Ah-Mazing

Wow!! I cannot believe that a week of outreach has past already and what a busy week it has been. It took us a about 3 days to get here, to Penang, Malaysia. The train ride was epic but fun. The most fun.. first squatty potty experience on a rocking train..haha.. So hard not to pee on yourself.. but I was successful and didn't spill a drop. I am totally hoping this will be a continuing tradition.

So it is totally hot and sticky here and I already have an awesome t-shirt tan (yes mum I am wearing sunscreen) but I think I am adjusting to it pretty well. I go with an attitude of yes its hot but I cant do much about it so suck it up and get on with life. And the food.. AWESOME.. true that you do not always know what you are getting but most of the time if you don;t look too close then it is no worry at all. Although I don;t think I have ever said grace and blessed my food with so much sincerity before haha.. So far so good. I have totally turned my food science brain off though.  haha..

So we officially arrived in Penang on Wednesday had Thursday off and the traveled to Sungei Petani on Friday. There we were asked to be involved in a Christmas concert that a local church was putting on for a Hindu orphanage. We did a very short skit of the Nativity story with the main focus of the Wise Men following the star. We got some laughs from the kids so that was a good sign. The next day we were asked to spend some time at the orphanage and put on a bit of a program for them. I pulled out my best kids songs for them.. Na Na Narni went very well. Mostly we just chased the kids and played soccer for the 4 hours that we were there. It was awesome to see their smiling faces and just love them.  That night we were asked by our next door neighbour Jimmy to go to his church with him. We had met him the previous day and he was very excited for us to meet his family. So we walked off into the darkness with Jimmy and got in a car with his nephew and went to church  I shake my head all the time when we do stuff like that cos you would probably never do that at home, but not once have I felt unsettled or scared about what we are doing. God really does have us in his hands.

So now we are back in Penang. Not sure what is next, we kind of just go with whatever and plans change all the time. I am thinking that I should probably throw my watch away. There is no point wearing it because we are running a Malaysian time and things happen just when they happen. Right now I am totally pumped for dinner!!

Where in the world is Megan Helen Mitchell...

Currently in the Tokyo for a 4 hour stopover, after a 10 hour flight, before getting on a 7 hour flight to Bangkok. But wait for it.. That is then followed by a 24 hour train trip to the south of Malaysia (after 12 hours in Bangkok). That's right, lecture phase in Vancouver is finished and we are on our way to outreach. Its crazy!! I cannot believe how fast the past 3 months have gone.


Seriously pumped for outreach. Three weeks in Malaysia, the a month in Northan Thailand, serving at the Elisha Children's Home, and a month in Pattaya serving at the Bridge Children's centre. Still don't have a totally clear picture of what exactly we will be doing, but that seems to be the way things go. :) What I do know is that God is going to amazing things,  we are going to have a  great time and the team that I am with is fantastic. 

Check out this link, http://dl.dropbox.com/u/49392081/YWAM%20update.pps
It's a short powerpoint presentation with some photo's and stuff of what I have done, and what we might be doing.


Well that's all I have for now.. Not sure when I'll be back on again, but be sure to come back again and find out what adventures I/we as a team have been up to.




If you want, here are a few of prayer points for the team:


Safety and protection; 
Wisdom for cultural sensitivity and to represent our faith and organization well; 
Team unity – working together; 
The 2 kids – .good experience (Mike and Jessi 2 of our staff have 2 totally cute little boys ); 
Acceptance from contacts/people we’re working with.

Be Still...

Welcome to Struggle Town, population Megan.

Thats where I have been for the past couple of weeks. Interesting place to be, wouldn't want to become a permenant citizen though. Why the struggle? Just because of stuff really- school stuff, but not school stuff, external stuff, internal stuff. At times my head is so full of school thoughts, God stuff, and home stuff that I just want to scream. And last week, scream is what I did. Its funny how God ratlles your thinking when you are the most tired you have been in a while, or when you are totally frustrated and bored. He is just like 'hey Meg, tell me about it.' So last week, I was bored and it made me totally edgy. Why was I bored? I struggle with sitting in a class room all day just listening to someone speak. Last weeks speaker had some good stuff to say, yet he had over 10 years of processing it and he dumped it all on us in four days and I could not focus. Instead, I spent time journaling and giving all my frustrations to God and just telling him what was going on inside my head and where I was at. At various times throughout the day I woud crack my journal open and just write what I was thinking, or song lyrics that came to mind. Looking back through these, I could see a pattern, and it clearly showed what God was telling me. God was just telling me to be still, slow down, know that he is God and that to hand everything over to Him. I don't have to strive to be the person I think I should be for God- he made me ME and he will meet me where I am at and walk with me.

