So I am going to have to give you a breif synopsis of what I've been upto since my last post, otherwise we are are all going to be here until Jesus comes back!
So since my last big post I have sung in a choir in the main church - that was hilarious fun. If anyone fancies paying the subscription to the TACF internet TV thing you can watch all the services they have recorded for the last... months, years dunno. But yeah you can see me on there- apparently a bit fuzzy, but it's me. (www.tagc.org and click on "revive TV")
I have as I mentioned, found out that I am going on outreach in Brazil. The outreach is on the last month and will be for 3 weeks. We are going to Porto Alegre. We will be going in their winter so it will be cooler than other times of the year, but still quite nice I think :) I am so excited. I have never been to South America before, or past the equator which I think is cool.
We went to our host church last sunday. Each of the outreach groups has a campus church that they go to each week. TACF has planted 6 churches in the greater Toronto area and so each outreach group goes to one of those churches from now on. Ours is TACF North. They were lovely and actually they got to tell us a bit about Brazil. I'm even more excited after that because it sounds like Brazil is all ready to hear about God and really receive him. It's going to be intence!
Teaching wise we have had prophecy, Intimacy and half or boundries. I will at some point give a more detailed look at those, but here is a breif look at what each of those week's looked like
Prophecy - Isabel and Ivan Allum gave us practical teaching on how to prophecy, what not to do when prophecying and how to give prophetic words. Prophecy is accessible to all christians because all it is, is repeating what God tell you and if you can hear God's voice then it's fine. It was really helpful practicle teaching. The two of them also prophecied over each student which was amazing. I'm so excited by all that God has planed for me. But the this with Prophecy is that it is an invitation from God. It is him saying "I want you to have this, will you step into it" It's not fortune telling. I liked God's offer so I want to step out into that and take all he wants me to have for my life. They talked about teaching (ties in very well with my current plans of a PGCE) and about doing some pastoring (which I had never concidered before). So it was both confirming and challenging which was exciting.
Intimacy - AJ and Allyn Jones gave, again, very practical advice on how to get closer in intimacy with God. God doesn't just want followers, he wants friends. Friends are people who spend time with him and know him, not just in their heads, but just in their hearts. I found this really useful and have taken a huge jump in my own intimacy with God after this week.
Boundries - Chip Judd has been teaching mostly on establishing healthy relationships where you know what you are responsible for and what you aren't responsible for. Learning to say no when you want to and we even got a free parenting class thrown in. We have just come out of the 'sex talk' where the guys and girls were split up and given the chance to hear from older more experienced christians about sex and your sexuality without pussyfooting around. The church is so good at skirting around key issues in our lives so many people feel they are the only one struggling, or they feel ashamed. It was so refreshing to hear people being open and honest for a change. It was very liberating. Not sure what we are learning in the last day of boundries tomorrow.
Getting closer to God has easily been the most exciting thing in the last three weeks. However the most eventful and the one I have the most photos of is easily the baseball. On the 4th April a load of us when out tothe baseball to see the Toronto Blue Jays vs the Boston Red Socks. It was so much fun. The stadium (in my eyes) was huge, and we, in the cheap seats, were very high up. I felt quite funny when I stepped out onto the stands. The game was a really good one because not much happened for the first 6 innings (in basebal there are 9) so I could enjoy my hotdog, the atmosphere, take pictures, talk to people etc. Then in the 7th inning the Blue Jays started to win!! In the end the Blue Jays won. I don't remember what the score was, but it was exciting. We were all getting really into it, screaming with everyone else, waving our free Blue Jays' towels. Once I have them off my camera I will post up some pictures. If you look at pictures of me on facebook you can see a few that other people took. We got a mirical bus on the way back too which was cool. We were waiting and my prayed for a bus, the the next second two buses turned up, neither of them ours. Now if you haven't come across this before I will let you into a secret - God has a real sence of humour (make sence concidereing he created ours). So we were aware of some of God's workings so tried to be a little more specific "Ok God, we would like our bus to turn up. And we want it to be a clean bus". The Toronto buses are really skanky and we didn't really want another of those buses. So three seconds later a 58 pulls up and it is the newest, cleanest, nicest bus I have seen since being here! we laughed so much! God is so good.
I don't feel I have done any of these stories justice, but I wanted to update you all and not post a world record on the blog post length, so I hope they give you a bit of an idea as to what I've been up to.
Prayer points:
- My laptop- it is really hard not having it now and bugging me
- Home sickness - not having so much conact is making me even more homesick, I have spoken to charl about 3 times in the last week and a half which sucks big time (called him this morning though which was fun- made my day)
- Physical health- my knee and ankle are both playing up and I can't dance and jump in worship like I would like to.
- Continued word- God is doing stuff and I want him to carry on and do more
Sorry if there are lots of spelling mistakes, spell check isn't working!
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