I Am Back!

Hey everbody!
Sorry it has been so long since I've last posted an entry. While in South Africa I didn't have the opportunity to post anything. But I am now able to give you an overview of what I've been up to on the Outreach phase of my DTS!
Since the beginning of April I have travelled to Durban, Cape Town and Worcester (all in South Africa) as well as Newcastle (England).
In Durban I was living at a farm with a family of fourteen (there was also fourteen of us on my team) it was a little crazy but a lot of fun. The family we were staying with had nine kids who were adopted (some were orphans from HIV or others didn’t have good home lives). We were at the farm for three weeks and helped out with building many things on their property. We also were a part of a ministry called Thembisa which is a group of grannies who look after children orphaned by HIV and Aids. Each granny usually had about ten children who they were looking after. My team helped with food distribution to the grannies and held church services with them. For this ministry we were in a township in which 90% of white South Africans had never stepped foot in, just being there with the people made a huge difference and brought about many questions.
After that my team moved to Worcester for three weeks. We lived with people who are a part of an organization called Kibbutz El-Shamma. Their property was right next to a community of people who were really affected by gangsters, drugs, alcohol and many other things. We worked with the Kibbutz and spent a lot of time with the children in the community. For two weeks I worked in the primary school with grade six and seven children . There was a group of four of us from my team who volunteered to work in the school but at first we thought that we’d just be helping out the teachers with their classes but then the first day one teacher was sick so we ended up substitute teaching. And for the rest of our time there we were the teachers and were just given various classes to work with! Some classes had 53 kids so it got a little crazy at points. But it was really amazing because we were able to lesson plan and spend the two weeks talking to the students about their identity and how that can be effected by challenges in life. We were also able to talk openly about God and pray in class which was crazy! So that was really amazing being able to invest in their lives.
We then unfortunately had to leave SA and after sixty hours of traveling (I was absolutely exhausted) we arrived in Newcastle. (We basically used every form of transportation to get there: van, airplane, walking, bus, train, the Underground, taxi, car.) We’ve been working with Tyneside Vineyard church here and just coming alongside them in a lot of things they are already doing. We’ve done plenty of different things such as: handed out coffee and chocolate to students during their exams, handing out flyers to different houses about the church, giving out free chocolate to people, handing out water bottles at clubs on Friday nights, praying for people on the streets, working with a ministry who provides clothing and food to homeless people, doing kids work with the church and many other things! It was extremely busy but really fun at the same time.
My team then went back to the YWAM base in Harpenden. There we met up with the other half of our DTS and had some debrief time together. We then graduated on June 22 and my Discipleship Training School is complete. Overall it has been life changing, challenging and very rewarding! I want to thank you all again for your support in prayers, this would not have been possible without them. I look forward to coming home soon and seeing friends and family again.
God Bless,
Laura

Forgiveness and the Cross

The weeks are going by very fast now and there is exactly one week left until I leave for outreach! This past week I had the amazing opportunity to have the lectures given by Cathy Nobles who is also the leader of the School of Reconciliation and Justice here on the Harpenden base. She spoke to my DTS about forgiveness and the cross. It was really interesting and made me think over a lot of things.

I'll just write out some various thoughts from the week that really stuck out to me and give a quick overview of the week! There were many quotes from this week that I found very powerful so I think I'll pass along a couple of those:
"Hope has two lovely daughters: anger and courage. Anger for what is wrong and courage to set it right."
"Unforgiveness is the poison I take hoping that you will die."
One of the topics that we looked at during the week was anger. The first quote goes well with the topic and we looked specifically at how anger is not a bad thing. It is okay to be angry as long as we use that anger constructively and don't hold on to that anger. The second quote looked at how unforgiveness not only hurts those you hold it back from but also yourself.

