MERRY CHRISTMAS

MERRY CHRISTMAS AND A HAPPY NEW YEAR 2009!

More pictures

me and my Indonesian friends

cavemen on their way to the city

carols by candlelight

cottesloe beach

These are pictures from commissioning night, our caveman's christmas party, carols by candlelight where I was part of the choir, the beach,... 

Last week of lectures

I just finished my last week of lectures can you believe it?! Sorry that I haven’s updated you in a while, it’s been crazy busy lately with Christmas, getting ready for outreach and all.

As I’ve mentioned before last week’s teaching was on relationships, not only romantic relationships but relationships in general. The leaders of Island Breeze (a YWAM ministry) Shaneane and Ray Totorewa spoke and they were fantastic! They work with Maoris, the indigenous people of New Zealand, and my outreach team will be working with them for a while, while we are in New Zealand. Ray is a Maori himself so he was able to teach us a lot about the Maori culture.

The week was great, maybe even my favourite week because I learned a lot about relating to others. Some key points for me were:

 * The test of loving God is loving your neighbour.

 * The four main elements a relationship is built on are love, trust,  understanding and honour. Shaneane took a long time to explain each element because they are so important. If one of them is missing the relationship is fragile.

 * Difficult people show us who we really are by our reaction towards them.

 * Caring is the action side of love. You can give without loving but you cannot love without giving.

 * We learned a lot about integrity. People of integrity have nothing to hide. I am who I say I     am, no matter where I am or who I am with.

 * The enemy’s success is based upon ignorance.

 * Courtship is the journey not the destination.

 * Courtships is like romance with wisdom.

 * Set boundaries in areas where you are weak, not where you are strong.

 

Then God challenged me with the question if I am ready to give him the best years of my life. Am I?

 

This week David Gustavesson, the YWAM LA base director, spoke on Lordship/Spiritual Authority. It was great having an older YWAMer share on this topic because he has a lot of authority to speak on it.

I taught us about different worldviews, how to become like a child, about the old and the new man and that we need to bring the old man to death DAILY, a lot about destiny and how we can go after our calling, rebellion, brokenness and submission, humility and faithfulness. We also studied different characters of the bible to see how God shaped their character so they were ready when their full ministry was released. Jesus’ was prepared for 30 years until His full ministry was released and Moses was 80 when his ministry began!

Some other key points for me were:

*Feelings are the enemy of faith.

*Meekness means strength under control

*What do I want in life- position or authority?

*God is going to test all of our works with fire.

*Humility+Brokenness=Authority

*There is nothing God gives you that you don’t have to lay down at one point before He can give it back to you.

*Finding your destiny means WAIT (worship, attitude, intercede, teachable).

*Faithfulness to today’s responsibilities brings opportunities. And the biggest killer of opportunity is a bad attitude and being in a hurry.

*Doing things you don’t like for a season forges character.

And I could add many, many more….

 

Other than lectures we had a caveman’s Christmas party last Sunday where we all dressed up as cavemen and women and after the party we went down town in our cavemen outfits. Some people even crawled up to the Mc Donald’s counter and ordered caveman style haha We had quite a laugh.

Our commissioning night was on Wednesday. Everybody dressed up really fancy; we shared about our lecture phase and then were blessed and sent out. We prayed that our outreach would be the best one YWAM has ever had! Amen!

A part of my school leaves on outreach next Friday and I am taking off to Cambodia on January 4^th and after that to New Zealand on January 30^th.

In the midst of all that Christmas in next week! It will be quite and experience to celebrate Christmas in summer with nearly 400 other people.

I hope you are all doing well and that you’re having a nice and blessed Christmas season! 

Dashing through the snow in a rusty Holden Ute.. falalalalalalalala

Sorry I haven’t written in a while. I was pretty busy with my unreached people group project the past two weeks. We split into different teams and every team got a country they had to intercede for, do loads of research on and find strategic ways to reach the nation.

On Friday we had to creatively present everything we learned about our nation. My country was Pakistan and our unreached people group were the Pashtuns, the second largest people group in Pakistan and the largest people group in Afghanistan. We had fun learning about this country and got incredible promises for this country during our group intercession time for Pakistan. Psalm 67 and Matthew 9:37-38 were just two of many other great promises and prayer points we got.

