And so it all really begins

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January 20th 2011

Published: January 20th 2011

Hello peeps 😊

I've been here for 2 weeks tomorrow and this week has been the first week where we have started the full schedule of waking up at 5:30 for morning exercise, morning chores at 8, worship at 8:30, lectures from 10ish-12:30, lunch, afternoon chores, dinner and an evening activity (only on tuesday, thursday & friday, other evenings are free). It's been a bit of a shock to the system waking up at 5:30am...i didn't even do that when I was at secondary school but you do get a whole lot out of the day. It can be a bit of struggle to give your full attention in lectures though. I'm sure that will improve when we're used to it.

So we went to the beach on saturday. it was a lovely beach and had a river attached to it and it was pretty windy so you didn't really feel the heat at all which was nice although because of this a lot of the students did not realise they were cooking under the sun and the following day a lot of people woke up in pain, some even got heat stroke so people were ill as well as in pain. i was very fortunate though and have come out with very little burns and a tan despite falling asleep several times in the sun. some people are still very red and it's been about 5 days now!

We had one of the students leave this week which was very sad and a pretty big shock. i can say hand on heart that he is one of the most genuine guys i have ever met and was just a very sweet person and he will be missed. not really sure why he went but i don't think it was out of homesickness but out of feeling called by God to go back home. Definitely would have liked to get to know him better and i know i'm not alone in that feeling.

This week the lecture topic is 'The Nature and Character of God' which is a pretty broad topic but our speaker has covered it so well. Our speaker is Maureen Menard who is a lady who is very high up in leadership in YWAM and is a great speaker. She is such an inspiring woman of God and is very open about her struggles and how God has brought her through it. I really want to share with you all I've learnt so far but I'm still in the processing stage and I don't know how much of it would make sense so I'll share with you some key points. So last week one of the main things which stuck out for me was that part of God's nature as being a personal God and a God of love is that he is a communicator and desires to relate to us in a personal way, not in a distant from the side-lines kinda way and this week Maureen has been expanding on this in relation to the Holy Spirit. Now for all those who have very little christian lingo experience the Holy Spirit may sound scary and I'll try and explain Him in a non-scary way but I know when I first heard about Him I was just like...'What???', just bear with me 😊
The Holy Spirit is the member of the trinity (trinity = Father God, Jesus, Holy Spirit...they are all God, all as important as each other, each as powerful as each other...not a very easy thing to describe) which dwells within a Christian, guiding them, directing them, counselling them and generally helping them during their time as a Christian. Now that is probably a very unclear explanation and I apologise if I have just confused you more. Basically the Holy Spirit is not bad or scary or evil but is a helper who does not force you to change or do things unless you are open to it. Ok I am very aware I didn't explain that very well so if you have any questions feel free to email and I'll try and clear things up!
So anyways...main points which stuck out for me:
*We either have all of the Holy Spirit or none of the Holy Spirit, there is no 'little bit' or 'quite a lot' it's all (if you are a Christian) or none (if you're not a Christian). This is a pretty big revelation for me as I've gone through church thinking that I've only got enough of the Holy Spirit to believe in Christianity and that was it, but no, I actually have full access to God and His power through all of the Holy Spirit which dwells in me. Pretty cool! Now just because I have all of the Holy Spirit in my doesn't mean that He is working in my life all the time in a powerful way, this is dependent on whether I am open and what my life is like i.e. if I am ignoring God and doing things to hurt Him, the Holy spirit will still be with me but will not be able to do anything.
*Through what Jesus did for us the relationship we have with God is drastically different to those in the Old Testament. Before Jesus, those who had faith and believed in God could only access God through going to a temple and sacrificing animals and although God used people like Moses, the Holy Spirit only ever came apon them to empower them. Now, because of what Jesus did for us, the Holy Spirit can actually dwell in us and help us to live in a way which is pleasing to God, not through behaviour modification but by actually changing our desires so that we no longer want to go against God but so that we want to praise and honor Him.
*God loves us as much as He loves Jesus and this love never gets old.
*God takes delight in helping us follow Him
*All of who Jesus is is now available to us

The way in which she was lecturing as well was really good. She would encorporate her testimony, songs, pictures and was just generally good at keeping attention which i'm very grateful for with all the 5:30am starts! She was very honest as well and has just quite a few inspiring stories. For example she is around 50 now and she is still single which I'm sure you can appreciate is very difficult and it's not through never liking men and she has experienced a lot of rejection and pain in the past but the way she allowed God to work in each of the circumstances and the result of this was just really inspiring. I just can't think of any other way to explain her as than inspiring!

I also got my one on one/small group leader this week and she is from Northern Ireland so I can talk about things without having to convert it to USA friendly like 'high school' which is nice and she understands the kind of background I come from. She's nice and seems like a very encouraging person.

So I'm very aware now that this blog is getting pretty long and I've only got 10 minutes till work duties start so I'm going to wrap it up now!
To sum up the week it's been very inspiring (oh look that word again) and although some things are still a little difficult the difficulty is completely outweighed by what I'm learning and what I am experiencing every day...and there is still so much to come 😊

Much love and blessings!

And so it all really begins

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