Easter and Outreach!

We had a wonderful Easter celebration family dinner last night! We got dressed up and all celebrated Easter together before the seven outreach teams head out to different towns for our first outreach. Enjoying every moment here!


I got my flight changed and have confirmed to staff Youth Adventures! The way it worked out, I have a week of free time in Australia after staffing Youth Adventures, so me and my best friend Kwai Ying are going to go spend a weekend somewhere cool before coming home! My new return date is July 11.


Anyways, outreach starts tomorrow! Very excited!

This is Tori! She is on staff in the accounts office. She is 19 from Connecticut. She's a one of a kind vibrant person, and I absolutely love her. There's just some people you know you will love forever, and she is one of them. Couldn't be more blessed... she is sure to bring me a laugh every day, and she's the most thoughtful and generous person ever. #kaytortime 

I've loved this girl from the beginning. She's wild, she's honest, and she's incredibly silly. I love spending time with her, being crazy, and laughing like crazy. So fun to be dressed up for the night! Happy Easter!
#loveher

Just a picture from a walk to the mall. I love my life. I love my home.
#isthisreallife

One of the besties. This girl has been a faithful friend since the day I met her. She supports me in everything and loves me better than I love myself. She's more than I could ever ask for, and more than I ever imagined finding here at YWAM.
#kaylakwaiyingtime

Hales and Tor... I have way too much fun with these two and I'm going to miss them the next three weeks as Outreach happens!
#lovethem

This is our school leader! Up camping we made her promise to spend a whole 20 minutes in room 7. She reluctantly agreed, and despite the sad face, she knows she loved it. We call her Momma Nomes and she is the most amazing school leader we could ever ask for.
#room7 #weloveNomes

Goodbye faithful blog followers- I am off to Outreach. Cairns, here we come!!!!

Back from the Bush!

We are home. Camping was absolutely amazing. I have a hectic week ahead... we leave for our Cairns outreach on saturday... so basically laundry, homework, and transitions are going to takeover my week. So sorry if this blog is a little shorter than normal- although many of you will probably be thankful for that ;)

I will include a bunch of pictures to make up for my lack of words.
But just for a little blurb of the two weeks...
I loved being in God's beautifully created nature. The Aussie bush is peaceful, scary at times, and always absolutely beautiful. There were however, lots of bugs and our sewage overflowed two days in.  It got a bit stinky around our tents at times...but it was totally worth it! On a big highlight I was baptized as a "confirmation" of my baptism when I was 14. After spending a couple of years so far from God, it was such a great feeling to acknowledge Him again in my life, and confirm that decision I made to profess my faith in Him when I was 14. The second week of lectures our staff shared their testimonies- this was really cool because we got to know a lot more about who the people are that we spend so much time with! I think my most favorite part of camping though was seeing this school become a family. We really do all love eachother and it's amazing! Okay, as you can see my thoughts are scattered and my words aren't flowing as well as they usually do...so I'm just gonna give you some pictures and call it a night.

Love and miss all of you dearly. This won't be made 100% for sure until the end of this week... but I'm actually not coming home as soon as I had planned... I feel like God is calling me to staff a Youth Adventure(more information on that once it's confirmed) but I will probably be staying in Australia for an extra two or three weeks. So instead of see ya in June, it's gonna be July. God is good.

Two toilets and one shower for 80 girls!

Water Supply

Our main swimming spot!

People just take their chairs and have quiet time!

Now that's what I call a grasshopper!

Momma Nomes! This is our school leader, and she is the funniest, most amazing, loving and caring person ever. RTO DTS is so blessed to be led by such a special individual. I heart her!

getting roasted everyday.

This is Kim! She is the leader of the NFS DTS. She's like your best friend's mother. Because NFS is RTO's best friend. If that makes sense... if it doesn't, well then, forget it, she's just this other amazing, kind and patient woman that does a great job loving all of us crazy students! And a plus- she's a softball player and we got to play catch!

On the left of me is Britt. Kwai Ying and I shared way too many laughs with this girl these past two weeks. She has been here staffing at YWAM for like 2 years(or something like that, we have this joke because I've seriously asked her like a million times and always forget), anyways she's like 21(or something like that) and she is an amazing leader and such a fun person to be  around!