Last week Stefaaan Hugo, the YWAM base director of Worcester, South Africa, taught on the Father Heart of God. Stefaan was very much lead by the Spirit and didn’t only speak on the Father Heart of God, but also touched topics like God’s provision, Judgment, the Holy Spirit and the Gifts of the Spirit. The one that touched me most was when he talked about the body of Christ and how everybody part has a different function. He ended that session with a time of praying against the Spirit of comparison and thanking God for the way He has made us. I almost cried more than during repentance and forgiveness week.

God really encouraged me so much last week. At one point I just asked Him how come he loves me so much and how it can be that he is proud of me despite all of my weaknesses and faults. It is because He is so much more gracious and compassionate, slower to anger and more abounding in love and faithfulness than we’ll ever be able to comprehend.

Last weeks teaching also gave me a complete new appreciation for my earthly Dad and for my Mom. I feel so blessed and privileged to have grown up with parents that have always let me know how much they love and care about me. They did their very best to represent God the Father and I am so grateful for that because they’ve spared me a lot of hurt and pain.

On Friday we had another great time of application where we gave God control over our lives. This was quite hard for me to be honest because I love being in control.

This week a couple named Ray and Shaneane are teaching on Relationships. The session this morning was fantastic and I’m really looking forward to this week.

Thank you so much again to everyone who has carried me financially and in prayer the last two weeks. I got all of my finances in on time and am able to go on outreach in 3 weeks HALLELUJAH! Everyone in my school managed to get their finances in through one or the other miraculous way. I’m taking off to Cambodia on January 1st!

Garth Gustafson, the base director of Bottambang, Cambodia, was at our base last week and got us all excited for outreach. Because the base isn’t big enough to house the whole Summer of Service (SOS) team and us, only a part of our team will join the SOS and the other part will live in a small village near Phnom Peng for the first two weeks. It will be quite a culture shock living without running water and electricity for a while but I am more than looking forward to it!
Other than that we decorated our base last week, so everything looks quite Christmassy now and baked a bunch of Christmas cookies on the weekend. Christmas time in Australia doesn’t feel right I must admit. I’m kind of missing the snow, the cold, the Christmas markets in Austria and all the other things that go with Christmas in Austria. Austria is the best place to be during Christmas time by the way ☺

But even though it doesn’t feel like Christmas at all I’m really enjoying summer and the hot weather here. We went to the beach yesterday evening to worship God while watching the sunset. Tough life..

Week 7

Wow another week gone, I’ve only got one more month of lecture phase to go!

Dean Sherman (a YWAM legend) taught on spiritual warfare this past week. Dean didn’t actually come to Perth but we watched videos that were filmed while he was teaching at our base 8 years ago. I was kind of skeptical towards the videos at first because I wasn’t too sure I could get much out of them, but hey God speaks through so many ways, why not through videos?

Dean’s teachings were fantastic. We learned what spiritual warfare is, that we are all called to do warfare, about our authority in Christ, the church, the nature of an attack, the armor of God (I encourage you to read Ephesians 6 again!), the enemy’s strategies and how to pray against some of those strategies,…   We learned how to fight and how to win.

Last Sunday I went to an event called ‘church together’ where over 15,000 people from about 200 churches around Perth came together to worship God as one. It was beautiful to see Christians from so many different denominations worship God in unity.

Then we went chocolate selling on Thursday to raise funds for new property for our base. Our base is growing and we need more space! We basically walked around the city and visit every business and office we could find to sell the chocolates an the girl I went chocolate selling with and I were able to sell all of our chocolates yay

I had some great times with God last week as well. On Tuesday I had to give a talk on one of God’s character attributes and I chose to speak on His grace. God has teaching me a lot about grace lately. Grace is a word we hear all the time and yet, at least for me, it is so hard to understand what grace is really about. I can’t believe that God loves unconditionally and with an everlasting love and doesn’t’ expect anything in return. Grace is something I cannot earn, which means that it doesn’t matter how much I pray, how much I read my Bible, God will love me the same. There is absolutely nothing I can do to make Him love me more, because He has loved me first. So grace is the free and unmerited favor of God, as manifested in our salvation and the bestowal of blessings.

“And if by grace, then it is no longer by works, if it were, grace would no longer be grace.” Rom. 11:6

We have some great future worship leaders in my DTS so we like to get together and worship. After small group on Tuesday a handful of us got together and had one of those special worship jam sessions in a back corner of the base (by the fire exit so literally a back corner haha). The presence of God was so intense though and I can truly say I loved God even more after that evening.

This week’s teaching is on missions and our speaker is Joseph Chean, the base director of YWAM Singapore. He has already been sharing awesome stories on what has been happening in Singapore and on Missions from Genesis to Revelation. I am excited to hear more these next days!

