Sometimes thoughts just hit me when I'm sitting (or in this case, should be packing...). God has truly blessed my life. He gave me the most amazing friends and family that I could have ever asked for. He gave me the opportunity to have the job up at camp that I've always dreamed of having. He took me to Germany, Nepal, and India and showed me his blessings every day. He has provided everything I need for going back to Germany and has blessed me with such supportive people behind me. I am blessed beyond belief. I am blessed every day with more than I deserve. My God is just so good to me. I'm just sitting here, in awe of how richly I am blessed by my Lord. I know that he loves me and will continue to provide for me in ways that I will never be expecting and that is what blows my mind. I love my Lord ♥
“God is good, all the time. All the time, God is good.”
This was the motto that we
shouted all the time during my DTS. The more I look at my own life, the truer this
simple becomes. God has truly blessed my life this past year abundantly.
My family is staff together at the place that fostered the growth of my faith,
my life is filled with friends who love and support me in everything I do, and
I have the support of a God who is proud of every step I take. Blessed is the
only word that comes to mind. Insanely, outrageously and undeservingly blessed. My summer at Pines Bible Camp as
one of the Assistant Program is more than half over. I’ve been here for a little
over 3 months, and it has been amazing. Not without its share of struggles and
learning experiences, but those experiences are what draw us closer to God. And
getting to share this place with my family is an extra cherry on top. I always
viewed this place as my home, but now I actually get to call it that; my Home.
I’ve learned so much and have gotten to show love to my fellow staff and the
amazing kids that come through. I don’t even remember what a summer without
Pines is like.
Before my time with YWAM I
thought that I would have a nice six month adventure with God and return to my
regular life. I would go back to university and finish my degree like a “normal”
young adult and start a career. I had no intention of staying in Germany or
staying with YWAM. Haha… God sure does have a way of changing our plans; always
for the better, but sometimes the changes can rattle you! For those of you who don’t know I
am RETURNING TO GERMNY! WOOHOO! My plane leaves on the 4th of
September! I’m scared, excited, apprehensive and giddy all at the same time
(talk about butterfly’s in the stomach!). I am returning to the country that I
fell in love with and will be helping to run the base that opened my eyes wider
to the greatness of my God and the love that he has for me. I will be base
staff there, which means that I will be helping to run the day-to-day jobs at
the base. I feel called to work in the office helping with the processing of
Visas. It’s an interesting desire to say the least, but I’m actually so
excited! I also am planning on helping with the growing café ministry that’s
happening there. I’m so excited, but I expect that I may become addicted to
coffee in the process! Haha. My other goal is to go to China. I would love to
go experience the culture over there and show the love of Christ to them
through my actions and through my photography.
All this being said, I am open
for change. If there’s one lesson that God taught me, it’s to be open for his
actions and be willing to hold my plans loosely. He has the best plan for my
life. This doesn’t mean that I cannot dream – in fact dreaming with God is
super important – but I cannot count on all my plans becoming reality. If he moves, I will follow. If that means that
I go back to India, or to someplace new altogether, bring it on! Haha. Life
with God is an adventure! The best thing you can do is embrace it, throw your
hands up like you're on a roller coaster and enjoy the ride.
This brings me to the final
point of this blog post. I can’t do this alone. God has called me to Germany
and I am going, but I need help. I need prayer and lots of it. If you would be
willing to pray for me that would be amazing! I believe that prayer works and that
God hears the cries of our hearts, so the more prayer, the better!!! Secondly I
am looking for financial support. As a staff member I need to pay base fees and
also be able to afford food and rent for an apartment. My goal is to have at
least 500 Euros a month, which is about $650 dollars. This should be enough to
cover everything that I would need. If it’s a one time donation, or monthly
support they would both be welcome! Once in Germany I am planning on putting
out a monthly newsletter. If you would like to donate, pray, or receive updates
please e-mail me at trinda_13@hotmail.com.
Thank-you for all of your support in my pursuit of God and his plans for me!
“God is good, all the time. All
the time, God is good!”
Time for another update from the land of bread and chocolate!
Lecture Phase is now OFFICIALLY over! It's so weird being able to say that I'm finally done with speakers and everything. We had our last speaker this past friday. He was amazing! He talked about the Kingdom of God and what that Kingdom looks like. It inspired me so much; it was a really good lecture week to have right before Outreach in my opinion.
