New beginnings.....

I have entered city life. The buildings are all two or so stores made out of concrete and painted shades of browns, and pinks, if painted at all. The street is full of business. People walking, cars, and miniature modes of transport going so quickly that you would think you could never cross to get to the other side. You will also think that when you step out into the traffic in hopes that it will stop or swerve around you so you can get to the other side! A member of my team said we are walking by faith and not by sight. Where we live, the best place to be is the roof. It is like a social life above the world. You can see so many people doing their laundry, just standing together, kids playing. The roof top is a new view of a sometimes overwhelming city.

It is a disturbing model of life when you walk down the street and see high class jewlery shop, one after the other in between clothing stores then you look to the front step and find one beggar after the other. The rich among the poor. It reminds me a lot of the parable of Lazarus the beggar, and the rich man in Luke 16. One of the many hard situations that I believe can change. I am finding joy in the small acts of kindness. I know that big action needs to be taken but I want to walk in the opposite spirit in whatever way I can. I am afraid God built my mind to see the big and I immediately think that if we aren't having world movements to see poverty put to an end then things just aren't satisfying. God is teaching me, for now it is recognizing someone's importances as a person, or buying them a banana on the side of the road.

The people are friendly, beautiful, and colorful. The clothes, accessaries, and foods keep all your senses in high gear. We have been spending our first few days getting used to all these new sights, smells, and tastes! We are waiting to get into the hospital, which always leaves time for getting out into the city! Making friends, and learning about this culture. I am so excited about our time here! This is the 5th or 6th time the BAS school has been able to come and learn in the hospital we will be working at. Hearing the stories of changes in the hospital over the years and of walls that have been broken gets me geared up and ready to go to work.

We are praying to be in the hospital next week! I will update more later! I will also try and upload some pics from my time in Perth with my mom and brother!

You are blessed to be a blessing!

Layovers...

I must say as much as I hate lay overs they are perfect opportunity to catch up on blogs, e-mails, and reading! I am sitting in the airport because we have a 24 hour layover!

I have had a world wind two weeks back in Perth that have been very exciting. My mom and little brother came to visit for a week. It was so great to just see them. It has been a year since I have been home, so this visit was very special. I was also blessed by a light schedule with my school, which meant my family and I spent lots of time together. We did so many fun things. It was great to become a tourist of Perth for a week with them. I had not seen so much of Perth as I did with them! Haha. We went to the aquarium, a zoo full of Aussie animals, snorkeling, and of course the beach. It was a hard goodbye after our week together.

This past week we were busy celebrating ywam. It was the 50th year anniversary for the organization ywam, and then it was ywam perth’s 25th year anniversary. It was fully of amazing speakers, worship, prayer, and good food!

I am going to post some pictures and yea India here we come!

You are blessed to be a blessing!

Kali

Hello bloggers!!

I am going to post something before we get to crazy with all the festivities of anniversaries. I am sitting in my room in Africa, finishing up last minute packing and trying to allow the reality of us leaving set in. I am afraid it won’t hit me until I am on the plane. This place has been such an amazing example of God’s love, hope, and presence. I can’t believe it has been 3 1/2 months! 

I wanted to post something before it was to late. After our two weeks in Perth, I will be headed to India. We will be spending two months working in a hospital there. After that time we have been invited to join a new health care opportunity being launched by ywam perth. It is called simple health care. It consists of teams of mission workers that target a country and send groups to teach simple health care to different towns in that country. SO a team goes into a town, they stay for three weeks. They gather all the local health care workers, missionaries, and Jesus following leaders of the community and spend three weeks equipping them with teaching plans and material to teach simple health. Simple health would consist of basic hygienic, sanitation, wound care, common tropical diseases, and nutritional education that most third world nations don’t have. The goal of the program is to impact the country through the workers that are already living there by educating the local people. If you raise up people within the community that are making the changes then you really start to change death rates, health standards, and lives in that community. The best part is all the people that will be educating these communities LOVE JESUS!!! 

