Quick "Home" Update

I went back and read my old posts to see how much I actually explained about YWAM and stories and such. Eventually I'll try to put in some more details about what YWAM is and what they do, and I'd definitely like to share some things I learned during lecture phase, and also still answer questions about Peru/Outreach -you can ask me in comments, facebook, email, whatever.

But one of the things I noticed is that I was talking about job interviews recently so I should probably let you know what I'm doing the next couple months. I'm working for my Aunt Pat right now, doing some office work basically, she wants to go 'paperless' and needed me to teach her how to do it, thus providing me with a part time job because it's really time consuming and she still needs to do her normal work. I had been hoping to get a serving job at a restaurant after a couple weeks of working for Aunt Pat but I think God had other things in mind. I was really planning on making a lot of money between coming home and leaving again, but God kept telling me I needed to let go of that and depend on Him more. And it's not like I'm not making money right now, it's just not half as much as what I wanted and know I could be getting waiting tables. But I've realized I'm doing just fine for now, and God is going to provide for me after SOMD so I need to quit freaking out about it.

I've been decently content the last week, going to work during the day, spending time with friends and my sister at night, and I've found this super random volunteer thing to do on the weekends. I'm stringing origami paper cranes together (there's over 106,000 of them) to represent the number of people in Minnesota that are affected by brain injuries. My mom found it online somehow (craigslist), so we went last weekend and they do it a few times per week, so I'm gonna keep going. I guess it's for the Brain Injury Association of MN now that I've googled it. Like I said, it's super random, but I needed some place to serve at anyways, so this is a good short-time volunteer thing I can do right now.
I've been sending out update newsletters the past week or two to everyone that was on my support team list that I have addresses (and stamp supplies..) for, so if you're not getting letters from me and you'd like to, PLEASE get me your address somehow! It's obviously way cheaper for me to continually update here, but I can also email you my updates (whether you want the mailed copies or the blog posts).

So yeah! Things are good right now, and I'm aiming to update this at least once every couple weeks while I'm home, so keep checking back!
Chau everyone :) -that's how the Peruvians spell Ciao-

this is me and some of the stringed cranes. yeah there's a LOT of them. like this is one corner of the room that was full of them. there's sooo many!

Tour of the Iquitos Base

Here's another video tour, this one would actually be the first one chronologically... This is where we stayed in the city of Iquitos. Sorry I forget sometimes to talk in a normal voice when I'm around my friends... I use accents and weird voices all the time, like the one I keep using here. Also there's a lot of random Spanish words so hopefully you don't miss anything essential.

http://youtu.be/IzyJs50RF6M

Questions?

I've had lots of questions about what things looked like, where we stayed, what we were doing, etc. So I wanted to share one of my 'tour videos' that I tried to take every place we stayed, it should give you a pretty good idea of what an average village looks like.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9S-C_Z-3l8Q


Umm I guess I'm not entirely sure what more to share about Peru. If anyone is actually following this, you should leave me comments with questions or send me a message on facebook and tell me what you want to hear!

In the meantime, I've got a job interview for another restaurant tomorrow, Malones in Maple Grove. It's new, so I hadn't heard of it either. Being home is like my least favorite thing in the world. I hate spending money, I hate not being able to sleep, I hate being away from my YWAM family, and the past couple days especially I've been really missing my camp friends too. I don't know, I've been frustrated lately, but not as much as I expected to be. I guess it's because I know I'm going back and that it's not that far away. But yeah, my newsletter update thing will be going out this next week, so hopefully that will be a better update than this is for those of you that keep up with my life.

Shalom friends. Seriously, if there's anything you actually want me to blog about, (stories, questions, whatever) let me know :)

Peru Outreach Slideshow!

This is the video slideshow Jo worked on for countless hours. I provided the pictures but she did everything else. I know lots of you have already seen this because it's on facebook and we showed it on graduation night, but for anybody that hasn't seen it... Enjoy :)

Apparently Virginia Is For Lovers

Sorry about this really late update guys. Obviously I'm home now. Things have been a little chaotic, especially the first week back (debrief week), and then I just spent a week in Virginia hanging out with Caitlin, a friend from the Russia team, so I've been trying to upload pictures and videos on facebook then realized I've been totally neglecting my blog. But I don't want anyone to get the idea that I won't be using this anymore. I definitely won't update as often (not that I could much in Peru anyway) for the next couple months, but I am planning on going back to the SOMD -School Of Ministry Developement, the second school following the DTS I just completed-. So I would love for anyone following this now to keep the link, check back every once in a while, and then have your connection to my updates in my next lecture phase and outreach!