This week my outreach team got a visit from a woman who came to talk to us about abortion. It was specifically about the abortion of baby girls in India and China because of the social stigma that boys are better for a family to have than girls. We got to watch a movie about it that hasn't even been released to the public yet. It was a very heart-breaking film. There were real stories and interviews from families and activists in the two countries, and it really gave me an idea of the opinions that I will be facing on outreach. Although I thought it was really sad, it inspired me to make a difference when I'm on outreach. I plan on pouring as much love as I possibly can into the lives of as many young girls as I can. EVERYONE deserves to feel loved and like they matter. I can't even imagine what my life would have been like without the love that I got from my family.
We have a really big team going on outreach. The first 8 of us left today. It was exciting to send them off! Also some of the other teams left today. I got to wave out of the window and shout good-byes. I really wished I had a handkerchief so that I could act like I was in an old movie and wave it from the window haha! I know that God is going to use them so well while they are all gone.
As for me and the rest of my team, we are staying at the base a tad longer. The goal is for all of us to leave this Thursday! I'm excited to get this show on the road and venture off into Asia and love people! Almost all of us have our tickets. There are 6 of us (including myself) that still need the money to get tickets, but I am almost there! God has truly been showing his faithfulness to me in these past few weeks! I haven't had the money to spend on chocolate and other things, but whenever I have been craving things, they just seem to pop out of nowhere! People will either give them to me, or I will come back to my room to discover a treat on my bed! One night I went to sleep and woke up to 10 Euros on my bed! I know for a fact that it was not mine. God is good, all the time!
Because we aren't leaving yet, we are doing outreach in town until we get enough money to get plane tickets! I am really excited about this actually. We get to bless the community of Herrnhut and show them how much we truly appreciate all that they do for us. For example, after lunch today a group of us are going to go shovel walkways and driveways for elderly people in town. I am so happy just to be able to shovel snow seeing as though I never get to really see snow... being from Abbotsford (A.K.A. The land of endless rain) and all.
PRAYER REQUEST TIME!! :D If you want to pray for my team and myself, please pray for our finances to come in. Also please pray for the 8 of us that have already left! I am super excited to hear from them about what God is doing through them already! Please pray that we all keep our health over in Asia and that no one becomes really sick. Also please pray that we would continue to dive deep into the knowledge of who God is and how much he loves us!
If you would like to donate to my team and myself, I provided a link down below so that you can! Hope that your December is going to be as awesome as mine!!!
Sorry for the long time no blog
everybody!! I have been super busy these past few weeks. I’ve been meaning to
blog… HONESTLY. But sometimes when you live with so many people and do so many
things, spending time writing doesn’t happen. But now I have some coffee in my
system (Latte Macchiato Karamellgeschmack to be precise..hehe German coffee), I
won’t be able to sleep for quite a while so I will be up into the wee hours of
the morning. PERFECT time to write a little something down!
This week has been one of the best
weeks so far in DTS if not the best one yet!!! Man oh man. First of all, our
speaker this week was Dan. He is the FUNNIEST man on the face of the earth.
Seriously. I almost cried in lecture from laughing so many times! It was
unreal! He had such a spirit of joy from God, and you could just see it
radiating out of him. He also clarified so many points about God that I was
wondering and contemplating. He also had his friend Christian with him.
Christian is such an intelligent person. He gave one lecture on Jesus as the
Word… My mind was utterly and completely blown… TO PIECES. Oh man. It would be
WAY too complicated to type out, but I had NEVER thought of Jesus being “the
Word” like that before and it seriously was the most mind blowing, intellectual
lecture that I have ever been in. It honestly made me miss university haha!
I also learned how to develop film
and paper in the dark room this week, which is exciting and also nerve racking
at the same time. There are so many chemicals that you get to use and you have
to do it in the pitch black. It was so weird rolling up my film in the dark and
taking scissors to it! I was terrified that I would do something wrong, but it
has been awesome so far. In fact as I’m typing I’m waiting for my film to be
finished sitting in the negative fixer. WEIRD! (wow… can you tell I’ve had too
much coffee or WHAT!). I also got to play with studio lighting for the first
time and shoot my first photoshoot in FILM. This is slightly terrifying because
if they don’t turn out then I have a lot of work to do in a very short period
of time, but my model (the amazing Kayla!!) was very cooperative (and
stunningly gorgeous!) and I really pray that they turn out amazing.
