Acceptance

This morning was terrible. I was angry at the speakers for everything they've been teaching and the way they do things. I didn't even want to worship or listen to lecture. But then I really got to thinking and praying about it. God's really been teaching me that it's okay for them to do things the way that they're doing them. We're all human and none of us has all the truth. So one denomination is not in any way better than another. We're all equally sinful. This doesn't mean that I'm comfortable doing the things that they do yet, but at least I can let them do what they do and know that we all love Jesus. We all serve the same God. We all believe that He is the only way. I don't have to be angry at them for silly little things they do. Who cares if they worship an entirely different way than I do? I can just accept the way they do things. They are no worse than I am for the things that they do. No one has all knowledge except God.
Sorry for my whole rant yesterday. This has been a crazy week. It's been all up and down and just plain tough. But I've learned so much. It's good to challenge what I actually believe. It's been hard and I'm exhausted from it, but it's still great. I love having to actually think about what I'm learning. I mean, I did that to some point back home, but here it's completely different. I love that it's not a huge deal if I don't believe what everyone else does. God still loves me. And about that - God loves me. It's crazy to think that the creator of the entire universe, as big as that is (watch that video I posted a few posts back. honestly. do it.), loves little me. He loves me enough to write my entire DNA code. It would take 96 years to read one person's code. Isn't that ridiculous? Just think about that for a while. He loves you. So much. And really. Watch the video.
On a lighter note, there is a crazy cockroach that lives in our room. It just came out again but went into the cupboards somewhere. All of us are too scared to kill it cause it's so huge, but it moves too fast to get someone else to kill it for us. It's probably like 2 inches long plus the antenna. Ew. At least they don't bite or anything. But I'm pretty sure we need to find ourselves a gecko. Or 10.

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It's Offficial!

I'm going to Haiti!!
Just got back from ice cream sundaes, dance party, and finding out our teams! It's going to be the best! I'm so excited!

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Charismatic craziness

Sorry I'm such a terrible blogger. Like I said before, our schedule here is crazy! But I will try to do better.

We found out our outreach location options on Friday. I'll either be going to India, Mexico, The Philippines, or Haiti and Dominican Republic! I'll know for sure tonight. I'm so excited to find out! I have a pretty good idea of where I'll be going, but nothing's final yet.

On Saturday, we went on a photo excursion to a bunch of different places. We got to go to a beach, the painted church, a coffee plantation, and a pink hotel. It was pretty fun, but way more rushed than I would have liked. We just moved around from place to place and didn't get much time to relax anywhere.

This super charismatic thing is really starting to weird me out. This week is corporate week, which means all the DTS classes meet together from 8-12 every morning. It's all about making Jesus Lord of your life. We do a lot of worship which I normally love, but this week is just weird. The lady that leads it seems like she's just putting on a show the whole time and repeats stuff over and over and over. It's super annoying and I don't think biblical at all. She was saying this morning how our enemies are God's enemies and He will make our enemies obey Him. It just doesn't seem right to me. The guy who's speaking is really into prophesy and all that too. He prays the same way that the worship leader worships. He'll say things over and over and over again. Like a ridiculous amount. And it also just seems like a show for him too. Like "look at me and see how prophetic I am and how well I can pray for people". Also, yesterday during worship we were singing about the Holy Spirit and how we wanted him to come in to us. Isn't the Holy Spirit already in us if we're Christians. Then after that song people started having fits and screaming super loud. Like somebody was dying screaming. Some people were gagging and having seizures and all this ridiculous stuff. How is that even pleasing to God? I just don't get it. I know that they may be in a different culture or whatever, but all this stuff is just so out there. Hearing from God isn't even an issue compared to this. I'm definitely going to have to study and pray a lot more about this.

I'm really excited for tonight! I'll let you know as soon as I can where I'm going.

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Is that really you, God?

On registration day, everyone was given a book, Is That Really You, God? It turned out a lot different than I thought it would and what it sounds like. It’s basically Loren Cunningham’s – the founder of YWAM – life story up until the founding of University of the Nations. It was pretty interesting to learn the story of how this all came to be and how everyone involved really had to lean on God and listen and obey His voice.

