Cyclone Yasi

As you all know a category 5 tropical Cyclone hit north east Queensland wednesday this week. The eye of the Cyclone missed townsville but about a 3 hour drive, we still got a lot of destructive winds which ripped up trees and damaged many homes. I am very thankful to say that no one has been killed and the majority of Townsville is doing okay, besides the lack of power and a very big clean up job ahead we are doing good.

But that is not the case in other areas just north of me. As of right now there are still no reports of death but in some of the smaller costal towns they have been flattened with not a single home that is still livable, people have truly lost everything. So needless to say I slash we do not take our safety lightly, it is kind of hard to fully wrap my head around everything that has happened. As of right now I am trying to focus on really how lucky I am and truly how much worse it could have been.

So really what I am trying to get at is that yes it was crazy being in the biggest storm Australia has ever seen, but we all survived and now we will all work together to try and get life back to normal. So here are a few pictures of just around the block where I live just so you can see a bit of the mark Yasi made on us.

One of the YWAM houses

Just down the street from us.

A normal site around town...

This is right out side my house! So lucky that it didn't fall onto my house.

and this is right behind my house!

Life so far,

I have been here for a month already and have gone through staff training (which is just learning more about the standards of Aussie education and so forth) and am now going into the third week of the Bible Core Course (BCC) – what a month! Everything is going so good, it was a very hard transition if I am being honest, I just loved home too much I think :) It was very overwhelming getting ready to staff the school (BCC) definitely didn't feel good enough to be doing what God was calling me to do. But one day I was talking about this with my roommate and realized that I am walking into exactly what God has called me too, so of course I would face some opposition! That really helped me see things a bit more clear and remind me that God really does know what he is doing and that everything is going to be okay.

I already really feel God showing up in a big way, my relationship with him is getting deeper and my heart for Australia (living here) is growing. God made it clear to me that I am only going to stay in Australia for two schools which means coming home for good in August 2012. Yes, that is a long time but like I said before when I see the big picture and everything that I am going to take away from here it brings me a lot of peace.

The School is going so good, we have gone through Acts, Philemon, and Titus! We are getting ready to learn about small group bible study and then 1 Peter (which I am teaching!) It is all pretty exciting!

I’m loving that I get to spend the next 5 months studying the bible – who gets to do that? BAH so fun!

Our classroom before all the students arrived!

This is where I sit :)

Just doing our bible reading! By the end of the school we will have read through the whole bible cover to cover.