Oh I totally forgot to say that on Sundays we break up into groups and go to different churches around the north side of the island. I got put in the church that we actually go to for worship on Monday and Friday mornings in Haiku (about a 5 min drive). I got assigned to help with Pre-Schoolers! So fun yet so crazy! I will have more stories from there after this Sunday because last Sunday was my first day. But I did get slapped by a troubled foster kid :( it's okay though, I love him anyways. Please pray for him and his brother and 2 sisters who are all foster kids too (they are not related, just have the same foster parents). It is really obvious that they were raised in a rough environment, the youngest one is a sweet little 4 year old girl and she is JUST learning how to talk. It broke my heart. Her name is Jaysia, please pray for her. Thanks guys.

OH and I heard a little more about Borneo...

1) I will not be able to contact anyone back home while I am gone.

2)Dog is a delicacy there and you can't say "no" when offered food...

3)There are spiders that eat birds...imagine the size of them...

4)I will be bathing and washing my clothes in brown rivers

5)I will get to be ministering to kids ALL DAY LONG and doing church services at night, which includes doing worship AND giving sermons!

I AM SOOO EXCITED!!!! Seriously, I don't even care about the dog and spiders and river bathing, BRING IT ON! I love my team and my leaders and I can't wait to tell the love story of my life (Jesus DUH) ha love you guys.

This is where I live...

This is Baby Beach:) so blue, so lovely.

My triple bunk bed! I am in the middle, a lot of the girls on the bottom have had rats and roaches crawling on their bed and all over them...

This is our lecture room but this was taken after lunch was served, usually that table is covered in loads of expired food:)

This is our beautiful main house! That is actually our room, it is so bright in the morning but during the week we get up before the sun...

SoOoOo...It has been a pretty intense week...I am starting to think most of my weeks will be intense here! The theme of our lecture was Bible Overview...yes, we went over the Bible in a week! It blew me away though. It's hard to write about it but to sum it up very briefly I would say that the main theme of the Bible is Redemption. In Genesis 12 God promised Abraham that He will 1)Bless him personally 2)Bless His descendants and 3)Bless the whole world(JESUS!) So the whole Bible is basically all the people screwing up ALL THE TIME and God forgiving them and fulfilling His promise. It's full of prophesies of Jesus' first coming and it was just incredible to read them and see them come true in the New Testament.

This week just lit a fire in me to really dig into the Word and know it. It's funny because on Monday morning before lecture started I wrote a little note to God in my quiet time asking him to give me more of a desire to read my bible and appreciate it more! He loves me so much and it makes me smile a lot.

Things have been great, I just need to raise a lot of money for outreach still and today I wanted to print out my support letters which I really don't want to send out because I feel weird asking for more money but they told me I would have to print them over the weekend or on Monday...so just pray for me please that I could raise some money because my parents have already done waaayyy to much (I know you two are reading this!) and a lot of people here raised ALL their money. I am so thankful though for the donations I received already though. It is an inspiring thing when people give from their hearts and obey the Lord:)

Oh someone just asked if I could help lead worship on Monday morning!!! YAY I am so excited!!! Pray for me for that too, I don't want to make worship about anything other than Jesus and sometimes that is hard.

Thanks for reading my blog and praying for me, it means so much. Love you all!

TEAM BORNEO!

This is my team! We will be doing our outreach in Indonesia! More specifically, Borneo and possibly Malasyia and Brunei. I am so excited that God placed me in this team, I couldn't ask for better leaders and team mates. So from the right in the back row is Ashley (my girl leader) from Colorado, Helene from Norway, Gabe from South Carolina, Jen from Canada, Lucas from Switzerland, Alyssa(purple scarf) from Canada, Natasha from South Carolina, Justin from California, Sam (guy leader) from Colorado, then me and Jenny from California. Please keep us in your prayers, I gave you all of our names so if you wanted you could pray for each one of us individually:) and pray for the people we will be reaching out to in Indo, for God to prepare their hearts. Thanks so much.

Everything has been great so far. This week was amazing. We learned about hearing the voice of God, intense but so incredible. I guess what I really learned was how to quiet my thoughts, submit my mind, soul, heart, and body to the Holy Spirit and just be still so that God can speak to me. And He did!!! He speaks to me through nature, animals more specifically...sounds odd but He is Almighty! Just this afternoon while I was swimming in the ocean on the south side of the island, I heard the whales! I didn't believe that it was actually whales, but I asked the locals and the people who have been with YWAM maui for a while and they said it's def the whales! So incredible.

