Hi everybody! As today marks the end of week 2 I thought it was about time that I sent you another update and let you know what I have been up to! It has been a busy week, but I feel like we have now settled into a good routine, which definitely helps. Here is a rough idea as to what our weekly schedule looks like!

On weekdays my alarm goes off at 6am and I get up, breakfasted and ready for the day. I head outside for my quiet time, as there is a park area just across the road from us outside of Perth stadium (to which Taylor Swift will be coming for concert in the next month or so!) and then get back to the house for morning family chores.

The base that we live on is pretty new. God provided the building and finances a few years back but they have only been working from it for the past year or so. Because of this, there is a strong conviction that we should do everything we can to look after the base, as it was Gods provision to us. Because of this, every weekday morning at 8am the whole base, students and staff, come together for half an hour to clean! We split up into groups and have different responsibilities to clean certain areas. Every 3 weeks you change area just to make things interesting! I am currently in the group responsible for cleaning 228, the house that I am living in, so every morning I am cleaning all the bathroom sinks and mirrors! Ive got one more week left there, and then I will change to a different part of the base.

Then at 8.30 we have different things going on each day. On Mondays we have base worship, where everybody comes together in the auditorium for an hour of worship and prayer. Tuesdays we have class worship, so just the 30 of us in our classroom, Wednesdays we have class intercession, Thursdays lectures start at 8.30 and Fridays we have class worship again! Then at 9.30 we have morning tea break!

Lectures start at 10ish, depending on how many class notices we have! We have a 5 minute break somewhere in the middle of all that, then finish at 12.30 for lunch. At 1.30 work duties begin! Everybody on base has to do 2 hours of work duties a day, serving the base as part of our discipleship. For some people this means cleaning the dishes, others it is food prep, being the handy man and fixing stuff, showing hospitality by baking cakes and preparing guest rooms or washing or ironing, or sitting on reception answering phones. Because I cant stand up for very long, I have been given an office based work duty, so I am based in simple healthcare. They are in charge of creating and designing resources to train up local people to be able to train people in simple health issues when working overseas (if that makes any sense at all!) but basically, I am currently working on their posters linking all of their pictures, and figuring out where extra translation is needed. This has proved to be a real lesson in patience as the computers are all horribly slow! But at least I am able to do something useful for them, as the job is very time consuming, and so by doing this, I am able to free up other workers.

I finish work duties at 3.30 and then have 2 hours off! Which is lovely. Dinner is at 5.30 and then again, different evenings we do different things. Monday night we have another 2 hours of lectures starting at 6.30. Tuesdays we have small groups, where 6 or 7 of us meet up from class to share with one another. Wednesdays we have a free night!! This is meant to be our study night for our weekly journals, but most people do this at another time and take some well-deserved time off instead! Thursday nights we have a packed dinner picked up from lunch, as at 6 everybody from base heads out into town for evangelism. And on Friday night we have our Friday night meeting, which is basically like extra church!

Wednesdays are slightly different, as because we have the evening off, we have something extra in the afternoon. Straight after work duties at 3.30 we have group intercessions for an hour. Our class has been split into 5 groups and each given a country to spend time praying and interceding for. My group have been given Egypt to pray for these next couple of weeks, and then we will rotate to a different country.

Weekends are mostly free, but from time to time we will have extra activities going on. Some people go to church on Sundays, some use the day to rest as the week is pretty intense with not much free time. Most people at some point will be found working on their journals as these are due in every week at Sunday dinner! And of course, Saturdays are generally used for that all important lie in and catching up on sleep!

Unless…you are on the prayer chain. Since 1999 ywam perth has had somebody from base praying 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. As you can imagine, this takes a lot of organising! Every individual is given a one hour slot each week when they are to be praying for the base. There are usually 3-5 people with the same slot as you, so you can meet up and pray together. My class has been allocated the time slots of Saturday morning 4-10am every week! So we have split into 6 groups and allocated each group with a one hour slot. This week my group were praying from 7-8am, but next week we get rotated, so at some point we will all get the 4-5am slot…which kind of messes up your Saturday morning lie in! But it’s a really important thing to be doing so we shall carry on regardless!!

Right. I was going to let you know what has been going on this week, but as Ive already written loads and I need to go work on my journal I shall leave that for another day! But it has been a really great week with some really exciting teaching, and other than a still gammy knee I am doing just fine