I'm not really sure where to start... Debrief week, being home (America...ugh), or future plans.
Alright, debrief week was crazy because I was spending every spare minute going through everybody's pictures and getting the best 300 on a disk, something I was supposed to do because I was team photographer. I was also giving those pictures to Jo so she could work on the slideshow we made for graduation night. Everything went wrong a million different times, we stayed up soooo late -more than once-, and all I really wanted to do was spend time with my friends that I knew would be leaving in however many days and I wouldn't be able to see them again for months. It was so much more frustrating than necessary, but we finally got both things done around 3:30 AM on graduation day. Ha.

Graduation night was a blurr... Everything leading up to it and directly after was pretty surreal. After 5 months of never getting away from these friends that are now pretty much family, it was just ending and half the school was leaving that night to go home. All I can really say is thank God for skype. But some fabulous friends of mine from Minneapolis came to see me graduate so that was nice, although I felt bad because my brain was being pulled in so many different directions I'm not sure I paid a lot of attention to them.

Coming home... is weird. Pretty much every single meal makes me sick (my body is no longer used to crazy amounts of sugar, chocolate, and preservatives). It's getting a little better now that it's been so long since I got home, but you'd think I'd be totally back to normal by now. Yeah, not true. Today I was finally able to drink a whole cup of pop without gagging once, but up until that point this afternoon, my poor tummy was still upset about the greasy pizza I ate last night when I was still in Virginia.

Speaking of Virginia, I had been planning to go stay with Cait since before I left on Outreach. A lot of people are thinking it was a random trip that I just had spare change for. Definitely not, I had been planning it and looking forward to it for months. When I was there, we were a little sad because we wanted to do a lot of things like go hiking and have bonfires but it rained a lot and places weren't open, but it was still much needed and much enjoyed quality time with one of my favorite people :)

Other than food though, it's not so much America that's bugging me, more just feeling very restless, un-productive, and annoyed at excessiveness. This should probably be a whole blog in itself honestly. It's hard to describe what I'm going through right now -reverse culture shock isn't really that shocking, it's just not motivating me in any way to do things anymore- and I'm having a very hard time feeling like this is where I belong. Maybe that's a good thing. Maybe it's just proving to me once again that I was not cut out to live a "comfortable" life.
For those of you that are concerned, I have gone job hunting and still am applying at places, mostly restaurants because I've had experience serving and it's quick money. I've got interviews set up for next week and a temporary job until I get hired which is hopefully very soon. But like I said before, I am planning on going back to the YWAM base in June to start the second school. I'm sure I'll talk more about that later. Right now the plan is to work, possibly more than one job, save up, go back in the summer, and see where God takes me from there.


Prayer requests:
-motivation
-loneliness (having 8 roommates for 2 months down to none is one of the biggest shocks for me. I thought I'd love it. I'm a person that needs my alone time, I need space and privacy. and now I hate that I don't have my YWAMers with me)
-job interviews!!!! (first one is at Red Lobster, woo!)
-this applies to everyone in my school. we're all very nervous about how depressed it seems we might get because of the reverse culture shock and being away from the supportive family we have in each other. I guess it doesn't quite make sense the bond we have when you've never experienced something like this, but it's really really hard for all of us right now to be back in the real world where temptation is everywhere and accountability is not.


Thanks so much everyone for following as much as you did, whether your name is Kathy Duffy or whether you read one post. I appreciate any kind of prayer and support I can get, especially the prayer part. I need it, and I'm sure that won't change anytime soon :)

Ciao Peru!