The main thing God has shown me though is how much He loves me. I am his precious jewel, his gem, he called me Gemmy during my quiet time which makes me laugh:) Finally, I am falling in love with Jesus and my heart is exploding with joy.

If you are reading this and thinking I am crazy, it's okay because I know what is real, and this love is soooo real.

Miss you and love you all!

PICTURES!

This was our first good view of the ocean:)

Our human pyramid with a stranger

Me hitch hiking:)

Our view from the campsite (that's my friend Shanda)

The view from the hike!

This is what happens on Exodus.

Hey everyone! I am sitting here in my awesome new house in Maui! Well, it's not my house but it feels like home already:) I guess I will try to do a quick run through of my first few days here...

First Night- After an unnecessarily long flight, two of my four DTS leaders (Sam and Ashley) picked me up from the airport in Kahalui (Kah-ha-lou-ey). I was so nervous when I was walking to the baggage claim but the second I saw them I instantly new they were YWAMers, I don't know how, but I felt so welcomed and not awkward or uncomfortable like I thought I would be. When they took me back to the base (where I live) in a little red toyota named "Old Spice" I was already laughing and joking with them and a fellow student. Everyone at the house was so welcoming too. My bedroom sleeps 18, but we only have 12 girls so it's not bad at all. I am on the middle of a triple bunk bed but no one is above me. The house is beautiful and open and everything I always wanted in a house.

So the next days we really didn't have anything planned so us girls wanted to spend our time at the beach and exploring the town we live near; Paia. We walked about a 1/2 mile to a main road and then hitch hiked into town. I know most of you just re read that line or gasped or something, but trust me, it is completely normal AND legal to do here, and no matter what you say I will keep doing it. I felt completely safe and protected by the Lord. SO CHILL OUT MOMS. Paia is a cute little town filled with tourists and hippies. I LOVE IT. The beach is beautiful of course and the waves are very tiring to swim in.

On Sunday night we had our Opening Night Ceremony where we were introduced to the staff and we were given our school verse.

1 Peter 2:4-5 ⁴As you come to him, the living Stone—rejected by men but chosen by God and precious to him— ⁵you also, like living stones, are being built into a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood, offering spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.

Then they told us we were leaving at 6am to go on "EXODUS". They told us we could bring only one shirt and one sweatshirt (so if you were wearing them thats it), 3 pairs of underwear, one pair of socks, one pair of sneakers and one pair of flops, a sleeping bag, your bible and a journal and pen. Notice I didn't say pillow, toothbrush or tooth paste, face wash, soap, etc.

We started off EXODUS splitting into 4 groups of 5 or 6 people. We had to do a scavenger hunt throughout Paia, Kahalui, and into Ioa Valley. We had four hours to complete a huge list of random things to take our picture in front of or collect. My favorite was to build a human pyramid with a stranger and have someone take a picture of it. Now remember, we didn't have a car or any of the leaders who know the island so we were left to figure out everything on our own. SO THANK GOD FOR HITCHING!

By the time we got to the GORGEOUS Ioa Valley, I was already thinking of going back to base and sleeping, I was exhausted and my new hiking shoes gave me blood blisters ( I just needed to break them in) We met back up with our leaders, had a packed lunch and headed off to our campsite.

Our leaders, Ashley, Maria, Sam and Tim are AMAZING. But they couldn't find our camp site, we kept driving up and down a winding mountain road with no air conditioning in 2 huge green vans named "Hulk" and "Gumby". Finally we found it, set up tents, dug out holes for toilets and gathered fire wood. We made Ramen noodles for dinner, chicken flavor. Sam led us in worship and then we shared testimonies. Awesome night. Oh did I mention the absolute beauty of our camp site? We were on top of a 50 foot cliff looking over the blue blue ocean. And yes, it's whale season, and yes we saw tons of whales:)

The next morning we had plain oats for breakfast. We had an hour of quiet time which was my best quiet time I have ever had in my life. (quiet time is just me and God chillin and talking) then we left camp, but our leaders wouldn't say what for. (they also wouldn't tell us when EXODUS was going to end) We had chicken ramen for lunch.

