Saturday, October 30, 2010

Outreach in Albuquerque, New Mexico

So this past week was a crazy week. We left sunday morning for Albuquerque, NM and came back this past thursday night. It was an awesome time and God definitely did some awesome stuff while we were there. We split the whole dts into 3 groups and every evening we would either go to the local jail or the homeless shelter. Heres the day by day breakdown:


Sunday: a pretty uneventful day due to the fact that we were traveling for 9 hours in vans. It was  a pretty scenic drive though thanks to the mountains and the occasional antelope that i would spot. But we got there safe and sound without any mechanical breakdowns and such. We didn't really have any idea what kind of place we would be staying at for the next 4 nights but all we knew is we would be sleeping on the ground. However we were pleasantly surprised when we got to the church. We stayed at a huge church in the childrens area, and in this childrens area was a full blown play area thing like u find in mcdonalds but better. So as soon as we settled in of course we had our fun but sadly that was the last night we could play on it. Apparently it wasn't quite built for kids our age. Weird. But anyway the church had a very building and we were definitely fortunate enough to stay in such a nice building.


Monday: In the morning we had class and some skit practices before we went out in the afternoon. That day i was in the jail and some other people went to a halfway house for women just coming out of jail. Both ministry times were very powerful. We went to three different pods that day and ended up meeting up with the other group in a pod called God's pod. Apparently this was a pod that had a strong group of christians in it. They even played a few songs for us. It was  such an awesome experience to see these guys even though they were in some pretty hard situations, still worship God. At first when we started our little program in our first pod it was pretty unnerving. I had never done skits before not to mention in front of people. But as we got going i could see that these guys were interested in what we were doing and God opened my eyes to the need in there lives for God. So once we had finished putting on our skits and dramas we had time to talk and pray with the inmates. They were very open and honest with us which made things easy.


Tuesday: We started off the day with class time again. The topic of this week was fear of God and Donna (our dts leader's wife) was the speaker. Again it was some great teaching. After that i left with my group to go to the jail again. This was probably my favorite day in the jail. In the first pod we went to me and another girl from my dts talked to this one guy. He ended up telling us that he was in jail because he had killed a man but was hopefully going to get out soon because it was out of self defense. This man during our whole drama presentation thing was watching very intently. So when we went to talk to him he told us how we were such a blessing. We were able to pray for him and he started crying and he ended up praying to rededicate his life to Christ. It was so awesome to see God get a hold of his heart and really just touch his life. I was also able to pray with a lot of people in different pods. God gave me lots of confidence to really reach out to people.


Wednesday: This was our last day of doing our outreaches there. This day i went to a place called joy junction, this was a homeless shelter that took in families. Its a pretty awesome ministry they had set up. So when we got there we served lunch to the people there. After that we did some odd jobs. Then we did our skits and dramas for the people there and had some ministry time afterwards. Me and another girl prayed for this one mom. She told us that she hadn't felt God like this in a long time and its just what she needed. Her daughter was going through some hard stuff and so we were able to pray for her for that. It was again awesome to see God touch her situation and give her the boost she so desperately needed.

Thursday: Another travel day. Not too much happened.

So then we got back and had class friday as usual. And that brings us to today. A few of us went to a state park about a half hour from eagle rock. It was an absolutely beautiful day and the park was amazing. Its a popular spot for rock climbing. I took a few pics but they just don't do it justice.

Here are some pics of the park and of outreach--
Enjoying the slide :)

It was pretty awesome

A little vista we passed on our way to the park on Saturday

This is why rock climbers like this park. If you look close you can see them climbing

theres a climber on the far right side.

pretty mountain stream. 

It was such a beautiful place

Well thats about it now. Another week down and i've been here over a month now. Time is really flying! Hope you all have an awesome week!

relationship week

So i realize that i haven't really updated in quite a while so i'm going to start where i left off and that was right before relationship week. 

So this was last week and it was another good week of teaching. A couple from the arvada base came up to teach us this week. Sadly i missed the first day of class on tuesday due to a stomach bug. So that was a rough day and kinda boring but it did give me an opportunity to catch up on the last few chapters of the book i'm reading called radical. I even got to listen to a few lessons that my church sent me :) that was a huge blessing. But then i was back in class on wednesday which was good because i don't think i could have took another day just laying in bed. It was kinda boring. It was another good week of teaching, and i learned a lot about friendships and guy/girl relationships. They offered really positive teaching about healthy relationships which was really uplifting. I feel like too often its easy to get caught up with the bad and hard parts of relationships and then ignore all the great uplifting things that are there too. They also really allowed us to think for ourselves when it came to boundaries in relationship. They would present what the Bible said about certain issues then let us discern it from there. It almost felt like i was in bible class at school again listening to Mr. Cote teach on PMRs (potential marriage relationships) so it was nice to hear what i already knew be reinforced. 