We also looked specifically at some different steps to forgiveness which were as followed:
1. Acknowledging the anger and hurt
2. Making a decision to forgive and not take revenge
3. Asking questions to look at the bigger picture
4. Learning to live with the bigger picture
5. Living from your best self

The last two days of the week we had the opportunity to hear from some people from Africa and hear about specific African cultures to help us prepare for our outreach. It was very interesting and eye opening. As I am leaving for South Africa next week I do not know if or how much access I will have to the internet for the next couple of months. So I will most likely be unable to post anything more on this blog for awhile. If possible though I will try and update! Thanks again to everyone who is reading these posts and your continued prayer is very much appreciated!
God Bless!

Relationships and Identity

The weeks seem to be going by faster and faster as outreach gets closer! I now leave for South Africa in two and a half weeks which is very soon and I'm starting to look ahead to packing and such. We also found out that for our outreach in the United Kingdom we will be going to Newcastle, England! We don't yet know what we will be doing there and may not till closer to the date.

This week's lectures were led by Steve and Jo Bishop who are the DTS center directors. They spoke on relationships and identity. We spent a lot of our time looking at who Jesus related to and how He related to them. We were often broken off into small groups to look up scriptures and give examples of those relationships. As Christians we are called into relationships with those around us so that we can share our faith.

We also spent some time looking at our identity and how that can be influenced by many different factors and how we have two different identities. Our natural identity which is how we would try and define ourselves through the world (through material things and concentrating on what we can achieve) and we also looked at our spiritual identity which is how God views us (found throughout the Bible). We also looked into the how our identity influences our self image.

This week I also saw the amazing ways that God works! There are five people who go to the same church as me here in Harpenden and on Sunday we had a little bake sale, face decorating and balloon animals for the congregation after the service. We spent four hours on Saturday baking and preparing for it and then on Sunday we just asked for donations towards the baking. Once we got back to the base we counted the total and we were amazed to find it totaled 360 pounds! It was wonderful and has helped out our team in reaching our financial needs.

Nature and Character of God

Overall this week was great! We had some beautiful weather, took part in another love feast and had a really challenging and thought provoking speaker among other things. David Painting was the speaker of the week and He taught on the nature and character of God. There was so many good things covered in the week it would be impossible for me to touch on all of them so I'll just focus on one or two points that really stood out to me.

One powerful yet simple thing we did was to read 1 Corinthians 13. First, as a class we established and all readily agreed on the fact that God is love. Then we were directed to read 1 Corinthians 13 which by itself is a very powerful chapter in the Bible. However, then David pointed out that if God is love then all the different characteristics of love covered in Corinthians also applied to God. We then reread the chapter out loud and replaced the word 'love' with 'God'. It seemed like such a simple thing to do but it really did make everyone in the room stop and think for a moment and re-evaluate how we see God and who He is.

We also looked into the idea of choices and how God has given us freewill to make choices. This in itself speaks of God's nature of love. Even though He has the ability as an all-powerful God to take absolute control of our lives He allows us to make choices whether they be good or bad. Not only does He allow us to make our own choices but if we make the wrong choice or move away from God with our choices He is willing to forgive us of that and accept us back into His love with true grace.

There were so many other topics covered in the week and many of them were touched on and expanded everyday so it is hard to give a sense of the whole impact and meaning of the lectures in this one entry! The two points above really made me think and appreciate more and more who God is.

As mentioned before my DTS had another love feast in which we specifically set aside an evening to get together, eat, be a community and have God the focus of it all. It was a lot of fun and really encouraging overall. We all dressed up in the theme of togas and shared a lot of laughs together.

The week was also so bright and sunny that I had the chance to play a lot of frisbee outside on the oval. Most of the flowers are starting to come out and bloom now! Some of the trees are also budding which is very exciting. I leave for South Africa in less then a month now and am getting very exited for it!

