YWAM Oxford # 2

Today is the day we must make our top three choices for where we wish to travel for outreach. There are to be a total of 6 teams covering Eastern Europe, Asia, Africa, Middle East, and South America. It is odd to sit here and think about such a decision - at what other point or in what other life would a person be faced with selecting their top three choices of such an opportunity?

Some have placed their top three choices with the school leader, whereas, some have not. I fall into the latter category - no selections made yet - though I do have confidence that after some prayer and contemplating this afternoon those top three choices will be down on paper.

We are beginning our first full and "normal" week. Last week was as much an introduction to the new people as it was to this school and the goings on for the coming weeks. It would rather monotonous to drone on about the daily schedule and the plans for the next 10 weeks or so and so I won't.

Simply put the school week primarily consists of a series of lectures throughout the day (nearly every week there is a new guest speaker) interspersed with times of small group gatherings, outreach prep meetings, once weekly base work duties, worship or prayer times and a few chunks of free time thrown in. I would surmise that between the weekly schedule as well as the various journal and book assignments we will have the weeks are to be quite full. There are also daily work duties to accomplish among the other activities - I get to clean and mop the kitchen floor for the next few weeks. Focus is important.

Friday evenings and weekends will be a time for getting out and about in New Zealand. Friday afternoons (typically) we will head into Christchurch (40 min drive - 3rd largest city in NZ) and have a few hours in the afternoon to hangout, run errands, or check out the city on foot. Friday evenings we will participate in some for of outreach (some of which may not take place in Christchurch); for instance there will be teams working with prostitutes, a Bible study at a downtown Starbucks, hanging out at the skate park or climbing wall (my choice for next week), and aiding a food bank with distribution.

The weekends, or rather Saturdays, there will be outings to participate in, most of which will get us out into NZ. Other than those outings the weekends will be free time, most of which I am guessing are to be filled with catching up with our assignments - that's the other thing that I have to do today.

In a general sense life here at the YWAM base very much has a communal living aspect to it. Many people reside in a place where there is much to be done daily to provide suitable living arrangements, and so there is plenty of work to do in amongst the time spent learning and growing and hanging out (believe me there is no shortage of that).

Oh, I shall not forget to mention that we eat, and eat well! If I don't gain weight in the next few weeks than there is something desperately wrong with me. The staff say that one will likely lose weight on outreach and so stock up now, so to speak. Anyway, between the grand ice cream shop down the road, the local "tim tam" biscuits (cookies) and awesome food we'll be hard pressed to not gain weight.

So that's kind of a general scope of what's going on here - not the most exciting piece of writing I am certain but a glimpse of life here. Over the coming weeks I will post upon the ins and outs of life here in NZ as we participate in this Discipleship Training School.

If anyone out there is so inclined and actually reads these things feel free to post questions with the comment feature and I will try to address them in a reasonable time frame.

Before I sign off and get to work (uh, lunch is first, then work...) I should mention that we did get to travel yesterday (Saturday) to Castle Hill and Cave Stream, which were both around an hour or so away maybe. These were two places where (or near where) filming was done for The Lord of the Rings and the Chronicles of Narnia, respectively. They are pretty awesome locations - notably Castle Hill - I could have sat there for hours - or attempted to go bouldering and broke something. Hopefully I will post some pictures by this evening or Monday evening. In any case, I am convinced NZ in a beautiful and special place - do travel here if ever you have a chance - and bring sunscreen!