1/13/13 UPDATE: DTS... here's to you.

Cheers to the furrows on our brow,
to each hard-won victory.
Cheers to the losses that grew us up,
killed our pride, and filled our cup.

Cheers to the friendships well worn-in
that neither time nor distance alter;
here's to the sleepers we'll see again,
fine company in memoriam.

Cheers to the passing of our youth
and the death of lust, not wonder;
a toast to the lessons not yet learned
and to the trials that will teach them.

Open your mouth and sing out your song;
life is short as the day is long.
I can't leave you my body, but I'll leave you a tune...
This is my legacy;
here's to you.

-Brooke Fraser, Here's to You

I love Brooke Fraser for many reasons, including that her music often seems to express my heart exactly. After five long, arduous, joyful, packed, challenging, life-changing months, the DTS is over. We arrived back from our outreach locations of Dar Es Salaam and Arusha (my team), Tanzania, on Tuesday morning after a blessedly uneventful bus ride (with the exception of a few exciting baboons on the road) and watched the few days fly by too quickly until our graduation and the inevitable but dreaded goodbyes. Yesterday we celebrated thoroughly, and this morning I was up at 5 to see off some of my dearest friends as they headed back to their home countries of Congo, Tanzania, and Kenya. My heart absolutely broke as we all wept in each other's arms and said our farewells, but as the day has gone on I've been able to reflect and thank God for the miracle of the last five months. We've transformed from a random assortment of young people from 10 different nations and 43 different life stories to a family, united in love after months of living, laughing, fighting, mourning, and facing each day together. Praise God with me, will you? I have learned to love deeper and through harder obstacles than I ever expected to know how, and I have gained true brothers and sisters all over the world. I know that God brought us together, united us in His love as He brought us to and through each trial, and will go out with us again as we head our separate ways, and I thank Him for the life of each of these beautiful people.

I'll try to update the blog with more reflections and details in the coming weeks as I process everything, but for now I'll attempt to summarize it all in two paragraphs!

OUTREACH. 32 people from 8 nations living in a house together for 6 weeks, sharing one pit latrine and two showers, sleeping 3-to-a-mattress, fetching water from a quarter mile away each morning for all of the cooking, drinking, cleaning, and bathing, ministering in hot weather and across language barriers, overcoming massive personality differences, unable to get personal space for 3 minutes in a day, away from our families for the holidays, making decisions together, dealing with a couple of major medical emergencies, and here's the miracle: we got on the bus at the end of the six weeks so indescribably united and knit together in love. How does that even happen?? (By the grace of God.) Oh, we had our moments. We had our screaming fights, our days of the silent treatment, and maybe more than our fair share of tears, but we pressed through. We chose to love each other, to work through it, to forgive and continue to care for each other each day, to see each other at our worst and not hold it against each other, and we came out the other side with relationships brilliant and refined by the fire. We ministered in leprosy homes, with street children, in churches and hospitals and public parks and orphanages, through generosity and love and prayer and preaching and service and dancing and fun, as we learned to listen to God and walk out what He gave us to do. Don't get me wrong, there were moments I would have hopped on the first plane home, but now that it's all finished, I wouldn't trade it for the whitest Christmas in the world.

WHAT'S NEXT? Now that I'm an official YWAMer, I'm staying here at the Hopeland base for four weeks, until February 10. I'll be helping around the base mostly in the area of admin and publications (website, videos, brochures, you name it), but also leading interactive, extended worship nights (creating an environment for worship through art, reading, journaling, dancing, singing, sitting, every way you can engage with the Lord) and hopefully making a few visits to the orphanage we found on our mini-outreach back in October. After that, it's off to the UK and Ireland for two months. Things aren't officially in place, but the plan is to spend six weeks at the YWAM Paisley base outside of Glasgow, Scotland, helping them to get their prayer house started (see above description of worship nights) and then to travel around and visit friends and family and see the sites of Scotland, Wales, Ireland, and Northern Ireland. On April 10, I fly into Portland, OR, and begin what I hope will be a summer of visiting as many people as possible, perhaps by buying an Amtrak 30-day rail pass and fulfilling my lifelong dream of taking a cross-country train journey, in which I visit people all over America! I'll also be attending a plethora of weddings. After the summer, God only knows for sure, but I'm hoping to go somewhere long-term (for the next couple years, at least) through YWAM. Which "somewhere" remains to be determined.

I did it in two paragraphs! I'll close by saying THANK YOU so much for all of your prayers and financial support that make this life possible. I am so supported and so loved and so blessed to be living the fulfillment of all the dreams God has placed in my heart, and I thank Him so much that you are partnering with me in that process. Words can't express it. Thank you, and God bless you.

Love,
Molly