I'll be home this weekend! Hooray!
I seriously can't wait to upload pictures, especially after today. We went to the zoo and it was sooo fun. Me and Bee (Brandy, our extra team member) played with a pink dolphin for a while, my neck is sore from having an anaconda around my shoulders, and I got to touch more monkeys and a capybara too even though we're probably not supposed to touch them... And last night we had macaroni for dinner -the blue box and everything! Luke is so good to me... it's been a pretty good past 24 hours :)
Being in the city again, like before, is kinda bittersweet. The water at the base situation is still a huge frustration and it's hard not to think why not just be back on the river, but I really do love this city. Well, most of it. I think I mentioned that last weekend at one of the churches we helped out with another youth camp kinda thing, most of us preached, we did dramas, and we had some fun worship times, dancing included thanks to me and Jo. Mostly Jo kept that up though because I got too hot after a while. Me and her made a new friend, not very surprising since she becomes friends with someone wherever we go. But she's coming to visit us at the base tomorrow so I'm excited to hang out with her again.
Like I said, most of us preached and man, I was fighting with God when I had to share. Well I didn't have to really but I felt like He wanted me to talk about trust, so I started trying to figure out what I was going to talk about on like Friday. I was speaking Sunday night. By 5:00pm, two hours before I was supposed to speak, I still had no idea what God wanted me to say. I was freaking out... Aside from the fact that I hate hate hate speaking in front of people and that I really wanted to translate it into Spanish before I spoke so I wouldn't have to use a translator, I was so mad that God wasn't giving me anything to really go on except one story from my life but I didn't know how to tie that in and actually make it an hour long. After pouting for probably 30-45 more minutes, I told Him it was all in His hands, and tried writing again. Words started flowing like crazy and I kept writing until literally one or two minutes before I stood up to go to the front. I haven't gone back and read what I wrote so I kind of don't know most of what I said, but a few people came up and told me that's exactly what they needed to hear, and let me tell you this is probably one of the biggest glory moments I had all Outreach. Considering that all the glory of it is going straight to Ashna (God) because seriously none of that would've happened on my own. Pretty sure the biggest theme of this trip for me is that I am capable of so much more than I think I can ever do, but only when I get over myself, stop pouting, and open up my hands for Him to take control of whatever it is I'm holding onto.
On that note, in a team meeting last night, we talked about frustrations and highlights of the trip, and it reminded me of a lot of stories I have... I'll try my best to put the important things in here when I get home and don't have a life again. Speaking of which... We leave Iquitos Friday night sometime around 7pm I think, fly from Lima to Atlanta, and then to MN and I'll be back at the base probably late afternoon on Saturday. I can't tell you how much I am ready to come home and see my Russia friends... Ahhh it's gonna be so great!

I'll see you all SOON!!!

Monkeys Arent Even Cute To Me Anymore

Back in the city again! I would say home sweet home -as close to home as we can get while we're still out of the country- but it's honestly really frustrating here. Like the things we miss the most when we're in the jungle usually have to do with toilets, showers, and ice cream, but the only one of those we can actually have on a regular basis is ice cream. Not gonna lie, I will miss these popsicles an awful lot. But the YWAM base here is just not quality. It makes me more and more greatful for the amazing place and people in the Minnesota base every day. Seriously. I'm kinda just whining right now but after we get done with the youth camp we're helping out at this weekend, we (the girls on our team) will be doing a ton of cleaning around the base for the next week and I can't wait to have a bed with no dirty q-tips, cobwebs, or bugs around the sides. And apparently the well that the base is getting water from keeps drying up and tubes break or something so that we can only shower when we pray really hard (I'm not kidding at all. we've actually got some pretty good stories from it), we pretty much never flush the toilets, and when we do it's normally with a bucket. So... it's nice not to be in the villages, but mostly because I love riding in mototaxis and not worrying about waking up with chickens or dead spiders under my hammock. I've been pretty spent the past couple weeks, missing things like lasagna and dry clothes, can't wait to come home. Still not looking forward to after we're done debriefing because I have no idea what I'm doing with my life or even where I'm living right away, but God will provide. He always does. That's pretty much my biggest prayer request right now is that I would trust God has a plan for me and not stress out about it, and also that I wouldn't want to kill everyone the last week we're here. My mood has been really good though the past couple days so hopefully the last one won't be a problem... But anyways. I'll be home soon! I'll upload pictures and stuff as soon as I can.
Ciao for now!