Update from Aus

Hey mate J The start to my last week of lectures has begun! It is so crazy! I had a very eventful week this past week . Lectures last week were over Bible study. I was so excited for this because over the past year and a half I have grown to LOVE studying the Bible…I mean, it’s the Word of God! That’s awesome! So anyways our speaker, Henk, was amazing! He won me over when he quoted “Coffee is God’s gift to this generation” Amen! Anyways, Henk is an older man with the sweetest heart! He is very wise and offered a lot of cool insight for getting the most out of studying the Bible. Summarizing and questioning what you read is very important! He also shared with us some pretty amazing statistics about well known people in history and how what they did was recorded. Apparently there are 10 manuscripts of Caesar, 7 manuscripts for Plato, but here is the amazing part: there are about 24,000 manuscripts of the New Testament! I never knew that before last week and I found that absolutely amazing! This was the first time I have actually felt sad to see a speaker leave!

We found out last week that one of our leaders, Susie, is unable to come to Fiji with us. Because of this, they asked me to co-lead that portion of the outreach with Daniel. So this is a huge honor and I’m excited about it. I will by no means be staff, I will definitely still be a student, but I just may have some extra responsibility when Daniel needs help.

As I mentioned last week, the April DTS returned back from outreach and so we were able to hear all of there really amazing outreach stories! It was very encouraging and made me even more excited for outreach! Their commissioning was Thursday night and it was crazy to think that in less than 3 months, that will be our group!! It was bittersweet to think of that. Commissioning here is like graduation, except it is not signifying an end to something, but the beginning to go out and change the world in which we live. It was a really great time!

I was back on evangelism teams for YouthStreet this week. My group went to the skate park to hang out and talk with people. I think that was the first time I have ever been to a skate park! It was pretty cool. Skaters are very talented! The crowd there was mainly people who were too old for YouthStreet, but we still did have a couple of opportunities to hang out with younger people and invite them to YouthStreet.

Sunday was Amazing!!! It was one of the best days! A group of 5 of us girls left our house at 5am to watch the sunrise at the break wall at the beach! We had our quiet time there and it was amazing. The pictures we took don’t even begin to do it justice! It was stunning! Afterwards we went out for some much needed coffee! Then we headed off to see the kangaroos. The place where they all hang out and are tame enough to feed even though they are wild is actually an old abandoned mental hospital! It was about an hour drive so we had a typical girl road trip. Complete with Taylor Swift and windows down! J  The kangaroos were so amazing although I was a little scared of them! They were so cute! And fun fact: they growl! Pretty nuts. They were eating bread right from our hands-it was amazing! And there were so many of them! After that we went to a Reserve Park and saw some koalas. They were so cute too! It ended up being a beautiful 90 degree day! Some spring weather, hey?

If you were a part of the picture video, God is Good, I want to say thank you so much and enjoyed seeing each and every one of your faces in it! It made me cry like a baby the first time I watched it, but it reminded me of how loved and supported I am, and of course that God is always Good! It was so great! Seriously, words can’t even express how much I love it!!

We begin outreach this Saturday, Sept. 24! We are taking 40 YouthStreet crew up to the Gold Coast-so pray for some real transformation in their lives! It is going to be great. Please also pray for our team finances. As a whole, my team needs $8,000 for every person to be able to go on outreach with us. Please be in prayer for this as well. We do not want to be separated. If anyone feels lead to give you can e-mail me at nicole_rae21@hotmail.com. Please really keep up your prayers-we are believing God for all finances and we know that He is more than able to provide! Thank you for your continued prayers!

Sunrise at the break wall

feeding the kangaroos!

Look at that little joey!!!

Kangaroo crossing!

Missions

Hey everybody! Hope you’re doing great. I am doing well here in the outback! I have had a very fun past week, but first I need to update what I said about our outreach on last week’s blog. We are no longer going to Auckland, NZ but instead will only be going to Christchurch, NZ. No more fun road trip, but that is ok because that’s not what we are going there for anyways J Arrangements for Auckland were just not working out, so our leaders told our group about it and decided we all needed to pray together to see if we feel we should even be going there. We were told to pray and then write either “Auckland” or “Christchurch” on a piece of paper. So we all prayed and wrote down where we felt we should go…..and 4 of us wrote Auckland and 4 of us wrote Christchurch. We had to laugh about that. We discussed a little bit about why we felt led toward one or the other and then decided to repeat that process. This time everyone wrote down Christchurch. So that was really neat! And we will be there in ONE month!!!!

We had lectures over the topic of “Missions” last week. Our speaker, Merv, was really great. He presented a lot of good information that opened our eyes to how necessary missionaries truly are! At one point in the week we watched a video about tribal people who received the gospel for the first time. It was amazing! Before being preached to, they had absolutely no hope. The video had footage from a funeral and the people were actually jumping down into the grave site because they couldn’t let their loved one go-they didn’t know where they were going, if they would ever see each other again. Public mourning of the people lasted weeks. It was heartbreaking. A couple of missionaries went to them and lived with them for some time and taught them about Jesus and how amazing He is. The people listened with such intent-they wanted to hear this Good News so badly! They knew they NEEDED it! When they finally realized what this meant for them, they rejoiced. And I mean they jumped up and down and danced around for hours straight! They were completely filled with hope and joy. It was absolutely wonderful! The missionaries then trained the tribal people how to tell others about the Good News. A tribal group a few miles from this one came and actually offered to pay the missionary to come and live with them and teach them what they knew! What I took from this was that a lot of time people want to hear what we have to say. They want to know how they can stop trying to work towards being saved, or where they can find a True Hope and Love. They want to know Jesus, even if they don’t know it!

