Mini-Outreach

Wow. I got back from Ukraine last week, which was an awfully long journey back because of complications, but the trip as a whole was great. There is so much to write about the trip and so little extra time that I will have to split it up into a couple of different posts. It was such a good experience and definitely needed as prep for big outreach. Big outreach is in 10 days!!!! We are going to Ethiopia, but I will get to that later. The trip through Poland to Ukraine went very well, it took about 12 hours and was quite entertaining. We stayed at a place called nezabudka where 30 of the poorest kids come after school to hang out, get a meal and take a shower. Our first day was supposed to be a rest day, but we all ended up meeting the kids and hanging out with them anyways because we were all too excited to stay still. The day after that it snowed a lot so we all went out and had a pretty big and intense snowball fight/wrestling match. It was so much fun and a great way to get to know them better. I know I just hardly touched the surface but I am going to go to bed, I am just building up the anticipation for the next post. Goodnight.

Week 7

Rogerio was our speaker this week! I met him last April for my sister’s wedding and thought he was awesome, so I was excited to here that he was coming here to speak. He spoke about spiritual warfare, which seems like a controversial topic. I will talk about his teachings more in two weeks, I need to go to bed because my team leaves for Ukraine at 5 AM. I want to put more time into this post than I have so I will be back. Keep the team in your prayers and thank you for the support. Goodnight.

Week 6

This week our speaker cancelled last minute so a women from the base, Cory Stroud, filled in and i think it was just as good if not better than the speaker we would have had, but I guess we will never know. Cory was speaking about our foundation and where it comes from and how we can change it. It was good, it really got everyone thinking. It made me think of the traits I have and different cultural views. I am feeling challenged to keep working on my self-discipline and consistency. It is kind of random but it seems like God is asking me to learn guitar, but I think it will be very beneficial. There is also a part of me that wants to keep learning russian but I don’t have any material here for that. I learned that I need to find a way to structure my days or have something planned for my extra time or I won’t use it very well. I am really excited for outreach!

My group leaves early saturday morning to go to Ukraine for two weeks. We will be helping at an orphanage during the day and find other things to do when we aren’t there. I think it is going to be a great opportunity to help and travel. Please pray for me and my team as we take the 20 hour drive this weekend!

Week 5

This week has been an interesting week. We had a speaker named Fiona and she has been my favorite so far. The gospel  is four books in the bible, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. If I were to describe it to someone I think I would tell them that it is about God’s love, how sin separates us from God, how Jesus saves us and how it is ultimately our choice. I am probably going to have to describe it to people in the coming weeks so we will see how I really do it. Our speaker talked a bout sin and where it comes from and answered most of the questions that I have been having about it so it was pretty nice. I realized that week how much I am letting fear and convenience rule over my life, so I am starting to change that. I also started reading a book called, “WIld at heart” by John Eldredge which has been pretty inspiring too. I am slowly facing my fears and it feels so liberating. I am also figuring out how much my “voice” actually means and that what you say really does have an impact. 

Week 4

This week the staff was telling stories about their experiences on outreach and how they started different things to help people. Their story was pretty inspiring because they had never started anything before and were just trusting in God to help them with it and it ended up working. I want to be able to hear God’s voice that clearly and be able to trust in him that much. We heard a lot of outreach stories, good and bad, but I don’t think they will help us too much on our outreach because I have heard they are all so different and it seems like it is so intense and different than what we are used too that not much can prepare us for it. We have been learning a lot that we can incorporate into our daily lives though, which is very helpful. I am definitely learning more self discipline and time management since our schedule is so intense, I am starting to use my time more wisely (except I am still struggling to spend enough time on my blog) and I really enjoy it.

Week 3

This week we had a speaker that was pretty awesome, his name is Pete Thompson and  he was pretty cool. He really took the time to get to know each of us by spending his time with us throughout the day and eating with us even though he had better food upstairs could have used his extra time to do other things. It was really nice seeing that much dedication and passion in what he does. He spoke about about God’s nature and his fatherly love. One of his main points was how huge but precise God is, which is crazy to think about because God is so big we can’t even grasp it. It is a struggle for some people to think of how big God is, it discourages them and makes them feel small and worthless but for me it is exciting that God cares about us when we are so tiny and that he is on our side. Our speaker started talking about things that we think we should give up which was really relevant to me because I had started a coffee fast and now I am on day 10 or 11.

Week 2

Sorry for the delay on my second post, it is pretty busy here and I am not quite used to making a blog but I will be getting more consistent with it as the weeks go by, don’t worry. This post is going to be about things from two weeks ago (Jan. 23-29). We had a speaker named Lucy for that week and the topic she was speaking on was Hearing God’s Voice. This was one of the more frustrating weeks for me but also good. I have a hard time differentiating God’s voice from mine. Lucy talked about all the different ways that God can talk to you and that he continually talks to us throughout the day we just don’t always listen. There were a couple of things that stood out to me that week and one of them was when she was talking about God’s presence. Just having a relationship with a voice doesn’t change your life but being in God’s presence is what makes a huge difference. To me it made me think of being away from friends and family like I am now and how it is nice to talk to everyone but it is so much better when I am with them hanging out face to face. 

First week

I decided to start this blog to keep all of my family members, friends and supporters informed about where I am and what I am doing. I am in a Program called YWAM (youth with a mission) and am doing a DTS (discipleship training school) that is 7 months long. The DTS is art based and is called MOTA (marriage of the arts), where they have a combination of tracks to choose from that are photography, fine art, music, handmade crafts and writing. I am doing the photography art track but am practicing fine art as well. The first three months are at a base in Herrnhut, Germany where we will be learning about our art track.  The next three months are in a third world country to help people and spread the word about Jesus. The last month will be back at the base in germany to debrief, compile photos and make prints. 

The journey overseas was pretty intense, it was pretty surreal when I was on a plane from Amsterdam to Berlin and all of the plane announcements were in another language. It was tough being the foreigner, well it still is. The money is so colorful it doesn’t seem real. but it definitely is. I love the snow here, it is pretty awesome and I have always wanted to experience a snowy winter. I think I am adjusting pretty well and the Redbulls are only a euro here!!!

IF you have read this far you might be wondering what made me decide to do a DTS. Well I had never considered the idea until about 5 or 6 months ago. I had a few friends from church who have done Ywam, But even then it didn’t interest me very much until I met a friend that could not stop talking about her time at the Kona base and the more she shared the bigger my interest grew. Then one day I was trying to make a plan for the future or just a direction to work towards. I started thinking of the different places I could move and what cool things I could do to my car, But I could feel my heart leaning towards YWAM. At first I thought, No that can’t be it, but the feeling just kept getter stronger and I realized I had been ignoring God far to long and committed to doing Ywam. 

It has only been a week and I have already learned so much here about God, myself and the arts. It is almost too much to put on here but don’t worry because I will be updating continuously.

If you have any questions/comments or just want to keep in touch feel free to leave comments or contact me via email: thomasjaykeil@googlemail.com