 Part of this relisation also came when we prayed for each other last week. We took time to ask God to give us something for each other. One of the girls got a picture of me running down a twisting corridor so fast that all the doors to exit were just passing by and I couldn't get out. At the time I was like ok whatever, but once I had time to process it, I was like yeah I do need to slow down. At times I just feel like I'm waiting for the next thing to happen, or counting down till out reach (which is less than a month away by the way), or waiting for the school day to finish. At times I forget where I am - and then I remember that I am in Vancouver and a massive smile spreads across my face.


Today instead of doing musical worship we were asked to write a song or a poem just to tell God how we were feeling or where we were at. So pretty much this is what I came up with and it totally sums up what I have learnt this past few weeks:

No longer will I have to strive,
from your love I cannot hide.
In your hand you hold my plan,
to meet me at the place I am.

Rest easy in your arms you say,
let anxieties doubts and fears slip away.
Open my heart, my mind and will,
and in your presence just be still.

God's Metal Detectors

FIRST AND FOREMOST I HAVE A NEW BROTHER CALLED VINCE....HE'S A AMAZING...So this morning we went on a treasure hunt. The treasure? People that have never heard of or felt the love of God in their lives. This whole week class has been on evangelism and how to share of faith with people. The number one point that stood out to most of us was just to love. To love poeple, to let them know that God loves them. To tell a complete stranger that God loves them is a pretty scary thing to do. You don't know how they will react, if they will be open or closed, and even how to approach them. Part of this comes down to fear. Fear of being rejected and fear of not knowing what to say. What we need to understand is that God will take that fear away and gives us the exact words to say. So with this in mind and with the Holy Spirit within us, we hit the streets of Hastings and went out to talk to people. Before we went out in groups, we sat and let God speak to us, to show us pictures or give us words about who we were seeking. My group didn't feel like we got anything but we went out anyway, asking God continually for something.

Half way through the morning my group was pretty frustrated, we had tried striking up some small talk with people but kind of got nowhere, they just weren't open. So the four of us split up into pairs and went our seperate ways. One of the guys and I went and sat in a park and there were a few people around but we were both not really sure of who to talk to. Brock prayed again, and it seemed like the park just filled with people, but still we didn't know who to talk to. The whole time we had been at the park, there were a young family playing, and I said how about we just go and pray for the family. So we worked up the courage and Brock just said to them that they seemed like a happy family, encouraged them and was about to walk off. I just stepped up to them and said 'this might be awkward, but would you mind if we prayed for you?' They were totally open to us praying for them, it was cool. After we finished, we got talking to them and told them what we were doing, an it turns out that they are Christians that have only recently moved into the area. They go to  church nearby and asked Brock for his number. We are going to go try out their church in a couple of weeks. It was cool that we could pray for them, cos last time I went out I didn't even talk to anyone, so it definetely a step forward.

Oh it's been a bust couple of weeks. Last weekend was Thankgiving so I made the trip from Vancouver to Vancouver Island and spent the long weekend with my family. It was really nice just to relax, although I did end up with the YWAM Community Cold thats going through the group so I was a bit wiped out. Tomorrow we are headed to Alberta for the GO Conference. Its a week long conference with workshops, worship times, and outreach preparation times. Fourteen hour road trip. WOOOT!!!!

The second hardest thing about a blog is....

.... Thinking up a new title for each new entry...This entry could be called, Week 2 or Hearing the Voice of God or ...... So i'll go without a title. I have such a maths/science brain that I struggle to be creative. It was an epic story to even think of a domain name.. Anyway onto something hopefully a little bit more interesting.. So last week the classes were on Hearing the Voice of God. We learnt about different ways God speaks to us, hinderances that stop us from hearing Gods voice and taking time to actually listen. One bit of homework was to pick a classmates name out of a hat and then ask God to give us something for that person. I felt like I had to pray for my person but didn't know what to pray for. Then I heard them talking about something that had happened and my stomach flipped and I was like I will totally pray for my person about that. So that was pretty cool.I also had to do a 5 min presentation on the one of the names for God. I picked God as Living Water. Its for us to practice speaking in front of people in case we are asked to preach at a church or lead a study group or something.. ARRRRGH. IT went pretty well although a bit short on time 3.5 mons but I did speak a bit quick. Thats something I have been working on because sometimes the Canadians can't even understand what i'm saying hehe Much of the rest of last week is now a bit of a blur. The weekend I didn't do much. Worked on my journal or processing book and then I was on dinner duty for Saturday and Sunday night so that took up most of my afternoon both days. But the food turned out good and I didn't poison anyone!