I told you in my last blog entry that I’ll be going to Cambodia and New Zealand on outreach and I thought back than that I had my outreach fees. The thing is though that the flight prices have gone up 50% due to the economic crisis, which means that our outreach fees have gone up around 40% of what was originally planned. This means that I am in desperate need of finances for my outreach at the moment and the fees are due next week on Wednesday! I would like to invite you to prayerfully consider supporting me financially. Any kind of help would be appreciated a lot!

If you feel lead to donate you can either:

 

European residents can make a bank transfer to: 

Stephanie Clewett 

Sparkasse Baden 

(Specify: for Stephanie‐ DTS) 

BLZ: 20205    

account no: 01301012728

IBAN: AT352020501301012728

BIC (swift): SPBDAT21 

 

Or you can donate via credit card:

www.ywamperth.org.au/007/payonline.asp

(if the link shouldn’t work out of some reason you can go to www.ywamperth.org.au and then scroll down to the very bottom of the page and click on ‘payments’)

Payment Type: Other

Recipient: Stephanie Clewett

School or Ministry Name: October DTS 08

Details:  Donation towards Stephanie Clewett’s outreach fees

 

Thanks so much for your support guys! I really appreciate it and need it a lot right now. Please continue remembering me in your prayers, prayer is powerful and it makes such a difference when you’re supported in prayer. 

Week 6

cleaning a Jaguar

my outreach team

This week all of our staff left to go on staff retreat so we ran the base by ourselves. The base is still standing and we’re all alive, so all went very well.

Our guest speaker David Gava from Zimbabwe of

ficially spoke on Evangelism but touched on other topics, such as spiritual warfare, spiritual gifts, our identity in Christ and healing as well. He is man on fire and very prophetic, so we had a lot of on fire prayer and worship times where he prophesied and prayed over every one of us. One of the most important lessons this week was:

It’s not about my ABILITY but about my AVAILABILITY.

During the beginning of the week we could all sense a spiritual battle going on, I, myself struggled with the spirit of unbelief and doubt. God woke up some guys Monday night and they prayed and fought all night for our class until they sensed the battle was won.

God has been speaking to me and through me more than ever this week. I can hear His voice better and better now. We as a class spend a lot of time in worship this week and it has been doing me good. I can really feel that I am growing closer to God day by day here.

One big thing for me this week though was that God lead me to do a bible study on Martha and Mary and I sadly could identify myself more with Martha than with Mary. I still had this great fear of failing God and thought God had expectations of me. I felt God tell me to abide in Him, to enjoy Him and to draw close to Him more instead of focusing on my weaknesses.

On Thursday night we went out to evangelize again and since this week’s teaching was on evangelism we were able to put the things into practice that we had learned all week in class. Miriam and I were able to share the gospel with quite a few people, tell many people that God loved them and pray with four. It was so cool how God spoke to them through us and how He led our prayers that evening. It was a very, very encouraging night for me!

Yesterday we washed cars for four ours to raise funds for outreach. We had a pretty good business going and my outreach team was able to raise a total of nearly $600!

Next week’s teaching is on spiritual warfare. I hope that after next week I’ll know how to fight and win ALL the time! 

Week 5

Last week was interesting, adventurous, exciting, fun, stretching and challenging.  Our topic for the week was The Fear of the Lord and I put last week like this: During repentance and forgiveness week God touched the surface but during last week he cut deep. I had heard of the Fear of the Lord and remember my Dad praying for the Fear of the Lord upon my life when I was a little girl but I never knew what it was. I am so glad I finally know what it is because I now know what I’ve been lacking all my life!

The main points this week were

- What the FOTL is 

- God’s Holiness

- Hatred for Sin

- Fear of the Lord in our Thought Life

- Fear of the Lord in our Communication

- Fear of the Lord in our Relationships

- Fear of the Man

- Obedience

- Results of Obedience

- How do we get the Fear of the Lord?

Some key things that stuck out for me were that we will never do what we need to do to get away from sin if we are not completely surrendered to God and have a revelation of His worthiness and holiness, what consumes our thoughts consumes our lives, holiness is the basis of our respect for God and for our intimacy with Him, asking myself what my response to sin is (how do I react when I’m confronted with sin?), that the battle is won or lost in my heart, we are holy as our thought life is holy, we have to actively chose to resist temptation, biblical obedience is submission not compliance and many other things.

