July Newsletter

“Doing”

The majority of my month hasn’t actually been about “doing” things, which I will talk about more later, but I have had a couple of things that I was involved with leading in the last few weeks that are noteworthy. At the beginning of July, we helped run a 2-day holiday camp at a church where one of our staff is the youth and children’s pastor. We played games with the kids, did a bit of teaching about our identity according to what God says (that seems to be a favorite topic of mine), and we were even brave enough to let them do some baking! A couple weeks after that, a few of us also ran the kids program for a church camp that was going on - we occupied the kids while their parents were listening to speakers and having worship times, and then throughout the rest of the camp got to know the people there, went canoeing, and rested. It’s great being able to do those kinds of camps to bless and connect with churches in the area.

Besides camps, I’ve been loosely involved with the DTS that started on the 1st of July (which Dan is leading). Besides getting to know the students and just being a friend, I’ve been organizing one of their weekly local outreach opportunities, which has been a lot of fun for me. Every week, myself and 3 other girls visit a group home for people with disabilities (very similar to the ACR home I worked at in Minnesota, though the residents here are fairly independent) and do one-on-one activities with some of the residents: play games, talk, cook. The students have really enjoyed it, I think, and it’s of course right up my alley. I’ve loved being able to get back into working with people with disabilities a bit - it’s in my blood!

“Un-Doing”

As I mentioned before, this has also been a month of un-doing: as in not “doing” much, undoing lies that I’ve believed and habits I’ve formed, and rearranging quite a few things in my life. That hasn’t been an incredibly enjoyable process, but I know that God is in it and is teaching me things and growing me in ways that will effect how I do things for the rest of my life. The context of all this un-doing has been that for the first half of the year, I was pushing lots of things forward, working hard and a lot… and I enjoyed it. However, after the outreach team that I was hosting left (in the end of June), I had a bit of a pause in all the work and realized I was quite burnt out and that a lot of the passion for what I was doing had left. So, I’ve been taking it slow and lightening my work load a bit so that I can take time to learn to rest.

The biggest thing that God’s been teaching me through all of this is that I’ve been gaining my value through what I do, and not who I am (who God says I am!). Since I haven’t been doing as much (or getting recognized for what I’m doing), I’ve felt like I’m floundering in who I am a bit and really needing to let God re-shape the way I see him and the way I see myself. I spent almost an entire day a while back having God just tell me in lots of different ways that he loves me… just because I am, not because I do things, not because other people think I’m valuable, but just because I am. I know that it will be a life-long process to keep understanding the depth of God’s love, but I do know that I’ve reached another “layer” of understanding what that looks like.

So, through all of that, I’ve been trying to re-evaluate what I want to be doing for the rest of the year, how I can be learning and growing, and also I how I can be more and more content just being God’s friend.

News from the whole of YWAM Adelaide

Pablo and Fernanda

Our base directors, Pablo and Fernanda, are still in South America working on getting a new visa for Australia. They have overcome quite a few hurdles (needing to prove finance etc) and are now just waiting to hear if their nomination has been accepted. They are hoping to be back in Adelaide before the end of the year!

UDTS

Our Urban DTS has been running for about 6 weeks now and is going very well, I think God has already done a lot of healing in each of the students’ lives. The team is currently in Melbourne for a mid-lecture phase outreach and will be returning in a week or so to complete their lectures. Their main outreach will be to the USA and Mexico!

“Intimate” base meetings

Our staff numbers are quite low at the moment, so those of us here have been getting to know each other quite well! It’s been a bit of a stretch for all of us to keep the base running (cooking, cleaning, paying the bills…) and also move forward ministry-wise. We do have a few things in the works, though - we’ve been visiting lots of churches, supporting other ministries, and planning for events later in the year.