About a year ago I decided that while all my friends were going off to university, I would go to Hawaii instead. Not just for a vacation though, I was going to a program called YWAM. Youth With a Mission is a worldwide program that has usually 3 months of lecture phase where we learn from speakers around the world on God and what he does in our lives, and how we can spread that to the nations. Then we go for 3 months after on outreach phase. So in september I hopped on a plane from Canada and came to the great state of Hawaii. Arriving on the base was amazing and just mind blowing to see the difference between Manitoba and Maui. Our base is huge. My room has 3 story bunk beds, and 18 girls all in one room, its quite squishy but awesome. Luckily I don't have a top bunk, I have a middle one.
The first couple days were kinda scary. Not knowing anyone and meeting 20 people at the same time trying to remember all their names was very difficult. The first day was opening ceremonies! All the students got on a bus and drove to a church and we got lei'd and food and sang worship and all introduced ourselves which was cool. That night we all went around the bonfire and one of our leaders told us the story in the Bible were Moses goes out and fasts for 40 days to listen to God in Exodus. She told us that our YWAM group was going on an "Exodus" for an amount of days we didn't know, with a list of items we were allowed to bring and nothing else! The items included one shirt, one sweater, one pair of pants and one pair of shorts and 5 pairs of underwear and our Bible. No cell phones, no toothbrushes, no anything. We were all a little scared but we willingly packed our stuff and got on the bus at 6 am Sunday morning. Exodus started off with a scavenger hunt through Maui, then getting to the campsite and setting up our tents. Luckily we had a toilet but it was surrounded by no walls so just in the middle of the bush. As we settled in we all surrounded the campfire and waited to hear what was going to happen over the days we were there. We were on Exodus for 3 days, only ate ramen noodles and oatmeal for every meal, and all gave our testimonies. It was definitely hard but we all bonded so well over those three days and I'm glad we did it. Coming back to the base we all felt closer and more excited for the upcoming 3 months.
After Exodus, we heard all 4 places that we would pick from to go on outreach. We had to go off and pray which one God wants us to go to, either Bangledesh, Nepal, Ch!n@ or Indonesia. We all went off and prayed and came back with our choice or choices written out and handed them in. God told me which nation I should go to pretty clearly even though that was the one I really didn't want to go to, I still wrote it down. That weekend we all went to the beach for the day and bonded as a school and it was so amazing. I love Hawaii.
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