Walking By Faith: 2 Months, Destiny, and Life

I can't believe that yet another week has gone by! Yesterday, we celebrated our 2 month anniversary of DTS and becoming a family (and by "celebrated", I mean we got really excited and that is about it). We only have one month left until Christmas break, and then we go on outreach! It's crazy! And next week is already American Thanksgiving, so we have 5 days off. No one is staying at the TC, so those of us who don't live nearby are going to different people's houses. My friend Rachel has told me from day one that I will be going to her place, so I didn't have much of a decision! ;)
This week was a crazy week, and I don't even really know why. It was a pretty typical schedule. We learned about destiny, and it was really good. But I was just in such an anti-social mood all week! I just wanted to be alone! It was weird. So I spend a good bit of time in the basement, which is kind of like a dungeon, because no one goes there. Except now people know about it so there always seems to be someone there, and if someone wants me, they know exactly where to find me. Like last night, for instance. I went down and Megan was sitting on the drier (which is the spot), so I went across the stairway to the tiny paint room and sat there. Not five minutes later, Anna came downstairs looking for me, and she dragged me upstairs to "do homework" (we really just hung out in the staff lounge and talked more than we did the work).
This week, we added another member to team Mexico! There are now six of us going, four students and two staff. The students are me, Jeremie, and Jack, which it always was, and now our German, Aaron, is also coming with us :)
So. Destiny. It is God's adventure for our lives! Destiny is an intimate relationship with God, from which a ministry and action will flow from. Destiny is a matter of the heart. A person of destiny, our speaker Wick Nease told us, is not someone who is great, but someone who is yielded.
Wick and his wife Jan have been in YWAM for years. Then, 12 years ago, they felt God calling them to begin a ministry that supports orphanages around the world. They began an organization called Streams of Mercy (www.streamsofmercy.org), and people donate while Wick and Jan give the funds to Christian orphanages, ones that they have carefully screened. Wick and Jan are the only staff of Streams of Mercy, and they are missionary. They raise support and are not on salary for the organization. All the funds go to the orphanages. Wick and Jan's goal is to someday have 100 orphanages that they support. They currently just added on their 31st. Their stories of how God provides the funds are really amazing! Streams of Mercy does not have abundant funds available to them. They rely on people faithfully donating each month. And Wick and Jan themselves will go to visit the orphanages regularly. They are older- their first great-grandchild was born just over a year ago.
One thing that Wick said that really stood out to me -since I have always had a heart for orphans. Really the whole reason I am here is because I wanted to volunteer in an orphanage but I didn't know how to- was how today, there are 143,000,000 orphans in the world. And there are more than 143,000,000 Christian families in the world. "If every Christian family adopted just one orphan, there would be no more orphans," Wick said. He said that every time he teaches, he challenges the students "Have as many biological children as you want. And then adopt just one. You don't have to stop there, but just adopt at least one." Then he told us a story of how one day, we went out to get the mail or something and he saw a woman walking down the sidewalk pushing a stroller. In the stroller, there was a black baby, and on each side of the stroller was a young child, one Asian and one white (I don't actually remember the ethnicities here, so let's just pretend. I just know that there were 3 different ethnicities). And the woman, when she saw Wick, pointed at him and started yelling "This is all your fault!" He was very confused, until she came closer and he recognized her as a YWAMer, who had once been a student in his class. And he had given that same challenge to that class. Only once she adopted one, she couldn't stop. :)
Yesterday, we ended class by splitting into small groups and praying for each other. But rather than praying what we wanted, we would listen for God and then pray that. It was so encouraging! It made me laugh when someone go Micah 6:8 for me- I definitely know that verse well, thank you GEMS :) There were other things, and it was super cool.
Tonight I am going out to dinner (Anna wants steak) with a few of my friends, which should be fun! Then tomorrow, we begin our Outreach Retreats. Basically, we are spending the next 3 days with out outreach groups (Tuesday we come back to the TC and everyone is free for Thanksgiving break). The 2 Uganda teams are staying here at the TC, since there are a lot of them. My Mexico team is going to some person's house in Madison- should be interesting!
Blessings,
Katie