YWAF.

Youth With a Farm! It's not official, but it begins here at the Brisbane base. YWAF includes chickens, compost pile and a garden. The project is unofficial and run by students at the base. The chickens and compost were started before I arrived. Upon arriving, I was put in charge of the garden and compost, because of my previous experience in both areas. We planted lettuce, tomato, cucumber and green beans before leaving on the road trip. After returning, the garden has grown immensely! The warmer weather is helping the process too.

I love the verse from 1 Corinthians 3:6,7 "I planted the seed, Apollos watered it, but it was God who made it grow, so neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God, who makes things grow." The growth does not depend on us, but on God. No matter how hard I try to stare at a plant and want it to grow, I cannot make it happen. Growth comes from God. The same is true for our walk with Him. We can try so hard to make ourselves good and grow in maturity, but it's impossible on our own. It's only God who makes things grow, and He promises "the good work I began in you will be carried out to completion, until the day of Christ Jesus our Lord." Philippians 1:6. It's so cool to see how God is able to make something so beautiful, and fruitful, from almost nothing, from something as small as a little seed.

I love the song "Beautiful Things" by Gungor that says "You make beautiful things out of dust. You make beautiful things out of us."

home sweet home.

It's funny to be able to call a place home after only living there for a total of 4 weeks, but when you've been living out of a backpack and traveling around the country in a van with 24 other people, you say a lot of things you wouldn't normally say:)

We are back at the base in Brisbane after being on the road for almost a full month. We spent the last week of our road trip doing outreach in an small town called Roma. Roma's economy is driven by a large oil rig in the city. Our team was able to speak at a high school chapel service and we ministered to the same kids later in the week at a youth group. Our team also helped out with a local women's conference and attended church with them on Sunday. It was another good week of service and team bonding, especially for our outreach teams.

Once arriving back in Brisbane on Wednesday, we started a mission simulation on Thursday which ran through Friday. We were in our outreach teams and they tried to cater our experience to our outreach locations so we could get a taste of what life would be like during that time. It was cool to see how our team stepped up and worked together, the simulation also pointed out some areas that our team was weak in and needed to grow.

This coming week we are going to have a speaker come in and teach about Bible Study, which will be really good to learn and grow in. Thanks for all your support and prayers, I am praying for you as well.

Here are some of the pictures I've been promising:)

-1st picture: Kids ministry

-2nd picture: me with Kangaroos:)

-3rd picture: Student baptism

-4th picture: Team Vanuatu

-5th picture: Springsure Ranch

-6th picture: Airlie Beach

from beach to bush.

hello friends!

Sorry it's been so long since the last update, but we've been pretty busy and have limited access to the internet. We have been traveling all throughout Australia learning and teaching.

So, 3 weeks ago we left for a 16 hour road trip to Airlie Beach to join another DTS at the YWAM Whitsunday base. The other school has a large house they are renting in the middle of the rainforest. It was beautiful, there were so many cool animals with jungle snakes, big lizards and spiders. I spent the nights in my hammock and it was great. We had lectures on the Holy Spirit by the YWAM base director, Jeremy. We discussed gifts of the Spirit, who the Holy Spirit is as a person and had incredible times on ministry. People on our team were given the gift of speaking in tongues, others were healed of allergies and others were healed of a lifelong struggles with depression. God moved in so many ways. We did outreach in the city and did evangelism, worship and prayer walks. During the week, the outreach locations were announced. I will be going on a team to the island of Vanuatu. At the end of the week, we had a BBQ downtown and someone was led to Christ. We also had 3 people get baptized in the ocean while we were there too. The other DTS only had 4 students, so it was fun to get to know them and be a part of their base. Over the weekend, our school had an opportunity to go out and see some of the islands and go snorkeling. We saw some cool fish and coral and the islands and beaches themselves were breath-taking.

After leaving Airlie, we traveled to Springsure, to stay out in the outback with a family who owned a 25,000 acre ranch. We learned about life on the ranch and had a fun time learning and growing. After a couple days we left for Emerald for our first week of outreach. Emerald is a small mining town in the outback. We set up our tents in someone's backyard and over 35 people shared one toilet and shower, that was a fun experience:) We split up into our outreach teams and our team did evangelism and prayer walks. On one particular day, we did a walk throughout the city and after praying we felt a heavy spirit over the whole town, a Spirit of exhaustion and apathy. We decided to do worship and games in the park to walk out in the opposing spirit. During worship time, we met another Christian man and prayed healing over his back. After talking with him he bought our team KFC for lunch. During lunch, we were told that the school we were supposed to be speaking for in the afternoon wanted us in 10 minutes instead of 2 hours and we needed to go immediately. We arrived at the elementary school just in time to do our prepared skit and games. We discussed friendship with the kids and talked about how important it is to treat each other with love and respect.

On Friday night, our group was in charge of leading a high school youth group. After playing some games and worship, I presented the message of focusing on God's promises instead of our situations or fears in the midst of trials. We had an opportunity to attend the same church on Sunday and talk to the kids again and they seemed to receive the message well.

After leaving Roma, we traveled to the Carnavron Gorge for a couple days of lectures on worship. We were able to stay and camp for 3 days in the Gorge. It was breath-taking and beautiful, but beyond the Gorge, God showed Himself in amazing ways! We had the chance to hike and explore the gorge in the afternoons. God spoke to us throughout our time there that worship is about acknowledging Him in everything. Worship is about living out our relationship with God. It's about being who He created you to be, giving the gift of life back to Him. Worship means to resolve not to settle for anything less than who God created you to be. "Our life is God's gift to us, what we do with our life is our gift to God." I read in a "Desiring God" that "the chief end of man is to glorify God by enjoying Him forever." We were created to be in relationship with God, to enjoy Him and explore His characteristics and follow Him. In Genesis it talks about Adam and Eve walking with God in the cool of the garden. We were created to walk with God in the garden, to spend time with Him and depend on Him like little children. Thank you God for the ways that you speak to us and desire intimate relationship with us.

Yesterday, we arrived in another country town called Roma for another week of outreach. We will be staying here until Wednesday before ending our first road trip and heading back to Brisbane. I will add pictures when we return and I will try to add more stories and details. Thank you so much for your support and prayers, I appreciate and thank God for each one of you.