Kia ora! Hello from New Zealand!

Kia ora! Hello from New Zealand!

I feel so blessed to be able to spend the lecture phase of my DTS in such a beautiful place that perfectly reflects the creative character of my God. The first day or two were a little hard because I missed home so much, but as soon as the school started I hit the ground running and haven’t had too much time to be homesick. Before I left, everyone asked me what my greatest fear was about coming here. I assumed they thought it would have something to do with the outreach phase, but it didn’t. My greatest fear was that I wouldn’t connect with any of the people I would be living with for five months. I am so pleased to share that this group truly became my overseas family before the first week was over. I am grateful that God has called each one of them here, for the dynamics of the group would be so different if there was even the slightest change. The sense of trust we are learning to have in each other is so valuable. We love to laugh together and cry together. They are so understanding of the fact that I cry with every emotion, and some of them even cry with me. In honor of Frozen, we have adopted the phrase, “Yoo-hoo! Family!” as our own. This is quite amusing when we are out and about. Also, having lived in the south my whole life, I’ve never been used to my traits being different to some people. They find my use of “y’all” and my love of sweet tea so very “southern”. Ha.

We just completed our fourth week. God has moved so much in my life in the past month. It would be impossible to share with you all the amazing things I’ve learned, but I will do my best to highlight the majority. Week one was orientation week, just getting the feel of the schedule, expectations and work duties. Of course it was about learning to have fun together as well. We spent an entire day that week doing our own version of the Amazing Race. Our awesome staff put it together in order for us to learn to work together in teams, and to get to know the city that is to be our home for three months. It was such fun, but so challenging! One of the tasks we had to complete was hiking (not even halfway) up this place called the mount and getting our next clue. Let me just say, I did not realize just how out of shape I was until I came here and routinely started climbing ginormous hills. When we reached the location that contained our clue, suffice to say I was pretty worn out. We noticed a water bottle next to the clues and assumed it was for us to drink. My teammate is such a gentleman and let me take a sip first, but as I took a drink, I quickly realized it was not water and began spitting out black stuff. I was a little panicked not knowing what it was. The piece of paper that was supposed to contain the clue was blank, so we decided to head back down. If only we had realized the black stuff in the bottle was ink to make the clue on the paper visible! We may have saved the second trip up the mount…anyway, I’m not sure what everyone thought of me after I had such a dumb moment, but thankfully they just accepted me for who I am. Ha. We ended up coming in third place out of four, which the uncompetitive spirit in me was happy with. The next day was a bit heavier. We shared our stories with each other, and just jumped into the nitty gritty stuff in our life right away. It was freeing as well as healing for many people as we prayed over each other.

The second week we learned about the nature and character of God. The one thing that I think made the biggest impact for me, was working through discouragement about not feeling like I was hearing God’s voice. As I said, our schedule is pretty packed. Each morning we have something different to begin our day after we complete our “morning blitz” chores. Monday mornings are whanau time, which is Maori for family time (the Maori are the native people here in NZ). Tuesday and Thursday mornings are worship, and Wednesday and Friday mornings are intercession. I have never really experienced intercession before, so I was so excited for our first day when we learned about what it actually entails, including some useful tools for preparing our hearts before we begin. Each intercession time we pray for different things. So far, we have spent some time in prayer for the issue of poverty, the issue of suicide in New Zealand, Afghanistan, and the girls from Nigeria that were kidnapped. Through our times of intercession, God has already taught me so much about hearing His voice through pictures and scripture references. Yesterday our topic was based on our justice stream for the week, which was genocide and abortion. We ended up having a time of creative intercession. This involved splitting into four different groups: song, drawing, painting and dance. We were able to pick which group to go with, so I chose painting. We prayed through the steps of preparing our hearts, and during our time of prayer, God gave me a picture of an unborn baby within an apple, as the pupil of an eye. This came along with Psalm 17:8, which says, "Keep me as the apple of the eye; Hide me in the shadow of Your wings". A few people also got a sense of darkness, but that God can work through any situation to redeem. This influenced the background of our painting, which transitioned from darkness to light. It was really awesome to experience God using our creative abilities in order to intercede.