Loren’s story begins even before he was born, with his family. Loren’s grandfather listened to God’s calling to go into ministry preaching shortly after his wife died of smallpox. This hurt his daughters and caused a lot of hurt between the girls and the rest of the family. Loren’s father was also called into ministry, and eventually so was Loren himself. The whole family was very in tune with God’s voice, from small things like where they put the milk money to huge things like whether or not their Dad was going to die.

Loren was first called to preach at the young age of thirteen and preached his first sermon that same year. He received a vision that would eventually lead to the formation of YWAM and University of the Nations on a trip to the Bahamas when he was 20. It was a vision of waves of young people going into every country in the world. He and his wife, Darlene, followed God’s direction throughout their life in its many trials and waiting periods. Slowly, YWAM began to form, with young people going into various countries. Loren and Darlene felt like God was leading them to more than just that though. They felt God calling them to start a school to train young people to be missionaries and then later buy a ship to use to minister to countries in need of help. These two things eventually ended up being started around the same time after many years of hard work and learning valuable lessons from God, such as giving credit to Him for His provision, not worshipping the item He has given to you.

It was interesting to read this book and learn all the beginnings of YWAM and everything they all went through to make this all possible for all of us. There were a few things that I don’t necessarily agree with and a lot of things that are going to take a while for me to be comfortable with, but I’m glad I know more about the beginnings of this school.

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My brain is exploding.

Last night was crazy! I've been trying to become more comfortable with all this hearing God's voice and prophesy and stuff, so last night we had the option to go on a "treasure hunt". Basically, you go out around town and ask God to show you people to talk to or to give you words for them or whatever. It was definitely a lot different than anything I've ever done. We talked to a guy from Oregon who wanted to sell us some weed, a guy with some emotional problem (we think he was skitzophrenic) and a service dog, and a girl who was depressed and was praying for someone to talk to her. I experienced people speaking in tongues for the first time, which has been raising a lot of questions and people are trying to tell me that everyone can speak in tongues, but that doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me. The point of spiritual gifts is that everyone has a different one and then they serve each other. So it just doesn't make sense that everyone would have one. I don't know. I'm going to study some more on it.
We've been studying the nature and character of God this week. Today we talked about how God is so great, more than we can even comprehend. We are so small and insignificant in this universe, but He still cares for each of us individually. Isn't that crazy. Just think about it for a minute. It's amazing. If you want to watch the video we watched, click here. It's part 1 of a series, but if you watch it, watch until the end. It's just amazing to think about the universe God created.
My work duty got switched today. I was cleaning the classroom with two other girls, but it was only taking us half an hour every day while everyone else's work duties take 2 hours, so they switched me to the office. It took us 20 minutes today. So, I'm not quite sure what the point was, but okay. Maybe different days will be different. We're taking care of orders people place on the photogenx website and answering emails and stuff. It should be fun.
I'm learning so much and we barely have any time to process what we're learning, so it's a little overwhelming, but still great. I love learning and thinking and having homework to do again. Is that weird? Probably.

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Whoa, Dude. Mr. Turtle is my Father.

Meet Tim. Some guy we met at the beach found him and he was a little upset when the guy tried to pick him up (which is illegal). So Sharon and I just hung out with him for a bit and watched him swim around. Amazing how many animals live here!

Classes are great! We have a different topic each week and this week it was hearing and obeying God's voice. It's something that I've never really put a whole lot of thought into. YWAM is super charismatic, which I knew, but I guess I just wasn't prepared to jump into it so quickly. I've never experience anything like it. People actually hear God's voice. The more I think about it, it seems okay and pretty biblical, but I'm really just not used to it. Or prophesy. It's crazy. It's hard to explain my feelings about the whole thing. I think it will take some getting used to.

Worship is really charismatic too. I'm used to people just singing and maybe raising their hands when they're really into it, but people here dance and shake and all this stuff. It's a little weird, but more freeing. I love seeing people really meaning what they're saying and just on fire for God. I'm definitely not used to doing it myself yet. I'll dance a little, but that's about as far as I'll go. Maybe I'm just really aware of people around me.