I came to a point where I realized that I desperately need the Fear of the Lord in my life. On Friday we cried out to God for 4 hours for the Fear of Him and I can feel a break through already. I no longer am controlled by my thoughts but I know that I can control them. I am trying hard to take every thought captive to the obedience of God and to think on whatever is good, noble, honorable, pure and lovely. I’m fighting and I admit it is really tough at times but I want to win the battle in my mind and I know that with God’s help I can. For now I am pressing in and praying for God to change my heart (because if we struggle with our thoughts and communication we can be sure that it’s a heart issue. Scary, out of the overflow of the heart the tongue speaks!).

Soo now finally to the part you’ve probably been waiting for. I found out last week where I will be going on outreach. We’ll be having three different outreach teams. The first one is going to Sri Lanka for 6 weeks and to Jakarta for 5 weeks, the second team is going to Cambodia for 4 weeks and to New Zealand for 6 weeks and the third is going to Ethiopia for 7 or 6 and to Northern Australia for  4 or 5 weeks.

The day after we got our options I prayed and got an impression on where to go to much faster than I would have expected. I felt a ‘no’ on where I originally wanted to go and felt God tell me to go to Cambodia and New Zealand. A little disappointed at first I decided to ask God again a little later and got the same answer. I felt real peace though and I am trusting for God to give me His heart for these countries.

I must admit I didn’t expect to do my DTS outreach

a)             in a western country and

b)            working with Christians

but I know God will do great things during our outreach and that it’s the place He wants me to be. We’ll be going to Cambodia with a group of 15-18 year olds for the first two weeks who are doing their Summer of Service. there  and after that we’ll be working with YWAM Cambodia for another 2 weeks. After that we’re going to travelling through all of New Zealand visiting different churches and youth groups to call young people into missions.

So this outreach is going to be waay different than I would have thought but the main reason is to motivate and excite young people for missions and what we’ll be doing will in turn have an impact on the nations as more and more young people go out into missions. I am stoked to go on outreach because I love getting people excited for things (especially missions!!), disciplining and watching young(er) people grow in their relationship and understanding of God.  While I was praying about where to go on outreach God reminded me of the great times I had in King’s Kids and how we went to Sweden last year, one of the richest countries in the world, to help a youth group do outreach in their town and of the amazing things God did in them and through them during that time.  What we’ll be doing on outreach will probably be quite similar so I am super excited!

The outreach is about $1500 more expensive than I thought it would be though because end of December is the most expensive time to fly out of Australia…

 

Other than that my small group had a fun time baking loads of cookies, I went on an adventure night last weekend which proved to be one of the craziest and most fun nights I’ve ever had. God is a fun God and he loves to see his children laughing and having a good time! That’s a little revelation I had after that, that God doesn’t only want to be included in our times of struggle, worry and sorrow but also in our times of joy, triumph and FUN! He created laughter hallelujah!

Please pray for all of the YWAM Perth students this week as all of our staff are away on a staff retreat. The students are in charge of everything this week under the leadership of two guest speakers, John Bills and David Gava (who is speaking on Evangelism in our school this week). Please pray for a blessed, fun and refreshing time for us and for the staff as well and for God’s protection on us and the base. Please also pray for unity amongst the students and especially for unity in my DTS. Last week we sensed such great unity but since our outreach teams have been announced you can tell that the Enemy is trying to cause division between us. We are fighting this together because we know that God can’t move in our team and use us if we aren’t one body. 

Camping Trip

Siamese Banana Twins
Campfire
Mmh yummy dinner

Mud face
Eating Contest
Canoeing
Lectures out in the bush
These are some typical YWAM buses haha
Getting ready to leave

Week 4

Wow I can’t believe that a quarter of my lecture phase is already over! This week has been very refreshing. Cliff Wiener taught on Intercession and Worship this week and started out with focusing on hearing God’s voice and the Holy Spirit.

I’ve always had this hierarchical picture of the Godhead in my mind because I’ve never really fully understood who the Holy Spirit is. I got a real revelation on the Godhead and especially on who the Holy Spirit is this week. I now know that he is a person who wants to relate to me just as Jesus related to His disciples.

On Monday evening we had a worship time where we really invited the Holy Spirit to come and speak to us and He did! I was blown away by His presence and how much He spoke to me that evening.

Some other key points for me this week were the whole topic on the spiritual battle we are in, our responsibility to stand in the gap for others and that worship means total surrender.
Cliff was a great speaker who was able to make complicated things simple by telling stories. Tomorrow we’ll have our first real intercession time with the whole base (our base has set prayer intercession times twice a week and now that we’ve had teaching on it we can join them).