Today we spent the afternoon researching the countries that we will be visiting. We broke into 2 groups, one to look at Malaysia and the other Thailand. Next week we have to present back to the other group what we found. Its really interesting looking at what is and what is not culturally acceptable to do. I think its going to be tough at sometimes to remember those things. Like you can't have your feet above someones head, or you can't touch people on their head at all.

Next week I am leading worship with another girl. She is playing the guitar and singing and I'm playing keys. We practise last night and it went pretty well. So that should be good.

So I haven't really said much about the neighbourhood we live in.. but its a pretty crazy place. A block down from where we live is the epicentre of Hastings Sunrise, the 'suberb' we live in. So there is 7-11 and Dairy Queen on opisite corners and thats where it all happens. I was asked the other day of I would like to buy some weed, (umm no thanks), then a guy that works at 7-11 asked me if I would like to go on a date (umm no thanks) and then there is the friendly (or not so friendly) neighbourhood prostitute. The outside the supermarket, starbucks and London drugs are usually the homeless people asking for change. Before moving here, I knew all that stuffed happened but it was never in my face. Now it is. Yesterday afternoon as I was walking home there was a massive fight outside of Dairy Queen. There was a guy on a bike and this other guy ran up the hill behind him, ouched him off his bike and laid into him with a baseball bat.He ended up against a fence in the foetal position just trying to protect himself. It was crazy!! Yet the guy on the bike was back later just hanging out at the corner again, with toilet paper stuck to his gashes on his face. I think he may have been a pimp, as there is a girl with him that is coming and going all the time.

Yeah all this stuff happens, but not once have I felt unsafe. There is definately a God bubble of protection over what we are doing here.

Well thats all for now, and its officially tea time. BBQ pork chops and rice. Smells YUMMY.

Catch you later.

Welcome

I'd like to take this time to officially welcome you to Vancouver and your journey with me at WYAM Nexia- DTS. We have pretty much now completed the "orientation" phase and first week of school. I can tell you straight up that it has been full on and overwhelming, but good too.

We have two schools doing the classroom phase for the first three months. So there is my school Nexia and then there is the Hockey school. All the hockey students are from Canada, there are about 11 of them and then 6 of us from various countries (3 from America, 1 Swiss, 1 Brazil and this little Aussie, with maybe one more to come (the guy to come is from South Africa, he is having some visa troubles). The living arrangements seem kind of crazy. We have 2 apartments next door to each other, guys in one girls in the other. So 7 girls in one place with a staff member and they boys in the other with their staff members. Us girls have it pretty good with space and stuff.  We eat meals together at night and just find a spot in either house where we can fit I am sharing a room with Linda, she is from Arizona and is also 26. So the nannas are in a room together which is good. And this little nanna got the top bunk YAY. Linda is happy to swap part way through so ill see how I go. I'm right once I'm up there, its just the getting up and down.

So yeah.. introductory stuff this week. Just finding about what we will be doing and how living in community will work. We have to sign up for 'job roles' so my job everyday is lunch clean up at school. Its pretty good. It was either that or cook tea every night for everyone haha.

So classes.. We have classes everymorning and then in the afternoons we break up into our schools and do our thing. The hockey students play hockey and we do what we need to do. The past two days we have been sharing our God stories and how we came to be at our DTS. Its been really good getting to know each other a bit better and where we have come from.

The sharing bit isn't always comfortable even just sitting at lunch and just chatting is tricky and at times I need to give myself a little internal pep talk to work myself up to it. I'm more than happy to let conversations go on and I will just sit back and watch or absorb what people are saying. I'll put in my 2 cents worth at times but sometimes not. lol. I have kind of challenged myself to push myself a little bit extra everyday. Like the other night I went to the boys house for tea when I would have preferred to stay at my house and quietly disappear afetr tea. Or today.. wait for it... I prayed out loud.. yep..EPIC And Anthea it didn't take me half an hour of laughing before I did it. Although the group I was with did laugh at me as I had to 'shake it out' after we were done cos I had to pump myslef up first haha. So that is good. As I was going to bed last night a line of a Supertones song came into my head. The line was - Don't take even a moment for granted, from the song Dedication. So thats the plan- not to take a moment for granted. It does make me tired putting myself out there but I think that in the long run that tiredness will be cancelled out with the what I gain form this experience.

So that about it fro now except for maybe the the answer to one of the biggest questions of all... Where is outreach??? I have told a few people and Facebook has probably done the rest but.... we are going to Malaysia and Thailand. Not sure in what order and the details of what we will be doing, but from the 4th ish of Dec till the the 22nd ish of Feb I will be somewhere in South East Asia.

So now that is really all I have. Totes time for bed now. Goodnight.

The hardest thing about a blog…….

