Hard Hard Hard Work and Some Well . . . Not So Hard Work

Well you'll never guess what I was up to this week! On Sunday we went to church and our outreach team split into 2 groups and went to 2 different churches. I went with a group to a Metro Church and it was very interesting. I'm pretty sure the building must have been a movie theatre at one point because we were definitely sitting in movie theatre seats! And a lot of the time it felt like it was still a movie theatre because everything was so high tech! There were probably 5 big screens at the front which showed the videos of the worship team and speaker just like in a concert. Actually it reminded me a lot of being at CreationFest . . . the only difference was they used the screens at CreationFest so the thousands of people could see what was going on at the front since everyone couldn't see. Let's just say there were not thousands of people at Metro Church . . . there were barely hundereds! I would be absolutely shocked if there were more than 250 people in the building! So pretty much the screens weren't so necessary, but hey whatever floats your boat, right!??? Another thing I noticed about Metro Church which I wasn't a huge fan of is that they have about 20 people at the front leading worship in a church of only about 200 . . . huh??? How does that ratio work??? It didn't make a lot of sense to me, but hey who am I to judge??? I can safely say though that I miss The Forge! I like our style of worship and life in general much better! There was one thing I really loved about Metro Church, however, after the service we were all invited into the visitor's lounge since we were first timers and they had amazing food to feed us! Brownies, springs rolls, mini quiches, orange juice! It was fabulous! With nearly 500 people on base right now and the kitchen used to cooking for only 300 let's just say there hasn't been an abundance of food lately and the food we are eating is mostly bread and rice so the food in the visitor's lounge was such a treat for us!

In the afternoon we had an evangelism time, so we waited on God to see where He wanted us to go and what He wanted us to do and it turns out God wanted us to evangelize at the beach! Sweet deal! So we headed to the beach and we drew prophetic drawings on the sidewalk in chalk and had a great time talking to different people about what we were doing and why we were doing it! And we got to do it all at the most beautiful place ever . . . Fremantle beach! It was pretty awesome!

For the rest of the week we were working with ARMS again, but we just did that during the morning. In the afternoons we were working on the base helping to get things ready for the biggest 50th and 25th celebrations that are coming up in a week! So the ARMS work was pretty much the same as last week . . . lots of yard work in the hot sun, but we also had a couple of days when my team had indoor jobs and I cannot even believe some of the places we went to! My last ARMS case was Saturday and when my group walked in the front door we all looked at each other in disbelief and were thinking, what are we supposed to do with this??? I know you are all probably thinking that it must have been a huge mess to stop us dead in our tracks that way, but in reality this was the cleanest house I have ever been in! It is cleaner than our house at home and we were called in to clean it because the woman was suffering from post partum depression and couldn't manage on her own. So we did clean her bathrooms and kitchen like she asked us to, but we felt it was pointless because they were already pretty much clean! So that was interesting! But usually the places are much more of a mess and we work really hard!

And of course we work hard on the base as well although this picture may hide that fact well! It turns out that for 2 days we were working on the base I got to be on the baking team! We had to write down any special skills we had so they knew how best to use us so I wrote down that baking and cooking were 2 of my special skills and I actually got placed on a baking team which I didn't really think would happen when I wrote those down in the first place. So that was nice! On Monday night we got to bake chocolate chip cookies which really didn't even seem like work, and then on Thursday we baked bran muffins! It was quite a daunting task to bake those though because for the cookies we only baked 410, but they need about 1400 and that is just for 1 afternoon tea! There are going to be about 700+ people on base for the celebrations so there is going to be a lot of food happening! It is madness to even think about since it took us 3 hours to bake those 400 cookies and it was only a third of what was needed! But it was still fun, so that was good! It was definitely far more fun than the job I had on Tuesday afternoon (which was a hot day I would just like to add!) On Tuesday afternoon me and 3 other girls were dressed in coveralls and sprawled on the super hot ashphalt car park to scub oil stain off of the ashphalt! We worked for 4 hours in the sun pouring degreaser on the stains, pouring sand onto them, and then scrubing at them with scrub brushes. It was terrible! And of course we were working with stains and stains by definition are messes which are not easily removed so it felt sort of hopeless as we were worked because at times we were literally pouring our blood, sweat, and tears into our work and the difference was barely noticeable! And by far the most discouraging part of that job was as soon as we were finished they parked all the oil leaking vehicles right back where they were so it was like what was the point of it at all when the mess will be right back??? So yeah that was fun!

This coming week we will be solely working on the base getting life ready for the celebrations. There is only 1 week until the celebrations and the transformation that they are planning has yet to be implemented so I have a feeling we will be worked just as hard this week as we have to pull everything together and get the whole base decked out and decorated before people start arriving next weekend! Hopefully I will get to do more baking (the not so hard work) and not have to do anymore oil scrubbing (the hard hard hard work!), but it is outreach so I just do what I am told and try not to complain because I know how much it irritates me when other people on my team complain; it just brings everyone down and doesn't help anything! I do have to say though that I am pretty much counting the days until we leave for Mexico! I am so excited to get to Mexico City that I can't even stand it! We had a Mexico City orientation at the very end of December so got to see pictures and hear more about what we would be doing and the whole time they were giving the presentation I was just thinking about how I wanted to leave the next day not wait a month and then get there! However, I did have to wait a month and now that month is coming to a close! We leave in 15 days and I am stoked! I never thought I would want to get on an airplane again when I got here, so I am looking forward to being on a plane again and I feel far more confident going back than I did coming here because I already know that I can make it through all the hoops you have to pass through in airports and all that jazz! Plus eventhough a lot of us (those from North America) booked their own flights back to LA I am on the same flight as a bunch of people from my school so I won't be travelling alone this time which will be far more fun! I do have to say I am not really looking forward to the 9 hour layover in LAX before we board a flight for Mexico City, but even that won't be so bad because I will have people to explore with! Yay!

There are some points of prayer for our travel, however, that I would love for you all to keep in mind. First obviously is safety while travelling. We have about 40 hours of air/airport time before we get to Mexico City which is a lot and we will need lots of prayer for energy and safety as we go. My flight from Perth leaves February 1 at 5:45am and I arrive in Mexico City at 11:43 pm on February 1, but we cross the international day line and since Australia is a day ahead of North America we pretty much get to live February 1 twice . . . either that or it is just the LONGEST day in the history of the world! Also we are still having issues with receiving visas so the Asians in our group are allowed in Mexico. If the visas do not come through my team will be short Malaysian and the other 2 teams will each be short 2 Indonesians. We are really trusting God for the visas to come through but time is growing short so we really need everyone to stand with us in prayer. Other than please continue to lift up the health of everyone on my team especially as we are soon off to Mexico the reputed land of intestinal discomfort!

That is about it for now I think! Just one more post in Australia and then who knows what internet will be like in Mexico. Hope everyone is enjoying being a part of my Australian adventure and is ready for the next chapter in Mexico!