The main highlight for me this week was our camping trip over the weekend. I’ve never been camping before so this was quite an experience for me! We had our lectures out in the bush, slept in the bush, cooked in the bush and had no running water! It was great! Friday night we had a blast while playing capture the flag and running through thorn bushes in the night (some of us were so dedicated to the game that they even swam in the river in pitch darkness just to get the flag). After the game we had a spontaneous time of praise and worship as a team. It was a very, very special time for all of us as we were glorifying God under the stars and realizing how much we love each other. I have never experienced such unity in a group before, it is amazing and I feel so blessed!

Saturday we had a rally and as you can see on the pictures above the rally included eating a whole box of shapes and a jar of salsa, an egg walk, 50 push ups, sticking your face in mud (I did that one!), swimming a certain distance,… My team won in the end and the whole thing ended with a huge mud fight in the river!

As you can see we had loads of fun the past couple of days and really grew together as a team.
This week Ari Sloots, one of our base leaders, is teaching on the Fear of the Lord. We already had our first session this morning and it was incredible! I can’t wait to hear more on this topic.
We find out hopefully tomorrow where our outreach opportunities are and I can then tell you in my next update where I’m going on outreach! Please pray that I can completely surrender all of my hopes and presumptions to God in order to clearly hear from Him where I should go on outreach. I really don’t want to base my decision on my own desires or where my friends are going but completely on where He wants me to go.

Please also pray for me that I will gain a much greater Fear of the Lord this week. Pray that I will get a deep, deep revelation of His holiness and His immense worthiness and that I will learn to despise my sin. Also pray for conviction of the Holy Spirit on areas in my life that I haven’t fully surrendered to God and that He will speak to me and challenge me this week.

Thank you so much for your support in every way, it really means a lot to me. Next week I can hopefully tell you where I am going on outreach and by then I will hopefully also know if I'm still missing money for it. The exchange rate I got when I paid for my tuition fees was fantastic and I was able to save some money thanks to the Australian economy.

More pictures

Week 3

This past week has been the most challenging but also the best week so far. Shirley Brownhill spoke on repentance and forgiveness and almost my whole thought life this week was about repentance and forgiveness.

Some of the lecture highlights for me were:

The 3 steps to repentance are:

1.   Change of mind

2.   Change of heart

3.   Change of life towards sin

4.   Everything I do that is against the nature and character of God is sin. Sin opposes God and without repentance there is no restoration with Him.

5.   Pride is our greatest enemy and humility our greatest need in repentance.

6.   I must take personal responsibility for all of my actions and have to fear the Lord more than men.

7.   It’s possible to live a holy life here on earth already. Of course we’ll still sin, but we’ll be so alert that we’ll do everything possible to make things right with God and men as soon as possible because sin means separation from God.

8.   Jesus can’t be my salvation if He doesn’t have my will and my heart.

9.   Forgiveness is a choice not a feeling. We have to be forgive others just as Christ forgave us.

10.       I’m not doing God a favor when I repent, but I’m doing myself a favor.

11.       Jesus came on earth to restore our relationship with God.

I got more and more burdened this week as I realized all of the areas of sin in my life and really started hating sin more than anything. On Thursday we listed all of the sins the bible mentions (there are a whole bunch!) and then wrote a letter to God where we apologized for all of the sins He convicted us of and on the back we had a list with people we had to forgive and why we had to forgive them.

The next day we had our repentance and forgiveness day. We started out in the morning with worship and we prayed for a deep revelation of the cross. Someone had a vision of her nailing Jesus to the cross and that was when I understood the meaning of the cross. I was the one who nailed Jesus on the cross, my selfishness and my sin brought Jesus on the cross!

 At 9:30am the first person started reading their prayer to God out loud in front of the whole class while the leaders were praying for the person. It was a very, very emotional and, for me, emotional exhausting time. With every student that went up front to repent and forgive, the pressure on my heart got greater and greater. I could sense some of the pain the people felt while reading their letter and I felt God tell me that what I was feeling at that moment was just a little glimpse of what Jesus felt when He was hanging on the cross.

When it was my turn to repent I decided to confess every single thing I had ever done no matter what other people might thing because it was all about me and God and I didn’t want the enemy to have any stronghold in my life whatsoever again.

