Father Heart of God, Outreach and other stuff

I'm super tired but I'm gonna try to write as much as I possibly remember...

So this week we had Mr. Ken Helser teaching us about the Father Heart of God. Though he didn't really teach, he just told stories. He really is an amazing man of God, and a lot of people got so much out of this week that their lives will be changed forever. But to be honest, I wasn't one of those people. I had trouble concentrating, and in a very weird way I felt really disconnected. I don't know why and I'm still very confused. This week was supposed to be emotionally draining, life changing and plain amazing, but I didn't feel it.

Last saturday we got our outreach options: India, South-Africa, Japan, Canada and Australia. Our entire band was asked to go to Japan as a group, which was something that has never happened before. Noah asked us to pray about it together, and we did. Most of us didn't have anything against Japan, except for Koji, our Japanese guitar player, who of course didn't want to go back home. So we accepted the fact that Koji wasn't coming and we all prayed about our decision as individuals. On tuesday we had to make our final decision. Apart from Koji everyone in our band was going to Japan. On tuesday evening Steven, our band's staff member, came to us and told us that Koji was coming too. Koji had prayed about it and God had told him to stick with the band. How amazing is that?

So in the beginning of February I'll be going to Japan for 7 weeks. On thursday the staff announced the outreach teams, and it turned out that I am the only student girl who's going to Japan. With me are coming Koji, Josh, Izac, Nick, Steven, Ronnie and Jess, who is the other girl coming. She's staff, and she's actually my one-on-one, which is pretty sweet. All the other girls are a little jealous of me cos more than half of all the MAD guys are coming to Japan... The South-Africa team is the biggest. It's actually like 3 times too big. The second biggest is the India team. Smallest one is the dance-oriented Asutralia boat trip team. They only have 6 girls. And there was no Canada team! Nobody wanted to go there.

Thursday night when we heard our outreach teams was our pizza night. Ken Helser had this thing with every school (mad, b2b, sports) where he and all the guys cooked pizza for all the girls. Our guys had decorated the community room and it was gorgeous! They baked alltogether 60 pizzas, and it was probably the best pizza I've ever had. They served us and were all polite and wonderful and it was sooooooooooo lovely. I ate so much that I was in physical pain for like a half an hour.

Tomorrow we are leaving for Byron Bay for two weeks. I won't have internet access there so you're just gonna have to wait. The whole idea of this trip is to go minister to so called schoolies. Schoolies is the Australian version of Spring Break. When australians graduate from highschool they head to different beach locations to party for a week. Many of their parents actually buy them alcohol. Young people about the age of 18 get absolutely smashed, many of them do drugs or have sex for the first time. We are going to minister to these kids, to play volleyball with them and to bake pancakes to them. I hear it's gonna be super intense, so I ask for you to pray for me and for the whole team. After a week of schoolies we're gonna have a week of lectures at the Byron Bay base. It's gonna be less intense and we're gonna have time to surf and just hang out on the beach. I am really looking forward to it.

So that's all I have for now. Please keep praying for me. Pray that I don't get sunburnt. It's nasty. Weather here has been lovely, plus thirty-something degrees celcius every day. It's starting to get really humid which is not too nice. It's like living in a dishwasher. And it's gonna get worse. Annyway. I shall be back in a fortnight!

week 3

Oh no oh no oh no!! It seems like time is finally starting to go fast... This week has pretty much just ran by. I've almost been here for a month. Crazy.

So this week our topic was Biblical worldview. We did lots of random stuff, and we actually had only one lecture that was just about worldviews and stuff. Then we watched a video of Landa Cope preaching about dicipling nations and discussed it. We actually used quite a lot of time discussing dicipleship and what it means. To be honest it could've been a it more intresting...

So as there's nothing much to share about the deeper stuff this week I thought I'd tell you a little about the everyday life on base. I'll just start with our weekly schedule:

Tuesday is the first day of our week, actually. Live every day, we have breakfast from 7 to 7:45. In the morning we have a community meeting, and we're given some random chores to do before morning tea. This basically means that everyone gets a little task to help around the base, like for example to tidy the community room or wash windows. After that we usually have a little worship time in the community room. For morning tea we usually have fruits and pastrys and coffee and tea. After that we have lectures till lunch at 12:30. After lunch on tuesdays us MAD students have the afternoon free for doing our homework. Supper's at 5:30. At 7:30 we have another lecture or something to do with the week's topic. That usually takes the rest of the evening..