Thursday  afternoon ,Merv (our speaker) arranged for some of us to go to the Mosque that is right down the road from our house and speak with some Muslims to learn about Islam. It was quite the experience to say the least. Never thought I would have tea with a few Muslims! It was shocking to me how much Islam and Christianity are similar. We learned  a little bit about their religion a couple of weeks ago during our Evangelism week, but hearing the beliefs from people who are actually living that out was pretty interesting. Part of what they believe is that there is an angel who writes down all the good deeds in their life and then another angel who writes down all the bad deeds they do. Whichever one outweighs the other determines whether you go to Heaven or Hell. There is no grace. It is all about how you can earn salvation yourself. There is no freedom.

I was put back on dance team for YouthStreet this week-just in time to perform what we have been working on the past couple of months. The crew had so much fun performing for their friends at YouthStreet Live (as did I!!). It turned out really neat. It is so cool to see how many middle and high school students are so talented! It was heaps of fun for me to learn how to break dance and just have fun with the crew! I was really sore on Sunday though…I must be getting old or something!

Outreach is right around the corner! Less than 2 weeks away. Please continue praying for God to prepare His way for us and to provide finances for those who still need them. Hope everyone has a fantastic week!

”Devote yourselves to prayer, being watchful and thankful.  And pray for us, too, that God may open a door for our message, so that we may proclaim the mystery of Christ, for which I am in chains.  Pray that I may proclaim it clearly, as I should”. Colossians 4:2-4

                                                           Danielle and I at the break wall <3

                                                     Just some random surfers...neat!

It's Spring!!.........in September!

G’day! I can officially say I have seen spring in September! How cool is that? Last week we entered into spring and it’s been really nice! A group of us are going to the beach today after lunch. How being in Australia during spring does have its benefits!

Anyways, last week our lecture topic was “Calling and Vision.” Our speaker was a lot of fun and really engaged u s in his teaching-it was neat! The overall message I took from the week is that we shouldn’t be so focused on what we are to be doing, but instead focus on being in right relationship with God, and trusting Him to direct our paths (Proverbs 3:5-6). When we have begun living our lives for His glory instead of our own, He will show us the right way. I believe He will speak to us through desires and passions He has placed in us. When we commit ourselves to His purposes He will guide us. We don’t have to worry about messing up or choosing the wrong thing. This is the beauty of completely trusting in the Lord! For me personally, I gained a great deal of confidence in realizing this for my own life. I often am so afraid of choosing the right or wrong thing that I end up not wanting to make a decision at all! I am going to work on staying committed to not overcomplicating things and TRUSTING my Perfect, Sovereign Savior who lives in me! How cool is that? Needless to say our lectures last week were really good and came at a very appropriate time! But, it is getting hard to focus on lectures with OUTREACH right around the corner!!!!!

We started something new with YouthStreet this past week. They decided to not have so many staff on each team during the day and to send out staff to different parts of Mayfield/Newcastle to spread the word about YouthStreet! Part of the vision for YouthStreet was to go to the kids instead of having them come to us. So, it was time to go back to this original vision. We ended up with 4 teams of 4 going into different parts of the city. I ended up being chosen to go out and spread the word! It was definitely a neat thing, but very exhausting! I think God is going to do really amazing through this!

So outreach....! We begin outreach on September 24! Can you believe it? Me either! First we will be taking a double decker bus up to the Gold Coast in Australia with the kids from YouthStreet. This is called 5 Day Escape and will include staying on the waterfront, going to the amusement park, shopping, movies, and heaps of fun! Then my outreach team will be doing a week of work in Sydney. We will then come back to Newcastle for Base Retreat, which to my understanding, is a weekend for staff us to go to the lake and just hang out! Right after that, we will be headed to Auckland, New Zealand! We are going to be doing some outreach there involving evangelism at the Rugby World Cup! Then we are taking a 15 hour road trip to the south island, Christchurch, New Zealand! This will include a 3 hour ferry ride! I am pretty excited about road tripping through New Zealand (if you couldn’t tellJ ). In Christchurch, we will be helping with various types of earthquake relief. About the beginning/middle of November we will be headed to Fiji! As of now, we will be working with a children’s ministry and a prisoner ministry. I am so stoked about outreach!!

Please be praying for us as we still need all the little details to fall into place with outreach. Also that God would be preparing our hearts to be completely focused on doing His work during this time.

I have been so blessed to not have to worry about all of my finances, but there are a couple of people on my team who do not have all of their outreach fees yet, so please be praying for their funds to come in!

Thanks for the support and prayers! ( I seriously can’t say that enough!) Have a wonderful week!