unanswered questions.

Hey yall! I'm down in South Carolina visiting friends and family down here. I forgot how beautiful and hospitable Charleston is:) I'm down here until March 30th, then heading back to Michigan to start work at the Junction Ice Cream Shoppe again...big surprise! I found a great quote on my friends' cupboard,

Have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don't search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live you way into the answer. -Rainer Maria Rilke

As I continue to pray over my next step, and wrestle with the question of "what's next?" I realized a reoccurring pattern in my life. I allow unanswered questions, unresolved issues to paralyze me with fear. It's like I wait to start living again until the answer comes, as if I hold my breath while waiting for an answer, even if that means turning blue in the face and close to the point of passing out. When I do this, I am refusing the freedom God offers me. God has seen the past, present and future, but He is living with us in the present. So often we allow our minds to wander to either the past filled, with regret or we get stuck on the future and what's happening next instead of missing out on the today. "This is the day that the Lord has made, I will rejoice and be glad in it." Psalm 118:24. So I am going to choose to live in the present, the today, breathing deeply, thanking my Savior for each breath, trusting He has a plan and He's watching out for me and I pray you do the same.

there and back again

Wow, it's hard to even begin to explain the past 7 months. God has exceeded my expectations over and over again. One of my favorite quotes is by C.S. Lewis;

"It would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.”

I have seen this ring true in my life so many times. We come up to the king's table, not even really sure if we are invited to dine with Him. So, we end up asking permission to eat the leftover crumbs on the ground when God is inviting us every day to dine with Him at the King's table and share a feast. We are so afraid of being disappointed, that we're afraid to hope. When our hope is founded in the person of Jesus, we will never be disappointed; we will never get to the end of His person. God is always giving us the invitation to go deeper to let go of ourselves and sign up for a life of adventure, but it always comes with a cost. There is always a level of risk involved and we must choose to accept the risk and overcome the fear if we are to live like Jesus.

After DTS, I had a chance to go to New Zealand for a couple weeks with Nele and take some time off to process and debrief the past 6 months. It was such a blessing, so beautiful and so much fun! I have been home for almost 2 weeks now. Life is always changing, always moving, like a river and we must choose to adjust and move with the change, or we will be swept away by the current. I am still in the process of trying to figure out how to make Discipleship Training School (DTS) a lifestyle and not an event, but I'm sure I'll be trying to figure that out for quite some time. I am currently in the process of praying over my next step and taking some time to rest and visit with family and friends again. I am looking into doing a Biblical Leadership School (BLS) with YWAM in Australia or New Zealand, which includes staffing the DTS and taking a few classes of my own.

Thanks again for all your love, support and prayers!

changes.

As most of you know, I'm not the best at change. I like to be familiar with people, surroundings and the schedule; I like to have everything in control. But if you look in the Bible, when does someone actually have their life under control? The Bible is pretty unexpected and full of change if you ask me. As I've gotten older, it seems like I've been put in more and more positions where I need to be okay with change; this is no exception.

On the last road trip, we traveled to 5 locations in 4 weeks. We started in Byron Bay, a hippie, backpacker town where we were able to talk with a couple from Belgium about God and help them with some physical needs they had. Everyone was so open to God in that town and it was so relaxed; it was great! Plus, we had a chance to go surfing at sunrise one day.

From there, we went to Fingal Heads, which is Aboriginal ground. We stayed at an Aboriginal church and led the service for them on Sunday. We also got to take a hike and see the actual Fingle Heads, which were pretty cool.

Then we traveled by car ferry over to Stradbroke Island for Spritual Warfare teaching and 'Survivor' games. The beach was beautiful and it was a great weeks for teams to address strengths and weaknesses. We also saw so much wildlife! We saw a koala, bald eagle, shark, sea turtles, dolphins and schools of fish. I got to pet and pick up the koala:)

We went from the Beach to the Bush once again and headed to a ranch in Toowoomba where we learned about missions for the week. The weather turned warm very quickly, but there was a mud swimming hole at the top of the hill we cooled off in almost every afternoon. It w

as great just to be out in nature alone with our school again. I had the privilege of spe

aking the sermon at a local church on Sunday afternoon. God moved so much throughout the service and we got to pray for people afterward.