The Father Heart of God

Week seven is now officially over and it's getting closer and closer to the end of lectures and the beginning of the outreach phase. My outreach to team to South Africa has decided that the three locations within South Africa that we will be going to are Durban, Worcester and Cape Town. We will be spending six weeks total in South Africa and then we will come back to the United Kingdom for another three weeks of outreach. The location of our UK outreach is still undetermined and we are currently looking into that. We've booked our flights for South Africa and we leave on April 6 which is exactly a month from now! I'm very excited to go but it will also be sad to split up from the rest of the DTS as they will be going to Tanzania.

This week's lectures were taught by Emmanuel on the Father heart of God. The first few days we spent in looking at the character and nature of God so that we established a foundation of who God. We looked at how the nature of God (who He is) and the character of God (what He does) is relevant to all generations and all cultures. God remains the same but He is relational and knowable for everyone and we can all seek after Him and know Him. God created us to be creative, stewards (of the world and our own belongings) and to serve (by having a selfless commitment to others). We first need to be able to understand the Father to begin serving with His same heart. A major hindrance to our knowing God's hear better is our pride because pride can lead to many different barriers such as insecurity, independence and jealousy.

We then looked specifically at at the fatherhood of God and how it is this aspect of His character that allows Him to demonstrate warmth, nurturing and security based on His unconditional love. The role of our earthly father greatly influences our opinions and thoughts towards our heavenly father. By looking deeply into His character we can see how our views are false and need to be changed. The reason for the warmth of God's character is acceptance and unconditional mercy and grace. God's nurturing is for our maturing through discipline, teaching and guidance. Finally, God's security is so that we may have safety in identity, protection and through our rights and inheritance.

This week I also had the opportunity to go to a gig here on the base which featured a band called Evergreen who work through YWAM; their goal is to evangelize through the method of music to other musicians. It was a lot of fun and a nice end to the week! Thanks for reading!

Evangelism

Week 6 of lectures was really good and a lot of fun too. The classes were led by Andy and Colin who both live here on the base. We covered the topic of evangelism and had some 'practical experience' during the week as well.

The first couple of days we looked at simple questions but really took them apart and analyzed them. One of these questions being: "What is the Gospel"? Initially it seems like a really easy question to answer but after taking out all of the 'Christian jargon' it was hard to explain what it was. As a class we discussed various ways of explaining the Gospel to those who know nothing about Jesus or the Bible.

Throughout the week we also looked at the importance of allowing the Holy Spirit to guide us as we evangelise. Another point that really stuck out to me this week was the question: "Is Jesus worth it?". When faced with evangelising it is easy to say no because it pushes you out of your comfort zone and it puts you in a vulnerable place but the question you always need to come back to is the one above: "Is Jesus worth it?". If you believe in Jesus, you also believe He is the best way to live your life by so why wouldn't you share Him with others? If Jesus, and what He has to offer, is true why wouldn't you tell others about Him?

As a practical aspect to this week my DTS went into Harpenden and did some mini evangelism with the people there. At the very beginning we all went to a little square downtown and did a random, funny dance, that lasted for two minutes, just for fun. However, as background information, Harpenden is a very small town and not much happens there; the police station is only open a few days a week. Anyways, apparently as we were making a little noise downtown some people called into the station complaining that there were some people making a ruckus. In the end nothing happened and it was all sorted out but it was a good start to our adventures!

The rest of the week went well and just had some processing time on the weekend to think over all the information we had been presented with during the week. Thanks again for reading and your prayers are greatly appreciated!

The Holy Spirit

Another week has flown by here on the Oval and I am now officially half way through my lecture phase here in Harpenden. The weather hasn't been too exciting as it's rained a fair amount this week. The DTS from September was back on the base this week finishing up their last week of their school so it was really cool to hear their stories from their outreach locations. It has for sure made me more excited about my upcoming outreach to South Africa!