This week has also been the week of
awesome people! I got to hang out with some wicked schweeeet people. This past
Friday I got to have a sleepover with Kelli and Maddie where we may have baked
and eaten an entire cake to ourselves… or not… technically there was no
evidence that there ever WAS a cake, so nothing can be proven! We watched a
movie and painted our nails and had awesome times playing on Photobooth. Then
we woke up (me to my feet being tickled… THANKS MADDIE!!!) and had awesome
French toast with Canadian maple syrup! Good way to start the day! From there
we met with Jenn, Cody and Patrick and took off to Görlitz. It was an amazing
day of crazy laughter and awesome site seeing. We even walked over into POLAND
and got some perrogies… oh man, they were SO GOOD! They were my first since
Camp! We got to take pictures of awesome people, play in a playground and cram
into a tiny playhouse designed for 3 small children, and find the most amazing
old book store! We also found the best döner place that I have been to yet!
(For those of you who don’t know döner is a Turkish food that they serve in
Germany. It is what we all in this DTS live off of). I haven’t laughed that
hard in quite a long time! So many shenanigans!
God and I are also doing amazing! He
is showing me new things every day and I love learning from him! We are also
planning more and more for outreach, which is exciting! Im not going to be
posting too much about outreach, for the safety of the long term missionaries
that are over there, but if you have questions you can feel free to shoot me
off an e-mail (trinda_13@hotmail.com) and I can answer any questions you might
have. I only have 3 weeks of lecture phase left, and I’m staring to get really
excited about outreach. I know that it will be so life changing and eye opening
to how amazing God truly is and I’m so excited to get to serve him in a whole
new way!
AND NOW CHILDREN I MUST ADJOURN TO
THE DARK ROOM. Audios amigos! Ich Liebt Dich!!!
God taught me quite a few
things while being on outreach. The first lesson was that ministry is hard in
first world countries. People are so content in living the lives that they
already have. They have so much that they can fill their lives with, they feel
like they don't need God. People think that in order to become a Christian they
have to give up everything fun and what fills their lives, so they reject it.
"Why would I give this up? If God wanted me to be happy, then why would he
take away what makes me happy?"
I also learned that my
expectations and God’s plans are two completely different things sometimes...
well, most of the times. I would have thought that I would have already learned
this lesson, seeing as though God and I haven’t seen “eye to eye” on a few
occasions and he has always been right somehow (Insert sarcasm here ;) ) . I
went into the outreach with expectations on how God would use me and how it was
going to look. God had quite different plans for me, and my time there. I was
disappointed at the time, but looking back now, I realize that I totally needed
the learning experiences I had. If my weeks had looked any different then I
wouldn’t have learned anything.
I had expected to be a part
of “big” things. That I would see miraculous things all the time and that
people would be giving their lives to Jesus left, right, and center. Amazing
things happened (there was a healing and people discovering Jesus), but I
expected so much more and was disappointed at my lack of “evangelism talent”. I
didn’t even think that I was being used. I didn’t see results, therefor I was
useless. WRONG! I wasn’t harvesting, but planting and watering. Sometimes we
get so focused on the harvest we forget that we have to plant and water first.
God is the most important in this process though. When I got back to Herrnhut
he reminded me of this verse…
So neither he who plants
nor he who waters is anything, but only God, who makes things grow. 1 Corinthians 3:7
Even if I had witnessed
people deciding to let Jesus into their lives, it wouldn’t have been my doing,
but Gods. I was doing something important while I was there. God had me doing
what I was doing for a purpose. Even if I never see any harvest from the work
that I did (and I probably never will), it was worthwhile!
During the second week we
also put together a flash mob! It was so amazing to be a part of something so
cool! I have another thing I can officially cross off my bucket list! It was so
awesome that people were so fascinated by what we were doing and the fact that
we were spreading the gospel by doing it. We all sang to “Beautiful Things” by
Gungor and it fit with the city so well.
Being on the road is
awesome, but nothing compares to being back "home". I have realized
that I have a very loose definition of the term "home". I've been
known to call camp, Trinity Western and the base here my home. Home is wherever
I feel comfortable and content. I've never really been one for homesickness,
because I usually feel quite at home almost anywhere, which I count as an
insane blessing. But after being in the big city without an actual bed for two
weeks, nothing beats coming "home" to the tiny town of Herrnhut and
being able to crawl back into bed and back into my comfortable routine.
The big city was awesome,
don't get me wrong. I love the city! Nothing beats Starbucks for €1.50 and only
having to walk two minutes to get it! But there is something completely
peaceful about living in a small town. I missed the trees and the quite of
Herrnhut. ALSO God totally blessed us with snow this weekend, so that was
TOTALLY AWESOME! He also blessed me with Bacon… which was amazing! It has been
two months since I’ve had bacon. You truly appreciate so much once it is taken
from you haha!
ALSO Breaking News! I found
out my outreach location! WOOOOHOOOO!! I will NOT be posting in on Facebook or
here, due to the safety of my teammates and the permanent base staff in the
country(s). BUT if you would like to know, send me a message and I will fill
you in on the awesome news!! I would also like to ask that you would please
pray for me and my team, as well as all the other teams we are sending out.
