Crazy Week!!!

WOW! This has been a crazy week for sure! We had an amazing speaker named Tim that pretty much rocked our world. I'm still processing through a lot of what he said-- a lot of stuff that I've heard before about freedom and grace. It seems like everybody I've met has talked about it and read all the same scriptures, but nobody's actually living like we are free from the power of sin like Paul talks about in Romans. Think about it! It is for freedom that Christ has set us free! It's about time we start walking in our freedom instead of choosing to be burdened again by a yoke of slavery!!!

We also had some amazing training tonight for a new program that we're going to be starting called Youth Street. It's basically a program started by a base up in Newcastle that reaches out to youth in the skate, surf, dance, music, and arts cultures by having workshops and meetings to train them in their skills. Through those trainings, the staff are able to build relationships with the kids and walk through a lot of really tough circumstances with kids who don't necessarily have another positive adult in their lives. The Newcastle base runs camps, workshops, youth church, and even a tutoring program (right up my alley!) in their outreaches. They had some crazy stories of really rough kids who's lives were turned around because people reached out to them and genuinely loved them, so I'm really excited to get that rolling at our base.

Tuesday night we had a bit of a catastrophe on the base. One of my good friends Nicole was running down the stairs, tripped, and landed four stairs down on the tile landing flat on her foot. We went to the hospital at around 11:30pm, and 6 hours later found out that she had broken a bone in her foot. We just found out today that she needs to have surgery on her foot and it will take 6 weeks to heal. (We're 5 weeks away from leaving for outreach.) Pray for healing for her foot and that she would be able to have the surgery soon and heal quickly. They can't do surgery until the swelling goes down, so pray that the swelling will go down quickly so the doctors will be able to operate as soon as possible. Nicole and I have moved to a room on the third floor so she doesn't have to go up and down the stairs to get to lecture. I've been trying to help out as much as I can, but I definitely need prayer for patience and an attitude check every once in a while, because it's a lot easier for my flesh to want to be selfish rather than a servant.

This weekend will be a bit of a break--we're getting super stoked about the Hillsong live album recording on Sunday. It's going to be amazing! I can't wait to hear the new songs they're going to lay down, and it's going to be pretty amazing to listen to that album for the rest of forever and be like, "yeah, I was there..." ;-} More details about that I'm sure after it's over.

I have some pictures to put up, but our internet is still being super lame (and probably will be until the beginning of April). I'll work on getting them up as soon as I can. Hope all of you are well! Missing you heaps and sending much love from down under!

~Maggie