New information!

Hey Everyone!

I’m sorry I waited so long to blog again, but there a lot of things on the brink of happening and I wanted to wait until they happened before I wrote.  They have now happened, so get ready for a packed blog!

Over the past week, there has been a National Leaders Meeting (NLM) here at our base, so a lot of YWAMers from bases all over Australia and the world have been here.  It’s really awesome to be able to have people who have been in YWAM for years and years all around us new DTSers.  They’re so willing to answer questions and just tell us their stories whenever we ask.  Anyway, because of the NLM, the flat that all the girls and I from our DTS were staying in was needed for some of the YWAMers that were coming, so they moved all of us girls to live on the ship!  You know, THE ship, the one that went to Papua New Guinea (PNG) recently and that I’ve written the past two blogs about.  I am now living on that ship.  Here are some pictures....

The gangway

My bunk

The lounge

Out the window

The lounge couches

Also, here’s a video of the recent ship tour of PNG with statistics and all.  I would definitely recommend watching it.  Ship Tour to PNG.

Now for the other exciting news:  we just found out where we’re going on the outreach phase of DTS.  On Friday night, they told us our four options and gave us the weekend and Monday to pray about it to discern where it is that God is calling us.  We were asked not to discuss it with anyone so that our decision wouldn’t be at all swayed by who else could potentially be on our team.  Yesterday morning, they had us write down where it is that we feel God has called us to go out of the four locations we were given, and then throughout the day they prayed and discerned us into four teams.  Only a few people had to be asked to consider a different location than the one they wrote down on the paper.  It was a really neat process, and by the end of the day yesterday we were all sitting on the edge of our seats waiting to find out where we’re going and what our team looks like.  Of course, our leaders stalled in telling us, much like I am doing now.  J Ok ok, so here we go. 

The four options they gave us were all in Papua New Guinea, Australia’s nearest international neighbor.  The four locations are Port Moresby (capital of PNG), Kerema/Vailala, Kikori/Ero, and Western Province.  At all of the places, the main focus will be discipleship.  Here's a map of the four locations circled in red. They go in the order I listed from right to left.  

The goal is really follow-up with what the ship just did as it went through and provide encouragement and help to those who have made a commitment to Christ.  The culture itself is extremely different, and the language will be somewhat of a barrier.  They have over 800 indigenous languages, the most of any nation of the world.  We will be working with translators the whole time, which will certainly be a new experience.  We will be there for 5 weeks.  We leave right after Christmas.  After this phase, we'll come back to Townsville for one week and then go out in the same teams to different locations in Australia to really empower young people into missions.  In Australia, it is still legal to teach religion in schools, so we'll be able to go right into the high schools.  Those locations are unknown as of yet.  

Ok, now for where I am going.  The location that God assigned to me is Kikori/Ero village.  I am in a team of 10 people, two of which are leaders.  The names of our leaders are Markus (Germany) and Anna (New Zealand).  My fellow students are Janine (Canada), James (N. Ireland), Megan (Colorado), Michael (Georgia), Paula (England), Victoria (N. Ireland), and Jacob (Florida).  As you can see, we have 6 nations represented throughout the ten of us.  If all of you could spend some time praying for this group both as a team and individually, that would be so helpful.  Each one of us was handpicked for this team for a specific purpose, and it's going to be so neat to see exactly how the dynamics work out.  I'll give all of you more information as it comes to me.  Thank you so much for all the support you've given.  Without it, I wouldn't even be close to seeing this outreach to the nations become a reality in my life.  

Blessings unending,

Nikki