December Newsletter

~For those of you who didn't get my first newsletter... I typed up the main story here...

Car woes, 4 Weeks of orientation, & a new life.

5 days of driving, 1 packed car, & 2 tired people later, I arrived to my new home in California.  We had driven clear across the country, & my car felt it.  My gear shifter for my transmission had come detached under the hood, leaving me void of the ability to shift.  Popping it back into place about a dozen of times, Brandon & I finally had to take it to a mechanic.  Dave was his name, & Dave just happened to be a friend of a friend of YWAM, so he, with several pieces of scrap metal, bolts, and such, created a temporary 'band-aid' for my car, & didn't charge me a penny!  So, as I continually am learning, God does provide!  Even for my little ol' car!

YWAM life for me began with 2 weeks of staff orientation, consisting of prayer tours (4 of them), long lessons about values, guidelines, and all that sort, as well as delegations of jobs.  For our base to run effectively we have committees that take care of various jobs from accounting to special events.  I am initially a part of hospitality & applicant relations.  Should be fun!

Then after, I had 2 more weeks of DTS staff orientation, where only the new staff that are working as DTS leaders trained how to run the schools, lead students, facilitate lecture phase & outreach phase, & simply prepare for the upcoming school.  Our base will simultaneously be running 2 different schools, an arts & justice school, & a surf school.  I, along with 5 others, am staffing the surf school.  We are super excited to begin in January!  I can't wait to meet the students!

Getting into a weekly routine.

I have learned that in missions, routines rarely exist, & God loves to keep us on our toes.  Weekly office hours, worship, intercessory prayer, evangelism, in-reach dinner, & base family dinner are about the only routine activities we have here.  But even those can change in unusual ways, or bring me out of my comfort zone.  Our office alone can provide a random encounter with a visitor.  Last week we had a man come by, having met & talked to a staff months ago, he was driving by, & figured he'd stop to see what we're all about.  The little moments like that are great because we get to really show someone what YWAM Pismo is all about.

In our recent intercessory prayer times, we've prayed on the behalf of our upcoming students, persecuted Christians, complacency in the church, & our focus countries of Nicaragua, Rwanda, & China.  The recent elections caused an uproar in California over the issue of same sex marriages, & we saw many Christians being persecuted as they tried to defend the biblical view of marriage.  Many YWAMers & Christians in India are also suffering mass-persecution, & we have been focused heavily on praying for them.

Our Thursday evangelism is always filled with unique encounters with people, & when we went door to door one day, God used our hands to touch lives.  We offered to wash windows & clean yards.  This opened up 4 or 5 opportunities for us to share the gospel & pray with families.  One woman invited me into her home, & we held hands with her and her family as we prayed over them.  We were even able to give a bible to a man who was deeply grieving the loss of his mother, encouraging him to read & seek comfort in God.