DTS, day 46!

I'm so sorry I haven't had the chance to post more in the last couple of  weeks.
 Life here has been crazy :-) 

Mark Parker's week finished out intensely with a 12 hour tabernacle day on Friday. We went to the class room at 9 am and finished at 10pm, with about an hours break for meals in the middle. It was such a great day, but very emotionally (and physically) exhausting. We did SO much worship, and a lot of other stuff. It was a very family building day for the DTS. 

This last week's lectures were on Biblical Worldview and the 8 Spheres of Society, taught by Leah Broomfield. It was really good - very calm after last weeks teaching. We went through each sphere individually, and looked through the Bible (mostly the Torah) and looked at what God's perspective/view of that sphere is... I don't know if that makes sense how I wrote it, but it was really cool.

On Friday night for local outreach, we went to Brighton with sidewalk chalk! We drew a huge square on the sidewalk under a street lamp, and wrote "Prayer Floor" in big letters across the top. As people walked past, we asked them to draw or write their prayers or dreams, and we would pray for them. It was so much fun! Brighton is a very good place for it as well, because I can imagine it would be hard to get many people to join in in a less... free... city. I love Brighton. 

We had our first outreach team meetings last week! It was so fun. We have a really crazy team - I think this outreach is going to be awesome. There are 13 or 14 of us. Eeh! So excited. 

I've been sick for about a week now, and It just keeps fluctuating between okay and awful. Ah well, life is still good. 

Oh yes! The weather here has been AMAZING for the past few days!! It has been perfect spring weather. Sun, but not too much - and the birds are singing, and the grass is green... we have been eating outside and climbing trees. They have the most perfect climbing tree here - it is fantastically wonderful.

This week the September DTS arrived back from their outreaches in Morocco, Moldova, Bermuda and India. This coming week will be their debrief week, and then they graduate next Friday. It's weird having loads of people in the house. Some of the India girls brought back henna with them, and were sweet enough to try it out on us :-) Love. 

Wow, we are leaving for outreach in 5 weeks now. I can't believe how quickly it's coming! 

Still praying for outreach fees as well, but God will provide, so I'm not particularly worried :-)

How is everyone? I haven't heard from anyone in a long time! You still alive? 

xx

DTS day 34.

    This week we are studying Relationships and Identity. Our teacher, Mark Parker, is very surprising :-) just sitting and chatting with him he seems fairly quiet and reserved, but when he stands up to start teaching... WOW. He's got some lungs on him. He likes to hop around the stage and shout and sing, and do all kinds of crazy things :-) At first I thought I would get frustrated with his crazy style, but as the day went on yesterday I learned to really like his teaching style. He is just so real and enthusiastic about his topic. The teaching is really good, but it's pretty overwhelming. He says SO much in every lecture, you don't have time to soak any of it up. I feel like I won't really get this week all the way until next week when I get a chance to read back all of my notes. There is just SO much content.

    Sometime in the next couple of days we will be finding out our outreach teams and locations!! Ahh, so nervous! We are all sitting on the edge of our seat, waiting for the moment to come...


    Yesterday evening we were informed that all the girls had to come down to reception at 6:50 in the morning. I have to admit, there was quite a bit of grumbling amongst us, even though we knew whatever the reason was, it would be good. It's just that none of us are morning people.
Anyhow, we came down this morning (some still in our pajamas :-) ) and found that the boys had all gotten up even earlier, and made us a lovely breakfast. They were so sweet, walking around the tables serving tea and pancakes :-) They even performed their own beautiful version of You Raise Me Up for us. Some of the girls said it was their best Valentine's ever :-) Sooo sweet. Our DTS boys (and staff. and guest speaker.) are awesome.


Oh my, oh my. How the time passes.

DTS Day 31.

    Hola! It's been a while. My updates on here may become a little more spread out, because my computer is having issues, so I am having to borrow other people computers to get online.

    This week has gone by really fast. Our topic for the week's lectures was Spiritual Warfare. The whole week was a bit off though, because the base was hosting a huge conference for the International DTS Centre, so there were LOTS of people. Our lecturer was also here for the conference, so we had to have an inverted schedule, and do lectures in the evenings. It would have been fine, but we were all sooo tired in the evenings, even though the teaching was really good, sometimes they were hard to stay awake through.
The lecturer, Leo, was from Uganda, and had some really crazy stories about spiritual warfare at work.

    ALSO this week, we were given the different locations for outreach, and given an amount of time to decide which team we want to be on (well, more like which team God wants us to be on). So intense!

    I can't even believe how fast time is going. We are already 4 weeks in! That means we are a third of the way through lecture phase, and a sixth of the way through the whole school! We leave for outreach in about 7 weeks! Mah! What the heck!! Too crazy.

