A week of Prayer & Surrender

Kaleo Ministry #11

This past week I have had has been on such a great adventure. I grew, I got challenged, I cried, I laughed, I surrendered. 24/7 prayer week was incredible! (If you do not know what it is i have posted what is is in my previous blog)...So I had lots of excitement and worries going into the week. My worries were not knowing what to do in the room when I went in it. My excitement was me thinking, ok what is going to happen this week. As a community Kaleo grew together a lot. We had some awesome stories coming out of the week to share with each other. We had chapel everyday before lunch and usually during our chapel people share their story. As in their story i mean their life story, what has brought them to the place they are at today and what events or moments in their life has made them the person they are. A story doesn't have to be big and challenging. It is your story to tell and it is unique because it is about you. During the week when we had chapel someone shared each day about their life. It was so evident that they were meant to share that week. It was just incredible hearing the stories we all heard as a community and supporting the person afterwards. The thing i cherished was the time i got to go into the pray room and sit by myself and talk to God. He didn't always talk back but i felt his comfort in my struggles. One night i sat in a chair and i prayed to God to give me peace and joy through all the things I am being faced with. There are a lot of choices to be made and some are I guess school is a factor for next september. I will have to start applying when i come home. I'm still so unsure of what I want, actually of what God wants for my life. A lot of people are feeling the same here and were going through that struggle together which is good to talk to others about. All in all it was a terrific week of giving things up to God and having peace come over me in small amounts. 

I will never be the same after this week of prayer.

So basically my week was prayer, homework, youth group and hangouts with the awesome people here! I had a paper due on friday and another one due on sunday! This week i had decided i wanted to take a fast from facebook, skype, msn etc. I felt it was needed. I didn't want to be distracted in any way and I wanted the week to be a facebook week of growth and not be spending hours on which i sometimes due and time goes by so fast. It was definitely a good choice made. I may do it again because  I benefitted from it so much. 

Church was sweet this week! My girls were sweet as always. They asked lots of questions. They did talk a lot but I was ok with that because a lot of it was questions! They are curious some of them about God and the thing I pray is that I would have the right words to say to them in answering the questions they have. I love speaking into their lives and being that role model. I hope I am and continue to impact them in some way even if it is the littlest thing that I do.

So another start to another busy week. David Lee is teaching us a course this week on Church Ministry. I am excited but scared because there is so much work to be done. I hope that the week goes well and that I learn lots. 

Some prayer requests:

-Missions trips..which one is the knowing right one for me.

-Pray that i continue to seek my quite time with God on a daily basis

-Prayer to get through my struggles 

-Prayer for tests and exams of everyone doing them

Love Alivia

p.s. I hope you like the new blog template :)

It's still a work in progress! I though i'd change it up a bit!

Photo of church taken by me :)

Kaleo Ministry #10

:)

Hey thereee!!

I have had quit the adventurous past week!

On sunday night was t

he start of reading week! Many adventurers were had and good time during the week! One of the days A few of us went down to Victoria and hung out and explored victoria, we shopped and went to the imax and than another day we went to Nanaimo to go bowling and had a great dinner at this really cool cafe! 

On wednesday I hung around the camp and went to youth group!

Thursday we went to a film called warren miller ski film at a college in victoria. IT was a film all about snowboarding and skiing and had some really sweet music and shots to it! 

Friday followed with our presentation in our camp ministry course and it went pretty well! 

My weekend was jammed packed with homework and finishing a paper for my course called Hermeneutics! I got it done after hours of doing it and editing everything! I felt so relieved when it was done! 

Church is going well! There was wednesday night youth group and we talked about different religions. We talked about buddhists and muslims and Christianity and what are the differences. Some of the kids had some great questions to ask! One prayer request would be for my girls during group discussion time to be not so chatty and listen in the group when another person is speaking. They are all so sweet girls and i enjoy hanging out with them!

