Hey Yall!
Sorry I have been absolutely terrible at keeping up with this blog since graduation. Training started and time seemed to just disappear and POOF it's now August.
I am so excited about being on staff here at YWAM Toowoomba! I've been on staff for about a month and a half now and I am loving every second of it. Sure there are times where I feel a little lost or overwhelmed, but for the most part I am excited and eager to learn! The students arrived a couple of weeks ago and they are all super cool cats, I think God has some really interesting plans for this group of kids.
I have been training for a few weeks now and am slowly but surely becoming more and more autonomous in my duties. I still have lots to learn and have lots of questions, but I am growing in confidence and ability everyday. So far I have been trained on Admissions and Accounts. For Admissions I am in charge of making sure that incoming students have all the information they need to successfully make it to Australia and be able to work in the community. I also answer any questions that they may have about the school, or how to fill out a certain document. I know it sounds absolutely riveting, but I really enjoy it! I am the first impression that the students get of the staff here and get to know a bit more about them before they get here. Pretty cool. Accounts on the other hand makes me a little more nervous because I have never been really great in the terms of financial management and such and now I'm charge of paying bills for multiple accounts and creating invoices and such. My favorite part is all the new software I have to play with. This may sound super nerdy, but I don't know what I did with my life before Textexpander. Seriously a gift from above if you are working in customer service or administrative roles. And yes I've officially come to a point in my life where I'm comfortable shamelessly plugging a piece of software...
Outside of training I have had a few side projects which have been both really growing and really fun! My first project was creating schedules for all the intern (including myself) so that they have an idea of what their week is going to look like at least for the next 3 months. More recently I've been working on things based on Faith and Finance. I have to create an outline for our area leaders to speak from, and now I'm working on an article for the website about it. Fun Fact: It's a lot easier to write an outline for yourself because you can pretty much remember where you got the information from and what it's all supposed to mean and it makes sense to your brain, but when you are writing for someone else's brain you have to be way more detailed. Not that that is a bad thing, it is just a new approach that I haven't had to take before. I have also learned a lot about Faith and Finance through preparing for those writings. If you are in a place where you could use a little boost of faith in your finances I would recommend "Daring to Live On the Edge" by Loren Cunningham. He has a lot of great thoughts about how God provides for us, sometimes in ways we can't even anticipate. It was especially encouraging to me because I am having a little bit of trouble with being faithful in my finances. I came to Australia with my school fees almost completely paid off and was actually pretty comfortable. I came back to staff with almost no money and the promise that God was going to take care of me. Seems like it should be really easy huh? Turns out it's actually pretty hard. I constantly have to repent of my own disbelief that God won't do what he's promised to do for me, and have been humbled over and over again by the amount of faith that my coworkers have. It is definitely something that I will continue to grow in over this next season. God said this wouldn't be an easy season for me, that it would be a lot of stretching and growing, but that it would be wonderful too. I'm pretty excited actually!
I've had a lot of fun here on base, but I have also had a lot of adjusting to do. Don't get me wrong, I absolutely adore what I am doing, the environment, and the people I work with, I just got really, really home sick for a bit between graduation and the start of the school. I just wanted to get on a plane and head home, no looking back, but I knew that the feeling would pass eventually and that my family is only a skype call away. It's really interesting how much things are different between DTS and after DTS. I mean I wasn't really homesick at all during DTS, maybe a little bit here and there, but after graduation it really hit me full force. It was kind of a blessing at the same time though I guess. It made me really lean on the Lord and work through it with him instead of just giving in and going home.
Currently I am waiting for my visa to get approved. We mailed it in a few weeks ago and just found out that the person that was supposed to look it over before it got sent to Immigration has been on a missions trip and didn't get back until just a few days ago. So we are praying that everything goes well, otherwise my time here might be a bit more short lived than I had hoped. Only time will tell at this point I guess.
Overall things here are going great! I am still adjusting to not have 33 of my favorite friends living with me anymore, but I will always have the memories we made and will probably see a fair bit of them as they start doing their own ministries. I am so blown away by those guys and I still have a hard time believing that those 5 months actually happened. Everyone changed so much and God revealed so much to us! I guess it'll just take more than a few months to process it all, hey? Anyway, the staff here are great and welcomed me as one of their own right away which was really awesome of them. They are really diligent about having nights where we all hang out as a staff team, and there's always random things happening like open mics and gigs. Just last weekend we all went to this sweet performance venue called The Fuzz Box to watch The Convergence Method (a band that a few of the guys on staff started) play.
I'll try to get better about my blogging again, I forgot how much fun it is, even though I hate writing, but this isn't all that bad! ;) I can't wait to see what God has planned for me in the next few months before I go home for a holiday. He has made me tons of promises and I just need to keep waiting expectantly to see how they will play out. if there's one thing that I learned from DTS it's that obedience to God always brings good fruit (even if you can't see it as good in the moment). Sorry this was so long and ramble-y feeling but a lot has happened and I didn't know where to start, so word vomit for you!
Again thank you all so much for being so supportive of me and what I feel God is calling me to do. If you ever have questions about what I am doing, or want to know how you can get involved, you can get in touch with me through the comment section or shoot me an email! You guys are the best!
Much Love from Toowoomba,
Kate
