19 July 2013

Mid-summer Update

Once again I find that life has continued a pace in which sitting down for the length of time it takes to blog is not often possible.

Since we last spoke I have returned to my beloved New Zealand at the end of May, where God almost immediately made His plans, which were quite different from mine known. I find myself in a place far, far from where I thought I'd be. The last few months have been full of change, tears, laughter, joy, success, failures, beauty, relationships, "Hellos," "Goodbyes," growth, prayer, Bible study, intercession, teaching and talking than I've had in a long time.


So what am I doing...
Through time, space, decision, and prayer I am not staffing this years Snowboarders Discipleship Training school as I had previously planned and assumed. God has different plans for me in this season and spending this season staffing our base in a variety of different roles that I am sure God has etched out just for me....A few of my favorites

Intercessor
Two of my weekdays are spent in large portion in our upstairs prayer room in prayer, intercession and worship. While I'm an "IHOP baby" at heart, I never assumed I'd ever end up in the prayer room full time. My heart, spark, and life's story is for discipleship and "doing" so learning to be quiet and submit my plan, my tasks and my busy-ness to draw away quietly and enter the Secret Place has been a journey. The first few weeks I would still bring my cell phone and my To-Do list into my quiet place and take far too many "five minute" breaks to pre-plan and arrange the rest of my weeks tasks and responsibilities and wonder why my time in the prayer room seemed like such a time suck??? Slowly and lovingly my Heavenly Father has romanced me into a a place in which I long for my time in the prayer room. It is nearly always empty when I'm in there and so I find a secret freedom in my heart to enter into new arenas of prayer and worship as I search out His heart and beseech Him on behalf of others. Now as the schedule has taken a flip or two with conflicts from other scheduling priorities if my time in the prayer room is shortened or missed my soul aches. God has begun to birth a place in my heart for the House of Prayer like I have not known.

Community Work Duties
While I am not school staff for the SDTS I still have roles in the school. One of those roles in coordinating our community work duties. Giving back and investing in the community around us is very important to us here so one of my jobs is making sure we do that on a weekly basis. It's my responsibility to spread out our staff and students around our property, our family off our base and places within our community to serve, fix, help, create, clean on Mondays.

Medical/First Aid
My passions alive! My ferociously caring, protection heart has found it's niche. Because of my training and experience I've been given the role of Medical/First Aid on our base. In this season that's looked a few different ways; helping dole out post-airplane cold remedies, leading our "Mtn. Safety" training, checking in on all the winter colds, only one hospital run thus far, a few nurse help line calls and bandaged many a bloody elbow and knee from our fearless snowboard boys.

Friday Night Outreach
Another place I have found myself thriving is in coordinating and leading out our Friday Night Outreaches, the ministry and evangelism times in the city. (Which is quickly turning into "Weekend Outreach" as our students leave an amazing impression and example on people and my contact information is shared with ministry leaders and churches in the city). I've loved being able to connect last season as I watched Susie lead out the Around the World schools outreaches. I feel so blessed to have been able to join them as often as I did and get a taste for the ministries they were a part of so that as a new season started I could help continue YWAM's presence through a new group of students. And let me tell you, these students are going for it! I feel like a proud Mama bear every time I get an email or text from a ministry I wasn't a part of telling how blessed they were to have our crew, what an amazing job they did or how evident God's love was in them.

Bible In Schools
In this coming season I will also be teaching a "Bible in Schools" curriculum in our local primary school. That's right everyone, shocking I'm sure but I've found God has brought me right back into the classroom. This time with Kindergartners! Here in New Zealand it is legal to teach Bible in the public schools. Through a series of seemingly random events I've been given the chance to teach one of these classes for the rest of the school year. I'll be going once a week into the Kindergarten class to teach Bible stories and Christian character. Sometimes God's plans are hilarious...

Homeschooling
For the next five weeks I will also be homeschooling a sweet little 7 year old. His parents are missionaries that I know from last year that are coming through Oxford to pack up their house and head to England to work missions with the Islamic community. While they are here their son will be in transition between school systems but will still need to be educated so that he is on pace to join his peers in school once they get to England so once again, I'm sure with a grin on His face God has arranged for me be educating children. I'm incredibly excited to be able to spend the bulk of my time with a kiddo. While I'm sure long days back in the routine of teaching will have it's share of difficulties, it's a welcome change of pace and adventure this winter.


Many times in the last few months I have been confused,  I thought I knew so clearly what God's plan was, but am realizing how often I've confused his perfect will for my own desires of what I think is right in the time or in my life. I'm learning so much about how God's ways are so much higher than our ways. (Not just like higher in that we can't reach them like we couldn't reach the cookie our older sibling held above our head as a kid) but higher in the ways in that His plans are just on a completely different plane of reality than ours. I've been reading through the Gospel of Luke lately. I'm finding solace in the way God's in ultimate control; as a woman I notice so many of the details in the relationship between Mary and Elizabeth. Both woman asked to carry babies in circumstances that are neither socially acceptable or even physically possible. (Elizabeth is barren and Mary is a virgin!) God's divine plan was to bring all creation into order through the birth of one; the other? The divine forerunner. I never noticed before how gentle and detail focused it was of God to give these women pregnancies within three months of each other; they lived with each other; one would talk and the other's baby would get fired up in the Spirit. I mean really, can you imagine the Holy Spirit party they four of them were having every day? And I just think, man that would be so hard. We have this plan for our lives, our realtionships and our futures and we think of the one plane of human reality but God has an infinite number of other realities we can't even comprehend. He can see and interact with past, present, future, time, space, sound, sight all at once. And the thing that has just been nailing me lately; (sometimes with tears of joy of how blessed I am, sometimes sorrow of how unworthy I am) is that in every single reality of His being He is ALWAYS, ALWAYS for us. We are always the draw, ache and pull of His heart. 

Praise Report: 
My insurance (mostly) came through and the bulk of my hospital bills have been paid! Thank you LORD for your insane amount of provision and protection!

Prayer Requests:
Bible in Schools and Homeschooling: God's wisdom and grace would be on me and pouring out of me as the majority of my days for the next many weeks will be spent with little ones who are so ready and willing to be loved and accepted by the Father.

Continued financial support and blessing.

Continued health and physical protection.

God's wisdom and guidance as we continue to journey on into the wildness of His extravagant love.

Staff hang out time after our Basic Leadership School on Tuesdays.

Gluten Free- Dairy Free Cupcakes Steph made for the 4th of July.

Sophie and I at our "All-Base Night Out." Last Crusaders game of the season, with a win they are headed to the play-offs.

Staff Girls in Christchurch for Stephanie Hanson's Bachelorette Party. 

Running Sunday School in Spreydon last week.