As I was reading my confessions to God I realized again how bad sin is, how much I have hurt God and it was good to let it all out. My leaders prayed for me and I felt free. When I nailed my letter to the cross I knew that everything was part of my story and no longer part of who I am. The last student repented at 1:30am the next day (we were glad that we were finished ‘that early’ the DTS last quarter took till 6am the next day!).  Friday definitely drew us closer together and I love everybody even more than before!

On Saturday I had such a great quiet time because I knew that there was absolutely nothing between God and me anymore!

Thank you so much for your prayers. Please keep praying for God’s protection on all of us and that we will cling to the truth now matter what. The enemy is already trying to bombard us with lies and some are feeling badly attacked right now.

Thursday night evangelism was great as well. We started with knocking at some doors and as we were on our way to the next house we saw a drunk man stumbling down the street and went up to him. We asked him how he was and to our shock he said that he felt like committing suicide. As we continued talking to him he shared how he was in the army and how he had killed loads of people in Bosnia and the Congo and saw his best friends die. He never got over his horrible experiences and tried to forget them by drinking, doing drugs and cutting himself up. Three years ago he gave his life to God, got baptized but fell back into sin shortly after because his past was still haunting him. He can’t believe that God would ever forgive him and he simply cannot forgive himself. We prayed for him and I was able to share with him about God’s grace and that for God sin is sin. To God lying is just as great of a sin as murder. After that he started to cry and prayed for himself. He asked for God’s forgiveness and told us afterwards how glad he was that he met us.

Other than that I’ve been busy with book reports, journaling and base life. I’m really looking forward to next week’s teaching on Worship and Intercession.

 

 

Week 2 in Perth

This week Peter Brownhill (our base founder) talked to us about ‘The Nature and Character of God’. My prayer for this week was to get to know God more and I did. Some of the key points from this weeks teaching for me were:

1) The most important thing is not what I may say or do, but what I in my heart believe God to be like. It is of immense importance that my idea of God corresponds as nearly as possible to the true being of God.

2) My view of God affects every area of my life. The evidence of what I believe is displayed by how I live.

3) The foundation of knowing God believes in Jesus and repentance to God.

4) Grace and peace come into our lives through the knowledge of God. 

"You then, my child, be strong by the grace that is in Christ Jesus." 2 Timothy 2:1

5) We are transformed from our distorted views of God as we see Him for who He is or as we know Him more. We need a renewing of mind and it starts a thought at a time. 

Thought-> choice-> habit-> character-> DESTINY

6) God is an invisible, personal, everlasting, infinite trinity of loving beings.

Pete also gave great definitions of God’s characteristics. I have read about God’s righteousness, mercy, faithfulness,… many times but now I have finally understood what these characteristics really mean.

God has also shown me this week how personal he is. As we were sharing our testimonies in my small group this week I was amazed how God speaks to every one of us in very different ways and how we experience God’s love in different ways. God is all-powerful and so great and yet he longs to have a personal relationship with us!

This week we started with morning exercises and it was such a challenge at first. The only reason I would ever voluntarily get up at 5:40 for a run is because I’m doing it for God! Morning exercise proves to be a great way of starting the day with God though. I’ve had some great prayer times during morning exercise and you’re awake for your quiet time afterwards!

As I mentioned in my last blog entry we go out to evangelize every Thursday. I’m in the Lockridge (a suburb of Perth) door knocking evangelizing team. At first I felt really uncomfortable with the thought of knocking on people’s doors and invading their personal space to share the gospel. I felt like a Mormon or Jehova’s witness and really wasn’t looking forward to Thursday night. And I knew that I personally would never open up to strangers and that door knocking would never work in Austria.

Then Thursday came and we got lost on our way to the neighborhood we wanted to go to and decided to just stop and evangelize in the neighborhood we were. Our leaders told us a little more about door knocking evangelism and I suddenly realized that I had a completely wrong attitude that night. So I asked God for forgiveness and prayed that he would lead us to the right houses.

Feeling kind of awkward I knocked at our first house. A woman opened up and was scared at first because she wasn’t expecting strangers to knock at her door at night. We asked her if she had a Bible, she said yes and as we were ready to leave Ben asked if she had anything we could pray for. She said yes and told us that her partner had committed suicide 6 weeks ago and left her alone with her three young daughters (Jaz 6, Elizabeth 2 and Charlotte 0). Carrie-Ann invited us in her house and let us pray for her and her daughters. She wept and then told us a little more about her situation. She said that they moved to Lockridge 7 weeks ago. When she found out they’d move to Lockridge she cried because she had lived there when she was a young girl and had terrible memories of that neighbourhood. Anyway, just a week after they moved to Lockridge her partner committed suicide out of the blue and left her alone with a new house, 3 young daughters and 2 businesses. If that wouldn’t have been enough, her cat was run over and her car broke after that.

