This week my school was helping at schoolies week (like I said, its their spring break here) it happens in a bunch of locations around australia...we were at one of the biggest ones...Surfers Paradise. There was a ton of kids there I couldn't really tell you how many...we were on the hotel chaplaincy, we basically got assigned a hotel and looked after the kids in it, we made them pancakes that the HC's organization paid for, we cleaned their rooms, if they threw up from drinking too much, we held the hair out of their face and cleaned it up off the floor, theres a lot of suicides that we help prevent, theres a lot of assaults that we help prevent, we walk girls who are alone home and break up fights...etc.etc... This was a TIRING week...but by the end of the week, the kids were sick of drinking and they called on us JUST to hang out with them, they stopped drinking in any situations and just hung out with us. After getting the question "why are you doing this?" SO much, and being able to answer "because with love you with the love of christ" and "we were sent by God to look out for you this week" and after talking to them about God everyday for the week we saw 90 salvations by day 3.
A personal testimony from the week which wasnt' even a salvation was when we were about to finish our day (I was on the day shift, so I got them when they were sober, USUALLY) and we walked down to the lobby of this hotel and saw someone was injured, we went to look and saw that a drunk guy had hit his head on a metal ceiling fan and was bleeding pretty badly...we COULD have left because our shift was over but God was calling us over there! So we went and found out they had already called an ambulance...so we prayed for healing. Nothing happened right away but the guy grabbed my arm and after being so drunk he couldn't put together a sentence he looked me straight in the eyes and said "Thank you man, that meant so much to me, you have no idea...I used to be a christian, thank you so much...come and visit me tomorrow." We asked when and he said "any time, I'll just stay home all day and wait", we said how about 10:00 am. His friends were shocked that these 6 crazy people just came up and starting praying for him. The next day we went into his room, he needed staples in his head, but the wound was healing quickly, that day we prayed for healing over him, God gave me some words of knowledge for him and then i shared my testimony, and by the end of my testimony the three in the room were in tears...the Holy Spirit was there! Jesus revealed himself to them!
Many healings happened that week and when drunk kids see an open cut turn into a scar in front of their eyes, they FREAK OUT and all their friends find out about it....we saw people saved because of healings alone! it was an amazing and emotional week1!!
ANYWAY 7 days till INDIA for me!!! thanks for all of your prayers!
Peace, Love and Prayers until next time!! buh-bye!
Saturday, November 26, 2005
Sunday, November 06, 2005
Challenging week
Well, we had a team building week this week, the lectures were on relationships. It was basically how to relate with people, and how we were designed for relationships. Every problem in the world is a relationship problem (minus natural disasters, which is arguable for some as well). But along side the lectures was a survivor week, where the 4 outreach teams (team india [mine], team vanuatu, port villa, team vanuatu, santo, and team malaysia) were competeing against each other in physical and mental challenges. Not in order to win, although that was the goal...but in order to create team unity and bring the weaknesses to the surface. We started off having trouble meshing (as a team of strong, independant leaders would) but in spite of starting the week off most likely in last place we sat down discussed and came back and won the last two biggest games and came in first for the week. God is teaching me that I'm a leader, but the only leadership I've experienced is taking leadership...the greatest leaders are followers, and I need to die to my right to have my way and empower others and exalt their ideas. It may not always be as fully selfless as this (although I'll always strive to be this selfless) but this missions trip God is focusing me on being in the background and empowering my team!
To give you an example of the challenges, the last night we did a missionary scenario where we were trying to reach a tribe. The staff woke us up at 1:30 in the morning (we had no knowledge of this) and told us the scenario of needing to urgently reach a tribe that was in a self-sacrificial state, ready to give their lives for their God or something. We were on an island (Stradbroke Island) and spent over two hours running an intense obstacle course where we had to eat the native food (wet dog food), make it over a pit and everytime a team member touched the ground we lost a point (I sacrificed my body and they walked on me to the other side, we only lost one point), then we had to scale a rope across a swamp, the rope dipped into the swamp and we got soaked as well some pretty bad rope burn and open sores, then we crawled through more swamp to some mental challenges. This whole deal ended at 4:00am and throughout the whole thing we were sprinting through thick forest on a "path" that has almost never been travelled, running through spider webs with spiders bigger than my open hand and constantly getting lost. It was a very trying experience, many people on many teams fell in the swamps and could not complete the tasks, but this is the reality of the mission fields we will be entering. I loved it, throughout the whole night my team kept a very positive attitude and really encouraged each other! We only had 5 people as opposed to 9 on the other teams, this made the events even harder for the most part. It was an amazing experience, and after my hour sleep back at the campsite, we packed up and moved out. I feel like I can conquer anything physically after that night!
My highlight of the week though was when my team said that they actually SAW my attitude and leadership change and could see a new tier of God-given power rising in me, that was so encouraging because I worked very hard to acheive this selflessness and brokeness for our team!
Peace, Love and Prayers!
Adam
To give you an example of the challenges, the last night we did a missionary scenario where we were trying to reach a tribe. The staff woke us up at 1:30 in the morning (we had no knowledge of this) and told us the scenario of needing to urgently reach a tribe that was in a self-sacrificial state, ready to give their lives for their God or something. We were on an island (Stradbroke Island) and spent over two hours running an intense obstacle course where we had to eat the native food (wet dog food), make it over a pit and everytime a team member touched the ground we lost a point (I sacrificed my body and they walked on me to the other side, we only lost one point), then we had to scale a rope across a swamp, the rope dipped into the swamp and we got soaked as well some pretty bad rope burn and open sores, then we crawled through more swamp to some mental challenges. This whole deal ended at 4:00am and throughout the whole thing we were sprinting through thick forest on a "path" that has almost never been travelled, running through spider webs with spiders bigger than my open hand and constantly getting lost. It was a very trying experience, many people on many teams fell in the swamps and could not complete the tasks, but this is the reality of the mission fields we will be entering. I loved it, throughout the whole night my team kept a very positive attitude and really encouraged each other! We only had 5 people as opposed to 9 on the other teams, this made the events even harder for the most part. It was an amazing experience, and after my hour sleep back at the campsite, we packed up and moved out. I feel like I can conquer anything physically after that night!
My highlight of the week though was when my team said that they actually SAW my attitude and leadership change and could see a new tier of God-given power rising in me, that was so encouraging because I worked very hard to acheive this selflessness and brokeness for our team!
Peace, Love and Prayers!
Adam
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)