The fun starts!

It’s hard to believe I’ve almost been in Costa Rica for a month! I’ve really settled in, and I’m loving it so far. The culture here is really warm, welcoming, and loves to make you feel welcome into their family.

This week, our topic of the week was ‘The Nature and Character of God’, which was a pretty heavy topic. Our speaker, Carlos Penning was really knowledgeable, and on fire for God! We covered a lot of ground in five days, my head is spinning from everything and I’m still processing!

One of the biggest things I’ve been processing is that God doesn’t make ‘bad things’ happen to people. He’s not passing judgment on people when terrible things happen. Since we’re made in the image of God, we can assume that God is capable of feeling everything we are, but multiply that by infinity! That means He loves us with a ferocious love that we can’t even comprehend! We assume that God is in charge of everything, good AND evil. We quickly forget that our world is full of sin and pretty messed up already. God isn’t someone who forces Himself on us, which means He let’s us make our own decisions, which ALWAYS have consequences. People always ask, why does bad stuff happen in this world? Why don’t we ever ask ourselves why so much good stuff happens that we don’t deserve?

Enough about classes though…that’s literally just a tiny snapshot of what I learned. This week flew by, on Sunday, I did end up going bungee jumping, and I’m so glad I did! The rush of jumping 420 feet with some cords attached to your feet is intense! I conquered my fear (with a video to prove it!) and would do it again for sure!

On Monday we had a dance party for a staff member who was leaving to go back to Canada. We all got to learn some Salsa, Meringue, and we even pulled out some North American dance moves. Someone was so excited that he jumped so high he broke a light! Since it was a Latino dance party though, we quickly cleaned up and carried on with the dancing!

Wednesday night we had an awesome night of base worship and I got to pull out my bass, which was so exciting! I played with the base worship team here and had a blast! I’ve really missed playing, and it’s great to get back into it.  We’re having a twenty-four hour worship/prayer night starting at 7:30 on Friday night and I’ll get to pull out my bass again for that which will be great.

On Thursday we had local outreach, so we headed to an orphanage that will be opening soon, just to help them paint, landscape, and clean the building. It’s exciting to be a part of something so important and something that they need so desperately here. The people who are running the orphanage were so grateful for our help and kept saying thanks, but we really just want to bless them and help them create an awesome home for the kids who need one!

Tomorrow I’m going out with a ministry on base called ‘Metro Ministry’. I’ll be going out into a poor neighborhood close by, just to hang out and play with kids! I’ve gone once before and had a great time. The kids are so excited to play with us even if some of us don’t speak Spanish fluently (I’m working on it!). Before I do that though, I’m playing from 5am-7am as part of the twenty-four hours of worship and prayer so I’ll be getting up pretty early. On weekdays I usually get up at 5:30 am to run, then I start making breakfast at 6:00, so it shouldn’t be too much of a stretch to get up a bit earlier.

I’m also planning on checking out the market in downtown San Jose tomorrow (Saturday), which is filled with super awesome stuff. Bags, shoes, food, clothes, jewelry, all that fun stuff that ‘gringos’ like me like! So my day will be pretty full!

One thing that God also put on the hearts of two staff members and a few students, is the need for dance while worshiping. Even though I’m no ballerina, I love dancing so I’m super stoked that we’ll be meeting as a group to start incorporating this! My DTS is full of people who have an incredible heart for worship, apparently staff here haven’t seen a DTS here with this ever. So that’s super exciting too!

All in all, I’m loving it. I’m learning to love the ‘family life’, it’s still hard having limited personal space, but it’s worth it for what I’m learning here!

-John 17:24

Settling in...

Hey guys!

So I'm not much for blogging usually (although I love to read other blogs), but I think this is just the easiest way to update everyone on the happenings of my Costa Rican adventures. I guess I'll just jump right in!

I suppose I'll begin with why I'm here...I'm here in San Jose, Costa Rica to do a DTS (Discipleship Training School) with YWAM (Youth With A Mission), which is a Christian Organization with the purpose of knowing God, and making Him known. I had thought about doing a DTS right out of high school, but decided to start my degree in music instead. In August, three weeks before I was set to go back to school, I made the leap and decided to come here!

So basically I'm staying on the YWAM base in San Jose, which used to be an old coffee factory that they converted into a huge, open concept 'house' for us to live in! It has four big bedrooms (I'm staying in one with 9 other girls), an eating area, kitchen, bathroom and showers, a few offices, a hang out area,  and worship area. The property that the coffee factory is on has space for a lot more though. There are quite a few big shipping containers outside that they turned into bedrooms for staff...so they definitely get used to cockroaches. There are also apartments that they added on to the main building for staff who have families.

The topic for the first week of classes was 'Intimacy with God'. We learned about God's character, and how he's a personal, caring, and loving God who wants to get to know us. He waits for us to seek Him and really delights in spending time with us. This past week's topic was 'Hearing God's Voice', which I think a lot of people struggle with. I think that a lot of the time we're waiting for a thunderbolt or a loud booming voice to tell us what to do. But most of the time God is quite the opposite. He loves speaking to us in whispers, and I've been discovering the personal ways that He loves to speak to me. I've been learning to not doubt His voice, and just wait on Him with expectancy that He'll speak to me. It's been great, but challenging so far.
Yesterday we had a full day of going to the park and just sitting and waiting on Him. It was so difficult! I'm so used to allotting specific amounts of time to spend with God, that when a whole day of silence (and no interaction with other people!) stretched before me...I didn't know what I was going to do! As it turns out, He spoke to me, and I just enjoyed spending the day with Him.

Our schedule every day is fairly regular. We have breakfast, quite time with God. base worship (or intercession), classes in the morning, lunch, then sometime more classes (or whatever else is planned...it varies), then work duties (chores), then dinner, and either free time to do homework, hang out, or we have base worship or intercession often too. We're a flexible bunch :). I get up at 5:30 every morning because my work duty is making breakfast for the entire base! I do this with two other girls from my DTS: Kayla (from Alberta!) and Nina (from Chicaaaago...note the accent). I really love my chore, we cook breakfast, listen to music, and dance around. I'm definitely a morning person and love being up when the sun is coming up. Luckily it's easy here because the sun comes up early! God has definitely been challenging me though because living with the amount of people here is difficult! But fun too :). All the girls in my room (and the other room) are so great, and I'm loving getting to know them. We have 23 students in the DTS, 6 guys, and the rest are girls. Everybody here is so ready to be challenged and ready to accept everybody...it's amazing.

So this weekend I'm taking a leap of faith...literally! I'm heading out to go bungee jumping with a bunch of other crazy DTS students. I'm normally terrified of heights, but for some reason I feel the need to conquer this! Maybe it's because of all the teachings we're getting on faith and overcoming fear?? So I'll try and post some pictures of my scared little face before I jump.

Another thing that's new is earthquakes! We had one just a few minutes ago while I was blogging! It's such a cool but weird feeling! I just pray that we don't get any major ones :).

This post has been pretty long so far since it's my first one, so I apologize. I could post a lot more, but I won't. If you have any burning questions or just want to say hi, feel free to leave a comment or Facebook message me. I'd love to hear from you! I'll also try and post some pictures on Facebook, or my next blog post.

-"For God gave us a spirit, not of timidity, but of power, love and self-discipline."

2 Timothy 1:7