Week 1 of Community Transformation's DTS

Life. Has. Been. A. Blur. WOW.

But it's been one seriously amazing blur. Let me do my best to bring you on the journey of this past week.

Thurs. Sept. 27
Registration Day! We got our room and met our house-mates. We share a little duplex/dorm with Tommy and Grace. We each get our own room, and share a bathroom, dining area and kitchenette with them. They are seriously an answer to prayer as they are so sweet and EASY to live with (I hope they can say the same thing about us! :). They have such a beautiful story of surrender to Jesus in how they became a couple, got married, and found themselves headed to a DTS with YWAM here at U of N (University of Nations). Love them! We are so blessed!

The Ohana (means family) Court on crazy Registration Day

Our awesome Housemates :)
They even let me borrow laundry soap AND quarters :)

Our living quarters. Quite comfortable, I might add. 

Plans for the week

Fri. Sept. 28

Orientation Day! We finally got to be together as a whole group with our Community Transformations Class (you'll see me refer to this as Comm Trans). There are a whopping 138 of us, and already God has begun to knit us into one big family! We marched around campus checking out the Mauka Theater, Prayer Room, Ohana Court, and Banyan Tree Cafe. While we were in the prayer room, Johnny (our fearless leader) had us jump right into a worship and prayer time. So special!! And the Holy Spirit met us right there in our spontaneous worship. He is AWESOME!

Following the procession

Sat. Sept. 29
We took a couple of girls we met to go snorkeling with us at a place called Turtle Beach. So many gorgeous fish to see! One of the girls is a sister to 3 girls I went to school with at HSBC. Wow, what a little world we live in! After that, we went to End of the World to let Jonathan jump off again and let the girls see some more Hawaii goodness. We met about 20 of our Comm Trans classmates there who were cliffdiving. This awesome day went on to include a pit stop at the Bleu Cupcakery, a dance party in the Wal-Mart parking lot, and shopping for dorm essentials.

New Friends, Christy and Caryn! Because what's school without friends!?

End of the World

Cliff Diving!

Sun. Sept. 30
We now call the Mokuaikaua Church our home church, so we attended here in the morning and brought our friend Caryn with us. We met several CommTrans-ers there as well. With a group of 138, you're bound to see us everywhere! Later, we skyped with Jonathan's sister and brother-in-law and got to say hi to the nephews. What a treat! :) Then we got to rest a bit for the rest of that day.

Mon. Sept. 31
Every week starts with a worship service at 8:00am to do nothing but praise the name of Jesus and tell him how wonderful He is. Lots of excellent worship leaders rotate each week, so it is NEVER boring. More on how my view of worship is changing later...Our leaders started the first official day of school with a trip to the beach :) It was a perfect day, and glorious to enjoy the Hawaiian sun while getting to know many more Comm Trans friends.

Tuesday --Friday
REAL class starts! An incredibly anointed man named Ben Nonoa spoke on this week's theme "The Father Heart of God." God used this man in such a beautiful way in both of our lives as he brought the truth of God's never ending love and adoration for little "us."

Our "classroom" in the Ohana Court

Some of our staff teaching on intercession. Such a beautiful thing!

This week the main thing I learned was how repentance is a JOY filled activity NOT something full of shame and agony. All my life I thought of repentance as a horrible thing because the enemy lied to me and I believed that if I fessed up to an issue in my life I would be branded with that horrible thing in front of the world forever. The REALITY is that God wants to set me free from it instead and when I confess with my tongue I take the power from the enemy over that area of my life and give it to God so He can turn my life into the beautiful thing He wants instead! SUCH A GLORIOUS THING!
I have completely rediscoved the love of our Father in Heaven. He has nothing but good in store for me!

Game night with Marie and Marian from Switzerland. They gave us some humorous  French "lessons."

Breakfast with a new friend from Mozambique, Leo!

Stay tuned for the next blog post! I'll be releasing our outreach location. We are SOOO excited about this :)
Much love to you all!