Well friends and family, I am going to attempt to fit 3 weeks into this one blog. We’ll see how it goes haha;) We started our regular schedules for the most part 2 weeks so life has been full of interesting adventures and surprises. On Sunday nights I work with Scout Hut which is pretty much a ministry for the unchurched kids that live around Glenwood Church. The purpose of this ministry is to build relationships with these kids and give them an alternative activity. One must remember though that these are not church kids, and so they aren’t going to act like church kids. It was a bit overwhelming at first. We were praying before everything started and all of the sudden the kids start banging on the trailer for us to let them in. After all the noise they were making, I wasn’t sure exactly what was going to come through the door but we let them in at 6. It was all a blur when everything started because they all ran in and there was one kid that had crutches that was purposefully sticking them in everyone’s hot chocolate they had and then wiping it on people, there was one kid that kept turning up the boom box in the building until it wouldn’t go any louder, and before I knew it the kid that had previously been on crutches was now on top of my chair without the crutches dancing (evidently he stole someone else’s crutches HAHA). The overwhelming feeling soon went away though, and I wound up playing foosball with two girls named Chloe and Lauren. We talked most of the night, and I really hope they continue to come. Monday mornings are staff meetings. Then Monday afternoons I go into the elementary schools with Aly the children’s worker at Glenwood to help kids with reading. I absolutely love it, and it’s awesome to see kids progressing in their reading skills:) As you know most American schools are against mixing with churches, and Europeans schools are even worse. So helping the kids read is a great foot in the door here because we are meeting a need and getting a chance to interact with the kids. Monday nights I will be joining a Bible Study for university students. University just started back here so I have not been able to go yet, but I look forward to building relationships there. Tuesday mornings two other American girls, Carrie and Jenifer, and then myself have kids work training led by Aly and the other Glenwood kids worker Lynda. We have a book we’re going through together and then Lynda and Aly will train us throughout our time here. On Tuesday afternoons I help with Friendship which is a group of older people literally aging from 50-95. They get together and sing hymns, share prayer requests, and have a short lesson. I get there early to set the chairs and microphone up…me and technical stuff don’t really get along so that’s always interesting haha;) I was so blessed last week at Friendship though because I had sat beside one of the older ladies named Joy at church the past Sunday and talked with her for a bit. Well Joy not only remembered my name at Friendship, but she had homemade blackberry and apple jam for me! Wednesdays I work on something called The Gate Project. I described The Gate in my last blog as a center for all the different arts. Well Garrett, Pamela, and I have been assigned to figure out the dynamics of the surrounding community and find out how The Gate can best serve the community. So we are working on getting a survey together and mapping out the community. It is the thing that I am most excited about because it’s an awesome opportunity but also most nervous about because it’s a great responsibility in a small amount of time. Thursday our whole entire trainee team which is 18 of us come together and have a time of worship together, interview different staff members to find out what God has done in their life, and teach a lesson. Thursday nights I participate in a ministry called GNR8 (Just in case you’re like me and didn’t get it the first time- that says Generate). Pretty much it’s a discipleship program for I believe 9-11 year olds. Lynda has the kids that want to go deeper into the Word over to her house on Thursday nights, and they have dessert and then split up into small groups for discipleship. Friday mornings I have general service at Glenwood Church. I pretty much assist the financial person named Cian. I do all the fun exciting tasks of filing financial papers, entering bills into the computer, shredding papers, mailing things, and delivering things to the bank. Friday evenings I have Kidz Klub which is actually at Glenwood Church’s church plant of Bethania. It’s also pirate themed haha no worries this time I remembered to say YAR not ARGH! These kids do not come from well off families, and so our main thing is to make sure they know they have a safe place to come to on Friday nights where they can feel loved by us and more importantly by the Lord. Phew well that is a what my normal weeks will look like…however I’m realizing there aren’t too many “normal” weeks when you’re in ministry HAHA! The British word of the week is “Guttered” which you can use when you’re exhausted, mortified, or just out of sorts simply say “I am absolutely guttered” and sound British for the day haha;) Please pray for energy for the rest of our time here and that our team would have the same passion that we left the states with. Also please pray that we would be able to build relationships with those around us day to day. Thanks for reading all of this if you made it to end HAHA and all your support!