How goes life outside of Holmsted?

Abbey

DTS, Day 25; Our crazy Saturday.

Wow. Yesterday was so fun.

We went to Brighton to go shopping all day (well, more of window shopping). I hate shopping when I have to get something in particular, but when I have no plan and nothing that I need, It's fun :-) We spent all morning going to H&M, Urban Outfitters, Primark, etc. Very girly. It was really fun to just go out with no agenda and hang out :-)

THEN, in the evening, we went to meet some of the other group, and when we finally got to where they were, OH MY GOSH. It was so wonderful. I was home. It was like, these little side streets packed full of independant shops. There were Bohemian shops, and vintage shops, even a Bonsai tree shop!!! IT WAS SO AMAZING. I want to live there. It was like the little (well, not so little) sub-culture part of Brighton, and it was perfect. There was even a Cyber-dog! So crazy. I HAVE to go back there sometime when it isn't evening, and when I haven't already been shopping all day.

So then we split off into groups to go eat dinner, and ended up at McDonalds. Not particularly classy or gourmet, but it was fun.
When we went back outside, it was snowing!!
Eventually, we ended up at an Italian restaurant where we shared some desserts, and had some really bizzarre and random conversations.

It was about 8pm, and we didn't particulary want to go straight home since we barely ever actually get off base, so we decided to walk to the beach a few blocks away. It was so much fun, running across Brighton beach in the dark, in the February cold while it was snowing.

So we headed home, hoping we wouldn't get stuck in Haywords Heath, since British people don't really drive in the snow. On the train ride home we kept getting more and more excited as we passed through the different train stations, and saw that the snow was getting deeper and deeper. We did in fact make it all the way home, although we did pass a couple of car accidents on the drive back. The little back roads here are so fast and twisty - not good when it's icy.

By the time we got there, there was already about an inch of snow, and being who we are, we couldn't resist having a middle of the night snow-ball fight before everyone else got to it the next morning :-) I've never had a real snow-ball fight, because we never have enough snow! It was sooo much fun! Everytime we tried to go in it started all over again. I think it ended up lasting for about an hour and a half. I couldn't feel my fingers or my toes by the end, and my eyes were burning from getting hit in the face - it was great. We looked so funny going in all covered in snow, with make-up all over our faces and our hair soaking wet. I think everything I own is damp now.

We decided to finish the night by watching a film with tea and hot water bottles. So nice, although I repeatedly drifted off through the whole movie, because the day had been so amazingly tiring.  Going to bed in the end was so wonderful, after such a great day.

Waking up today and looking out the window at the snow covered trees and fields was wonderful. A bunch of the team is having a big snow-ball fight in about 15 minutes, but I don't think my muscles will let me join in. I am so unbelievably unfit and I think last night's craziness wore my legs out for the next week :-P


How have everyone's weekends been? Miss you all! xx

DTS Day..... 23?

Mah! This has been a good week.
Last weekend we went to London for Chinese New Year! It was crazy. We got the whole tourists-in-London experience - Trafalger Square, Big Ben, cheesy phone booth pictures, Westminster Abbey, getting completely lost and seperated from our group without any of their phone numbers... all of it.

It was... exciting. I got a little paper Chinese dragon, and it made everything worthwhile.


This week's topic was Destiny by Design, taught by Joylynn Landshut, who is from Washington State, but lives in South Africa. Oh gosh, it was soooo good. It was all about our dreams, our gifts, our identities, and our destinies. It was so awesome, because at the beginning of the week a lot of us thought we didn't have any dreams, and she just helped us recognise that we DO have dreams, and that God put them in our hearts. Eeeeh! I am so excited for the future.

One of my favourite things from this week was an excercise we did yesterday afternoon. We all wrote on pieces of paper the negative things about our identities that we or other people had believed and/or spoken out about ourselves. Then, we stood in a circle around a bin, and took turns speaking out the lies that we had been believing about ourselves, and each time someone said one you had been living under, we would rip off a piece of our paper and throw it in the bin, and then declare the truth!
Did that make sense? Because I don't really feel like it did. If your confused, just comment.

Anyhow, it was soooo great! I really can't believe how many lies I have been believing about myself for a really long time now. It was really freeing. I know that throwing pieces of paper in a bin doesn't really sound like it would help anything, but it was a physical action to concrete what was happening in the spiritual.

We are going to Brighton to hang out tomorrow, I am excited :-)

Oh my, we are also going to Brighton TONIGHT to do street evangelism (give me strength). I'm nervous. It is going to be so very very cold.


OH and I found out my parents are going to Macedonia tomorrow?? What the heck?! I am sooooooo jealous. But I'll deal.


What has everyone been up to? Missing you all!