Before I start this post, there are a couple of things from my previous post that need to be set straight. Firstly, as some of you pointed out to me, my house does not have 33 bedrooms; it does in fact, only have 3. I have now corrected this so it reads correctly. I apologise for the incorrect facts, and can only blame it on the jet-lag. Secondly, I thought when I wrote the last post that once the students left from our house, things would settle down with the 7 of us living here. I was incorrect. In the last week alone, we have seen 2 students leave, and one move in (but only for a few days) 1 member of staff leave, one member of staff move in, one member of staff who will soon be leaving, and one member of staff who was going to be leaving, but now is not. It seems that life in this house will continue to move around a fair bit; but the 4 of us girls in my room will be the same now for the foreseeable future, which is nice.

Some of you will know that I got hit quite badly by jet lag last week. Happily, I have now pretty much recovered from that, and while I am still pretty tired at the end of each day, that is now down to the very busy schedule and all the new things that I am having to learn, and not because I’m not sleeping. Praise God!

Anyway, I will leave all other things for another post some day, as really I want to share a little bit with you about the Missions Conference that we have just had. I had no idea when I booked my ticket for Perth that I would be arriving just in time for this. It was such a blessing to be able to be at it, although the timing of it for me had both good and bad points to it. In one way, it was nice to have that as my first week to give me a chance to settle in more before getting fully involved with my ministry, but in other ways it was at times difficult and frustrating listening to people talk about your calling and role in missions when I hadn’t even started in my ministry yet! To sum it up…..it was really good, but totally out of context. So what exactly was it??

The missions conference was an in house conference held by YWAM Perth to spend the week talking about different aspects of missions. Everybody had the week off from their usual ministries, and we had a full on schedule, starting at 8am every morning, (although one morning I was on food prep duty in the kitchen – so then it was 7am) and finishing at about 9.15pm every night. There was some free time in between, but with about 500 people on base for the week it was petty chaotic! And a bit of a gruelling schedule for someone who was suffering from jet lag and majorly sleep deprived! So apologies for the lack of contact that I have had since arriving (and for the lateness of this post!) but hopefully you can understand why!

I did enjoy myself though; we had good speakers/topics, amazing times of worship, and a lot of fun too! Highlights had to be watching people go crazy after an awesome time of worship, crowd surfing, dancing and and generally partying really hard! Then there was the videos about the base that we got to make, all of our different drama interpretations on Genesis 12 and the calling of Abraham (the people here are so very creative) and even more exciting, hearing different peoples stories of how they got called into missions and where they feel God is calling them next! There are some amazing new things being developed here and in other countries around the world that we have connections with through different ministries, so it really is an exciting time to be involved!

Something that was really encouraging for me was that God really used the week to affirm once more that I am in the right place for this season in my life. I would be lying if I said that some doubts hadn’t crept into my mind these past few months (on occasion) about coming back here, or more often, wondered why God has called me to this place. If I am honest, I still don’t know why God has called me to this place specifically, but I am absolutely 100% certain that this is the place to be. And so I am trusting God in that.

This week God has really used the speakers and times of worship to show His faithfulness to me, as well as many other different things as well. I’ll save those things for another post – but for now I will just say that God is so very good. This week has definitely had its ups and downs, and there have been many challenges that I have had to face; but the good news is that I have survived! And I am looking forward to another week coming, where I will finally be able to get inducted as a fully fledged staff member (literally everything got put on hold this past week) meet the other people on my team and get stuck in with the Mega Cities Ministry. Adventure awaits!

Signing off for now, but I will be back soon with more updates I promise! Thanks to everybody for all your love, support and encouragement.

Jo