Times have changed.

Let me just start off with the big news:

I am no longer going to Holland to do my DTS with YWAM.

Yeah, it was kind of a surprise to me too. But let me explain how I came to make this decision after months and months of prayer and preparation.

It was the day after I wrote my last post, and I was just going through the motions of the day to day. I had come back from a really fun trip visiting my friends of mine, and was thinking a lot about my trip to Holland, which was very soon.

I had to pack. I still needed $1200. I was going to be the only native English speaker in the school. I had so many things to do, and no motivation to actually get any of those things done.

Shouldn't I be excited? Shouldn't I be on the edge of my seat just waiting for the day to come when I could actually embark on this adventure that I had been waiting to do for YEARS? I should have been, but I wasn't.

I had a talk with my mom about how things were coming along. Things had stalled completely, really. My mom told me that maybe since things had not come together yet, that that was God telling me to stop and take a look at what I was I was trying to do. So, I did. Nothing felt right anymore. So, she suggested maybe I take another route. She pointed out this section in Acts:

Paul’s Vision of the Man of Macedonia

6Paul and his companions traveled throughout the region of Phrygia and Galatia, having been kept by the Holy Spirit from preaching the word in the province of Asia. 7When they came to the border of Mysia, they tried to enter Bithynia, but the Spirit of Jesus would not allow them to. 8So they passed by Mysia and went down to Troas. 9During the night Paul had a vision of a man of Macedonia standing and begging him, “Come over to Macedonia and help us.” 10After Paul had seen the vision, we got ready at once to leave for Macedonia, concluding that God had called us to preach the gospel to them.

I see it as Paul was called to preach in a certain area, but God prevented him from going into Asia even though he was so close. I was so close to going to Holland, but God stopped me and had me take pause to reevaluate my situation.

This is not to say that I am not going anywhere and that I am just going to stay home. No, I am looking at a couple different programs with Operation Mobilization that start in a few more months from now. I really liked working with OM in the past, and to be honest, I remember thinking that I was sad I was working with YWAM and not OM when I was planning to do my DTS. OM is just a great organization and I would love to have the chance to work with them again.

So these past few weeks have been pretty crazy, and I am just trying to reorganize my life completely and tell everyone that my plans have changed. The face that I don't feel embarrassed that I told everyone that I was doing this certain thing and now I am not is another sign to me that I made the right decision. It might seem like a cop out to some, but it really isn't. I still plan on doing mission work for God as soon as I can. I just had an abrupt change of pace.

And if life went the way we planned, then it would be boring. So, here I am right back where I started a year ago, at the brink of a new adventure.

7 days.

7 days left? Really? Time flies so quickly it's hard to even keep up.

So, in one week I am supposed to leave for Europe. My plan is to fly into Dusseldorf on the 18th so I can spend the weekend with my friend, Karen who I met on my missions trip to Ireland last year. Then, I would head to Apeldoorn and then Heerde to start the DTS.

However, I am getting a bit worried, because I still do not have all the money I need in. I know God seems to like to wait until the very last minute, but I'm starting to feel that maybe the last minute has already passed. I know God can do it, but will He? I've put so much thought and time into this, to not be able to go would be a blow.

So any and all prayers would be appreciated, and I will try to update more frequently.

45 days left.

I knew time would fly between when I was accepted into the DTS and the actual date of leaving, but I didn't realize how much that was true.
I am a gigantic procrastinator. I have always been that way, and it still prevails to this day. So, that's why I only managed to send out my support letters a few days ago. You can see my stack of envelopes and a few copies of my letter that I was working on. I thought I was more prepared, but it turns out I had forgotten to write the return address on the letter. But, oh well. I wrote it out and got it done.
My next step is to arrange a tag sale some Saturday within the next couple weeks and see if I can pull together some sort of coffee house/music night at my church. I'm just not sure how to go about that.
It's surprisingly difficult to plan fund raising events for yourself. Who knew? Well, in any case I am trying and praying. God will provide in His own time. I just have to keep trusting in Him and plug along.

54 days left.

I have been meaning to start a blog for quite a while now, but I had not gotten around to it until today. A combination of procrastination and actual busyness were the main contributing factors to my delayed start.

But anyway, the point of my starting this blog is so people will be able to keep track of my Adventures that start this September. "And what Adventures are these?" you may be wondering. Let me enlighten you:

This September I will be starting a Discipleship Training School (DTS) with Youth With A Mission (YWAM). The school I will be attending is called Heidebeek in Heerde, The Netherlands.

The motto of the DTS and also YWAM is "To know God and make Him Known." It is a 6 month program with 2 separate phases. The first 3 months are dedicated to the lecture phase, which includes topics such as: God's character qualities, Finding your identity in Jesus, Spiritual battles, The Fatherheart of God and missions. The next 3 months are used for the outreach phase, where the students will go out in the field and use the things that have been learned in the previous section to share with others in the world. Some of the places that the Heidebeek school has gone to in the past have been Poland, Brazil, India, South Africa, China and Thailand. I do not know which one of those countries I will be going to until further along in the program, but they all sound like very worthwhile places.

This whole thing has been something I have been looking forward to immensely. I orginally had started looking for a place to do my DTS about 3 years ago, but was not able to go at that time. Which, in retrospect, was a really good thing. I was no where near the level of maturity it would have taken to spend many months away from home and in a foreign land. I have grown a lot in the past few years, and I feel that God has now enabled me with the skills and tools needed to take on such challenge.

So, the main point of today's post was to just share a little bit of what I doing now and what I will be doing in the future. I will update whenever I can with news and stories of how God is helping me prepare for this life changing event, and when the time comes, tales of how it actually IS changing my life.

Again, I could not be more excited I cannot wait to have stories to share.