This week's lectures were taught by Connie Taylor and we learned all about the Holy Spirit. The lectures were both encouraging and challenging and have left me with a lot to process. We looked at many different scriptures to learn about who the Holy Spirit says He is and how He works in us. The Holy Spirit has also made many covenants with us and we looked into how these covenants affect our lives. He is our Jehovah Tsidkenu (the Lord our righteousness), Jehovah Mekadesh (the Lord who sanctifies), Jehovah Shammah (the Lord who is ever present), Jehovah Raphe (the Lord my healer), Jehovah Jireh (the One who provides) Jehovah Nissi (the Lord our banner/victory), and Jehovah Rohe (the Lord our shepherd). We also looked at the gifts of the Holy Spirit and how they appear in our lives.

This week we also had a 'Love Feast' which was a lot of fun. It's basically a feast for God and to recognize what we are thankful for. So my whole DTS prepared thank you cards for God and dressed up for the feast! We all took part in an amazing chocolate fondue, worshiped God together through music and prayer and read our thank you cards aloud in the group. It was really encouraging and refreshing to hear what other people are thankful for and to rediscover the MANY ways in which God is good!

Thank you for reading and prayers for my teams outreach preparation would be greatly appreciated! Specifically for the location within South Africa God wants us to go and how He wants us to share His love with others. God bless!

Lectures, London and Outreach

This week has been very busy and full of lectures, practical experience and excitement. My DTS spent this week learning about intercession and spiritual warfare from Steven Hanvatty. We covered many different topics such as allowing God full control and guidance in our lives, looking deeper into the armour of God (Ephesians 6), the history of sin in the world, how we are ambassadors for Jesus Christ and the power of prayer.

I found the lecture on the armour of God very insightful and learned many new things despite having known about Ephesians 6 for a long time. We learned a bit about Roman history and that helped to understand the importance of each piece of armour. The belt of truth is our identity in Christ; the truth from the Bible defines who we are. During Roman times the soldiers would each have their rank on their belt so everyone would know who you were by looking at your belt. The breastplate of righteousness guards our heart and emotions just as in real battle it would protect our torso. The sandals of the gospel of peace allow us to have a firm grip and to stand firm in our beliefs. The scriptures give us a foundation for what we know to be true. Just as during the Roman times the soldiers would attach nails to the bottom of their sandals to add extra grip during battle. The shield of faith enables us to take our position in God to fight for Him. As we get to know God better our faith increases and we are better equipped to defend and protect ourselves. The helmet of salvation protects our minds from the lies of the world and lets us take each thought captive in Christ. And finally, the sword of the Spirit is our only offensive weapon and truly fights the battle. It is key to warfare and is full of God's truths.

We also had the amazing opportunity to go into London and pray for the Parliament of England. Our speaker had connections with a current member of parliament, Fiona Bruce, who is a known Christian governmental leader. We attended a Bible study in the Westminster chapel with other members of parliament. We had the opportunity to talk with Fiona about her role in government and then pray for her and for England as a whole. Along with this came a very interesting tour of the Parliament buildings which was full of history and strong Christian foundations which are not necessarily present today. By the end of the day: Parliament, seeing Big Ben, the London Eye and taking the Underground I was extremely tired but it was worth it!

January DTS with Fiona Bruce

Big Ben

Thames River

 To finish off this rather long entry I will tell some wonderful news! Our DTS has decided on two outreach locations for April. One team is going to Tanzania and my team is going to go to SOUTH AFRICA! I'm really excited for this and can't wait for it to come. It's amazing how God worked through prayers and intercession to lead us to these destinations and how right they feel. God will work in great ways!

Freedom Week

The past week has been very good and also very challenging. Throughout the week we focused on our original designs and on our strongholds. Original designs being the unique creation of each person and how we are each created for specific things. The stronghold aspects of the teachings referred to the areas in our lives that keep us from fulfilling our original designs.

There was a lot of time spent in prayer, many encouraging conversations and a lot of time spent thinking through the lectures. Within the context of original design and strongholds we also touched on subjects such as the power and authority that has been given to us through Christ, how fear can hold us back in our relationship with God, how to respond to injustices that happen to us and others, the powerful effects words (both positive and negative) have on other people and how forgiveness is the foundation of God's kingdom and His very nature.

