Home alone

I had the 'Home Alone' post all done and ready to be posted on Thursday. All I needed to do was wither borrow a laptop, or sit next to one of my friends as they used their mac (I love mac's internet sharing). So I was planning to do that at break on Friday morning. This plan, as you can see, failed rather.

Friday morning dawned far too early. I got up and finished packing, tried to call my mum, got breakfast and came to morning worship. We had got about 6 or 7 minutes into worship, still on the first song, when suddenly the music and the lights all stopped! We had had ANOTHER power out. It was awesome though, because everyone just carried right on and we worshiped mainly using the drums as backing. So we sang and danced for a while before starting a fire tunnel. Teams Mozambique and Brazil had done a fire tunnel for the other's when they went off on min-outreach, so they returned the favour. It was so funny, it being in the gloom of the emergency lighting, accompanied by about 5 of the guys on the various drums we had on the stage.

We had the first part of our lessons in the dark as well. We have had Rick D'Orazio this week, speaking about church planting. He is an amazing speaker, so immensely likable and entertaining and he had some amazing messages to give us.

Right after the morning session we were off to mini outreach.

Break down to follow

Last weekend 4 of the 6 outreach teams when off on their mini-outreach. Mini outreach is basically a shorter version of our main outreaches. The team goes away for the weekend and works with a church preaching, doing worship, running car washes, prophesying- anything really.

Team Brazil (that's me) and team Mosambique however are going this coming weekend, so we were, for a whole weekend, home alone. Ok so there were about 20 of us, but after having 60 or 70 of us around for 2 months, it was a big shock.

Throughout the day we waved off the various teams. Lizzie and I were so sad to see them go that we sent them off with waving hankies and tears, running alongside the cars – it was good fun.

Later on in the day both teams bundled into the cars and headed off to Woodbridge where we went to see the latest Narnia movie... AHHHH FILM, it's a film! I have picked up so many americanisms! It's awful! So anyway we saw Prince Caspian. Personally I thought it was an amazing film, but it differed from the book so much that it really detracted from my enjoyment of it and I came out feeling really betrayed by the film makers and really quite angry. After journaling about it for over an hour and talking to God about it (no joke I was journaling for about 2 hours on Saturday morning and about half was about the film!) I feel much better and can say that it was an amazing film with some fantastic points. So after the film we came back and had a late night boogie in the car park (was just about to call it a parking lot!). It was hilarious, because Otis' car was blaring out music and whenever a heavy base part came on the lights on the dash board would dim and you could hear the engine revving harder to produce enough power!

Saturday I woke up at about 12:30, so after my mammoth journaling session it was half two before I even thought about getting dressed. But get dressed I did and went to read my book out in the sun. It was incredibly windy though and after having to chase my notebook and my pillow across the carpark I decided to re-locate to the other side of the building. Here however although the wind was as often, when it gusted round it would pelt me with bits of debris. So I had to find a place that was in the sun, but out of the wind and away from the bits of grit that were now peppering my clothes and hair. Shawn's truck! Bingo! So I clambered up in the back of Shawn's pick up truck and lay reading my book and soaking up the rays. It was bliss.

Saturday evening I helped out with soaking in the main church. They were short of a keyboard player so Jonatas asked if I would help out. I'm up for getting all the practice I can, so I agreed. The soaking session is two hours long, so as you can imagine we played quite a lot of songs and we didn't manage to practice many of them before hand. To add to that I hadn't played with anyone in the band before and they use in-ear monitors which I have never used before, so I didn't really make best use of the sound check, meaning I couldn't hear everyone in the levels I might normally ask for. So it was an experience. However I did it, I played the majority of the chords right (though there were some stonkingly bad ones which I really hope didn't distract everyone else too much). Was fun in the song they transposed though when I realised halfway through that there was another chord that I hadn't worked out and I had to do it on the spot. Like I say, it was good practice. I'm glad I did it, and God came which was fab. After soaking it was party time. We had food, we had music, we played games in the dark, and games in the gloom, we ran up and down, scared each other silly and just had a great time. We were up until about 1:30 playing games!