On a separate note. i was struggling with some feelings of depression due to the phillies... they let me down big time. I was looking forward to watching the world series and bragging on the phillies the whole time but noo they lost. It was a sad day. 

So thats about it for relationship week. It was a pretty simple week but it was yet another quality growing experience. :)


Sunday, October 17, 2010

Father heart of God

Boy. what a week. The internet finally decided to work up here now so i decided now would be a good time to do some updating. This week we were able to have a speaker named Jeff Pratt come and teach on the father heart of God. He is an excellent communicator and was a walking quote book almost haha. I don't even know where to start with his teaching. I'll try to explain it the best i can. So tuesday the subject was on the passion and dream. He talked about the importance of being impassioned people as followers of Christ. Then he went over the many different faces of passion that God embodies. He is the lover/bridegroom, husband, friend, mother,  and father. Then on Wednesday he spoke on the wall of divide. He was saying that its through our hurts and wounds that we can create this wall of divide between our Creator and ourselves. It is never about God reaching to us rather its about our past hurts or sins that hold us back from truly loving God. He also talked about our times of darkness or captivity that we often find ourselves in. He defined those times of captivity as the times where God seems distant and living a christian walk seems so difficult. He talked about how when we go through those dark times that is when God is able to do some pretty challenging but life-changing things in our lives. Then came Thursday. Wow. that was a very intense day. We had a long time of ministry that day where we were able to surrender some areas that we had held onto and had created walls in our lives. Then on Friday our last day with Jeff, he gave practical ways to walk out this freedom we had experienced from tearing down those walls. I really enjoyed this week a lot and learned a bunch too. It also brought us much closer as a school. It was awesome to watch students reach out to

Then friday evening i went down with some of the people here to the arvada base to take part of a thing called kingdom night, Kingdom night is a ministry they more recently started where they do ministry in downtown denver. There was about 30 or 40 of us that went and it included people from the different schools at the arvada base. So we went down there and we could either walk around with signs that say free prayer or we could just walk around and talk with people. So me and another girl from my school started talking to this one guy who was checking out what was going on. We ended up talking to him for over an hour but got no where it seemed. He was very open to sharing what he believed and he would listen to what we had to say but yet he still didn't quite buy the whole Christianity thing. He believed that putting and name to the whoever created everything limited that being. I found myself feeling really sorry for the guy. He really thought he was living a pretty full and amazing life, but he still had such a huge part of himself missing. In some ways its always harder to minister to the ones who are well off and satisfied with life because its so hard to see there need for Christ. Its even the same for those Christians who are just as well off. They are so easily caught up in there success and having celebrating that success that they forget that with that blessing comes responsibility in the church. 


So as of now i'm still leaning toward going to columbia for my outreach. So its time to start practicing some spanish i guess :). And we leave for Albuquerque, new mexico next sunday to do some outreach there. So yeah thats about it for now. Next week's teaching topic is relationships so it should be another good week. So goodnight all! keep in touch! and GO PHILLIES!!!

Saturday, October 9, 2010

observing.

Theme of this weeks teaching: Characteristics of God. We learned about God as the creator, risk-taker, trinity, father, lover, and a few others. The teachings on the trinity were pretty mind bending and in depth. This whole week was full of information and got a bit overwhelming at some points, but thats why we have the weekend. I've pretty much spent the whole weekend at eagle rock which is nice. Currently I'm sitting by a nice cozy fire in the dinning hall. It's so nice to have some down time finally. All week we are doing something from 7:30 till 6ish. The day can get long fast. But I'm starting to learn ways to keep relaxed and make the most of my time here.

Today was definitely not an all relaxing day however. For one thing my day started at 5 in the morning. Thats right 5 AM. A bunch of us decided to do a sunrise hike to eagle rock which is a rock formation type place that overlooks eagle rock. So we started hiking up this mountain while it was still pretty dark out. So my little headlamp was pretty handy-dandy. The hike up was pretty difficult i can't lie, but the view was TOTALLY worth it. We got up to the top in time to watch the sun change the appearance of the landscape. We could even see the continental divide from where we were. Despite the cold wind and whole fear of heights thing I was able to enjoy it all. Well i was going to try and upload some pics for you all to see but its not working at the moment. So I'll try some other time.

Well thats about it for now. Enjoy your weekend!