We all have work duties every day. It's scheduled from 3-5 but mine never takes that long. I clean our classroom (sweep, mop, dust, empty garbages, etc.) with two other girls and it usually only takes us around half an hour. I kind of feel bad, but then again really thankful for the extra time to just rest for a while.

The food has gotten a bit better. It's all loaded with preservatives which isn't the greatest, but we've been having more rice and plain meat. There are a lot of Koreans here so we have asian food pretty often, which is usually okay to eat. I found a health food store which makes me relieved. I didn't think they would have anything. Obviously, it's crazy expensive, but I'm glad it's there just in case.

Some of the lectures from class are available online if you're interested in what I'm learning. Click here if you want to.

I'll work on getting some more pictures up soon.

Let me know if there's anything I'm forgetting to tell you or anything you're curious about.

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Human Trafficking

We've been learning a lot in class about human trafficking this week. The Sex + Money team is here and they've been showing us videos from the documentary they're making. They are so heartbreaking and terrible. We're supposed to do some research on the industry so I figured I would just stick it on here as well and let you all learn about it.

14,500 - 17,500 foreign people are trafficked into the U.S. every year. The number within the U.S. is even higher than that. There are an estimated 300,000 American children at risk every year for commercial sexual exploitation. 300,000!! What a crazy number. 600,000 - 800,000 people are bought and sold across international borders every year, half are children and most are female. Most of these people are forced into the commercial sex trade. The average age a child enters prostitution is 12.

I thought it would be interesting to see what slavery looks like in Seattle, so I did a little research on that as well. The FBI did a study last year, showing that Seattle is the number one spot for child prostitution. This breaks my heart. I can't even comprehend that my hometown is the one place where it is the worst in the country. You can look at the places in where things like this have been reported at slaverymap.org.

Please be praying for the whole situation. It's such a disgusting thing that is happening all over the place. Want to help? The Sex+Money people are trying to create a network to bring unity to those fighting modern day slavery. Pepsi is giving away $50,000 for the Pepsi refresh project, but the money only goes to the idea with the most votes. Would you please consider taking 30 seconds out of your day to help this cause? It's super easy. Just go here. You can sign in with your facebook account. Easiest thing ever that will help so tremendously. It's already moved up one spot today just from our DTS voting. You can come back and vote every day too! Please please please help them out. I would also encourage you to take a look at the videos from Sex+Money. They're so impacting. Here's the first webisode.

Love you guys. Sorry I'm not the best at keeping this thing up. We have the craziest schedule ever and honestly the only good chunk of free time we have on weekdays is between 8:30 p.m. and 6:30 a.m. It's so busy but I love it.

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Gorgeousness.

I'm loving it here so much! It's so beautiful, the people are great, and it's just such an awesome experience so far.

We had a luau on Friday night after a whole bunch of boring orientation stuff. So much fun! They dance beautifully and we had this whole ceremony for all the people of all the different countries. They had flags representing all the nations of the students here and it was amazing to see how many people from different countries there are! There are so many Koreans here. They always have a translator for them which makes everything twice as long, but it's cool. I obviously didn't have a very good view of the dancers. Sorry.

On Saturday, everyone from photogenX went to the beach. It was so gorgeous. I put on a bunch of sunscreen, but the sun is sooo strong here. I have a pretty bad sunburn right now from that. A lot of people do. You literally have to put on sunscreen every hour or so if you're out in the sun all day. It's crazy. I still love it though.

A bunch of us went to church this morning. It was called Living Stone Church, and it was sooo gorgeous. It was half indoor, half outdoor, and right on the ocean. There were a couple huge trees, so there was shade, but also more sunny areas for those that wanted sun. I sat inside because of the sunburn. It was a pretty good service until toward the end. They started praying for people, but it was more of a "God's telling me that someone with lower back pain/arthritis/asthma etc. is going to be healed today". It was a little weird and I'm not quite sure what I think about it yet. I've never experienced anything like that in church so it was just a little weird. There are a lot of churches around though, so I'm planning on trying out a bunch.