I've also been working on different assignments and work duties throughout the day. The weather has been fairly nice and sunny this week but with a lot of wind. A group of us from the DTS program took the train into St. Albans this past weekend and had a chance to check out the open market and a beautiful cathedral. It was great to see more of England and to hang out with everyone!

Disciple[ship]

This past week has been filled with lectures, work duties, and some fun adventures in and around Harpenden. The time is flying by fast and I am really glad that I am here.

The lectures this week were all focused on the topic of discipleship and what it means to be a disciple of Jesus. I was reminded of things I already knew but was also challenged with a lot of new ideas of what it means to be a disciple. It's hard to condense a week's worth of teachings into a few paragraphs so I'll just write about the points that really stuck out to me.

The disciples of Jesus were all ordinary men and had ordinary lives; they were challenged by Jesus to follow Him and to give up their daily routines. By making the decision to follow Jesus they lived a life of unknowns. They didn't always know where they were going, what to do or what to say. They got things wrong and had to learn continually from the teachings of Jesus. But they were still willing to give everything to Jesus. They learned along the way and depended on Jesus for guidance.

This commitment that the disciples made really challenged me to give my whole life to Jesus and trust that He can take care of my dreams, plans and future. The question isn't where I'm going in life but who I'm following. I'm bound to get things wrong along the way and realize somethings I need to change but Jesus will be my guide. If I listen to His guidance and truly seek Him out He will show me where to go and provide me with the means to get there.

I really look forward to learning more this week and getting to know my fellow students better! All of us have connected really well already. We all shared our testimonies in the week which really brought us together more. We've had a lot of fun as a group with random games, exploring the town, dance parties and just hanging out!

Thanks for reading and all of your prayers!

The Oval

The "Oval" or YWAM Base

From left: BB Hall, Church and Clock Building

One of these cozy houses is where I live!

A Map of the Oval: I live in #9

I'm Finally Here!

So after many months of preparation the adventure has finally begun. For those of you who don't know I graduated from high school in June and did not know where to go next. I decided not to go to university but I wanted to do something more then work for the following year. I felt God pushing me to do something that would allow me to develop my relationship with Him and also something that would stretch my faith. I know a few people who have done a DTS program with YWAM and had heard that it was both challenging and rewarding. I prayed about the decision a lot and really felt that God was leading me to Harpenden. There have been many challenges in the journey towards YWAM both physical and emotional but I am very grateful to be here now. I know I will be challenged in my ideas of faith and my relationship with God but I hope to grow through the program and really experience God's presence.

I flew into Heathrow airport early on January 15th. As I was driving back to the YWAM base in Harpenden, England I was able to see some very 'English' scenery which is gorgeous. There are twenty people in my DTS program and over ten different nationalities are represented within the group. Everyone is really amazing and I'm looking forward to getting to know them all. There are also other YWAM programs going on at the same time as mine so I have the opportunity to meet many more people all of which share the same love for Jesus.

The first twelve weeks of the DTS will consist of lectures and guest speakers. Through this time I hope to really strengthen my relationship with God and get to know Him better. This week's lecture focus is on Discipleship and what it means. I'm really looking forward to learning a lot and being reminded of things that I may already know.

Hopefully I will be able to update this blog every couple weeks to keep everyone up to date on what is happening here in Harpenden! To finish off I'll leave you with some verses that have really stood out to me this week:
"Then the eleven disciples left for Galilee, going to the mountain where Jesus had told them to go. When they saw Him, they worshiped Him-but some of them doubted. Jesus came and told His disciples, "I have been given all authority in heaven and on earth. Therefore, go and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Teach these new disciples to obey all the commands I have given you. And be sure of this: I am with you always even to the end of the age." -Matthew 28:16-20