UnSettled.

I was beginning to worry about what to write in this entry. I've been here for 6 days now. I only had my first lecture today. The past week has been spent mainly getting 'settled' into the house, getting to know the people in the house that will soon be considered family, and going through manuals and orientating ourselves on what YWAM is. This last week has been tough. Tougher than I would have expected. At first, it was fine. I was sufficiently distracted. But slowly it is hitting me: I'm half way around the world, and it will be that way for a long time. And it has been the reason why I don't sleep at night, or why my appetite has suddenly disappeared. But last night, as I was talking to friends back home, one of them said something during goodbyes that really caught my attention.

'Enjoy being on the mountain.'

Here I am, given an experience that most people will never have. I am in a foreign country, with a house full of awesome, amazing God-loving people who coincidentally have the same taste in music as me, seeing beautiful things, doing awesome stuff, and all I can do is look behind me or look far off into the future. I spend all my time thinking about the journey up to this point, or thinking about what I'm going to do when I get down the other side. But what about right now? Right now, I'm at the very top of the mountain. The view is (apparently) breathtaking, but I'm not looking at the view, am I? I want to enjoy this part. I want to sit back, breathe it all in, drink up everything Ireland has to offer me; I want to marvel at the beauty and potential that Youth With A Mission is offering me. I want to enjoy being on the mountain. So this leads me to my first prayer request! That I would enjoy the view, and not spend my time looking down, when I could be looking up.

Cheers!

[ PS - Eventually, I will get around to actually telling you all what I'm doing with my time and what I'm learning and such, I promise! Once lectures start picking up and local outreach gets up and running, I'm sure it'll be far more interesting than the 7 hours of mind-numbing child protection videos and the foundational values of YWAM... although the latter is great, ha! ]