After breakfast today we all found peaceful places in and around the building to have what is known as a 'quiet time'. This is a time to be with God and to seeks His will and message for you. Today I sat down near the beautiful stream at the back of Holmsted Manor and started to contemplate the Bible verses we had been given to think about: Philippians 4:4-7. Eventually the stream in front of me cought my attention. It is designed in several sections with small waterfalls letting the water flow downhill. I felt there was a message in the water. We are all like the individual pools: we start off with a certain amount of water (the water representing blessings). If we do nothing with the water, it would grow stagnant and worthless. However, we can allow the water to flow out from us to the next level down, and be a blessing to them. If we do that without letting ourselves receive from above, then we would eventually run dry. I hope that makes sense to you! After the quiet times, we returned to the lecture hall, where we studies the 17 'YWAM Values' and the community values. This was actually quite fun, as we got to watch clips of several movies and TV shows to guess which value applied to which clip. I started to cry a little bit during a clip from the TV show 24 though! There were a couple of reasons for that, I think. First, it was a scene where the main character was about to sacrifice himself to save his nation (which has striking parallels to the message of Christianity- that Jesus died for the whole world, to pay the price that must be paid for us to get back in to the relationship with God that we were deigned for). The second reason is based around the fact that the first time I saw that episode, I was still recovering from some medical situations that affected me for a couple of months last year. Funny how something as 'macho' as 24 can have such an effect on you! After a break, we moved on to a couple of sessions about Hearing God's Voice. I think these counted as the first main teaching sessions of the DTS course, and were pretty impressive. Although i've already covered a lot of the subjects before in various church meetings/Christian Union meetings/Alpha groups, it was good to hear it again, and get to hear what the rest of the group had to say. I think we all learnt something from the sessions, and heard from God through the activities we took part in and through prayer. After lunch (a rather nice macaroni cheese with vegatables -including the first taste of parsnips for some of the American students), we watched a couple of health and safety videos which reminded me of the 'mandatory reading' health and safety videos I used to have to watch each month in my old job. They had some quite useful information in them though: all about keeping food safe and keeping bad bacteria away from it. We also had a discussion about 'Community Care', which is the daily programme of work duties we each need to participate in to keep Holmsted Manor and surrounding grounds looking so nice. We gave our preferences of which team we wanted to be in, and will find out if we got our first choice soon. I think it is a good idea that the students get to take a part in the cleaning up on a regular basis. It will help us respect the location. After another break, we heard from more students about how we came to follow Jesus. This was another powerful and emotional time, and once again I was/am so thankful to God for protecting me from so much in the world. Given the number of temptations and traps laid out in life, I really have managed to steer clear of some quite damaging activities. Once we had finished dinner, we took part in a fantastic murder mystery. We were split up in to teams, which helped us get to be with people we had not met as often so far, and had to go and interview various staff members posing as suspects in a murder enquiery. This was a lot of fun, though I may have gotten carried away with asking lots of questions. It seemed to pay off at the end though, as our team was the only one to accuse the guilty party, and suggest the correct motive! It is starting to feel like I have been here a lot longer than 4 days. This really is my home now. I'm so glad I chose to do this YWAM DTS course. It was certainly hard to give up my former life in Portsmouth, and I miss the people there, but it is great to think that I am now doing what God wants me to do. Thanks again for your comments. Please feel free to add more comments on this post.
