As you all know, I am now living in the new PE house. You can’t imagine how nice it is to know that I won’t have to move again for another four-and-a-half months! After having to move everything all the time, I am excited for stability. The house is pretty sweet. I am trying to make a movie about it, so if I get it done I will let you all know. It has four bedrooms, three bathrooms. All my girl team-mates are staying in the largest room that has a bathroom in the closet… “I know… hahaha,” there are 9 of them all together. They have three bunk buds that are three beds high, “It is scary, thinking about rolling of the top bunk onto the floor… I did that at UCSA a few nights before we left, and it wasn’t fun… I think I still have that battle scar on my leg from falling.” Then Chelsea and Dee Dee are staying in the second largest room with a bathroom in the closet as well. Matthew, Kevin and I are staying in the third largest bedroom. This does not have a bathroom in the closet. We have two bunk beds with two beds on each, so for three guys we have 4 beds. I am sure we will have fun with that. Becca, our third leader gets a room to herself, “which she is very excited about because this is her first bedroom all to herself!”
We didn’t have any furniture when we moved in. We had to buy a few bunk beds, which sounds like it took up quite a bit of the budget, so when we moved here all we had was a refrigerator and three extra beds. One of the beds went into the guys room, “hence the four beds in our room,” and the rest are being used for couches… hahaha…. Except one of them doesn’t have a cushion on it yet… and Kevin broke one of the boards from standing on it… so for now, we don’t use that “couch”. So, we had two beds for couches and a refrigerator when we moved in. Then Bigger and Better came into the picture. Two days ago, the leaders split us up into three teams and gave us all paperclips. The point to this game, Bigger and Better, was to go around our neighborhood and meet the neighbors while taking this paperclip to the neighbors and asking for something bigger or better than this paperclip, then when you get the second item, you go to the neighbors and ask them for something bigger or better than that. I played that in my youth-group days and came back with a HUGE stuffed dog and a broken computer.
This time was AMAZING, “we have very wealthy neighbors.” The leaders not expecting what would happen at all, a team came back with the book, “The Purpose Driven Life,” some nice African Jewelry in a frame, and our team pretty much won with two pillow cases, a water heater, “which the list from now will actually be some things we needed but didn’t at all expect from this game,” an iron, a microwave, and a HUGE REFRIGORATOR!!!! That’s right…. Pretty much my team won. We needed a second refrigerator and a microwave, and they both work very well!!! Perhaps when we play the game next time, we might be able to come back with a television!… I don’t think we will be playing the game again though…
This week has actually been pretty chill, all we have done would basically be described as moving in and getting settled. We haven’t been able to start our ministries yet, especially since we don’t know what they are yet. We will probably start soon sometime next week. Tonight we are going to start getting involved in the Youth Group called FireHouse, and we are all pretty excited to help out. I have heard, but haven’t seen yet, that the Youth Group has about 100 kids come each meeting. So they will need more leaders. I am going to get involved. I have been thinking for the past few years that God will probably someday, “whenever He is ready to put me back into the American Society,” have me working with Youth. This will be such great training for working with youth. I am very excited to possibly be one of the leaders. I met a kid named Charlie that I am really excited to get to know better. It will be fun to get to know all the kids better.
So lately I have been trying to spend more time with God. I think I had a rant on this blog already about how all my life I have been leaving phone messages and not even trying to have an actual “phone” conversation with God. So my prayer life and devotions have mostly been spent learning how to stop asking for things and start finding out what God wants me to do with the time He has given me here in PE, to actually get to know my creator in a MORE personal way than finding out about Him through what others have told me. It is crazy to think a year ago I would have never believed I could actually hear God talk back to me. I have been going through this book called, “The Art of Listening Prayer,” a book that the head guy from AIM wrote. It is basically a devotional that teaches you how to actually have conversations with God, and making this so called relationship we have with God into a REAL relationship. It is quite good and really is teaching me how to actually hear God and making His heart for things more accessible to me.
The Devotion is set up with a bunch of questions, basically they are question the book wants you to ask God, then you just listen and wait for answers, questions like, “Are there ways in which I have offended you?” Something interesting I wanted to give you an example of was today when I was going through the devotion, I skipped ahead to tomorrows devotion because I felt like God was giving me the silent treatment today, “which He really has every right to do that because that is all we ever give Him back,” and the first question that I read asked, “How do I hear Your voice?” and God told me, “Just listen. You have the ears to hear Me, so hear.” God is so smart… in my own life, I think even before the reason I rarely ever heard God was because I never gave Him the time of day to answer back. I was on my own schedule and wouldn’t give God the time that He needed to answer back. Think about this, if you called your mom and only you talked to her for three minutes at a time when you needed something, do you think you would ever be able to hear her talk back, or have an authentic conversation with her? Often, that is how I have treated God. So this is how I have been spending my time, trying to learn to listen to God’s voice better, and part of that has been just sitting and listening to hear His voice.
Well… I think that is all for now, I will write back soon!!!
In Christ,
Andrew
