Week 2

Hey everyone! WOW, what a crazy-busy week it has been hear in Perth. We have been filling everyday with SOOO many activities, i have been running around non-stop. This week we started morning exercises on monday....at 6 AM. All I can say is yikes! I was totally dreading getting up at 5:30 every morning and working out and had a pretty negative attitude about it to begin with, but after actually having experienced it, i really feel the Lord working through me to be positive and up beat(i'm not a morning person). It's been so awesome! It's really starting to sink in that we are all going to be in Perth and away from home for quite some time, and i thought that would totally FREAK me out but it doesn't! I feel so at home here with all the staffers and students, it's totally God's comfort that i am experiencing. It's also so sweet to have my awesome sista Erika here. We just had a movie night last night, which was awesome...but i do still miss my lil sis abskin. This week in lectures have learned about the character and nature of God. I never thought I would be so pumped about going to sit in a classroom for 3 hours, but i have been! Our speaker Rachel McGirr had so many things to tell us about God and His goodness. Some of the things that were really high-lighted to me including God's blessing doesn't automatically equal happiness, reading the Bible in context, and the fact that pride can blind you to the reality of God. So starting at the beginning, I never realized how much i really do associate God's blessing with happiness. So often, I think we all form the wrong expectations of God in our minds. We, or at least i, always thought that if i believed Jesus was the son of God and acknowledged God as Lord, then i would receive things in life like success and money and material things. This is so untrue. God never promised a carefree or easy life. Instead we are promised to face struggles and rather than gaining favor here on earth, we are gathering our treasure in Heaven. So it really hit me that i need to stop blaming God for all the hardships in my life but rather keep pursuing His truth and word. The next thing that resonanted with me was the fact that we need to read the Bible in context. There has been so many times where I would search for a verse from the Bible in order to apply it to my life the way i want to apply it. Well, this isn't really at ALL how it works. Instead we should read surrounding verses and get a deeper explaination of the story before we can truly understand scripture. The last thing that hit me was the fact that pride can get in the way between God and my relationship. I realized how prideful i actually am, just with comparing myself to people over simple things. Such as "oh well at least i'm better than her/him." This is not at all how we are supposed to live. We are called to be humble followers of Christ. This is something I think everyone struggles with. As for the things that have been going on in action here, this past weekend, out DTS went to a national park in the Midland (the name escapes me) and saw wild kangaroos (pics will be coming)! It was like the coolest thing ever! We also got to feed parrots, they were so beautiful and I just kept thinking how amazing God is for creating such glorious creatures. I don't know what's on the schedule for this weekend but i'm sure it'll be something amazing. Please let me know if you have any questions or comments on what i'm doing here, I love feedback! Until next week! :)