Carrie-Ann is such a sweet woman and a great mother to her daughters. She was open with us about her doubts that God is real and that he cares, because she has just experienced too many bad things in her life. But she did say that she is thankful we came and that we came at just the right time. She gave us her mobile phone number and name so we can keep in touch. I am convinced that she’ll pick up her Bible again! The kids were so well behaved and full of joy. I talked a little bit with her oldest daughter and she told me how much she takes care of her sisters. She brings them to bed, changes their diapers, bathes them and helps her mother a lot. What a responsible little girl!

I am so grateful that God led us to this woman. How great is our God! If we wouldn’t’ have gotten lost we would have never met her! And I learned so much that evening, I learned that God is a very personal God and that he grieves when we grieve. I could really feel God’s brokenness and grief over this woman. He was crying with her. And I learned to step out of my comfort zone and to do things I would never normally do. God is faithful, he gives us grace and courage when we need it and I am so glad that I had a great first experience with door knocking evangelism. Now I’m looking forward to next Thursday! Please pray for Carrie-Ann and her family. Please pray with me that she’ll start seeking God and find comfort in Him.

Please also pray for me next week as we learn about repentance and forgiveness. From what I’ve heard next week is going to be one of the toughest but best weeks in our DTS. We are expecting great breakthroughs in our lives! Please pray that God will show me what’s in my heart. That he'll show me areas of sin and things where I have to forgive others. I know it’s going to be challenging but I am looking forward to the freedom I’ll have after next week. 

Pictures of my first week in Perth

      

First week in Perth

DTS started this week and after a few days of orientation I had my first lectures. Shirley Brownhill, our base director, spoke on Hearing God’s Voice and Quiet Times. Shirley is a great speaker and talks in a way that is easy to understand. She told us about ways God speaks to us, reasons why we are deaf to God’s voice and that God hearing God’s voice is essential for an intimate relationship with Him. If we are willing to listen and obey He will talk to us.

This week was challenging and great. I was convicted of things that weren’t right in my heart. An important thing I learned this week is that we can be completely honest with God. He loves when we humble ourselves before him and tell him where we are at and share our struggles with Him. The great thing is that He knows our hearts and loves us the same. 

I understood the meaning of this verse this week:

  “But you are a forgiving God, gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and abounding in love.” 

~ Nehemiah 9:17

As you can see God has been doing so much in me this first week already. I can't imagine all the things he's still going to do in the next months!

Here is what a normal day in the life of a DTS student looks like:

6:00 morning exercise

6:20 breakfast and quiet time

8:00 family chores (cleaning the base)

8:30 intercession, base worship, or school worship

9:40 break

10:00 lectures

12:30 lunch and break

3:00-5:00 work duty

5:30 dinner

7:30 small groups/study night/outreach/Friday night meeting

A discipleship is a vocational training, which means that we not only sit in a classroom but also apply what we learn and give glory to God in every work we do. It doesn’t matter if we pray or clean a toilet; we do everything for the glory of His name. Part of this vocational training is our daily work duties. I work at the reception as my work duty. I am basically in charge of the phone and welcoming people. I had my first day of work this week and I never knew that so many people mumble on the phone! I am, in any case, still looking forward to a fun and challenging time as a receptionist.

The Perth base has a strong emphasis on family. This means that we as a base are a family, function as a family and do a lot together as a family. Some of our family activities include barbecues, movie nights, or we had a swing dance one night. Yesterday we went to the beach and then walked through the Australian desert to go sandboarding. We took boogie boards with us and then boarded down a sand hill right into the river. I unfortunately forgot my camera yesterday but will definitely try to get some pictures up here from our great day yesterday.
The Australian beaches are amazing! White sand, turquoise water, blue sky, loads of sunshine and no people!

Our DTS group is bonding more and more. I am amazed at how honest and open we are with each other. I’ve had such great talks, heard so many wonderful testimonies and have found great friends already.

If you’d like to pray for me, please pray that God continues His work in me. Pray that I’ll be able to handle the tight daily schedule, get used to base life and really find time to spend time with God alone. Please also pray that I will continue to grow in my relationship with God and get to know Him more.