....is knowing when you have something new to write about. I have been in Victoria, Canada for a week now just doing life and keep thinking that I should write something else. But then I go, but I have nothing to write about. But Em said to me that she wanted to hear about the mundane stuff as the would be exciting to her, and Anthea keeps telling me she want to know everything. So here is mundane and everything for the past week.

I left you last week when I was at the aiport and found that my flight had been delayed by four hours (which is how I finished my first post) The weather in Toronto was bad so the Toronto- Sydney flight was held up there which made my flight Sydney- Vancouver (cos they needed the plane) delayed. Anyway, they called us for boarding and then my name was called over the PA and I had to make myself known to the check- in staff. SCARY!! My little heart dropped to my stomach. I had no idea what they wanted me for, so I picked up my very heavy carry on bag, (trying to make it look like it was the lightest thing in the world) and made myself known. All they needed was to let me know that they had changed my seat. WINNER!! I was shifted from 19A which was a window to 19G which was an aisle seat WOOT! An even bigger win.  The aisle seat was great as I didn’t have to jump over people every time I wanted to get out, which was a good thing as the person next to me didn’t even give me the time of day. She would just watch me out of the corner of her eye, it was just like being at home with my next door neighbours lol. My first question of the flight was, why would you make us lowly economy class travellers walk through first and business class to get to our seats. They have a nice set-up and if I had the money that’s the way I would fly. What the airlines should do is make the upper class passengers walk through economy class just to remind them how special they have got it lol.

So 14 hours on a plane. The first 10 weren’t so bad. I was fed, I was watered and I had movies to watch and I got some sleep. There were so many movies to choose from. I ended up watching Diary of a Wimpy Kid 2 and Rango. It was the last four hour that I started to get a bit edgy, just because I was stuck between 2 times and thinking about what I had to do at the airport to get another flight to Victoria, as my flight was meant to be at 10am but we weren’t arriving until 11 so that was a fail in connecting flights. Getting off the plane it was actually good to not be under any pressure to catch another flight, as when we hit the customs hall the line was huge. All these people were huffing and puffing about their next flight I was just like meh, ill get there when I get there. The line did move pretty quickly so it only really took about 20 mins, It was my visit to immigration to get my permit that made me huff and puff. I walked in and there were about 30 Chinese exchange students aged between 8 and 18 all needing permits. The immigration people were collecting their passports and processing them in groups but the kids didn’t focus and when their names were called and it was an epic task. So two hours later I was out of immigration with my permit and on a mission to find out the time of my next flight and contact my family to let them know.  I ended up on the 15:30 flight to Victoria and arrived at 16:00, at last I had made it. Six hours after my original time. One  good thing about that was that I only had to stay awake for about 4 hours as opposed to 10 hours if I had have arrived on time.  

The next day, I went with my Aunty and Uncle to pick up my Cousin Cam from camp,  about an hour and a half drive up the island, we went to a place called Port Renfrew for lunch and then drove home through Sooke. Sunday we went to church at my families church. By comparison to Yorkie it was pretty small and pretty new, they are celebration 40 years this year. The service was most like our 8:45 service. My Aunty played the piano, my Uncle lead the worship and my cousin did sound.  The part I most struggled with was using the hymn book. If you miss the number of the song, by the time you have found it the song is all done. The last time we used a hymn book at Yorkie was probably to prop up a foldback or something lol.

Not me.

Sunday afternoon, my cousins and I went to this place called Wild Play. It is a high ropes course that is up in the trees. It was heaps of fun, except we had to sit on a platform up in the trees for about half an hour as there was a rescue mission for someone who had gotten stuck and couldn’t get off one of the obstacles.

Monday, Tuesday and yesterday I just chilled at home with my cousins. Had my first Canadian migraine yesterday so spent most of the day in bed. Feel better today though. This weekend is the Saanich Fair. My cousin Louisa has a horse called Rock, so she will be doing horse stuff with him at the fair, plus cupcake, watermelon and pie eating competitions and lots of other stuff.

So that is pretty much my first week in Canada, with a few drives, scenic views and trips to the supermarket left out.

I thought  that as  I go along I would a ‘things that are different’ segment. Apart from the obvious like driving on the other side of the road and the drivers seat being on the left side of the car. Other little things are different, so:

Milo- Sweeter and less malty. You also don’t really get the crunchy bits on top, they just seem to be soft bits of sugar

Light switches- up is on and down is off

Powerpoints- most that I have seen don’t have on/ off switches

Buttons on traffic lights for pedestrians – both buttons are on the one post as opposed to having the button at the post that is closest to the direction you are walking. Its hard to explain so I will get a picture.

Toilets and drains – I’m not sure. They seem to goo clockwise but I can’t remember what way Australia goes. Can someone please let me know? Thanks