Sooooooo another week has started and it is 24/7 week of prayer. So far it has been incredible! Everyone signed up for an hour a day and there is a room dedicated for prayer.  Someone is praying every hour and all through the night the shifts rotate. One of my shifts was last night and it was from 3-4am. I woke up and went down to the room with erin who we were partners for the shift and as we come in the person who is leaving prayers for our hour with God that is about to be had. There are pictures set up in the room of everyones faces all around and there is our names on pieces of paper. At the beginning of the year everyone on our sailing trip named each-other. For instance some one's name is freedom. My name is vulnerable. It all represents our life and our walk with God and what we are to either break free from this year or grow in. So in this room you can write encouraging notes to people on these papers that have their names or you can write prayers to God on the papers. You can do whatever you felt led to do in this room. SIt down if you like and just pray to God for what is on your mind. I've been in the room 2 times. Once by myself and once with another person. Both times i never want to leave by the end of the hour because i'm thirsty for more of God and i love just taking time aside from my busyness here at kaleo and giving it to God and sending prayers his way. So i am excited for this week. I am fasting from facebook and skype and it has gone well so far. I am finding myself getting more things done and be more productive than sitting on the computer and letting hours go by which sometimes happens. 

Prayer Requests:

-Prayer that this week goes well for everyone and that prayers get answered

-Pray that i continue to stay strong with my struggles i am facing

-Pray for God to be present in everything we are doing here and that is it glorifying to him

Thank you so much for reading and coming along on this journey with me!

Love Alivia 

Kaleo Ministry #9

<--My roomies :) 

Soooo past week has been an adventure :)

Where do I start! Well i go to go caving on Tuesday and it was really sweet! I was very nervous about going but i'm parksville m glad i went and experienced it! Now i can say i went caving! We went just outside of to caves called "horn lakes caves" i believe that was the name. We all had helmets and head lamps on going into the caves. There were spiders and it was a bit wet. I enjoyed it a bit but i was sure glad to get out of there when we were done lol. There is something about being in small tiny spaces and spiders around you that doesn't make me feel the best haha. We also did homeless ministry that was on Monday and i already have told about that experience a bit. It was defiantly amazing!

Youth group was pretty good on wednesday. It was kind of frustrating trying to talk to my girls in our small group when they were so chatty. But all in all it was sweet spending some time with them getting to know them better. I helped out at church that week as well with sunday school. It was fun. Only thing was that i pulled an all-nighter the night before so it was funny not sleeping at all basically from 10am saturday until 11pm sunday night. It was well worth it though i got alot of homework done. 

On the weekend Camp Qwanoes had a Junior high retreat at the camp. I had the privelage to be a counsellor of 8 girls from friday to saturday. It was lots of fun! It was a very long weekend though and so many things to do and very busy! The girls in my cabin were really sweet and all unique in their own way. THe whole weekend was about be careful of what you speak and what your actions reflect. The speaker brought a real tongue in from a cow! It was so gross but defiantly caught the kids attention! We talked about how to uplift people and not put them down with our words. He was a pretty sweet speaker and i believe he got the message across pretty well. THe last night on saturday night the kids all got together and we sang some songs and than the speaker Mark came up for a few minutes just to talk. He asked the kids to close there eyes and bow there heads and he was going to give time to have popcorn prayer. He told the kids to say out loud a word or something they are scared of or worried for in life. The things that these 10,11,12 year olds had to say were unbelievable. Some things that were said were: scared of growing old, scared of being popular, not fitting in, death, not being liked, being bullied. Wow i was defiantly amazed by some of the words that came out of there mouths. All in all the weekend was good and I have some of my girls on facebook to keep in touch with so it's sweet!

Soooo other than that my week was pretty good!

Some things for prayer could be:

-missions trips that i am led to go on the right one

-to get my work done

-to trust in God in rough patches

thanks so much for reading this i appreciate it lots

Love ALivia

Kaleo Ministry #8

HEY HEY HEY

Kaleo is incredible.

