get to play, they're all so excited, and I love seeing them so excited about something. I can wait to get to coach them every week.

School Begins!!!

Wow.  One week of schools done already.  It feels like I've been here forever, but at the same time like I just got here.
We got our morning chores and work duties yesterday, which was actually really exciting.  For morning chores all I do is clean the kitchen of the director of YWAM Perth, which usually only involves washing a few cups, and then wiping down the cupboard.  But the really exciting job is my work duty.  I'm on hospitality for the 3 months that I'm here, which pretty much means that I get to bake cakes or brownies or cookies or something for 2 hours every afternoon.  Which is super fun.

Last night we started doing outreach as well.  For those of you who have been to the Dream Centre in L.A., its a lot similar to what we would do on their evening outreaches.  For the next month the area that the base is focusing on Scarbourough, a really touristy, rich are of town right on the beach.  We went there last night, and got to worship on the beach and pray for the people that we're going to get to meet there over the next month.  We went off in smaller groups to pray, and I ended up with 2 guys on my DTS from Switzerland, which ended up being really cool.  We wandered around praying for a while, and then all of us really felt that there was someone wandering around that we needed to talk to.  So we kept walking, looking out for who this could be.  Eventually when we were walking outside of a hotel, we came up to 2 older men who were speaking in German, which both of the Swiss guys I was with sort of spoke.  They got the chance to talk to the 2 men, and although we didn't see them come to Christ or anything, it was really cool to see how God put the 2 men in front of us to talk to, and how it was the 2 people on our team that spoke German that were there.

The Adventure Begins!!!

So I got to school yesterday.  I love it here so much.  All the single girls on base live in one house, which has two huge rooms and a kitchen.  So all the DTS girls live in one room, which is the 8 that are in my Sports DTS, and then 10 in the regular DTS.  Pretty much everyone here is from North America.  There are 2 Canadians, about 15 Americans, and then 2 Europeans.  The base is only a 3 minute walk from the house, which is also really nice.

Everyone at the school is really friendly, a ton of the staff is also from North America.  After lunch and dinner every day everyone goes out to the volleyball court behind the cafeteria and plays for about an hour or so.  It sounds like my school will be playing a ton of volleyball, because that's what everyone played the most at home, which is also really exciting.