My room is so great which is such a blessing. We're all really laid back and easy going. There are 7 of us: Sharon from South Korea, Connie from Germany, Vanessa from Oahu, Alyssa from Tucson, Christina from Brazil, and Caroline who was originally from Korea but moved to Georgia. They're all super sweet and so fun to hang out with. I'm so relieved that we all get along. I'm sure it will get a little crazy in here with 7 girls living in such a small space, but it helps so much that we all love Jesus and that brings us together. It's amazing how I already have a connection to all these people just because we all love Jesus so much. It's crazy but I love it!

The food will be a big issue for me I think. We have a lot of pasta and bread, so I've just been eating salad and that's obviously not going to keep me going for long. Food here is so expensive! It's $5.50 for a gallon of milk! I think I'll at least go buy some meat and cheese so I can at least have some protein. Maybe something to make the salads more exciting. Right now its just lettuce and dressing and sometimes corn or cucumbers, but that's it.

Classes start tomorrow and I'm so excited to actually start. I feel like I have no idea what's happening and once everything gets going it'll be so much better. I'm super excited to learn again too! It's been so long since I've been in school. The schedule here is crazy. I'm basically going to be going from 6:30 a.m. - 8:30 p.m. with a tiny bit of free time in between. I think it will be so much fun though and a super great experience. Can't wait for what's coming!!

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Aloha, my happy west coast friends.

Just arrived in Kona today! It's so beautiful, but a lot more humid than I thought it would be. There are birds and flowers everywhere and it's just so gorgeous!

My flight was so great. There were three girls going to school here in the row in front of me, and then the guy next to them didn't want a window seat so he traded with me and we all ended up sitting together, which was fun. I'm usually so scared of flying. Like I usually hold Kirsten's hand and squeeze until she can't even feel anymore. But this time it was so easy. Even when there was turbulence I wasn't that worried at all, which is so strange for me.

Registration was crazy. They aren't the most organized bunch of people here so it was a little confusing, but still fun to meet everyone. It's super overwhelming trying to remember everyone's names and everything. We went to Walmart and Starbucks after dinner tonight. It's 1 1/2 miles to the walmart which isn't bad at all, but in flip flops it's not too comfy. I'm so looking forward to sleeping and getting started with everything tomorrow!

The beginning is near.

For more information click here.

This weekend was so great! Tea party, friday night movie, party late into the night playing quelf, seattle with the family, gelato, baptisms, painting eggs, shopping with my mommy at creepy antique malls, and basically just having a ton of fun. It was such a great way to spend my last weekend home.

I'm so ready to go. I'm packing tomorrow. Should be fun. Hopefully I don't get too distracted.

7 days!

1 week until I leave! It's so weird how it came up so fast. These past few weeks have been such a blessing. I've gotten to spend some time with people I haven't seen in a long time and I've gotten a few big jobs which is so exciting!! In the past week, I've raised over $1200. Crazy, right? God works in amazing ways.

I'm so ready to leave right now, but it's so weird. I'm going to miss it here, but I know there are amazing things waiting for me in Kona. Kind of a mixed emotion about leaving. I'm so ready to get out of my parent's house and start my own life, but I always thought I would stay close to home. I think the weirdest part will be not being able to see certain people all the time. Mostly Kirsten and Anna. They have become a part of my everyday life and we just understand each other so well that I think I'll really miss just hanging out. Thank God for Skype.

Please pray for me as I'm getting ready to leave. The goodbyes are going to be hard. I'm also really nervous I'm going to pack too much or the wrong things or completely forget something really important or something. Honestly, everything about this is hard. It's going to be so great though. I just know it.

Beyond the Sea

About

A selection of stories from my crazy missionary life.

.

Acceptance

It's Offficial!

Charismatic craziness

Is that really you, God?

My brain is exploding.

Whoa, Dude. Mr. Turtle is my Father.

Human Trafficking

Gorgeousness.

Aloha, my happy west coast friends.

The beginning is near.

7 days!

Beyond the Sea

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