Wednesday usually begins with worship in the MADhouse(our classroom). After that we have lectures till lunch. In the afternoon we have free time, and for a couple of hours before supper there's sports in the nearby park. I've tried to use those afternoons working out at the gym on the base and then gone to play volleyball with others. It's been pretty sweet, i gotta say. Wednesday evenings we have small groups that usually begin with everyone sitting in the madhouse talking about the day's lecture or something else Noah(our school leader) wants us to think about. Noah's really good at digging deep into people's own beliefs and questioning everything. It can be a little annoying at times but it does make one think more about their beliefs. After that we split into small groups where we discuss a topic that Noah gives us. I really like our group and we've had some pretty sweet conversations.

On Thursday mornings we have intercession in the MADhouse. For the last 2 weeks we've been praying about the Muti murders in south africa. It's pretty heavy stuff and I still find it hard to believe that our prayers would make a difference, but i guess they can. The rest of the morning is normally lectures, but for example this thursday we went to the city to visit an art gallery and afterwards had a barbecue at the manmade beach (which from now on I'll be reffering to as South Bank). In the afternoon we have MAD moments, which basically mean that we divide into our domaine groups and "do our thing". Thursday evenings are free, and the nearby mall (which from now on shall be referred to as Brookside) stays open till later so it's possible to go shopping in the evening.

Fridays are pretty much the same as thursdays with two exceptions. In the morning we have community intercession when we pray about different things with the whole base. For example yesterday we prayed for different authors who have lots of influense in the society today. And in the evenings we have some sort of MAD group gathering, whether it's worship and prayer, theological discussion or just mandatory fun. Yesterday we had an 80's theme birthday party for all the people who have their bday in novemeber. It was loads of fun. Afterwards we went to McDonald's (which from now on shall be referred to as Mackers), some of us still dressed up in our 80's costumes. Good times.

On Saturdays we don't have lectures but in the morning we usually have like a discussion thing. Today we watched a documentary about global warming and talked about it. I suppose that you've noticed so far how Noah's trying to make us talk about stuff all the time. He's really trying to make us think for ourselves instead of just believing everything we've told. And it's working. So when I come back and a lot of me has changed, don't think that I was brainwashed. Cos that is exactly what our dear school leader is trying to prevent. Anyway. On saturday afternoons we have the so called GO day, which is divided into two sections. First there is EPIC, which is a youth programme for the children that live near the base. Loads of children come and we organize different activities for them, such as skateboarding, sports, art, music, games etc. Then there's community work which can be like picking up trash on the streets, taking care or the elderly or raking someone's yard, or just cooking lunch at the base. I was lucky to get be in the art team for EPIC. It's probably the most relaxed one... after EPIC the rest of the day is free.

Sundays and Mondays are our weekends. We have no obligations, except for breakfast/lunch/dinner cleanup (everybody in MAD is either on breakfast, lunch or dinner cleanup team, which means we have to cleanup the kitchen and the dining room 3 times a week). We're also recommended to go to a local church here in Brisbane, but it's not mandatory. We can spend the night somewhere else if we wish to, so it's possible to go somewhere like Gold Coast and spend the night there.

So that is our weekly schedule. Of course it looks a little bit different every week. There's also loads of stuff i could talk about that's part of our everyday life. Such as the bread station. It's this thing in the diningroom where we can get hot water for tea and toast bread 24/7. There's a small fridge with peanutbutter and jam for the bread. The station can be very deceiving and I am trying to avoid it as much as possible. What else... We have 2 pool tables and a pingpong table and a trampolin. We also have a gym like I mentioned earlier. In the MADhouse we have a dance studio and a recording studio. Mackers is like 10 minutes walk from the base and to my great joy Apple pies cost only 1 dollar!

I don't know what else to share... I guess that was enough for now. Oh! We got our outreach destinations today! We have till tuesday to decide where we're going, but I'm pretty sure where I'm gonna go. I can't tell it yet though... in case God tells me to go somewhere else. But I'm pretty sure.

Annyway. Keep praying for me, I need your prayers! And I try to write here a little more often. I guess. I promise nothing!

week 2

So. This weeks was a little different than the first one when it comes to lectures. The subject was Strength Finders, and we were supposed to learn about spiritual foundations and building "the house of God" on top of our foundation and then learning about our strengths and what they mean and how we can develop them etc. Before the school started they made us take a psycologic test that told us what our five strengths were. Mine were Empathy, Communication, Strategic, Developer and Responsibility. During this week's lectures we were supposed to study eveyone's strengths and learn more about them, but on wednesday our lecturer Dave decided that we should do testimonies and ministry, cos he felt like some people had baggage that needed to be dealt with before we could start "building". So we spent all wednesday and thursday mornings listening to people sharing about stuff they struggled with, confessing stuff and getting delivered from stuff. It was powerful. I'm not sure how much of it is appropriate to be shared here, but i guess i can just mention a couple of things without giving any names. So we had this one guy who used to be a drug dealer tell his life story and at times i thought it was a movie cos it just sounded so amazing. He's not a christian but he's doing dts and he's definitely getting there... Just last night he gave away 900 dollars to some homeless guy and a lady who had cancer or something. Some people confessed idolatry and distrust towards god and sexual impturity etc. One guy told about his addition to pornography and after praying for him we had all the guys stand up in one line and all the girls standing in another line facing the guys, and we passed a microphone around and girls and guys would apologize for sinning against each other. It was powerful.