So why am I telling you, well because this opportunity in India is open to any Indian in the whole country to come and also going to be open for a few African to come. It is expensive for there travel and to pay for the three weeks they will be at the seminar. I wanted to give anybody the opportunity to sponsor equipping one of these Indians or Africans to go to this seminar. To tell you how cheap it is, if you sponsor a Indian to attend the seminar it is only 54 US Dollars!!!!! I used to spend that in a week on fast food, I am ashamed to say! So for 50 bucks you could greatly impact a nation and be apart of God’s kingdom coming to India! I don’t know how much it would be to sponsor an African, but if God put that on your heart then I could get that information for you. 

If God is speaking to you about this, you can spend the money to YWAM Perth (address below) with a note saying that it is to sponsor an India to go to India. 

Well we are starting a very busy week. I had a wonderful time with my family and will hopefully write more about it later! 

You are blessed to be a blessing.

PO Box 8501 Perth Business Centre, Western Australia, 6849, Australia

Wrapping up....

Hello ...

I feel like it has been so long I am not even sure where to start. Well we are finishing up our last week here in Tanzania. I can’t believe how fast time flies! We are coming to the end, starting to say goodbye to people, and trying to wrap our heads around the fact that we are really leaving. There is a huge part of me that just dives into the African culture and will have a hard time leaving. The beauty of the people, the land, and their hearts is inspiring. There is defiantly a hope and childlike faith that this culture so easily grasps that teaches me how easy trusting in Jesus can really be.

We finish up our last week at the hospital this week. We will work three days this week, saying our goodbyes on Wednesday. I wish I could say that these last few weeks have been easy, full of health, and not as much warfare. I think that is the opposite of what has happened. It is a battle until the end, and even after we leave it will still be a battle. One that God is never done with. He spoke words to our group about the virgins waiting for their bridegroom.(Matthew 25) The wise ones who kept extra oil so there lamps burned all the way through the night and when the bride groom called they were prepared. This was so encouraging for pushing through these last few weeks. It is so easy to give up and coast through these last weeks. Giving up a little bit of the fight so that it is a bit more comfortable or less exhausting in the end. We as a school were commissioned off to prepare the way of the Lord (Isaiah 40), to keep our lamps burning so that we would be prepared for the bridegroom (Jesus). This has brought me a new excitement, and love for this place. The Lord is coming, and is still at work within me to see His kingdom in all the glory, be brought one step closer to becoming reality in this place and hospital.

I had a conversation with a doctor this week about her faith. She pulled out a Bible looking through her purse one day at the desk in the hospital. As I needed to talk to her about a patient, I felt the Holy Spirit prompt me to ask her about her faith. I am become more comfortable these days with plainly asking, do you believe in Jesus. She smiled, a big smile and said “yes”. I told her I saw her Bible and was encouraged. That she was loving these women like Jesus loved her. That He was using her to love and provide for these women. Her smile and the reaction in her spirit and appearance was amazing. God is encouraging, uplifting these workers here that are believers and He is greatly shaking the foundations of the ones that aren’t! It is exciting and it will have lasting impact on this hospital.

It is bitter sweet getting ready to leave. I am sad but I am super excited to head to our next locations. We are having an unusually break in our outreach. Usually the BAS outreach goes for nine months and does not return home (to Perth) until the end. (Random side note - I just realized out outreach is nine months, that is how long it takes to have a baby. haha.) Anyways, this year, it is YWAM’s 50th year anniversary and YWAM Perth’s 25th year anniversary. So we will be heading back to Perth in 7 days. God is amazing and has provided a way for my mom and little brother to head over to Perth to come see me!! SO in 9 days I get to see my family who I haven’t seen for a year!!! I am so excited and anticipating a really good 10 days with them! God is amazing and speaks crazy dreams that can come into existence when He is apart of them!

SO I hope everyone’s new year is starting with God’s dreams and hopes for this new year. Throw New Year’s resolutions out the window and ask God what He has for you this year. I think you will have a lot better hope of seeing that come to be than trying to loss ten pounds! =)

You are blessed to be a blessing!