Outreach is going to be amazing and hard and life changing so prayer for ready
and willing hearts would be much appreciated!
Here's the Video of us
doing the Flash Mob.
If you are searching for
me, my hair is strait, so good luck to you;
I like to make like Waldo
and be hard to find ;) haha
Three months ago my life was changed forever. I can’t even
begin to describe the emotional roller-coaster that the staff, families and I
went through. But God is good. That is what I cling to when times are rough;
the fact that God is Good. He is beyond comprehension. I don’t know why we all
had to go through this tragedy, but through Jesus comes healing, strength and
wisdom.
The first week I came to YWAM, I was still devastated. I am
really good at putting on a strong positive face and acting like everything is
ok. My summer ended completely different than I wanted or expected and I had to
leave my friends and brother, who were all still processing behind. I was in an
entirely new country and had a lot of pent up emotional hurt that I was still
clinging to.
The first lecture we were going through was on how to listen
to God’s voice. I felt like He had something that He really wanted to tell me,
but I was making things complicated and was overthinking everything. It has
always been hard for me to hear God’s voice, and I was trying too hard and not
really getting anything. I was frustrated and angry and all of my pent up
emotional baggage came out. On the Thursday, Donna (our speaker) told us to
take an hour and go for a walk. We were supposed to listen to what God wanted
to tell us.
I went through the woods next to the castle. On the path,
within the first 15 feet of the entrance, was a tree that been chopped down and
an open stump. Broken branches surrounded the stump, and it was like I was back
at camp. I felt like I needed to sit on the stump, so I climbed over to it and
sat down and listened. An overwhelming sense of security washed over me. Seeing
the size of that tree, and remembering how much devastation was caused by so
many trees, God gently reminded me that he WAS there. The event could have been
so much worse than it was. He is there in every circumstance. He has a plan for
everything.
I was calmed, but not satisfied. I felt broken. I was still
angry. I asked him why I felt so broken and why this happened. I looked down at
the broken stump and saw little glimpses of new life growing from the
brokenness. God then told me that He creates new life out of brokenness. From
tragedy springs new life. I just sat there in his presence for a while and
soaked it all in.
God’s ways are mysterious and confusing. What happened was
awful, but so many life-giving things have come out of it. I feel like I’ve
been so open with God since I’ve been here. So many things are changing and
it’s because I was in a state of brokenness. God is the greatest comforter that
there is. I’m still not happy with what happened, and I don’t think I need to
be. I think all that I need to be is content in God and allow Him to work in my
life. God works in every situation, all the time. God is Good, all the time.
Living in a different country is… different. You think
that would be obvious, but you don’t realize how different cultures are until
you are there living smack dab in the middle of it. German culture is pretty
different than Canadian culture. For example, I’m used to being as loud as I
want during the night. However, here in Germany they have something called
“Quite Hours”. Staring at 8 pm things outside have to be almost silent and at
10 pm things inside buildings should be quite as well. I am NOT used to this
whatsoever. Things I used to do back home, like playing grounders until 3am,
would NOT fly here.This is
disappointing because I love being outside at night having fun, but it is good
in because it helps to make sure that I actually get to bed at a decent hour at
night.
We
also take care of the trash quite differently. In Germany they sort ALL of
their garbage. They have about 4 different categories of garbage, which are
enforced everywhere, even in places like malls and outdoors. If we sort our garbage
wrong at the base they can actually refuse to take our garbage that week. If we
get repeated warnings they can even tell us that they aren’t taking our garbage
at all anymore and we have to take care of it ourselves. They take it very
seriously over here. I actually like it though. I wish we could adopt something
like this back home… that is, until I have to throw out my to-go drink cup that
I had my tea in, and need to use 3 different garbage cans for it! Haha.
Interacting
with people in everyday life is different too. For example when I go to the
store they usually don’t hand me my change directly. There is usually a shallow
bowl that they put the money into. Line-ups are a free for all too. Just
yesterday I had people, even old ladies, try to budge in front of me.
There
is one interesting thing that I found out about. During lecture one of the
staff brought up that when we worship on the street we have to be careful about
how we raise our arms. They said that we have to be aware of how we angle our arms
so that it doesn’t look like how the Nazi’s did back in WWII. I thought it was
just out of respect, but after talking to a German, I found out that it was
actually illegal to hold your arm like that in public. I found it interesting
how much times have changed, but things from WWII still effect how people live
their day-to-day lives.
