This week’s lectures were on the Father Heart of God. It was incredible! God loves us no matter what. Doesn’t matter where you’ve been or what you’ve done. You can not change his love for you.That’s not saying you can’t walk away from him because you can. He gave you that choice. But if you do, he still loves you. And he’s willing to meet you exactly where you are, right now, right here. You don’t need to change before you seek him because he already knows who you are. You don’t need to hide some ugly sins before you seek him, because he already knows your heart and its deep dark secrets better then you do! So just seek him and hand him all your worries, fears, sins and ugliness that you are so afraid of revealing and don’t be afraid because he already knows about it whether you confess it to him or not, so why not just give it to him? It will make you feel better, and it will take away the things that are keeping you from fully experiencing his love. YOU HAVE NOTHING TO LOSE!! Because he loves you! Exactly where you are, right here, right now. He also loves you just the way you are. You know those times when you look at someone else and you think: “Wow they always know just the right words to encourage someone, why can’t I be like that? We all know this is called envy and it’s not ok to be envious, but we still tend to compare.Or we look at it from a different angle and think: “Wow they are great encouragers, I have a lot of spiritual growing to do! This may or may not be wrong. It’s ok to see the strong points in others and strive to live a more Christ-like life. But the thing is: We need to be ok with where we are right now, because before you were even born God knew you would be right where you are now, on this precise day. You definitely didn’t surprise him by your spiritual growth or even your lack of growth. He knew you would be right here on this day. So seek him from where you are right now, not from a mile down the road where you think you should be or where everyone around you seems to be. It won’t work! You know why? Because he’s back there, waiting on you, in the place where you really are. So, theres just a bit of what they are pumping our heads full of, and honestly that’s just a very, very tiny piece of it:) How about a fun fact: We were told: the average message at church is about 30 min long, so the amount of time a DTS student spends in lectures is approximately 7 years worth of church! I thought that was pretty cool:) I also finally understood why my mind feels a little overloaded sometimes:)

As for us, I think I can say we have adjusted! Lakenzie did so much better this week! (Thanks for your prayers) After spending a whole weekend with us, she seemed a little more ok with hanging out with Kristina, and then there is the fact that we started bribing her with candy. Yea the power of candy really is amazing:) But she really was much more excited to hang out with Kristina, she would come back to us telling us excitedly: monkeys! Kristina! Toys! Most times I’m not sure what she’s saying but we know she enjoyed whatever it was:) If I’m not around she asks Kristina: Mama class? So I think she figured out I left but I’ll be back! We face timed Michael (my brother) one night so she could see Josiah (my little brother and Kenzie’s favorite person) again, she didn’t say much, I think she was a little baffled by the whole thing, but when we hung up she burst into tears saying where’s Josiah? As for me and Checkers we didn’t yet regret coming here. Other then getting married or having Lakenzie I think it’s the best thing we ever decided to do!:) Life here is great even with a lack of of space, we formed our own routine and this is becoming the new normal. Get up at 6:30, breakfast at 7, worship at 8, after worship Kenzie goes with Kristina, then we have lectures from 8:30 -12:15, meet up with Kenzie and Kristina for lunch, then I put Kenzie down for her nap, then its back to the lecture hall to do either tracks, outreach prep, or small groups from 1:30-3:00, from 3-5 is work duties, dinner at 5:15, then we are off for the night, except tuesday evenings we have a lecture and worship from 7-9 and thursday evenings we have like a church service from 7-9. Thats what a normal week (mon-fri) around here looks like. Weekends are free! Here’s a small explanation on some of the stuff I mentioned above. Tracks: They teach us how to take our talents or hobbies and turn them into ministry tools. You can choose: Dance, Music, Photography etc. Outreach prep: They teach us different things about the country we are going to. Culture. How to dress etc. Which by the way… WE ARE GOING TO THAILAND!!! Small Groups is exactly what it sounds like, they split the 52 students into groups of 5 or 6 people. Groups consist of all guys or all girls. Then we get together to process what we learned. And work duties is also exactly what it sounds like to everyone gets a job to do, I think the main point is the physical activity since we do so much sitting and listening all day.

Miss Kenzie got extremely tired of her carseat on the way here so when we were doing some really slow driving/sightseeing she got to sit up front.

The beautiful Glacier National Park.

And then threre’s some horses that Joey a lady here at YWAM takes care of! Kenzie loved them!:)

And that concludes week 2!:) Be blessed!