I knew this already coming into it. And when they said it countless times, I didn't doubt it. But this Thanksgiving weekend, I'm realizing how true it is. I don't mean to sound like a giant cliche, it's just ridiculous how real this statement is.
I'm the type of person that needs breaks in between every activity that I do to rejuvenate myself, regardless of how inactive I was or am going to be and regardless of how much I go out of my way to have this time in between things. So living in a place like YWAM where everything is planned out to jam-pack your day can get really exhausting for me. Especially with insomnia and narcolepsy which makes me permanently tired. Basically what I'm getting at is I'm worn out on a very regular basis. I don't really mind, but I do wish I had more free time just every once in a while so I can catch up on de-stressing myself haha.
So I expected to love coming home with my one-on-one Megan to do a whole lot of nothing for five days. Ok I should probably rephrase. I LOVE this home. I've told them I'm moving in a million times. They feed me all the time and it's like I'm eating something mortally sinful it's so good. Something about their family makes me feel right at home, I'm totally comfortable here. Nothing's really expected of me so I'm free to do my own thing whenever I want. Me and Meg's mom are the same person, we're becoming great friends haha. I'm enjoying myself entirely. But... to be honest, there are way too many opportunities here to be bored. For me anyways, Megan's been pretty busy with visas and stuff -Russia pretty much wants nothing to do with American visitors just for the record-.
As much as I anticipated loving this feeling of no pressure to get things done for once since like March, I just feel like there's so much I COULD be doing.
To explain things a little, I'll just start out with the first real week of classes we had. Our speaker, Fred Markert, is pretty crazy. Everyone really loved his stories (I loved his stories but he himself actually pissed me off on a daily basis...but I will give him credit for being one of the most God-trusting, truth-motivated warriors I have met). He has done insane things to further the kingdom of God just one more step, and he really taught us how God promises victory and that means we need to seek it out where we're told it's impossible to find. One of the points he made repeatedly that I will never forget is that Christianity, at least the way the bible says to live it out, is NEVER boring. Let me tell you, the life of Fred Markert is anything but dull. Even through the eyes of an atheist, he's been through intense, terrifying, and awe inspiring things. Living the way the American Church does, you'd think that Christianity is a pretty easy way to stroll through life, but really if you actually read this thing called the bible, you'd see that we're called to live life to the full (John 10:10 for those of you that don't speak missionary). Sometimes that means you die standing up for someone. Sometimes that means you eat monkey brains. Sometimes that means you just have no clue what's coming next -usually the case when you're on missionary support....ha :)-. One of our more recent speakers, Troy Sherman (he's probably going to be the basis of a blog or twenty in the future...just to prepare you), said that being a Christian is pretty much the worst decision you could ever make. Let's be honest, if you're sincerely living the life that is described in the New Testament, there's nothing "fun" about it in American standards. But we're not called to be comfortable. We're not called to stuff our faces full of delicious food for days, sit around and watch TV, waste hours upon hours on facebook, and sleep on pillow top mattresses. Seriously, that just described my entire Thanksgiving break to you, and I know I'm not the only one of my YWAM friends that did the exact same thing.
All to say, being relatively bored, as great as it is, is not enough for me anymore. My body is physically aching to do something productive, and I'm realizing how much better I feel about myself when my day is planned minute by minute even though I hate getting out of bed every single morning because I know I won't stop until lights out. Another point Fred made is that the bible says "GO" more than 8,000 times. Sometimes it specifies what that means, and sometimes you decide how it best fits what you're called to do.
Habakkuk 1:5 says "For I am going to do something in your days that you would not believe, even if you were told." How am I going to see that if I'm ...bored? Sitting on facebook? Watching Madea? As much as it pains me to say that Madea needs to take up less of my time, I'm not supposed to be deteriorating my muscles because I haven't left the house all weekend, I'm supposed to GO!
So yes, i'm having a great time here at Megan's, consuming glorious things and being lazy. But really, I can't wait to be back at my new home preparing myself for outreach where I get to go! and actually bring hope to people. If you just happen to not believe in the 'hope' I'm talking about, maybe you can at least appreciate that we'll be digging wells in Peru providing clean drinking water so that some of the jungle villages will have access for the first time in their lives to something we take for granted every single day. I should probably use a separate blog for that soap box moment though :).
I ramble so much. If you got to the end of this, I should give you a high five or something. Since I don't really have any great closing statements, this is a video Fred showed us that really portrays how I feel about the American Church. You can feel free to disagree if you want, maybe you've never even been to a "contemporary" church, but I think it's a pretty great video and I'm gonna post it because I can.
Shalom again guys. I guess leave me a comment if you feel as restless as I do right now and we can holla at each other :)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pzqaITA3IO0
Friday, November 26, 2010
Monday, November 1, 2010
Gotta Love Missionary Wi-fi
Turns out this blogging website is blocked on the base's internet so I have no way of getting to it. Potentially I could type something up every once in a while and upload it on the weekends when I go back to the outside world, but I keep forgetting. So this one isn't really an in-depth update, it's just letting you know that that's the reason I haven't been blogging. Sowwy everyone.
We've been crazy busy. I mean... my free time comes in half hour spurts. We have weekends of course, but we usually have things planned at some point, plus laundry, wal-mart runs, church, and whatever else I need to get done... Not to mention book reports every other week, journals we turn in once a week, and lots and lots of reading. I spose I could tell you my daily schedule. Breakfast at 6:30 which means I wake up anywhere from 6:12-6:43 (if you don't already know that I work by odd times...well welcome to my life). We don't necessarily have to be at breakfast, but we do have to be there at 6:55 so they know we're alive to the world. Then they send us off to our Quiet Time with God from 7-8. 8-9 is different depending on the day, some days we have worship and some days we have prayer meetings. We are, after all YWAM -Youth With A Meeting. We're all about acronyms. So far I've learned that YWAM not only stands for Youth With A Mission, but also young women after men, young wolves after mates, youth without any money....they're all true. Anyways. 9:15-12:30 is class. Lunch. Afternoons depends on the day. Monday's and Friday's we have free time for a couple hours which I usually have to use every minute of doing something... But every day at 3 we have work duties, so some people are on maintenance crew, some are in the kitchen, and I am doing housekeeping. I clean the entire basement/game room, we're supposed to clean for 2 hours but mine takes me about an hour and a half. Then I shower and hang out till dinner at 6.
