Yet another update!

Uh oh, only 25 minutes until dinner . . . guess this will have to be a very fast update! We had another great week here in Perth. I especially enjoyed it because we got a little bit of a break from the heat that had been building in the early parts of November. We even got some rain this week! But it wasn't rain like at home where it is gray and drizzly for like a week . . . instead we had rain for 2 days but I'm pretty sure the same amount of water fell as would fall in one Victoria rainy week because it rained hard! It was funny though because it was never continuous! It would rain insanely hard for about 5 minutes then stop and maybe even get sunny for 10 minutes then rain really hard again for another 5 minutes then stop again . . . it was the weirdest cycle I have ever encountered! But it was great! I loved it! You could tell exactly who was from BC because we were the ones who were so happy when it started to rain and even went out and stood in the rain and got completely soaked just because we were so happy to see rain! Our bodies are telling us it should be raining everyday right now because it is November, but in reality it is not raining hardly at all here and it just feels wrong! I love the sunshine and warmth, but there are just times when I really need a little rain in my life!

However, apart from the rain situation we also had a great week of teaching! Andrew Dutton came from the base in Kona, Hawaii to speak to us about Lordship and Submission. I found the whole week fascinating and was really impressed with Andrew as a speaker. He had a hard act to follow after Hinrich last week, but he held his own and I was impressed! Probably the thing that stuck out at me the most from the whole week was about submission. I have always known that it is possible to submit without necessarily obeying, but I was floored when Andrew said that you can also obey without submitting. Submission itself is not an action, but a heart attitude! This really hit me because I always thought of myself as a naturally submissive person; I do what I'm told and usually do it without complaining. However, my heart was not always submissive in those situations. I may not have grumbled on the outside, but in many cases I sure grumbled on the inside, so that was a really interesting thing for me to note!

Another thing which made this week so fabulous was that we finally found out what our outreach teams would look like! Since our DTS is rather large (50 people) we will be splitting into 3 different groups and even though we will be in the same city (Mexcio City for those of you who didn't know!) we likely won't see each other at all. Plus since half of us are doing report back in Perth and half in Mexico City, we won't all be together again for report back so when we leave for outreach we could very well be saying goodbye to certain people forever! So this was a big deal for all of us! But we found out about the teams and our leaders really did a fabulous job of splitting them us up because all the teams are incredible! I don't think I have come across a single person who is not absolutely thrilled with their outreach team. There are definitely cases of people wishing they could have been with this one or two people, but overall everyone is happy which is great. I am on an outreach team with 2 of my roommates (there are 4 of us in our room and only 5 of us in our house) which really surprised all of us since we thought for sure they would split up us Gladstone girls (Gladstone is the house we live in!). But 3 of us are together which is amazing and I am really really happy with everyone who is on my team! I think we have a great mix of people and we have great leaders (though all the leaders are fabulous of course!).

So yes, basically we had an all-around good week! Still keep praying for unity with our whole group and unity for our outreach teams. Health is also a big prayer point right now as the stomach flu is still going around and now colds are sore throats are running rampant as well! Everything here is going well, but your prayers are always appreciated. Hope you are all enjoying hearing about my adventures!