A Month til India & Nepal !

      India and Nepal is less than a month away! It's crazy how fast my time here has gone. This trip is coming up especially quickly because we have our lectures in the Sunshine Coast this week, Byron Bay next week and then it's Christmas! Then we leave 2 weeks after Christmas! Ahhh I'm getting too excited just thinking about it. You guys are AMAZING though; seriously. I came into this needing $3000 for my trip and as of right now I only need $700 more! Thank you thank you thank you. You are all such a blessing and I covet all of your prayers as well. Please keep the praying going and if you could support me in this final push to get money in I would be overjoyed! I'll post the link to donate again or you can get in touch with my parents back at home. I cannot thank you all enough! http://www.ywamgc.com.au/finance/paydonate-online19.html?view=donate (Remember to put my name in the comment box)

      It’s been busy around here! Week 10 we had the wonderful Lael come and speak to us about spiritual warfare. She took us through the book of Ephesians and broke it up into 3 parts. She spoke on ‘sitting’ (our legal position in Christ/ who we are) ‘walking’ (what our life in the world should look like) and ‘standing’ (our attitude towards the enemy).  I found this really helpful to understanding what spiritual warfare is really about and why we don’t have to face it as a topic that’s fearful or creepy. The beautiful thing is that we don’t fight for victory, we fight from victory! When you understand that it’s so much easier to take control of temptation and to bring the truth of what Jesus has done into your circumstances on earth.

     Last week was on missions and the poor and needy. We had Ken Bartsch who’s originally from Abbotsford come and speak to us. He works for YWAM in Australia and is especially involved in the media. His teams go on outreach trips and film stories of the locals they work with and the country they’re living in. His presentation had a lot of really inspiring videos and crazy statistics about missionaries in the 10/40 window. It was cool to hear about how God is moving in these countries because  all we usually hear about is the negative stuff that is in the news . Of course there is still a huge need for missionaries and basic resources in these countries, but there are people who have dedicated their lives to helping these people and it definitely inspired me.

Yesterday evening (Saturday) YWAM Gold Coast and the Ashmore Uniting Church (church beside our base) worked together to put on a community carols event. We had lots of kids games, bouncy castles, coffee and even a prayer tent! This event has been happening for 8 years and YWAM has taken it as an opportunity to bless and love on the community we're in during the Christmas season in hopes that they'll see Christ's love through us! We had Tommy Franklin from Australia’s Got Talent and a few other Christian performers come to our stage and sing and dance with the community. They were awesome and just shone with the joy of the Lord the whole time.  It was a lot of fun and we got to hangout with Tommy Franklin! (If you dont know who that is you should youtube him!) Last year we had 800 people there and this year they think we had about the same, if not more. I think this event was the first thing that's really reminded me of Christmas since it doesn't quite feel right in nice, sunny weather :)