Tour of San Jose!

FINALLY after many months of trying to upload this stupid video, youtube let me upload it. So this is the extremely long tour of our very favorite village, San Jose. It was also the first village we stayed in, so my first experience in the jungle! Ok the video isn't THAT long, but it's longer than the rest of them because I didn't really know what I was doing and that I should walk fast to make it less boring for you guys. But I hope that at least some of you watch and enjoy it :)

http://www.youtube.com/user/S0meCallMeRed?feature=mhsn

18 Days!?!

I know it's been forever since I've written, but I didn't really have much to say I suppose. So then last night I was determined to come up with something to tell you guys, and realized I've known I'm going back to the second YWAM school at the end of this month, only 18 days away from now (so crazy!), and I've mentioned it a couple times here, but haven't really told you guys about what it actually is. Half the time when I say "SOMD" nobody knows what I'm talking about, so this seems like the prime time to fill you in on the details! Or at least as much as I can give you for now..

On June 26th, me and most of the students that were with me in DTS plus a few more students from other places will be starting our School Of Ministry Development, or we refer to it as SOMD because YWAM is all about acronyms as you may have guessed by now. It will be a very similar set up as the schedule for the school I just finished, a 3 month lecture phase and then at least a 2 month outreach. The subjects we'll have speakers talk about each week are (tentatively);

• Principles of Ministry Through Community
• Bibilical Worldview
• Cross-Cultural Communication
• Spiritual Gifts and Strengths Finder
• Personal Evangelism
• Principles of Servant Leadership
• Compassion and Justice in Ministry
• Faith and Finances (for Ministry)
• Preaching and Public Speaking
• People Groups and Belief Systems (World Religions, one of my favorite topics since high school)
• Planning and Leading an Outreach

The last one is kind of important. The big thing about this second school is that our Outreach is really our own. During my DTS, I went with a group to the Amazon, most of the planning was done by the leaders, the location and connections were already covered, it was just a choice between one trip or the other. This outreach portion we will have 3 options. 

1) We can go on our own outreach to wherever and do whatever. We make our own connections, plan our own budget, and really make this outreach our own. The description from the website sums it up a little better than I can: "Custom design your own outreach. You pray, you hear, you plan, you go. YWAM staff will provide guidance, but you will be the one who puts this outreach together. It will be an exciting time of growth as you learn to exercise what God has given you for ministry."

2) Group Outreach. Same concept as the first option, but as a group of 2+ people with the same goals, going to the same place and working together. 

3) Staff Internship. We have the option of staying as an intern and staffing the fall DTS (the school I just finished) and eventually co-leading their outreach. So it would mean being a leader through that school, which means staying an extra 3 months for their lecture phase, and then helping plan and lead their overseas outreach wherever that would be for the next 2 months. This one honestly would be the most expensive, most challenging, and longest commitment since I wouldn't only be staying till November like in the other two options, but would be gone till at least February.

I haven't fully decided which one I'm doing yet, but I do feel God calling me more towards one direction, but I'd rather not make it common knowledge until I know for sure. I haven't even prayed about it that much yet because I didn't want to make any decisions before I even started the school since I know how quickly God can intervene and change my mind. But as soon as the decision is officially made, probably more towards July, you guys can definitely count on more details, specific prayer requests, and my financial situation. 

I'll also probably be sending out my last mailed newsletter once I decide on Outreach so that everyone can for sure hear about it. After that I am planning on keeping my blog up to date for people because it's just too expensive for me to keep sending out 100+ letters when this is free and less time consuming and I can do this way more often. 

Hope this gave you some helpful insight on my future plans -at least what I know for now!

If you wanna check out the website for the school the link is
http://www.ywam-mn.org/index.php/ywam-training/ywam-somd 
or you can just check out ywam-mn.org and see everything my YWAM base has to offer :)

My Favorite Amazonian Bird!

This was my favorite bird to listen to in Peru. You'll understand when you hear it, at least I hope.

http://youtu.be/QeX-KcViN-Y

The ones we saw were yellow though I think... But they literally make the sound of water dripping! They're called oropendolas apparently. I'm really excited that I found a clip for you guys, I really miss hearing this every day. Especially now that birds are coming back north because they think winter's over (yeah I thought so too guys..) and I'm realizing how boring birds are here. Who knew that was something I'd ever notice?

those dangly lookin things are their nests. and I guess we didn't get any pictures of the actual birds, but obviously you can see them in the video.