Mary and the Manger

One of my leaders, Paula, started the day off with this amazing revelation that really brings me joy. She is reading this commentary on the book of Luke and she was talking about the birth of Jesus. That when Mary and Joseph came to Bethlehem they stay in an inn. The inn was for passing through shepherds and flock keepers. So as we all know there were no beds and they stayed where all the animals were, and Jesus was placed in a manger. The point that Paula was making was that the King of Kings who came to save the whole world was born in the worst conditions and on a night where unless an angel came to you, you didn’t even know He was born. No one knew, Jesus was born and the world was oblivious.

I think this really is amazing because I see women every day that give birth in conditions that aren’t acceptable. They are laboring with three women on the same bed, some in the floors, some make it to the laboring table (which still isn’t anything close to what would be used in the western world for delivery). These babies come into this world and no one even knows. They are in the worst conditions and then placed in a modern day manger (a crib with ten other babies). This has begun to wear on me over the last couple of weeks. This revelation though, thinking back and seeing how our King was born into this world. Remembering the impact He made on the world, even if He did have lower standards entering the world. He became our saviour. The most humble servant to the world. I prayed a prayer this week and will continue to pray it, that these little ones that we bring into this world. On the floor, table, or bed, that they would be world changers. That the conditions that they are born in and the lack of awareness of the world to their birth wouldn’t stop them from rising up into the fullness of what God has already placed in them. I am excited to think about the Moses, Abraham, or elijah that we are delivering here in Tanzania.

You are blessed to be a blessing.

MERRY CHRISTMAS

time is flying...

It is getting closer to Christmas. I am definitely not having a white one but it is still
a special one. We have so many different traditions that we are seeing come
through from different members of our team. We have an advent calendar,
stockings up, and even a Hanukkah candles that are being lit every night. It is fun
to see all these traditions shine through and be able to be apart of them all.

Our lives here have been busy and full. We are one week away from being done
with all of our lectures! Next week is our last week. We are officially half way
through this school! I can’t believe it. These amazing women and families have
become my family over these past 6 months. It makes me sad to think that we
only have six more months to go.

I have about four weeks left here in Africa. If there is one thing that I can’t get
over these days it is how God has just brought life to me. I think it has been a
collection of months of growing and letting God do a lot of healing in me, so now I
am starting to see the results. The new joy and life in my spirit. I now enjoy and
desire to soak up everything and live in the moment of today. I still look forward to
the future but I don;t ignore the present. The hardest thing for me in growing
with God, in my relationships, in different cultures, and the travel in these past
couple of months has been that I wasn’t slowing down in my mind or actions to
enjoy and take it all in. I was so busy trying to get to the next thing that I was
missing the opportunities that were right in front of me. I think this was a defense
mechanism that I had built up from my past. If you are always living in the future,
looking to the future for “better life” then you don’t stop and stare at the reality of
how ugly your life is at that moment or how beautiful it is. So these last months I have been stopped and I have stood face to face with today. It hasn’t been fun, most of it hard and painful.
The result though is magnificent. I really don’t know if I can do justice in
explaining the way that my spirit awakens everyday with an excitement and love
for life and today. This new excitement, love, and ability to face today makes me
even more captivated by Jesus. I often think that I need to come up with some
new angle to present Jesus because of all the material that is out in the world
today and with all the different views and theologies. I want to attract every one to
Him, but the truth is i always get back to the basics when i really want to
know or share about what he is doing in my life. Jesus saved me, over and over again. He has been doing this for 23 years and will continue too. He has brought me through a lot. Not very much of it being easy but the process and especially the end result He has brought me so much
healing, joy, love, freedom, life, and excitement.

So I am super excited about our last few weeks here but a little nervous that it is
going to fly by because our first two and a half months did. I am looking forward
to being back in Perth. I am blessed because my mom and little brother are
coming to see me when I go back to Australia in January! I am so excited! It will
have been exactly one year from the time that I last saw them that they will be
there!

Christmas is soon... I hope everyone has a wonderful Christmas!


You are blessed to be a blessing.

Merry Christmas

Hey!

Just wanted to throw some pictures up! Hope every one is getting ready to have a great holiday! Merry Christmas!!