Sunday was it's usual long day, with church (where we prophesied over the entire youth group), a trip to Nandos for lunch, kids ministry and then the glorious return of the other students. I went quite silly as I realised just how much I had missed everyone, even after only 2 days. I can't imagine how bad it's going to be for the 3 weeks of normal outreach! I was so pleased to see everyone that I just talked with everyone, ran around and beamed at them all. Then stayed up till half three talking. I didn't stop talking on Monday either as I used the day off to sleep, and talk, and talk, and talk. I didn't really manage to do any more on my book report! Woops. Oh well got a few more days to do that.

My day off

After each conference the SoM students get the Monday off, mainly just because we are all completely exhausted! However, I was so stoked to have a day off that I didn't want to waste it all by sleeping (not that sleeping is a waste of time, but I wanted to go and explore somewhere). So at a very bright and early 10:30 Candice and I headed off to Woodbine Mall with Lizzie and Rebeka. So I got shampoo, flip flops (which when I wore them then rubbed my feet raw in 1 minute flat), jelly beans and phone cards. Lizzie also got phone cards and while she was there she made friends with the guy on the stand. We were just chatting and talking about where he was from and what we were doing in Canada, and Lizzie led him to the Lord! It was crazy exciting. She told him the gospel message, the fact that Jesus loves him and wants a relationship with him and all he needs to do is ask Jesus into his life. She asked if he wanted to ask Jesus, he said yes and so we prayed with him and he accepted Jesus. WOW.
So then on the journey home, we got in the taxi and Lizzie struck up a new conversation with the cab driver.
Every time I complain to God that I don't know how to talk to strangers he reminds me that I have seen Lizzie do it a ton of times. We went to Tim Horton's once and when she came to join us with her drink, she already knew where the server was from and how many kids he had! She has an amazing talent for talking to people.
So she started up “So what's your name?”
“Kingsley”
“So Kingsley are you are believer?”
“A believer? A believer in what? God?”
“Yes”
“Of course”
“So do you have a personal relationship with him?”
“You can have that?”
Oh my word, if there was an evangelism text book I think that would be one of the examples you never expected to get! We of course lept on this golden opportunity to tell him all about the fact that you can have a personal relationship with Jesus, because of what he did on the cross. All you need to do is believe that he died for the sin in our lives, the things that separate us from God and ask him to come into your life. Tell him you know that your way doesn't work and that you want his way. Kingsley had grown up in a Catholic background but hadn't ever really know God and walked away from him. So we asked if he wanted to start walking with Jesus and he said yes. So we sat in front of the SoM building for about 10 minutes talking to him, answering his questions and praying with him.
So there we were, lunch time and I had just been a part of two people becoming Christians! Completely unrequested, both guys had given us their numbers, so Lizzie has been in contact to invite them along to TACF and stuff- so we didn't tell them the gospel and leave them stranded. My goal now is to not make such things any less exciting, but for them not to be so much of a surprise. I want to see people come to Jesus more often!

After lunch we once again rallied the troops and a group of us sauntered down to the bus stop on the start of our adventure to Toronto Island. Well I saw we sauntered, 5 of us sauntered, the last of our member was doing more of a hobble. Poor old Mark was helping set up at his church on Sunday morning and had the 120 pound sound board fall on his foot. He then spent the rest of the morning in casualty. It wasn't broken, but even with a bruised foot I thought he was a bit silly to come on such a long trip, but he insisted. So equipped with a pair of borrowed crutches, old hobble-along joined us on the adventure. To get to the Island is not a hard journey, but it is reasonably long. We took the number 58 bus to the end of the route, the subway to the bottom of the loop, we then had a 10 minute walk to the lake shore and a beautiful voyage across the waters to the Island.
It was one of those times when I truly felt that the atmosphere changed the way I was thinking. I felt alive, there was grass and green and water and ducks and trees and squirrels and birds. It was amazing. So we wandered by the water, swang on the swings, got lost in the maze and strolled along the pier. The pier was strange because the island is on Lake Ontario, however the lake is so huge that it looks like it's the sea. However, seeing swans swimming in the shallows and having fresh water blown in your face rather than salt water, was very strange. We also played pooh-sticks over the slowest moving piece of water I've ever tried to play it on. We must have been standing for about 10 minutes waiting for the sticks to come under the bridge, but it was hilarious fun.
At 6:45 we jumped back on the ferry and headed back to the mainland. We were all flaking a bit by this point (some more than other's), but were all starving, so we wandered and hobbled to find food. We settled on Jack Astor's for dinner, and although the restaurant was far too loud, making ti quite hard to talk to one another, we all had fun. The table cloth was a nice long strip of brown paper and on every table was a pot of crayons! So we were all drawing little pictures on the table cloth while we were waiting for our food. After a hearty meal, we were all stuffed to the brim, so we rolled back onto the subway and headed home, ready for a thoroughly good sleep!

