So, first of all I'm back in Australia and have been since last Monday. It has beenreally good to be back andsee all of my other new friends that all went to different countries. It also has beenstrange to be back because we have come back to a horrible natural disaster situation in this state of Australia.I'm sure people have heard about the flooding in Queensland. We are safe. Our area of Brisbane didnot flood, but just a few minutes away homes were under water. It is crazy to think of all the people that have lost their homes and family members. Also, several of the placeswe have traveled to throughout our time in Australia have flooded with horrible damage. Our base has had lots of opportunities to help and take people to different towns to rebuild. Please keep all of Australia in your prayers.
Sorry I haven't given an updatein so long! There are so many things that I've learned/experienced on outreach inVanuatu. We spent our first week starting to build a new house on Aore Island where the YWAM base is located. We poured a cement slab for the house, but it was quite different than just pouring a slab in the US-we broke rocks, sifted sand, broke open cement bags, got buckets of water from the well, and mixed it all with shovels. It was my first slab making experience. It was hard work, but fun! We also got to try stingray during that first week.
The next week we started off by traveling to a village called Vatumasan. It was 2 hours by truck and 1½ hours walk through muddy, slippery paths. The school and church are located there. It’s the central meeting place for all the villages around there. We stayed there for a week, going to different villages everyday. We traveled from anywhere between 30 min. to 2 hours by foot. We would worship with them, pray for them, and tell stories with them then head back to the central point where we slept. While we were there we were able to meet with the chief and present him with a gift. While in his village I was able to sit and talk with some of the ladies. I was talking with one lady (the chief’s daughter-in-law) and she was telling me about commemorating the death of her daughter in the next few days. Her daughter was 6 months old and had died of diarrhea. I asked more questions and found out that she had died within 3 days of being sick and on the third day they began to walk down to the hospital, but the baby had taken her last breath on the way down. It was heart breaking. I just wanted to ask more and help with health education. In the same area we were able to pray for another sick baby and the baby got so much better right after, and we heard the next day the baby was well. It was so great. In this area we also had the opportunity to try many new, interesting types of food such as snake, lizard (which was a whole lizard with a stick through it’s body roasted over the fire), and bush cat (pretty much your normal house cat, just wild).
After we left Vatumasan we wentto one of our translator, Selvan’s village for 4 days. We did children’s ministry, prayer walked, did church services, and built relationships with the people. On the first day that we were there we prayed as a team and felt that we needed to focus our messages on Unity. After we had this time as a team we found out that there was actually much tension in the village (the village was separated by a river and the tension was between the people on different sides of the river). As we did children’s ministry the kids from both sides of the river came and played with us all afternoon, and the mother’s of the kids also came to watch. It was amazing because previously the kids from opposite sides of the river would fight all the time, even to the point of throwing rocks at each other. Selvan said that this was the first time her village had anyone come do children’s ministry. In this same village Selvan asked one of us to go talk to her cousin-in-law because she no longer went to church. I went over to her house and the conversation was really slow, not much was happening, but I just kept trying to talk with here about her life. When I felt like she just wouldn’t talk anymore I asked her if I could pray for her for anything. She asked the other girls in the room to leave and then told me that she needed prayer because she was having trouble breathing and that her life with God was gone. I asked her what she meant and she explained that she used to have a relationship with God, but did not anymore. She felt like she couldn’t have that again. I told her some stories about my life and how I had felt like I couldn’t be close to God, but then he would pull me back into his arms, all I had to do was ask and that was the same for her. I told her that is all that God wanted to bring her back to him and to love her completely. I told her that God loved her no matter what she had done in her past and always wanted a relationship with her. It was so cool because then I told her if she wanted she could ask out loud for Jesus to come into her life and so she repeated after me andasked for herself. In the same village a small boy was crying and walking around aimlessly all morning long. I decided to go talk to him to see what was wrong. He walked into a lady’s home and I began to talk with her. As I talked with her I found out the boy was sad because his dad had left for work for a week. He still wasjust crying and so sad. I went over and began to pray for him that God would give him joy and stop anything that was making him cry- immediately the boy stopped crying and didn’t cry anymore the rest of the day. The lady then asked me to pray for her because she was having lots of problems in her life. We were also able to stop at another village for a day and a half where we did children’s ministry and a church service where I shared how I have been able to give over fears and anxiety to God and I can have his light and not be worriedabout the world’s darkness. God really worked through our team and it was exciting to see all He did.
The next week we met up with the New Zealand team, which was a huge blessing. We went back to Aore to finish doing building projects and celebrate Christmas and New Year’s. It was aphysically hard time, but also a great time of making friends with the locals on base and just continuing friendshipsfromour own DTS. We accomplished so much. Christmas Eve was great! Our leaders had gotten people from home to send us stuff secretlyand they brought it with them to Vanuatu. They surprised us with gifts from family and friends from home, which was so amazing and really helped with missing being home for Christmas (thank you so much for everyone who sent something!) Our Christmas day was really fun and different. We woke up and continued putting up decorations that we were making that morning. We helped get ready for a feast that we would have on a tiny island right across from our beach. The feast included pig, which we had picked up a day earlier from another island. When we picked it up it was alive in a bag. It was a little sadto say goodbye to our new friend, but hewas quite tasty. We ate our feast and snorkeled afterwards at the island.Later thatnight we had a gingerbread house contest. It was really fun. A wonderful Christmas day! For New Year’s we celebrated with a movie on base (we had a generator) and then snacks, coffee, and fireworks around a fire. It was so cool to celebrate in such a different way.
The last week we had a mini DTS for people to come to on Aore. We invited people from the villages we had visited. We had 12-15 students (some came late and left early). It was so good because members of our teams taught onthings they had learned on DTS in Australia. It was cool to see how God used each of our team members in different ways. Some shared testimonies, some taught for 1-2 hours, some led intercession and worship, and some made sure everything worked according to schedule. It was great to see people who had seemed so shy getupandshare boldly about what God had done in their lives. I think that the students learned a lot and they were really receptive to all we talked about. I had the opportunity to share on evangelism and relationships. It was what God had put on my heart to share with them. The students were very shy at first, but as the week went on they began to warm up and really open up. It was so exciting to build such great relationships. They had lots of fun learning and playing games with us. It was an amazing week and such a great way to end our time in Vanuatu.
Above is the house we built while we were there and me teaching on our mini-DTS. We had a little going away party for us leaving Vanuatu. We celebrated bygoing to a beautiful blue hole with many of our new friends. The next day we also got to see an amazing waterfall. We ended with good relationships and awesome views! God taught me lots through my Vanuatu experiences and I know I will be able to use them to look back on and help me later in life. It was a great trip!
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