Monday nights are Outreach meetings -officially decided on the Amazon/Peru!-, Tuesday nights are Local Outreach -my group is a tutoring outreach in a nearby trailer park-, Wednesday nights are designated for reading so we can catch up on homework, Thursday nights are Community Night which is worship and usually someone comes to visit me :), Friday nights are basically weekends so we're free -depending on what's planned... some Sunday mornings, we speak at churches, sometimes we have fundraisers, we've had a couple events that took all day but were super fun, etc..- until Sunday night.
All to say.....every hour of my life is pretty much planned out for me while I'm here. It's kind of overwhelming a lot of times because I just want to add 6 more hours to every day. But I'm learning a ton- I can't even begin to tell you... If you haven't done a DTS there's no way you can even fathom what we go through. I can already tell I'm growing emotionally and spiritually so hopefully other people notice as well. There's also been some rough times, especially the past week. There's a ton of spiritual warfare going on, if you don't know what that is, you should send me a message and we can talk about it. So there's been a huge lack of sleep for everyone around the base the past few days and I don't know of anyone that hasn't wanted to go home at some point. We're all pushing through though for now.
Prayer requests for the moment:
-spiritual warfare is crazy, overwhelming, and sometimes scary. you can ask me for details if you want
-God's been growing me most so far through helping me let go of things. small things, big things, forgiving things, there's been some reconciliation with people and some letting go of relationships...even letting go of about 1,000 songs off my ipod the other day. so just that I would continue growing through it and not get defiant towards it
-a lot of personality clashes...if you know me, you know i'm blunt. and people that aren't used to that sometimes get really offended by me. ok I'm offensive either way. there have been many confrontations which is mostly a good thing, but yeah, sometimes dealing with people and making them deal with me is stressful.
I guess this is all I can think of off the top of my head. Facebook is probably more up to date on pictures and stuff. well definitely more up to date. I'll try to remember to update this more often when I get a chance
Shalom friends
We've been crazy busy. I mean... my free time comes in half hour spurts. We have weekends of course, but we usually have things planned at some point, plus laundry, wal-mart runs, church, and whatever else I need to get done... Not to mention book reports every other week, journals we turn in once a week, and lots and lots of reading. I spose I could tell you my daily schedule. Breakfast at 6:30 which means I wake up anywhere from 6:12-6:43 (if you don't already know that I work by odd times...well welcome to my life). We don't necessarily have to be at breakfast, but we do have to be there at 6:55 so they know we're alive to the world. Then they send us off to our Quiet Time with God from 7-8. 8-9 is different depending on the day, some days we have worship and some days we have prayer meetings. We are, after all YWAM -Youth With A Meeting. We're all about acronyms. So far I've learned that YWAM not only stands for Youth With A Mission, but also young women after men, young wolves after mates, youth without any money....they're all true. Anyways. 9:15-12:30 is class. Lunch. Afternoons depends on the day. Monday's and Friday's we have free time for a couple hours which I usually have to use every minute of doing something... But every day at 3 we have work duties, so some people are on maintenance crew, some are in the kitchen, and I am doing housekeeping. I clean the entire basement/game room, we're supposed to clean for 2 hours but mine takes me about an hour and a half. Then I shower and hang out till dinner at 6.
Monday nights are Outreach meetings -officially decided on the Amazon/Peru!-, Tuesday nights are Local Outreach -my group is a tutoring outreach in a nearby trailer park-, Wednesday nights are designated for reading so we can catch up on homework, Thursday nights are Community Night which is worship and usually someone comes to visit me :), Friday nights are basically weekends so we're free -depending on what's planned... some Sunday mornings, we speak at churches, sometimes we have fundraisers, we've had a couple events that took all day but were super fun, etc..- until Sunday night.
All to say.....every hour of my life is pretty much planned out for me while I'm here. It's kind of overwhelming a lot of times because I just want to add 6 more hours to every day. But I'm learning a ton- I can't even begin to tell you... If you haven't done a DTS there's no way you can even fathom what we go through. I can already tell I'm growing emotionally and spiritually so hopefully other people notice as well. There's also been some rough times, especially the past week. There's a ton of spiritual warfare going on, if you don't know what that is, you should send me a message and we can talk about it. So there's been a huge lack of sleep for everyone around the base the past few days and I don't know of anyone that hasn't wanted to go home at some point. We're all pushing through though for now.
Prayer requests for the moment:
-spiritual warfare is crazy, overwhelming, and sometimes scary. you can ask me for details if you want
-God's been growing me most so far through helping me let go of things. small things, big things, forgiving things, there's been some reconciliation with people and some letting go of relationships...even letting go of about 1,000 songs off my ipod the other day. so just that I would continue growing through it and not get defiant towards it
-a lot of personality clashes...if you know me, you know i'm blunt. and people that aren't used to that sometimes get really offended by me. ok I'm offensive either way. there have been many confrontations which is mostly a good thing, but yeah, sometimes dealing with people and making them deal with me is stressful.
I guess this is all I can think of off the top of my head. Facebook is probably more up to date on pictures and stuff. well definitely more up to date. I'll try to remember to update this more often when I get a chance
Shalom friends
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