The third week was on identity. Our speaker for that week is such an awesome woman of God, and I felt so blessed to have the opportunity to get to hear the wisdom God has given her. She really took the time to get to know us and invest in us. This is the one hard thing that I am already realizing about YWAM; there are many relationships formed, and many goodbyes said, but it’s very cool to know people from all over the world. In my DTS alone we have people from Canada, USA, UK, Mexico, Switzerland and the Philippines. 

I experienced such freedom during that week. I have struggled my whole life with feeling that I never had a talent. Not that I’m terrible at everything I do, but I never had that one thing that I felt made me special and set me apart. What God showed me during this week though, is that He has given me gifts and talents. He has given me the gift of encouragement and strong faith, as well as a spirit of acceptance and hospitality. He has used the people here to show me just how important the talent of making people feel welcome, comfortable, loved and accepted can be. The two compliments I have received the most since being here are: that I have warm eyes and a motherly spirit. It seems God knew what He was doing when he created me, with the talents and character traits that would mesh so well.

This past week has been on relationships, no, not just romantic relationships, in fact, the majority of the week was on how we relate with God. We reviewed the first and greatest commandment, which is to love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul strength and mind and to love your neighbor as yourself. We focused in on loving God with our minds and the importance of learning to love studying scripture. One of the biggest things that I learned this week was this: I cannot honor God and effectively love the people I am in relationship with, if I hate myself. In order to love my neighbor, I have to first know who I am. My identity is found in Christ.

I continued to experience even more freedom this week. I have been set free from the strongholds of shame and rejection that I have held onto for most of my life. The sin of regret and spirit of unworthiness I have carried around for so long are gone. This doesn’t mean I won’t still struggle, but the more these things are brought into the light, the easier the load will be. I know the process of being refined will continue for the rest of my life…what a powerful thing to experience freedom in Christ!

We also had a very special time on Thursday morning. The men in our DTS and on staff, prepared a very special surprise breakfast for all of us ladies. They requested that we wear formal attire, and escorted us into an atmosphere quite like something out of Jane Austen’s Pride & Prejudice. Maybe it just felt like that because they had the soundtrack playing... They took our orders, served us and made us feel so special. They had hung twine from the ceiling that held encouragement notes. The amount of planning and the careful attention to detail was very impressive. We felt so honored that they would take the time, not only to serve us, but also put so much thought into what we would enjoy. In the end, they had cards for each of us in which they had written the things they recognized in our character and how God created us. I have to mention that one of my favorites said, “Brings a Southern Comfort”. But not only did they make these cards for us, they took the time to come to each of us individually and read them aloud. We had a time afterward to give feedback on our experience. It turns out the breakfast was not all about us, but also helping the guys become men. Hearing the stories from some of the ladies about how that was the first time they felt so cherished brought tears to my eyes. What meant the most to me, was that it wasn’t a romantic thing. I think women tend to expect to be treated the way they treated us if they are in a relationship. It was so refreshing to be cherished as a lady by these men who are my friends.

Our justice stream lectures have been interesting, heart wrenching and thought-provoking. We have covered topics such as the definitions of justice and mercy, poverty, compassion, genocide and abortion. We have been walking through Old Testament scriptures to take a look at God’s definition for justice. The hard thing is, there is not a clear definition and justice is not always fairness. What may seem unfair to us is still just in God’s eyes. It’s been a very difficult process for many of us to work through some of the things God allowed in scripture. Many times, I have had to wrestle, but come to the conclusion that I have to decide that I still believe my God is sovereign, just and merciful, even if I can’t understand.

“We believe something not when we say we do or even when we believe we do, but when we act as if we do.” Gary Haugen