I think this past week has been the HUGEST learning curve since i've been here! Like oh my goodness, i've been faced with some different things that have put a curve ball in my life and challenged me but i feel like ive gained so much peace God has given me and it's hard to explain. God is wonderful i'm seeing him work in me so many different ways especially this past week! For instance highlight story of my week that was the best thing ever! It happened actually today monday so technically a start to my new week but i'll include it anyways :)

So today we did street ministry and we went to Victoria a group of us with socks/gloves/food/blankets/sleeping bags/hats...all to give to people we saw on the street that were homeless. So we went out to Victoria and got split up into groups today and i had Ameilia , Jake and I in a group. We made up a funny team name called team "nitro". haha it didnt really have meaning it was just something fun we made up! So anyways we went out the 3 of us in the afternoon and walked around and handed out a numerous amount of things. We were walking on the walkway by the harbor in downtown Victoria and we heard a guy playing guitar so we decided to check it out. I knew the song right away! It was Johnny Cash, Folsom prison blues..it had that train sound to it..i love Johnny! We stood there in awe of how good this guy was! He sang the song and than he finished. We started talking to him and he told us his guitar case was behind us if we wanted to put any money. We weren't really carrying any money but Jake spoke up and said" we don't have any change but would you like some socks?" The guy replied back with saying "oh no its ok i'm trying to get off the socks". It was quit hilarious, he was quit the funny guy saying jokes lol. So we started talking a bit more and we were saying how we are from a bible college. He asked us if we were christians and we said yea fore-sure we are. Than the big question came up "why, why do you believe in God?" WOW.  talk about a million things running through your head thinking wow how can i sum up how i believe in God or explain it :S I started praying in my head asking God to give me the words to say, i wanted to say something but i had no idea what to say. I just kept repeating in my head ok God show me what you want me to say, tell me, i want to tell this man about you. All of a sudden i start talking and telling this guy about God. It was incredible, i started telling him how not enough people in this world show people love. This world has abused what love is and should be as people. I related back to how earlier in our conversation he talked about a catholic priest who has done wrong in the past by molesting boys and how can a God let that happen...i said to this guy about this topic that God does not like that, he did not intend for that to happen and that is sinful and im sorry for these people that have abused what christians should be representing and that he see's these "christians" acting that way. I told him that, that is from the devil those wicked things...i went on to say that us coming out here today is us showing people love, more like God's love and how we could be on our computers just sitting there all day and being lazy but we chose to come out and get to know people and hang out. I had sad a bit more but i can't remember everything, all i know that those words defiantly did not come from me. Yes physically they did but God spoke through me to say those words to this man that was confused and curious about God. We talked to this man for a little bit more and it was really sweet. As we were walking away me and Jake and Amelia started talking and they were like Alivia oh my goodness what you said was incredible, and we just thought of how it was so God in all of it and i was defanantley like yea i really just spoke and the words came out lol It was the most humbling experience!

CHURCH :)

Church is going really well! On wednesday was games night and dress up night! We just hung out and had LOTS of fun! We played musical chairs, hot potato we decorated pumpkins

to throw onto a target! Musical chairs was hilarious running around with all the kids! Some of their costumes were crah-azy! One girl had these fake teeth that had blood when you bit down ha it was cool!                                   

We decorated our pumpkins and than all the leaders threw them backwards over this railing and tryed to get them on a target BUT it was much harder than it seems! Here is a 

<--picture of Maylane trying to throw her pumpkin over, it was really funny! I went to throw mine and all my girls were screaming "GO ALIVIA GO ALIVIA" haha i had an awesome crowd! :) IT was such a fun night getting to know the kids even more and just pure hangouts were awesome! As for sunday i helped out with sunday school and it was really sweet! We played a few games and than talked about peer pressure in life and a few different things. There was this kid nick and a piano and he was playing and he was really sweet! I'm defiantly really liking my church and the kids are so sweet! I love just hanging out with them and talking with them! 

Me and the girls that go to Warmland Church dressing up for Youth on Wednesday :)

Homework oh dear!

Other than that this week has been filled with SO MUCH HOMEWORK and a course called hermeneutics! We learned about how to read the bible and had a good time asking questions and reading the bible and analyzing it! We had assignments every night due for the next day which was so much to do on top of our other homework due for other courses! I definitely pulled an all-nighter....ha it was so crazy but so worth it to get lots of homework finished and get a HUGE paper finished! 

sooo that is all for now im off for roomie night :)

Love Alivia!

Me loving surfing! Wish i was back there! This photo was taken on my disposable water camera surfing last month!