 

 

Thailand

My time in Thailand was fabulous! Lea, the girl I travelled with and I connected immediately. Before I flew I was a little nervous, because we had never met before but after a few hours it was as if we had known each other for ever.
We stayed at the YWAM outreach center in Bangkok. The base has loads of contacts with various ministries and outreach teams from all over the world stay there, so we were able to meet and have great talks with people from all over the world.

On our first day we met Ek and Becky, the leaders of King’s Kids Thailand and were able to spend time with them. They started a ministry in the slums of Bangkok. They go there a few times a week to offer the children primary health care and to teach the 6 to 9 year olds English, Bible, play with them and to give them milk and a healthy snack. Once a week they also have a Bible study for the children’s parents and teach them English.
The YWAMers are the only outsiders the gangs allow to enter the slums, because they have a great fear of kidnappers.
On Saturday Lea and I had the opportunity to go to the slums with them and help at one of their Kid’s Clubs. It was heartbreaking to see the situation these kids have to grow up in. I have never seen such poverty in my life and the shocking things was that the slum we were in was one of the ‘richer’ ones. Many of the 7-9 years olds have already been involved with alcohol, drugs, pornography etc and all of the kids are neglected by their parents and don't really know what it means to be loved. It was great to be able to spend time with them though. Many of the boys play quite hard so I had five little guys kicking and punching me while laughing their heads off haha but they do respect you and leave you alone when you tell them to stop. Other kids just wanted to be hugged and touched..

Lea and were also able to have a great talk with the leader of ‘At Risk Kids’, which is a ministry based out of YWAM Perth that reaches out to children that have been abused and offers counselling to those children. He told us everything about their ministry, the situation and problems in Thailand.

Did you know that prostitution is illegal in Thailand and that the bar owners don’t own the girls? In Thai culture it is the woman’s responsibility to provide for her family. That’s the reason why many girls leave their village to move to the city and earn money for their families as a hostess or waitress. If their family writes them and tells them that they need money to buy a car the girls feel obligated to earn this money. This is one of the main reasons why the girls sell themselves. It is not unusual for a sex-tourist to rent a girl for 1 or 2 whole weeks.

It was really fun getting to know the Thai culture. Thailand is such an interesting country. The Thai culture doesn’t allow you to show emotions, which means that you smile no matter what. It is also considered impolite if you point at things or people with your finger. I had no idea how difficult it is not to point at things (especially while trying to give directions!).
Thais also cover their mouths when they’re on the phone, they’re never noisy and they love food! I can assure you that you won’t starve in Thailand!

We had a blast trying out new dishes, doing some sight-seeing, enjoying Thai massages, experiencing the Thai means of transportation and getting to know new people. I’m so grateful I had the opportunity to go there before DTS and I’m positive I’ll go there again.

Thank you so much for your prayers. We didn’t get sick, had a great time, were able to serve a bit and didn’t notice anything of the political problems. It was so quiet and peaceful in Bangkok that I completely forgot about all the political problems the country experienced just a few weeks before we came.

Let the adventure begin!

I can't believe I'm taking off in two days already! Right now I’m still getting things prepared for my big trip and trying to decide what to pack for 6 months. 20kg really isn’t that much for half a year! I’m leaving home September 22nd and I was able to extend my layovers in London and Bangkok, so I’ll be traveling around before DTS starts October 5th. In London I’ll visit some friends and meet up with a girl who’ll be doing her DTS with me and we’ll fly over to Bangkok together to spend some time with YWAM Thailand for a week. I’m very excited and grateful that it worked out for us to go to Thailand because I’ve never been to Asia before and I have the chance to see what YWAM’s Mercy Ministries are doing in Bangkok.

This blog should be a good way for us to keep in touch and for you to always know what I’m up to during my Discipleship Training School in Perth. I hope I’ll have many exciting stories and adventures to share with you here during the next months. The reason why I’ve decided to have a blog instead of sending out mass e-mails is that prefer the layout and this way you can decide yourself when and how often you want to read about me.

Thank you for all of your support and encouragements. God has been so faithful! Just to mention some of the answered prayers: I got my student VISA two days after I applied for it, I got a good deal on my flights, my family and I had an incredible time in the States and thanks to some very generous people I am able to cover most of my DTS fees now! Thank you so much for being part of this.

My main prayer request at the moment is for God’s physical and spiritual protection on my trip, especially during my time in Bangkok. The political situation is better than it was two weeks ago, but I am still a little nervous. Please pray that Lea and I will be able to avoid demonstrations, that we won’t get ill and that we’ll be able to serve, even though we’ll only be spending a week there.