That was friday, and on the same night all MAD people had a movie night. Our school leader Noah had selected a film that he hadn't seen, but since it was PG-13 he thought it couldn't be that bad. The film was Year One, and a lot of people were very excited to see it. So we watched like half of it, and it turned out to be quite inappropriate, especially after what had happened in the morning. So Noah stopped it in the middle and we had a discussion about the film, which was super cool. We talked about world views (which btw is our subject for next week) and how a PG-13 film could have such provocative stuff in it. Ironically, later Noah told us that he's watched the rest of the film with his wife and after the point where he'd stopped the film it had become totally clean, all the dirty jokes were gone and there was actually a pretty good moral message at the end. So we might watch the rest of the film some day. But nobody minded, cos the discussion we had about it was so awesome.

On saturday morning we had a bible study forum thing, where we discussed about the Bible and what makes it real and true and how we can be sure etc. It was really cool to dig deeper into what we believed and why we believed so. I personally came to the conclusion that even though the Bible and it's stories are historically accurate, without the Holy Spirit working through it it's just a sotrybook. Just like no one comes to Christ without the spirit of God working in them, nobody can really believe in the Bible if they leave Holy Spirit out of it. And debating with non-christiand about what is true and what is not is useless, cos no scientific information is ever gonna change the way people feel inside them. The power to change hearts lies in our actions, loving our neighbour as ourselves. Of course we need to tell people eventually, but jumping headfirst into a debate with an atheist isn't gonna help anyone. So on that note, and also out of Noah's encouragement, me and a couple of friends decided to go interview people on their vies about God and Christianity etc. Our purpose was not to tell them what we thought, but to actually learn what people thought about stuff. And it was super intresting. We had a videocamera with us, and hopefully i could get a video of it on facebook or something. One thing that was really obvious, was that people weren't really sure what they believed in. Most people thought that there was a God, or just a higher power, but they couldn't define it more. There was a christian girl who wasn't sure if she was going to heaven cos she didn't think that she was a good person. Someone said that they didn't believe in God but they did believe in heaven and hell. And old lady told us she couldn't live without God but when we asked her what makes the difference in a person's life that decides whether they go to heaven or hell, she didn't know. A lot of people thought that the Bible was too long, unreadable and that it should be updated. We might do the same thing another time, cos it truly was enlightening. I truly recommend it for everyone, whoever you are and wherever you live. Cos oftentimes we christians think we know, but then we really have no clue, cos we don't think about it. Kinda like what those non-christians thought about God and stuff. They think they know what they believe in, but when you ask them straight, they have no clue.

With Everything

I've been getting some really cool feedback from friends that've been reading this blog and it makes me super happy to know that I'm not writing this for nothing. So thanks guys <3

So far this week hasn't been quite as intense as last week. The topic this week is Strength Finders, and so far we've been learning about the spiritual foundations that each of us have. Our this week's lecturer, base leader Dave Niebling, hasn't rocked my world quite as much as Kevin Norris did, but he's had some good points too. We still have another 2 days of lectures on this subject, so I'm eager to see what God's gonna show me. So far I've felt a bit disconnected by Dave's teaching, but it'll get better, I'm sure.

The last couple of days have been frikkin hot here. In the day time it's been like 32 degrees celcius, and I can't believe that it's gonna get even hotter! But so far I've managed to avoid getting sunburnt, though I did get a sunstroke on monday when we went to the city. So my first time in downtown Brisbane was filled with headache and nausea. Whatever, I still enjoyed it. The city has like these 2 main shopping streets that are for pedestrials only. They form a cross in the middle of the city, and on the streets there are cafeterias, bars and performance stages in the middle of the street. And oh my word are the shops here amazing. Me, Liz and Nat didn't really have a good chance to do any proper shopping cos we had to drag 5 guys around, but we're definitely gonna go do some hard core shopping before leaving for Byron Bay, which btw I believe is in 2 weeks!

Last night we had community worship and it was frikkin amazing. I don't know if I have any voice left to sing at band practice today. I was jumping and dancing and shouting and jumping like crazy, it was sooo goooood. God really set people free to worship Him and there was just this overwhelming joy that filled the whole place. We we're singing the song With Everything by Hillsong and it was just unbelievable. And it made me wonder why worship couldn't be like that at home. Where's the fire, where's that overwhelming joy that sweeps over the entire room? I'm sure God's presence is there, but where are our hearts?

After these challenging questions I only have one word left. Breakfast!