Today we started our teaching series on Grace, and had a great sung worship time, as well as resuming our Community Care activities.
We started this morning, as ever, with Quite Time - or we were meant to anyway....due to my busy weekend, I must admit that I hadn't found the time to complete my journal, so I did that during Quiet Time! Shocking, I know, but they had to be handed in today, so I had to do it. After that we had a great time of sung worship. It energised me and gave me just what I needed to get going for the rest of the week. We also sang a song written by one of the residents that was inspired by watching "The Lord of the Rings", which I think a few people reading this might appreciate.
Before we started our classes on Grace, we had to write down the memory verse - or that's what we thought we would have to do.....instead, they asked that we write down the verses from the previous two weeks! I think I just about managed it, but I don't think I got the references correct. Hopefully I'll have gotten most of it right though. The small group with the most correct memory verses at the end of the course will get to have a pizza party!
The speaker for this weeks' classes is the base leader here at Holmsted Manor. He is a friendly, energetic, fun American called Daniel. Today he started the classes by telling the story of how he came to be volunteering for YWAM. There is too much to talk about to put it all here, but he certainly has heard from God in quite dramatic and unarguable ways. While being a good story teller, he also managed to drop in a few great quotes, such as "Delayed obedience can lead to disobedience". I'm looking forward to the rest of the week's teachings. I know I've said this before, but it is so true: I am just so blessed being here: my first duty on a Monday morning is to sing praises to God, then I get to hear fantastic teaching by interesting and engaging people. I don't think there are many places where that would be the case!
After lunch we performed our usual Community Care duties - or we thought we would.....but we got to one of the toilets, and were refused entry as they were being painted. Apart from that, the time was uneventful (apart from spending a long time trying to turn off one of the showers as the switch has broken!). Then we had a seminar on the Word of God. This was given to us by a friend of Daniel's, who had flown in from America to give the talk, and has a few other speaking engagements later. He said he almost never made it though: he'd forgotten to check his passport till the week of his flight, and then found it to be expired. He has another long, but amazing story about how he managed to get a new passport in such little time. It just went to show that if God wants you somewhere, He can get you there.
Tonight after dinner some of us watched another great movie, Donnie Darko, and then I started writing this. And now I'm going to stop.