Ever Watched River Monsters?

This blog basically is for anyone that has spare time that you might want to spend getting to know some of the things I witnessed :) but not necessarily from my point of view this time.

I just discovered this show because I was looking for some other show I remembered liking on Animal Planet. Thought it would be fun to reminisce and watch the Amazon Assassins episode. Basically I just want to puke. Who convinced me that getting in this river every day to bathe when you CLEARLY can't see anything around you AT ALL was a good idea??? Oh my gosh. It's been how long since I've even been there and I'm still terrified of what could have happened to me haha. I mean Kirstin did get bit by a pirahna twice -while I was in the river with her, did I mention that part?-and Taylor either cut his finger on something or got bit by who knows what -let's be honest, the chances of either of those are equally likely...

But anyways. Here's the link to the first part of the episode http://youtu.be/eSM5yMyI2ig   and from there you can click on the 2nd-6th or 7 parts I don't remember how many. I haven't finished it yet, but actually just watching the first part is fun because I saw the giant dinosaur fish they're talking about! Except we called it a 'paiche'. Saw them at the zoo. We've got some pictures but probably not very good ones. And seriously, they were 7-9 feet long, huuuuuuge fish, they really do jump out of the water like that, but thank goodness I only saw them at the zoo.


So if anyone happens to watch this with me, or even part of it, you should comment so I can talk about it with you! I thought this blog might be a little more fun than my boring back-at-home-life. :)

Not In School, But Still Learning

Being home is hard for me, I don't know if I've said this before, but I feel like my life is on pause. I'm in between YWAM right now, and I've spent pretty much this whole time thinking my brain and heart are also on pause until school starts again because what could I possibly learn while I'm at home? Ha. God has been trying to convince me that there's still growing to do before I go back in the summer, and that these few months of my life are just as important as ones spent at the base or on Outreach.

So what am I learning right now... I've seen how faithful God is to the promises He made me while I was in Peru. We did a lot of talking then -funny how that works out- and He's come through on everything He said He would help me with once I got home. I guess I'd have to go into details to explain what I mean but I'm not going to do that here so if you'd like to hear examples, we should hang out or talk some other way :)

By the way, you can reach me by email at sarah_valentine1@yahoo.com or S0meCallMeRed@hotmail.com. I don't check my email much, but I realized I had never put it in here or on my letters...I think...

What else am I learning.. Ok so a big part of my DTS was having hope for my future that I didn't before. Just not thinking I'm good enough to accomplish anything, thinking other people are so much more faithful to God's work than I am so why would my future ministry be anything worth talking about, like extremely down about myself and my "lack" of gifts and skills, etc. A few people have given me some insight the past couple weeks on what kind of person I'm going to be in the future (through visions and God speaking through them...I don't know how many people following this blog actually believe in this kind of thing so I guess if you want specific details on this too you can ask me). It's really crazy the things I've heard, just tiny glimpses of what could be true of my future ministry if I let it happen. The things I've held onto the most are that I'm supposed to be an encourager and a counselor. It's funny knowing that now because my initial thoughts are "yep that's definitely in the future because I've got a LOT of growing up to do before that's true". I don't consider myself an encouraging person just because I'm such a downer all the time, and I think I'm terrible at consoling people because I'm so blunt all I can say is "yeah that does suck" when people just want to hear "it'll be ok". But God has funny ways of showing me He's working on me right now because I'm getting lots of practice in...
My friend Jo (from YWAM, also went to Peru with me), her dad just died last week. Obviously words can't even describe what she's going through (please please please keep her and her family in your prayers!), but the interesting part is that since me and her are so close, I'm the only one she wants to talk to. I mean at first I was the only person in the world she wanted to talk to, and now I'm the person she can actually be real with and we talk every day about how she's doing and what else is happening in our lives. Because of my personality, my real-ness that I can't help and the fact that I don't want a surface answer of "I'm doing good", I'm realizing it's easier for people to talk to me because they can be themselves and say what's actually on their mind instead of just saying what people want to hear.

I've also been told that my listening is going to be the biggest part of my counseling, that people will take great comfort talking to me about things because I can listen. So I'm really trying to put that into practice and be the person that people can trust so this can really happen someday. I'm starting to believe my future is sincerely going to help/impact a lot of people instead of just hope that I do something kind of worthwhile.

So these are a couple of things I've been thinking a lot about the past few weeks and trying to improve on. Not much else to say for now...
Peace out everyone.

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