We are heading into week 8 of 12 for this January DTS Lecture Phase. The time is quickly approaching for us to pack up and head to either Guyana/French Guiana or Morocco! But not before God does some more major things here!
This school we have had speakers speak on Truth, Leadership, Forgiveness, Spiritual Warfare/Heart of a Warrior, and more Truth. It's been an awesome time of learning, not just for the students but for me as well! It's great to sit in on lectures and have my mind blown even by speakers I've heard before! Something that has really clicked for me this school is knowing your own value as well as the value of others. Value is determined by what someone is willing to pay. Jesus paid the ultimate price, death, for us which determines our value. How cool? This is something I've always known, but for some reason it has really been a focal point for me during this time. Also, the importance of gratitude has been on my heart. For me, I'm learning sometimes it's not always good to just think how thankful I am, but instead vocalizing it. It's neat to feel my attitude shift when I simply say how grateful I am for something! For the students, it's been a time of realizing who God is, that He is good and He is unchanging. It is amazing to see the transformation in them, their eyes get brighter, their posture changes, their confidence grows, and their hearts are softened by the love Christ is pouring out onto them. It's been an amazing time of learning and growing together!
A couple of weeks ago we went as a group to Living Tree Academy http://www.ltaschool.com, an up and coming Biblically based school about a 20 minute walk from us! There we worked with Shannon and Anthony planting palm trees and evening out the ankle deep mud spots on the property! It was a lot of fun to be out in the sun/mud working hard for someone other than ourselves. We all poured 110% into what we were doing and really worked as a team! Below are some pictures from that work day!
It was an amazing day to serve the Lord!
This past week we had our Rest, Renew, Restore week. It's a time to take a break from lectures and allow ourselves to find rest in the Lord and have fun with each other before heading into our final month of lectures and then two months of outreach. This week included our YWAM DP Olympics and Challenge the Staff along with some other fun things!
Challenge the staff was a fun event for us! The students split us up into two teams and came up with an obstacle course for us to do, at first it didn't seem that bad until they added in the rules we had to sing everything we said and leap frog everywhere we went...any infraction of the rules resulted in a roll of the dice to tell us which penalty we were to receive. Luckily, we only had three infractions which included doing the chicken dance, singing a "We're sorry song", and jumping into the ocean (which came at the perfect time because a few of the staff were covered in egg from the egg toss event.)
The challenge started with us having to swim one blindfolded person from our teams to the dock without touching the bottom of the ocean.
This is where our staff unity kicked in which was really cool! The first team made it to the dock and then jumped into to help the other staff members out! Unity is the key!
We then had a relay race which included passing an orange from our necks to the other person's neck...awkward, but funny!
After we concluded that, we leap frogged our way to the face painting event.
When all of our art masterpieces were complete we leaped frogged again to the snack palapa, but not before we had to guess where to go by writing letters on each other's backs (My group failed miserably, but thankfully we logically concluded we were going to the snack palapa)
Here we did a ring toss event!
When all of us sank two rings on the bottles we made our way to the dining palapa via leap frog for the spelling portion of the course. We had to spell words I've never heard of before, and don't forget everything is done by singing...no pictures of that!
Afterwards we leap frogged our way to the volleyball court where the egg toss station was set up.
Only a few eggs were broken!
Next we were given two envelopes containing the clues to our next challenge.
Catch a lizard and then head to the pool!
Usually there are a bunch of lizards running around, but thankfully after what felt like hours of searching none were to be caught so the students gave us a free pass.
Our last event came in the form of a synchronized dance/song we had to make up while treading water in the ocean. We decided to jump in and sing "We are the champions" while holding hands swimming in a circle. Very unified, but slightly uncoordinated!
Thank you all for your prayers and support! It's been almost a year since being back on staff and together we have been a part of something a lot bigger than I could have ever imagined!!
Brittney
"Give thanks to the Lord for He is good, His steadfast love endures forever!"
Psalms 107:1