Adventures in YWAM: Two weeks!

In the almost two weeks that I've been here, I've definitely seen God moving in my life. I'll try to make this somewhat brief, but bear with me. We had orientation last week, so during our lectures we talked about living together, accountability, dealing with conflict, lots of really good topics. We have time for small groups and we're doing something called accountability triplets, where we pray with two other people on Thursdays while we're fasting during lunch. We have worship time in the mornings and we're learning how to tell our testimonies so that we can do some evangelism on the street. My group went out to the Carlisle town center on Tuesday and we spoke with four people about Jesus. It was more just listening to them, but that was ministry in itself.

We have a regular speaker during the week that stays in the house with us and this week is Katherine from South Africa. She's been talking about the Nature of God, Personal God, and Characteristics of God. It's been awesome and she's been praying for us individually as well and sharing words from God's heart to ours during lecture time. It's been really encouraging.

Last week we bought our plane tickets to South Africa. We'll be leaving on January 15th from Manchester and I'll be returning to Manchester on March 22nd with 3 other people. I'll be staying in South Africa for about 4 extra days.

Our team is meshing together really well and sometime soon I hope to have pictures to send so that you'll have a visual of the people you're praying for.

Last night we had an outreach prep meeting to just talk about the different things we'll be doing in South Africa. It turns out that there are two different outreaches. One doing the Garden Route, which follows a particular path along the coast of SA and will be doing evangelism to the people along the way, in townships, hospitals, through churches and different mission groups. It'll be backpacking and we'd spend no more than 10 days in each town on the way from Cape Town to Jeffrey's Bay. The other option is to stay in Cape Town for 4 weeks doing ministry in local schools, orphanages, food drives, and door to door evangelism. Then four weeks in Jeffrey's Bay working at a home for street children and AIDS orphans. There'd also be the opportunity to teach children and spend more time creating relationships with the locals. So we were asked to pray about it for 15 minutes to listen to God and help us decide where He is leading us for the outreach. I really felt that God was impressing upon my heart to do the Cape Town and Jeffrey's Bay outreach (not the backpacking). I'm pretty certain that that's the one in my heart. It's somewhat what I've been trained to do in that we'd spend a lot of time working with kids and teaching and I think that I would love it. If we need to change up the teams, there's the possibility of me being moved to the other team, but I'm pretty certain that I'll stay on that outreach team.

That's the most recent news. It rained the entire walk to the Graco this morning and it's quite cold of course. I'm settling in better and spending more time by myself to just process and think. I can't imagine being anywhere else right now. And although there are times when my heart aches to be at home, for the most part, it's been really good. Let me know how I can be praying for you.

Thanks to those who've written me back or sent me mail. It's been amazing.
Love you all!

Carlisle Castle