Thursday, October 7, 2010

birthday pics (a little late i know)

so i got some pics from someone else of my birthday and figured u all would enjoy them a little :)



So yes mom they did sing to me and have  a cake for me. Don't worry :)

Tuesday, October 5, 2010

First birthday away from home

Well i spent my 19th birthday away from home.. it was bittersweet. So heres how my day went:
I woke up pretty early and took a shower. Apparently i missed a pretty fun awakening from some of my roommates. They were all going to climb in my bed and wake me up so instead they all sang to me in the bathroom as i brushed my teeth :). Then after breakfast we had our first classroom time. This weeks teaching is on the different characteristics of God. We started looking through the creation story and it was pretty awesome some of the stuff everyone noticed. All through the day everyone kept saying happy birthday and it was great. I love everyone here. a lot. So then after our two teaching sessions we had our first introduction to creative presentations class. But this one was a bit different because it had more of a focus on drama stuff (its not usually like that). The reason it was that way is because we are leaving in about 3 weeks for New Mexico to do a mini outreach. We will be ministering to a correctional facility there through dramas and such. So in todays creative presentation time we did a lot of stretching stuff haha like mimeing so it was a bit of a stretch for me but i had a good time laughing at myself and everyone else. Then after that we had our work duties and mine is dinner prep. I have a feeling its going to be an absolute blast. Again I'm with some pretty fun folks :). Then tonight i played some good ole volleyball. Its going to be a fun week i can tell. Its really starting to feel like my home away from home now. I am really looking forward to see what all God is going to do with my time here. He already has shown me soo much and its only the beginning of the second week! I just hope i can take it in while i can because i know its going to go by wayy too fast. So yeah. That was my eventful day. It was a pretty amazing birthday dare i say it was one of my best. So goodnight all!

Friday, October 1, 2010

my week in review

Well. I made it through the first week! and so far no melt downs about going home. So i'd say it was a great success :). Let me just inform you all of what the rest of my week included.

The big bull elk on the golf course
Wednesday- This was the day full of hiking and elk fun. We traveled down to Estes state park which took about an hour and a half. But it was a drive through some beautiful mountain scenery. Anywhere you go here you see mountains. its great. So we started out the hike and ended up going the wrong way on a trail. We took the climbing trail instead of the nice little easy trail. The climb was pretty crazy and by the time I got word that we had to stop and turn around I was almost to the top of this mountain. So then on the way down I had my first encounter (and hopefully my only) with a cactus. I was trying to make it down on the trail without sliding so i put my hands behind me to brace myself and put my two fingers right where a cactus happened to be. This also happened about a minute after i had warned a guy to watch out for the cactuses (cacti?) on the trail. So yeah im pretty sure there are still little thorns stuck in my hand. Who knew there were so many thorns on one cactus. O and they range in size too. There were little itty bitty ones and big ones. Anyways. We finally all made it to where we were supposed to be and had a little worship service on the mountain. It was a great experience. I loved it. O and then we went and saw some elk! Apparently they really don't care about people. They just sit and chill while a huge crowd gathers around only about 50ish yards away. They act like they own the town and i think they pretty much do. We spotted a herd on a local golf course and were able to get some pretty awesome pics of them. Even got to hear them. O man they sound so awesome. So then we went over the the local ymca and had some sharing time. I was able to hear all the testimonies of the staff and students. Its pretty amazing to hear what some people have come through and to see some walk out in faith in this DTS even though some have no idea why they are here. That was pretty much Wednesday.

Thursday- We spent that this day at the base all day. We got our work assignments for the rest of the dts. Every week day we have a scheduled work time and during that work time we all have different tasks to do each day. So my work duty is dinner prep. I was pretty happy about that one cause it meant i wouldn't have to get up early or clean anything :). So we had a lot of class time that day so it was pretty uneventful till the evening. We had a pretty intense evening service. Where we were all challenged to relinquish control. God's still working that one out in me. Its a pretty difficult task i must say. So its only been about 4 days into the school and already God has been doing some pretty difficult shaking in my life. Which can only mean even greater things are to come.

Friday- So then today we went down to Boulder for the afternoon where we met up with the musicians dts that is at the arvada base and did a scavenger hunt. Pretty fun time. Got to see an interesting side of Colorado. There were lots of hippies there and a good majority i'm pretty sure were stoned. It was a beautiful town despite that though. And when we got back we had the rest of the evening free. I must say my classmates here are pretty amazing and they definitely know how to have a good time.

Weekend plans- So saturday I'm thinking i'm going to get a chance to play some soccer! I'm telling you I'm in the perfect place! One day I'm hiking and seeing elk the next I'm playing basketball and the next I'm playing soccer. Other than soccer and church on sunday its a free weekend. Which i'm kinda dreading and looking forward to at the same time. I'm most definitely looking forward to some down time but yet with down time comes thoughts of home, which i do miss. I know that sunday i'm really going to miss church and being home :(. but i'm taking it a day at a time and try not to dwell on the fact that I'm here for a while.

Well that was a lengthy post. O well. Its whats been happening in my life this past week and its been a very eventful week. So long all and i hope to hear from you soon :)