Hiya Everyone! Hiya is the greeting they use here in the UK. I haven’t been able to say it yet without laughing though, but I’m hoping it’ll be natural before I leave haha:) This past week was absolutely amazing but extremely exhausting so I’ll do my best to just hit the high points. Sunday September 6th was a very full day. When we got up to the church that morning the 9 British students we are serving along side of this semester were there, and it was complete mayhem trying to introduce everyone and remembering people’s names. After the church service, the church put on a big lunch for all of us trainees as we are called. During this semester each of us have been assigned a mentor so this lunch was set up for us to meet our mentors and get to know the staff we will be working with. My mentor’s name is Anne. She seems extremely nice and has a real heart for missions so I am definitely looking forward to getting to know her more. Monday was full of mixing us and the British students together so we could get to know one another and build relationships:)Tuesday was started off by a scavenger hunt in the middle of Cardiff City Center. Even though my team barely came in 2nd it was still lots of fun running through the streets of Cardiff and getting to know people better on the team:) That afternoon we did general service at Glenwood Baptist Church (The church I am serving and attending this semester) which is where we generally do any type of service they ask us to do. That night we went over to the British students’ house to hang out, and they introduced us to their desserts of custard and chelsea buns. Fortunately the food isn’t TOO weird here, but almost everything they give you could use a good round of salt on it so it has flavor haha:)Wednesday was exhausting. It was started by grocery shopping. Just in case you thought grocery shopping and public bus transportation mix well together; they don’t LOL! After an adventurous morning lugging all the groceries back to the flat, Carrie and I headed up to Glenwood to set up for Wrigglerz which is a kids club for 4-7 year olds. It has a pirate theme so we played pirate games, sang pirate songs, ate pirate snacks, and of course dressed up as pirates haha:) It was great fun! By the way, British pirates do NOT say ARGH. I found this out when I started saying Argh, and everybody looked at me funny. British pirates evidently say YAR! Who knew:) Thursdays the whole entire team which is now 18 of us come together for a day of teaching and training. As the semester progresses, us trainees will take turns leading worship and a lesson to start Thursdays off. However this Thursday our leaders simply gave us a bit of a model for how things go. Friday was my favorite day yet. After a week of always being surrounded by people and getting all kinds of schedules, we had a day of just prayer and praise to God. We all went to The Gate which is an art center that Glenwood has taken over. It is actually an old Presbyterian church that people redid as a place for the arts. There are actual art galleries, dance studios, a café, and an auditorium for plays and shows. The people that redid The Gate into an art studio were ready to move on to something else so Glenwood came along and took The Gate over. It is a really neat place though. So on Friday my other supervisor Emma set up prayer stations all throughout the auditorium at The Gate for us to pray about specific things. It was absolutely wonderful to be still before God and both speak but more importantly listen to Him. We had surprisingly amazing weather all this week. So whoever is praying for us to have good weather keep it up it’s working haha:) But seriously thanks so much for the prayers and encouragement that you all send my way. They are very much felt and evident in each of my days here! We got our schedules this past Friday so please pray that as we begin our actual ministries here that things would easily fall into place and relationships would be opened for mentorship and discipleship. I am so excited to see what God has in store, and I am already feeling like time is flying by! On September 18th I will have been gone for a month which seems so crazy. Well have a great rest of the week, and the British word of the week is a hole in the wall which is an ATM here.

I have been in Wales for close to two weeks now. It seemed that as soon as I got used to the people and places in London, it was time to go. However before everyone serving in the Hands On program in Western Europe left London two weeks ago, we had a commissioning service. It was a great time of prayer, encouragement, and challenges, but the song we sang before we all departed really put my heart and mind in the right place. The chorus said “We must go, live to feed the hungry, stand beside the broken, we must go, stepping forward, Lord keep us from just singing, we must go.” Our time in this world isn’t about being comfy and making friends although God blesses us with those throughout different points in our life, but it is all about furthering the Father’s kingdom and bringing Him glory. It was a wonderful note to end on. Sunday August 23rd my team and I took a train to Cardiff Wales our place of service. I am serving with 8 other people. There are the two guys Garret and Chris and then the seven girls Carrie, Audra, Lindley, Jesslyn, Pamela, Jenifer, and myself. The two guys and Jenifer and Pamela are staying in host homes for the four months. Myself and the other 4 girls are staying in an apartment or a flat as they call it here. It is owned by a man in the church we are attending in Wales that recently got married and is now on the mission field in Burkina Faso with his newlywed. Our dishwasher in our flat is our two hands. Our washer only has symbols on it no words so we really have no clue how it works. Sometimes we can’t get it to start, sometimes it runs for hours, and sometimes it won’t let us open it HAHA. We have no dryer and with the constant rain here it is not much help to hang your clothes on the line outside LOL! Oh and our door is quite temperamental; it only unlocks after 5 minutes of jiggling it all over the place haha. The only thing one can do is laugh about all that:) Our modes of transportation here are our two feet and the bus system. I won’t lie it is hard being at the mercy of public transportation, and it is also no fun walking in the rain. A positive thing I can say about it though is I am so worn out at the end of the day from walking that I have no problem going to sleep HAHA! The weather has not been totally dreadful yet. We have some sunny days and some cold rainy days, but our supervisor Marc Verlander said the sunny days are not going to be around much longer. The problem is that it is so windy here that you look outside the window one minute and it is sunny but in the next minute a storm cloud has moved in and it’s raining. There was one day I decided not to bring my rain jacket with me because it looked so sunny and bright; let’s just say I won’t make that mistake again haha. My supervisor like I said is Marc Verlander and he has an amazing wife Charity and three adorable daughters all under the age of five Carys, Bailey, and Addison. Marc is a great leader and his family is great. Both this week and last week have been fairly laid back. Half the day we’ll do orientation and training stuff, and the other half we’ll have to ourselves. The church we’ll be attending and serving with is Glenwood Baptist Church. Everyone there is so excited to have us and absolutely amazing. We will also be working alongside a group of British students that will be coming in on Saturday. These two weeks have allowed our team to get fairly acclimated to the area and figure out the bus system. It has given us a great chance to see the beautiful sites of Cardiff. They have beautiful castles, bodies of water, and parks. It is an absolutely gorgeous country. This country has a very rich history including revivals that have broken out here over the years. Our prayer is that God would reign out another revival in this place and awaken the people’s hearts to Him. Next week is when the real work will begin, and everything will be a whirlwind from then on out. I am not fully aware of what all I will be doing at this point, but I do know one of the areas I will be working with is the children’s ministry. Please pray for the team’s health as the days are getting wetter and colder. Also culture shock is really hitting now that we have been away for three weeks. The Welsh word of the week is trolley which is their word for a grocery cart:) Have an amazing week everyone!