Just the beginning.

Africa, the place where all of life’s questions come together, not to be answered necessarily but to come to peace and come to place where God reveals the means to the questions.
I have only been here for a short period of time but there seems to be so much happening already. Every morning we have about 2 hours of worship, quiet time, and intercession. Even the first morning I was here for it God spoke to me already. Reminding me that though I am here to serve others I still in turn need to be spending time focusing on my personal relationship with God. This for me as always been something I have struggled with, though I may seem like a good Christian as I travel the world to bring God’s kingdom I am no greater than anyone else and I struggle so much with spending time with God one on one. The greatest part of the morning gatherings is that we do have a set time to spend alone with God, and I have been spending time outside of that reading spiritual books and spending time in prayer, hopefully I can continue doing so when things start to get busy next week.
Another thing that God has been speaking to me already is where my faith is real. I realized that I came to Africa and worship/pray very differently than I would back home. I don’t know if this is a matter of my desire to fit in and not stand out when I am at home, or if I am uncomfortable doing things back home that I feel free to do here. Or on the flip side if I want to seem just as Spiritual as other people around me here so I act out in the same area’s that they do.

The base is slowly starting to fill up here, currently we have about 15 people but soon once the DTS starts on the 3rd we should have about 20-25 people in total. This is very different from the Worcester base that I was at before where we had about 200 people on average. But I still really love it here, everyone has been so inviting and we are already such a great and loving family. The base is actually much bigger than I expect and has much more than I expected. We have hot water(though only one shower), a washing machine, a massive fridge with an ice/water dispenser, a living room with a tv and a media centre with many movies and after 6pm we have free internet.

The next two weeks we will be having our staff training where we just get to talk about own our DTS experiences and can figure out what we want to get out of the school and what we want the students to get out of it. One of the interesting things about this DTS is that I am actually the youngest person on it, though I am a staff member. Many of the students have been in mission work for a while, one even being a pastor. At first I was a little intimidated by that fact but now have realized that though I am younger there are things that I can teach them as much as they have things to teach me. I am very much ready for the DTS to start and get going with our weekly outreaches to the orphanages and other churches.

Just want to thank everyone for the continued prayer and support. Also thanks for the birthday wishes today, I had a birthday cake and got sung happy birthday which was wonderful.
Here are some prayer requests for the next week:
-Pray that staff training will go well, that we can communicate with each other well
-that last minute details can come together for the DTS but also for the base
-we are figuring out if our lease on the base is going to change at all this week, so pray that we can stay and that the price will not change.
-Pray for financial break-through for the students before they come. Many of them, especially the Malawians, do not have enough money to do the school.

Thanks again everyone for your prayer and support, it’s very much appreciate.
Much love from Africa