Going Higher, Going Deeper

The past week, as I mentioned before, was conference time. We started the week with a soaking school on the Monday and Tuesday. This is basically a very short version of our 'core value month' with soaking time to let God deal with the stuff that came up. Most of it was repeating stuff from our first month, but even so it was very useful for a number of reasons, 1- You always have more stuff to deal with in your hear, so another opportunity to work it out is a good thing, 2- I am writing my sermon on hearing God's voice and so to hear someone else preach it was really helpful (I took plenty of notes!). We all got to catch up on a lot of our missed rest as well, what with the 45 mins we had at the end of most of the sessions where we all just grabbed some floor space, listened to some gentle music and just soaked up God's presence. God loves it when we are willing to just be with him, not trying to do anything, not striving to get closer, just resting in his presence and soaking him up! I did find that it messed up my sleeping patterns a bit though because I was so rested that I wasn't tired come bed time!
Come Wednesday it was time for the main conference. The soaking school was for those who were going to be on the ministry team (ministry team meaning those who have been given permission by the church to go and pray for people). The rest of the week had hundreds more people from all over the world who were there for the “Going Higher, Going Deeper” conference. So 9am Wednesday morning I was there reporting for my work duty. I was once again in the kitchen with Francis. I must admit that I was quite disappointed when I first found out, because I did that for the last conference and wanted to see something different. However I love working with Francis. He is an absolute sweet heart and we were some of the very few who ever got let off early from our shifts. Mikayla and I were chopping tomatoes and celery, unpacking chicken & salmon, and defrosting about 50 packets of mash potatoes for the 4 days we were there. I am now an expert at chopping tomatoes!
After kitchen duty I was always off to get some food and then go to the afternoon sessions. Since being here we have had about 40-45mins of worship at the beginning of every week day. The soaking school was the first time we hadn't had it and I missed it so much. It came as a relief when the conference started up and I could leave my shift and go to worship. I'm not quite sure who I'm going to survive when I leave. I guess I'm going to have to get up half an hour earlier each morning and have my own little worship session!
It was really exciting getting a chance to hear all about the things God has been doing all over the world. We had people from England telling us about the string of nightly meeting they had been having because God was showing up so powerfully that they just couldn't get enough. Reports form Iceland about how the country is lighting on fire for Jesus. Patricia King (on of the speakers) had actually just come from Lakeland in Florida, so was buzzing with all God is doing over there in what has become the largest healing revival that we have ever seen. But then God showed up in a powerful way here in Toronto. We saw a lady who hadn't walked in 4 years, due to Lupus, get up and walk with help one day and the next day she was running and jumping and preaching the power of Jesus. She had been a Christian who most definitely didn't believe in the power of the holy spirit – God sure showed her how wrong she was. We saw other people healed of muscle pain, back ache and headaches among others. One of my friends had a set of prominent scars on his fore arm and God completely removed them. I was standing next to him at the time and his face was an absolute picture! Other people (including a few of the other students) had supernatural money appearing in their wallets and bank accounts. It was crazy cool.
The talks were good, my favorite was a talk Duncan Smith gave on Boldness. He was talking about a fairly obvious thing really, that if you want to blind healed, you need to pray for the blind! So he was talking about stepping out and trusting God to fill the gap. He also prayed an impartation of his boldness to us. There was a lot of impartation at this conference actually. The thing with the holy spirit is that whatever you have can be given out. So Duncan Smith has been given a real spirit of boldness by the holy spirit, so he was giving it out to us.
The hardest thing about the conference for me was probably not singing. I was trying to take care of my voice and not damage it so I was limiting myself to talking. But when you are so used to singing in worship it is really hard work not to sing. Thankfully the school has taught me enough about being creative during worship that I just sat there drawing pictures instead :) Actually the Saturday morning I was described as a female Barry White because my voice was so low when I woke up.
We finished of the conference in the normal fashion, with one of the student's favorite pass times- fire tunnels. They are so much fun, but absolutely exhausting. I was very ready for bed when it came to it.

