Weekend Update # 2 (post 4?)

Week Two is coming to a close and it has been a great one! The weather has been absolutely lovely, sunny and warm during the day and chilly at night and early morning. We had our first night lectures, which while super informative, are hard to stay awake through since you are ready to sleep by 8pm. We also had an amazing opportunity on Tuesday night. A Canadian Reggae band named Tasman Jude came to visit the base to play a few songs for us and the lead singer shared his testimony. It was great! The band has hung out with us a few times since then, whether in town or at the base playing volleyball and watching our Open Mic Night. Speaking of which, holy cow do we have a bunch of talented people here. There were so many original songs shared and they were all wonderful! 

We also had the big reveal of what our outreach location options are on Thursday(Fiji, East Timor, Thailand, Cambodia), which was so exciting. A few of us already knew one or two things about it, either a leader that was going, or one of the countries we could choose form. After the presentation we were all given slips of paper to write down our top three choices after praying about it. We should find out our teams tomorrow.

I have been super tired this week, I think my jet lag has finally caught up to me, but it's all good because I've gotten to do a lot of people watching as a result. Friday night was our first night for local outreach! I went to a youth group of a local church with 3 other YWAMers and we had a blast! The students were so nice and took us in right away, and we played lots of fun games with them like dodgeball, card games, and something that involved plastic cups and ping pong balls and lots of running and screaming. I still don't know who won that game... We also got to listen to a talk about identity and worship with them, I hope to go back to visit at some point during DTS. 

Weekends here are free days for us unless we have a school activity planned, so yesterday I went into town with Jeff, Becca, and a bunch of others for lunch and some shopping. It was so nice to explore the city and not just be in the mall like last time. There are some really cute shops that I can't wait to explore, but mostly I just enjoyed hanging out with people. Jeff, Becca, and I got some Chinese/Malaysian food for lunch before meeting up with the group and getting groceries. Then we went back to base and had open mic night and a volleyball game. Today has been an extra lazy day that involved finishing my homework and skyping with the Fam-Jam. Over all it has been a great week and I can't wait to see what next week hold. Our next topic is Fear of the Lord and Repentance, and they say that it is usually a pretty emotionally draining week, so we won't be having Friday night outreach per usual. In a few weeks we are taking a day trip to the Gold Coast to check out Dreamworld and the beach, which should be a lot of fun! 

As for prayers, please just continue to pray for unity for the base and the Toowoomba community as a whole, God is doing a lot here and I can't wait to see how it all plays out. Also just for open hearts and open minds as we go into this next week so that people can share freely without feeling judged. I've said it a hundred times, but thank you all so much for your prayers and support, I love reading all your comments on my posts and pictures and hearing updates from home! ---Sorry this post might not make a ton of sense, I'm a little zombied out today :)

Much Love from Toowoomba,

Kate