Christmas is not about the beaches.

I live on tea. I seriously feel like I drink four glasses a day, minimum. It's still been pretty rainy here. Sunday was probably the coldest day we've had. I hope that the weather is just like that on Christmas. It will make me feel more at home. We're doing Secret Santa right now and whoever picked my name is so awesome. They've been sneaking me Mad Libs :) Every time I get a new one, two of my English friends (Kezi and Emma) get together and laugh through the whole entire thing. I forgot what fun simple kid games, like Mad Libs, can be.

Mark Parker. Enough said. haha Two weeks ago, for lectures we had a guy from New Zealand come and talk to us. He was pretty blunt and harsh, but dang he had the love of God in him. He taught on the topic of Lordship. He kept talking about how Jesus is already Lord, but we need to decide daily to make Him Lord of our lives. A lot of the week had to do with surrendering and learning to walk in the freedom that Christ brings. And man, is that freedom empowering or what? We learned all about the structure of the Tent of Meeting in the Old Testament. Then, Mark took that structure and put it into practical New Testament terms and ways. Many of our lectures went on for hours after they were scheduled, but Mark didn't care. Frankly, neither did any of us. He was speaking so many absolute truths that it was all we could do to make ourselves get up and leave the classroom once he was done. At the end of the week, we took what Mark had talked about the Tent of Meeting and actually did it. This consisted of 4 hours of praise and worship Friday night and then 15 hours of praise, worship, prayer, intercession, confession, consecration, tears, laughter, dancing, communion and a lot of freedom on Saturday. To say the least, it was a little bit nuts. God did a lot in my heart throughout that week, including breaking off some ties that I still felt connected to from my past. One of the greatest parts of Mark was his constant looking towards God. People so often focus on their sin. "I need to fix this. I need to get better at that. I need to get control of this. I need to. I need to. I need to." Instead the sin seems to fall away and because much less burdensome when you simply keep your focus and eyes on Christ. When you praise God for who He is and what He is, has and will do, you find that many of your struggles seem petty. I serve a God is excited for breakthrough and excited for wisdom and understanding to come on His children.

Last week, Pastor Grant Windle, from a local church, came and spoke on the Holy Spirit. Even though it was tough to follow up Mark Parker, Grant did an excellent job. God knew exactly what He was doing when He gave us Grant for the following week. When Mark spoke, you listened. When Grant spoke, you had to be hungry for God. It was such a good way for us to continue to devote ourselves to God. I learned that when you allow the Holy Spirit to come in and overflow in your life, God's incomprehensible peace comes in tidal waves.

Friday and Saturday of last week we did "faith days". After they told us we were doing that, I quickly realized that it was simply "As We Go" days. :) It was nice to do something familiar. God worked through these days like crazy. A lot of serving and blessing others went on. Last night, I taught my outreach team how to play Telepictionary (only the best game ever.). It was so fun to play with people who don't speak English as their first language. haha We laughed and laughed and laughed. I was asked if we could play it on the long train ride into Darjeeling. :)

We leave for two weeks of outreach next Monday. We're doing this thing called Impact Summer on Byron Bay. It should be very cool. I don't exactly know what all will be going on (which I never do here haha), but we should be finding out more pretty soon. I'll be excited to come back and share all about it.

Christmas is on Saturday. That's less than five days away from now for me! So weird to be here, while the Holidays are going on back at home. This will definitely be a different Christmas for me, to say the least. I'm excited though. There's been a lot of baking going on around the base. We'll probably spend the day playing games, eating, laughing and enjoying each others company (there's even rumors of a beach trip on Christmas Eve). Even though I miss my family terribly, I'm so happy that I have a new family here to celebrate with.

Merry Christmas!