End of an era

So after a wonderful year, Charl and I have decided to call it quits.
Part of me is really sad about this, but the other part is just incedibly grateful for the time that we shared together.
We have parted as friends though and I pray that we remain good friends for many years to come.
So thank you my friend for the best year ever

Jesus you’re my superhero

So right after our prophetic evangelism on the streets, we had a school social and the theme of this social?... Superheroes!!

So everyone in the school dressed up as a superhero, it was an absolute hoot. At 5pm we all assembled in the fire hall (the hall in the SoM building) and got the hilarious chance of helping with announcements.

Each week at TACF there are video announcements made. These announcements are then given to each of the 7 churches and get played along side of the normal announcements made by each church. These announcements get funnier and funnier each week. The guy that does the filming and directing for them is a guy in the marketing department called Mark who is originally from Sheffield!

So anyway the announcements were following 'Announcement Girl' as she was teaching at the superhero school. So we were prominently featured learning about the up and coming encounter weekends, how to throw cartoon punches and slow motion fight.

I think all of the announcements are up on the web so you can check them out at http://www.tacfvideos.com/. And it's "Leadership in Action". You can see me a bit, but I have a mask on so you would never know it was me!! MWAHAHAHAAAAA

So yeah, I was Super Sixties Girl. The name sucked I know, but my costume was amazing. I am not one for dressing up normally and was stressing a bit about this, but the day before I found some amazing shoes and a sparkly dress and I was away. I actually didn't get anyone to take a picture of me with my camera so I can't stick a photo up at the moment. Those of you on facebook should be able to see a couple though. My shoes though are platform heals and make me about 4 inches taller (no joking). My dress was a very pale pink sequin covered miniskirt dress which I wore over leggings of course and I had a green cape and black eye mask. I was so chuffed with myself.

We had some amazing costumes; Dan- a smurf (OK so there wasn't as much of Dan's costume as everyone else's- more blue paint than anything else), Shawn- Jesus (best superhero really), Jonathan- Aqua man, Candice – The Super Sleeper, Amy- The Invisible Girl, Otis and Jon- Jedi knights, Team Mozambique- The Power Rangers

My favourite though was Faith who was one of a couple of Super Grannies, but she was so well made up that it was very hard to recognise her. It took me a good few seconds to work out who was under the big pile of tea towels.

The prize for best entrance though goes to the boys from 207. We were halfway through filming the announcements when we heard this Spanish guitar starting up and suddenly in runs the Mask of Zorro pursued by two musketeers, each with big hats and coat hanger swords. The trio (Johnatas, Mark and Andy, with Justin on the Guitar) fought their way round the whole room, up onto the pool table and everything. It was fantastic.

So we all had dinner and then, in our outreach teams, we had to do a photo scavenger hunt. Basically we had a list of tasks and each task was worth a certain number of points. Each of these tasks required either a photo or a video of the task being performed.
The tasks included
• Take a photo with a Tim Horton's staff member
• Take a photo of the whole team up a tree
• Take a photo of the whole team with a dead animal (though you can't kill it yourself)
• Take a photo of the whole team with hairnets on and with a worker at the bread factory
• Get a video of one of the team singing to a stranger
• Get a video of one of your team break dancing on a box

So we all traipsed along the highway in our costumes getting stares and honks from the passing motorists. It's amazing how many people were willing to smile and wave when a crowd of superheroes waves at them. It was a hoot. For peace of mind for all of you worried souls, I did change my shoes before heading out. So with our efficient German leading the way (did you know that if you select very carefully which tasks you perform at which time you can maximise what can get done?) we went through and did quite a lot of the tasks on the list, including filming Otis (bless him) snorting Wasabi through a straw! Thankfully he only got a tiny bit, but even so he was reeling from it.

Once everyone was back we all gathered and watched all of the pictures and videos on the big screen, while totting up the points. We ended up coming in 3rd which was pretty good really. But at the end of the day it was a hilarious fun evening and a good old team bonding experience! lol

Prayer request

Hey All

Well we are once more mid-conference. So life is hectic with long days and lots of work. I however don't feel up to doing any of it as I have the scratchyist throat ever. It hurts to swallow, let alone sing or pray for people. So if you could pray that God would heal that supper fast that would be great.

If you are interested to see the conference you can subscribe to the TACF 'Revive TV' and watch it live or recorded.