After baptisms! Me and Mel(in black) confirmed our baptisms!

Confirming my baptism, with my best friend here, my 1o1 Lea, Mark Parker- the speaker, and Momma Nomes/Kim our school leaders!

In case you didn't know- we pray like a family! Because we ARE a family!

hardcore girl hiking

Wild Child

tent with a view

Fire blower

this girl...

blocking the smell of sewage, and loving life at the same time!

Mel- my outreach leader! Spent so much time getting to know her during camping- and she is absolutely great! Talk about a good time...

A little hut that we found!

To the Outback we go!

It is currently 79 degrees and pouring in Townsville! We have had some amazing storms in the last week, you really haven't seen a thunder/lightening storm till you've seen it here! It's quite a bit gnarlier than California! And I love it! Things are going really well. This week we spent a lot of time packing and cleaning to prepare to head to the Outback to go camping for two weeks! I am super excited for this...it's one of the highlight to doing DTS here at Townsville. For your information- I will not have phone, internet, etc. until March 23rd(when we return from the outback into civilization)! 

Okay, now for the exciting stuff! As students, we believe God has called us to be here at this time in our lives, but with that comes the stress of leaving our schools, jobs, families and a financial commitment that for most of us is out of our comfort zone. As of monday, the four schools, Reef to Outback DTS, Not for Sale DTS, Bible Core Course, and the Intro to Primary Healthcare needed $118,000 to come in for all of the teams we are sending out. By Wednesday we had seen about $30,000 come in, in two days. On Wednesday night we had a giving night...basically the students and staff of all four schools came together...the students who still needed significant amounts stood up front and other staff/students could donate money. For the most part, no one here has lots of money, but we rely on the support of people around us to partner with us and send us out. So it was incredible that by the end of the night- we had raised $20,000 for those students. For RTO specifically we still need to see about $35,000 come in ASAP. But God has already been extremely faithful to us in finances and we have no doubt that he will continue to provide. There were so many cool testimonies of how God has used finances to bless us- and I'd love to share two stories!

First of all, on wednesday night I felt led to pray for a certain person regarding finances for her and just encouragement in her being where God has called her. She still owed $2900 for her outreach... not more than a couple of minutes after we finished praying a donation came in for her of $2900. It was such an awesome and encouraging moment of God's faithfulness to us. 

Second of all, at the beginning of this week I thought I owed about $400 more for outreach. Tuesday I found out that I actually owed $760. I had posted in facebook that I needed to raise $400- so when I found out I was a bit worried. But as of this afternoon I have had $775 come in this week and am officially fully funded. In addition, team PNG is, I believe the first of nine teams to be fully funded as a team- assuming everyone's pledges come through! This is so exciting. We are so encouraged that God is with us, God is for us, and that he has prepared the way for this outreach!

Thank you all so much for praying and being faithful! I am so blessed to be supported by so many different people. Below are some pictures for you to check out about some random moments of my journey lately!

God Bless! 

Just a typical day at YWAM! These are two staff from my school! The girl, Mel, is staffing my outreach team!

This past saturday we played "Minute to Win It" at Youth Street. They needed an assistant for the gameshow...so I got to dress up and walk across the stage with the sign! So fun!

Also in Youth Street last week, we participated in "Clean Up Australia Day" and took youth around the town to pick up trash! So cool to see young people rallying in their town to make a difference- and having fun doing it! This is a picture of the staff of the park team. Me, Tori and Haley!

Me and Kwai Ying! We have sunday's off and we typically spend it at the "rock pool".  The rock pool is a manmade swimming hole filled with ocean water right beside the ocean... no sand and keeps the stingers out! They found a croc in it last week though... 

Coffee and a Giants sweatshirt- perfect monday morning in lectures!

I live here! Is this real life? Because I'm feeling so blessed! There's a lot of hard work, reading, studying, emotions etc to go through, and there's nothing like sundays to rest and relax after a full week!

The view at the top of Castle Hill... such a nice, steep hike!

Proof that it's not all fun and games! We do homework!

We make ourselves at home in lectures, because WE ARE AT HOME!

Packing up our rooms to go camping in the outback. We tend to make everything fun!

A group of us getting ready for lectures!

During lectures, learning the history of missions with Richard from YWAM Perth! He was AMAZING and so inspiring!