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!