A Thanksgiving Birthday

Today I have officially survived 19 years on a massive ball of dirt hovering, drifting eerily close to an even larger fiery nuclear ball, all through an unfathomably large vacuum. I would also like to congratulate the other 6,500,000,000 people, on this Earth, for surviving another year. Praise the Lord. In the spirit of sharing here are three wonderful pictures! I hope you enjoy them.

I call this "Nature Meets my Mustache"


This is my work-duty team "Special Projects"


I call this one "Me, the Ladies, and the Cactus People"

Time is flying by!

WOW! Things are going by quickly. A week just zooms by! I was talking the other day to some friends of mine about how when we first got here a day was so slow, and now it's like a week goes by and I don't even notice...

Anywho... this last week was on the topic of relationships. They were both from Hawaii and it was interesting to here their take on relationships, and "culture sensitivity". Relationship is one thing I have neglected in my past, but as time goes on I realize that in any situation, or field of work, the first thing you should do is develop a relationship with the people around you. It is crucial! The main focus however was making our relationship with God right, and continuing to let down walls you've put up which limit God's transformational power.

About 4 weeks ago I joined the "Choir of the Nations". This weekend we gave two performances: one to the Kona base, and the other in a local market. It was a really good experience to work with people who had limited musical backgrounds yet were so passionate for Jesus and for glorifying Him. Despite some technical difficulties here and there, everything came together in a surprisingly solid way! By the way- our choir dressed in Hawaiin shirts and khaki's for the performance.

I've been experimenting a lot with language and how we communicate as I've been here. One of the first things you notice on the Kona base is how diverse language is here. So on top of my Japanese studies I have also been messing with constructed scripts (creating an alphabet for any language). I have also just checked out this book from the library called loglan.

To summarize, Loglan is a language designed to test the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sapir-Whorf) that the natural languages limit human thought. It does so by pushing those limits outward in predictable directions, principally by:
-forcing the fewest possible assumptions about "reality" on speakers
-incorporates the notational elegance of symbolic logic
-removing all structural sources of amiguity
-generalizing all semantic operations (what can be done to one word, can be done to all)
-derives its word-stock from eight natural languages (culturally neutral - [or at least culturally diverse])

Making up for lost time..

Well first of all... here is a picture of me in Kona. In case anyone was curious as to what it looks like for me to be in Kona. Actually this is a picture of me in my dance attire, to be more specific. I am learning Ceroc. It is a swing/salsa fusion with a dash of ballroom. It is as strange as it sounds.

Here is what is going on in a nutshell:

Last week- A team of guys came in to talk on worship. What ended up happening was we spent the majority of the week in crazy worship, minus the talking part. This one guy was insane and would began to cry and drool because of the hurt in people and in communities around the world. We had one night where 17 drums were on stage and everyone just danced, like in that one matrix scene. However, despite the insanity, there were some powerful times spent in the midst of the Holy Spirit. By the end I was ready to process a lot of it all.

This weekend- I spent most of the time indoors studying Japanese. 私は八時間が先週末で勉強しました。 Which means! Last weekend I studied eight hours. I think. Soo...

This week- we are covering the Holy Spirit. The woman teaching it is serving as a doctor in Japan which is exciting. She has many impossible stories how her hindu family all came to Jesus through the radical power of the Holy Spirit moving on them. So, crazy stuff.. and today we had a big prayer time.

I've been fasting and praying asking for some guidance as to where I should go after this. Strangely, I think my plans and God's plans might line up more than I figured they would. So the plan still is to finish my college applications. I think UChicago may be where I need to go. So please pray for me and I will keep you posted.

I'm still here..

Sorry I haven't been updating lately. I will post in a few days with a picture of Halloween and to explain recent events here at YWAM. In addition to this I have the final details on my outreach plans.