Our last stop was Chinchilla where we did a week of outreach. We helped out in churches, schools, and did manual labor at the local Boy Scout Club House to help with repairs from the floods that hit Australia last year. While we were there, I got to hold someone's 9 month old Wallaby:) We also saw people healed of back pain!

We had a week to get ready for outreach; teams have been leaving over the past 3 days for various countries. Our team is the last to leave. Internet is not very prevelant in Vanuatu, so we've been having a difficult time communicating with the base there. We don't know exactly what we will be doing, but we will be helping out with kids ministry and church services. 2 days after arriving, we are going to go backpacking into a bush village for about 10 days.

I love that God does not change, that He is the same yesterday, today, and always; that truth gives me a place to rest in the midst of so much change. It's normally in times of immense change we grow most. If we refuse change, we refuse growth. Life is about change.

Thank you so much for all your love and support, you are so much a part of what God is doing here.

Pictures:

Top right: preaching in Toowoomba

Top left: date to the city with Nele

Bottom: team Vanuatu

growth.

As of this week, we are about half way through the DTS, it's hard to believe. I feel like so much has happened during my time here, so much growth.

Growth is such an odd thing. When you're growing, it's so difficult to see the changes on a day to day basis, especially inside yourself. Sometimes it's easy to point out growth in others, but when it comes to ourselves, we are blinded. In order to see growth, we usually need someone else to point it out or we can look way down the line at our old self and compare it to the self we see today. I love that only God has the power to make things grow. 1 Corinthians 3:7, "so neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God, who makes things grow." Growth seems to happen when we feel stuck, when we think we aren't learning anything or that God just forgot about us. Normally, those are the times we seem to grow most...funny how life works like that:)

So today, as I look back on the garden that was planted 3 months ago, I'm presently surprised by the growth of the plants. In the beginning, it was only a bed of dirt, waiting to be cultivated and planted, now there is so much fruit, so much goodness coming from it. As I look back on my own journey over the last 3 months, I see growth, even though it was difficult to spot on a daily basis, people have helped point it out to me. I am beginning to see the fruit of what God was doing, even when I didn't feel like anything was happening and He had forgotten that I still needed to grow. Paul says in Philippians 1:6 "...being confident of this, that He who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus." I celebrate the growth today, but I'm also confident there is more to come and Jesus is not finished with me or you:)

Do you see growth in your own life? Is there someone you have seen grow recently who you can encourage and point it out to them?

it's not about me.

It's been so good to be on base for the past 3 weeks, I feel like I've been able to get into some sort of routine, if that's even possible in YWAM:) God continues to teach and grow us in some amazing ways, I love that He just wants us to know Him and that He will continue to reveal more and more of Himself. It exciting to me that God's character will never disappoint. We will never be able to get to the end of God and think 'that's it?' God is full of mysteries and surprises and I love that about Him. Who wants to serve a god that we could understand and wrap our minds around? No me:)

Last week, we had teaching on Lordship. The week was pretty intense to say the least, but so good. Our team was so hungry for God, so hungry for more of Him. We spent the week discussing what it looks like to make God Lord of your life. 2 Corinthians 5:14 says, "..those who live should no longer live for themselves, but for him who died for them and was raised again."

On Friday, we had a ministry day and worshiped God from 8:30am-11:30pm. We spent the day going through the Tabernacle, declaring who God is, confessing, giving, praying, anointing, and sharing communion together. The day was not about receiving, but about giving of ourselves for each other and ultimately, for the sake of the nations. In our western way of thinking, it's easy to get wrapped up in the mentality that God is a God for individuals. He does care about individuals, be His concern is for the masses, His perspective is for the nations, not just me.

This past week was about relationships. I loved the quote by C.S. Lewis:

"Love is not an affectionate feeling, but a steady wish for the loved person's ultimate good."

There are so many broken marriages in society today. People think they can fall in and out of love, but love is not a feeling, it's a choice. It's a choice we must make at every moment of every day, not only in romantic relationships, but in every interaction.

"Every act toward other human beings is either a sacred or profane act. It either treats them with dignity or it dehumanizes them. We have no other choice."-Duane Elmer

The picture is of a Bottle Tree, probably one of the coolest species of trees in the country:) Thanks for your continued love and support, I appreciate each of you!

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