This month I am in Darwin, Australia, which is about as far from Sydney as you can get in the continent.
We are truly blessed here. My team has joined up with one other team at the YWAM Outback base which makes 14 of us altogether.
This ministry is definitely different than our experience in Malaysia. Last month my team was busy home schooling and teaching English. It wasn't uncommon for us to leave our hostel by 9:30 a.m. and not return back until 10:30 p.m. with little rest in between classes. We ate a lot of peanut butter and jelly as we didn't have a stove, oven, or even a microwave. When we got back to our hostel for the night we would sleep on sleeping mats on a concrete floor.
This month, however, our ministry consists of working with a local homeless shelter (helping to clean, cook meals, and building relationships with those at the shelter) doing prayer walks around the city as well as helping out at the YWAM base… this sounds like a lot, but in a given day our ministry starts at 8:30 a.m. and is typically done by 2 p.m. which gives us A LOT of free time that we just didn't have last month. We also have air conditioning in most of the rooms at the base, hot meals prepared for us, comfortable beds to sleep in, a swimming pool, and working western toilets!
Even though we are blessed in so many ways, this month has has had some challanges of its own.
It's been hard not to feel like the staff at the YWAM base has been serving us more than we are serving them, by doing things such as spending their time and energy figuring things for us to do, shopping for us and driving us around.
I know that our service is helping those whom I come in contact with, but it's hard only spending one month in each country, just starting to build relationships and then moving on to a new place.
I was living a comfortable life back home, a full-time job, was involved with a great ministry on the university campus… but, I knew that I wasn't called to live a life of comfort and safety.
This is something that I have been praying about for the last week and a half, and God has shown me that this is where He has me for this season of my life… live in it and enjoy the free time that we have this month.
On the race, I know that some months will be gruelingly hard, others very easy, but it's not about "making myself uncomfortable" or "stretching myself to my limits." It is about loving God and those whom He has placed around me. It's about serving others. It is about discovering what God is doing in my own life.
I love serving God, serving others, traveling, meeting new people, seeing new things… I love photography and video work (which I have the opportunity to do while I am here.) I am truly blessed to be where I am and I know that I am living an amazing life in Him.
I am now just a little over a thousand doallars short of my December deadline, please consider partnering with me financially. Thanks!
"God has now revealed to us his mysterious plan regarding Christ, a plan to fulfill his own good pleasure. And this is the plan: At the right time he will bring everything together under the authority of Christ-everything in heaven and on earth. Furthermore, because we are united with Christ, we have received an inheritance from God, for he chose us in advance, and he makes everything work out according to his plan."
~Ephesians 1:9-11 (NLT)