We hiked up a big steep mountain. It was 2.5 miles up and 2.5 miles back down. Most beautiful hike ever, not like a hike a lot. But I did really good, I had a good pace for a beginner so I am proud of myself:) I got mud thrown at my ear and then someone took a handful and rubbed in down the front and back of my shirt. Meh.

When we got back we ate, guess what? RAMEN! ugghh. so sick of it. And Sam told us funny stories from his outreach. We played a trivia game of just info on individuals in our group and apparently I have an amazing memory. Helene (a girl from Norway who I adore) kept calling me Hermoine because I was answering all the questions. We got mints and floss as prizes. Our leaders surprised us with s'mores and hot chocolate afterwards. I've never been more thankful for chocolate.

The next morning we had oats with left over hot chocolate mix, so good. Awesome quiet time again, I hear God so much clearer when I don't have the busy world around me. We did worship and then we were led out to an open spot about 3 min from our camp site. We sat in a big circle and played "Drip Drip Drop", a YWAM created game similar to "Duck Duck Goose" but the Dripper has a pitcher of sea water mixed with mud and just drips on your head or drops the whole thing. If it's dropped on your head you run around the circle, chasing them. Yeah. Messy. I got dropped on twice. BUT THEN. The staff brought out big pots of disgusting smelling stuff. One was water and flour mixed together. One was water and mud. And one was left over ramen noodles, oatmeal, baby food, and rotten eggs. Guess what we did with it? Had a huge war. I've never been so dirty in my life. But it was the most fun I had in so long. We all smelled like vomit, and one boy even vomited after seeing the mixture of disgustingness. Then we were rushed back to camp and told we had to clean up very quickly and we were getting kicked off the camp site so we couldn't go wash off in the river. We piled into "Hulk" and "Gumby" and drove to "another campsite". We got to a church where we could "wash off" but when we walked in all the YWAM Maui staff were there clapping:) IT WAS OVER! We had a huge dinner yummy shrimp and steak and tons of ice cream sundaes! We had amazing worship and fellowship too. I came home, wow I am already calling it home, and showered and now I am here sitting with my good friend Alyssa, or "Flem" journaling everything. We both want to remember this.

So if you have read this far I just want to say what I got out of the weekend. The two verses that God put on my heart were Ephesians 3:16-19¹⁶I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, ¹⁷so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, ¹⁸may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, ¹⁹and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.

And also Ezekiel 17:22-24²² " 'This is what the Sovereign LORD says: I myself will take a shoot from the very top of a cedar and plant it; I will break off a tender sprig from its topmost shoots and plant it on a high and lofty mountain. ²³ On the mountain heights of Israel I will plant it; it will produce branches and bear fruit and become a splendid cedar. Birds of every kind will nest in it; they will find shelter in the shade of its branches. ²⁴ All the trees of the field will know that I the LORD bring down the tall tree and make the low tree grow tall. I dry up the green tree and make the dry tree flourish.

Since I have written so much already I will just say, I have come out of this experienced very humbled. I feel so blessed for the opportunity God has given me and the love I am experiencing. I feel so different, in a good way, like I don't want to sweat the little things anymore, and I want to make more time for God and less time for me. I have been told this over and over again but I really experienced a rugged life only for 3 days but it was enough to affect me.

So thanks for reading this, it probably took you a long time, but I really don't want to be on my phone or online much while I am here so this is my way of telling all of you what is going on here. Thanks for supporting me and please keep me in your prayers, lecture starts tomorrow at 9am!

My First Post

Hello Friends:)

I promised I would make a blog for anyone to read up on my adventures in Maui/Southeast Asia so here it is!

I really don't have much to say now other than thank you so much for all the prayers and support. I wouldn't be able to do this without any of you!

I will update when I get to Maui on Thursday.

^{Philippians 4:8 -9}Summing it all up, friends, I'd say you'll do best by filling your minds and meditating on things true, noble, reputable, authentic, compelling, gracious—the best, not the worst; the beautiful, not the ugly; things to praise, not things to curse. Put into practice what you learned from me, what you heard and saw and realized. Do that, and God, who makes everything work together, will work you into his most excellent harmonies.