Australia!

Hey guys & gals!

I def. been super busy and have had little time to be online, which is probably a good thing. I can usually make it to the cafe we use the internet everyday, but I usually try to keep it to 20 minutes or less. But tonight (or this morning for you guys.... yeah the 14 hour time difference is pretty nuts) I got the chance to take my time and snag a laptop all to myself, without fellow teammates waiting to use it. :-) 

God has been awesome while I've been out here... actually He's always awesome. So far, we've seen two girls come to Christ and had other people show a lot of interest. It's been awesome to watch God move in people's lives. I'm def. pumped to get back to Central and go sharing and hopefully disciple someone this fall! I'm so much more comfortable with putting myself out there and feeling awkward, but striking up conversations anyways. I've made two solid friends at the Uni (what they call college here), their names are Brodie & Nin. Both are not Christians so please keep them in your prayers. It's my heart's desire to have the privelage of leading them to Christ or at least a lot closer. The Australians tend to be extremely apathetic towards ANYTHING, so that's made sharing a challenge. I've been rejected twice as far as trying to do a survey or just trying to talk to people. Which isn't bad compared to some of my other teammates are rejected daily. I had the privalege talking to two Muslim girls on Friday who seemed VERY interested in the gospel, but they had class and took the KGP with them... so that was amazing and I hope to see them again. 

Of course, I miss all of you terribly and I cannot wait to come home. Homsickness settles in when I have large amounts of downtime. I'm so glad they kept us really busy the first week because I had zero time to be homesick. 

I spent two days in LA which was a blast. I feel like we all knew each other for forever. There were never really awkward moments. We got to go to the beach and to Santa Monica the night before we left for Australia. We flew to San Fran and then to Sydney... 13 hours and 45 minutes! My ankles were freaking HUGE... they swelled up like no other. But I slept probably 10 hours of the flight, so praise God for that!!! I'm praying I can do the same on the way home. :-) We got into Sydney at 6:30 am and went sight seeing ALL day. We walked the harbor bridge and we got to be right next to the opera house, which was a dream come true. The next day we went to the Zoo and got to ride a ferry across the harbor. It was super cool. Then we headed to Newcastle and that's where we've been settled for the past week and a half. We stay here until August 17th and then get to go to a nearby christian camp for debriefing. The beaches in Newcastle are amazing and beautiful and it's so cool to have seen both sides of the pacific in a short amount of time. The Uni is basically a jungle with buildings in it. I'm so glad it's winter here because apparently the snakes do come out on campus in the summer... and I hate snakes SO much. Picking up an Australian accent is REALLY hard... there advice is to get really lazy with your words. Most of them love OUR accents and how nicely we tend to say things and the big words we like to use. Most of them want our accent which is odd to me. They have the best accents EVER. The Australians are pretty amazing and very helpful. 

I ate Kangaroo stir fry the other night... it was delicious but I felt sad that I was eating such a cute animal. :-(

This Saturday I get to go Sand Boarding (which is like sledding apparently) and I get to go to a petting zoo and play with Kangaroos and see Koalas! Hopefully I won't be sad about the whole eating a Kangaroo thing when I get to play with them....

Sunday a bunch of us are planning on going to the Hillsong church in Sydney...yup... the place all those awesome CDs come from. I'm SO excited! We had to leave at 5am... take the train 3 hours, catch a bus that's about an hour long and then we'll be spending most of the day in Sydney and then heading home rather late. So it'll be a long but awesome day! 

SO I think that's about it for now. Not sure when I'll get the time to do this again.... hope all is with you... 

<3

Sam

Reader's Digest Version of my Testimony

So we're supposed memorize our 3-5 minute testimony for summer project... so I typed it out. I did a half-hour version at my church last November so this is my super-short version.

Enjoy!

I was saved when I was six. I went to a Baptist church for 18 years of my life. My church family was great but I didn’t feel like I really knew God or that He was even really “approachable”. From age 13-18 I went through cycles of being really excited about God and caring less about what He has to say about my life and where it was going. My family started going to a different church a few days before I started college. After attending this new church, for the first time I felt like I knew that I could have a PERSONAL relationship with God. I never got the concept of worshiping God before. I never felt like God was really there. Throughout my freshman year there were many trials, including two crazy roommates that made my life pretty miserable, many failed auditions, and feeling led by God to leave my boyfriend of two years. So for the first time I was radically living sold-out for Jesus! Last summer was a huge spiritual growth spurt for me. I went back to school in the fall and God led me to Campus Crusade for Christ. I made amazing friends that will last for a lifetime and found a place that I could continue to grow spiritual and have great fellowship. I also have a chance to really focus on pouring into other people and learning how to share my faith more effectively.