Youth Street went very well saturday. Went to the skate park and attempted to skate board lol. Didn't do to bad :) Wiped out a few times and realized my body is used to taking that kind of punishment anymore so i decieded to call it quits. Saturday night we just hung out in the house and made food and watched King Arther....which I highly recommend! Sunday I walked downtown to a market where they had all kinds of good stuff ... great gift ideas :) I then proceded to walk to the beach. It was such a beautiful day...I took some good videos but I cant upload them to this blog or facebook because the internet here is to slow. I'll try sometime there isn't a lot of people in here. Im not looking forward to exersize tomorrow lol but it is what it is lol

God Bless, Colton

So its Saturday here in Townsville! Im taking my youth street group to the skate park this afternoon. Which should be pretty interesting, I havnt been on a skateboard since maybe middle school haha. Tomorrow is the day for the beach! Some of the guys are trying to catch a ferry over to an island that has 12 or 13 nice beaches. One of our staff members was going to take us over at some point this DTS so i'm not going to spend the money on a ferry. There is something very important im going to buy when I get home ;) Things are going very well thus far. I dont know if I said this before but im not cut out for being away from home this long. I have to say I am ready to apply the this i've been learning on outreach. Although we don't know where it will be im very excited.

God Bless, Colton

I didn't have to go the ship today either. This will be a good day to get some clothes washed. This morning was a lot better than yesterday. Thank you everyone for the prayers :) Tonight we have outreach prep at 7 30 pm.

God Bless, Colton

Well today i didnt have to go the ship! Which they only told us 30 minutes before we had to leave. It was nice because i really didnt want to be here today. You have to do things you don't want to do sometimes i guess. I really didnt want much to do with anyone today...why? who knows. I just wasnt feelin any of it. We'll see how tomorrow goes lol.

Well today i sept in till 8 lol....we had a dance party last night at youth street after all of the proformances were over. So everyone slept rather well. After breakfast I walked over to the mall to finish up some homework. Everyone and their brother was at the cafe and the mall has it so I thought what the heck. I was there till about lunch time then we went over to a staff members house to swim in there pool which was nice. We are having fish and chips tonight for dinner :). The food here is great! They try and mix it up and try different things. We had a mexican theme the other night and had rice that I thought was kinda cardboardish lol but hey nothing is perfect. I dont really like mexican food anyway. All in all it was a very relaxing day and I feel like im ready to start another week of lectures tomorrow. As far as pictures and videos go, I have been taking a good bit of videos with the camera my friends got me. The internet here is pretty slow and there are usually a lot of people in the cafe using it so I dont think I will be able to upload my videos to facebook. I did save them to my laptop for when I come home.

God Bless, Colton

The past two days i have working on the medical ship. It was given to Ywam and they have been traveling the coast and giving medical care to indigenous people that wouln't be able to get it otherwise. I have been using a grinder to take paint off hand rails. Some other people are following me with primer. Tomorrow night we will be taking over the Youth Street ministry.  Kids from around Townsville come and we teach them games, sing songs, and just hang out. Sunday is our day where we don't have any responsiblilities. A bunch of us are going to walk over to the beach for the day sunday. We have a book report that is due week 6 of our DTS so that should be interesting. I am going to try to get that finished as soon as possible, so I think I will take to the beach with me tomorrow.

God Bless, Colton

Well we are still in the orientation stage of the DT S and I am already learning a lot about myself and who God wants me to be. I realize that I really couldn't grow closer to God until you become stripped away from all the crap in my life. We broke into small groups and it's one of the greatest feelings in the world to know your brothers and sisters in christ have your back. I have been starting to do quiet time every morning before breakfast. It's been amazing to go through the bible and discover new things that I never realized was there. One example being the story of David and Goliath, 1st Samuel 34 through 37. Basically Saul tells David that he is to young to kill Goliath. David replys by saying " I have been keeping my fathers sheep. When a lion or bear came and carrried off a sheep from the flock, I went after it, struck it and rescued the sheep from its mouth. When it turned on me, I seized it by its hair, stuck it and killed it." He then went on to say that the Lord rescued him from the lion and the bear and he would rescue him from Goliath. What it mean is when we are faced with something we need to speak out the time the lord has delivered us from and he will give us the strenght to face what is in front of us. It really hit me and I would never have got that if I was just flying through the bible trying to finish the story.

Things are still going great. They say that after five months of going through and DTS together that it's the equivelant of three and a half years of friendship. I think they're right... even after a week I feel like I have known some of these people for my whole life. Its obvious I am going to have life long friendships with these people.

I hope everything is going well and I miss all of you!
God Bless, Colton

Today went well... Some people from the community meet here at the base for there church service. The paster this morning talked about the woman in the bible who gave everything she had to the church. He went on to say that jesus never said to her that she shouldn't give because she had so little, but he made an example of her and taught people that it's not about how much we give but where our hearts are. Where are money is, that is where are heart is. I am a firm believer in the saying "you get what you give". At the same time we need it needs to be for the right reasons, not because people are watching.  Today I got a chance to see how much money was sent to ywam and how much more I need for outreach and I was blown away! The amount of support and prayer I have recieved is unbelieveable! Thank you all so much :) Tomorrow breakfast starts at 6:45 and then we will all meet together around 8 to start our day. Its funny because I am actually looking forward to blogging about my day tomorrow :)

God Bless, Colton

Today is Orientaion Day!

Well took a 45 minute walk with some of the other students down to the beach.... long walk but man was it worth it. Everything is beautiful and it was so clean. There is a big hole in the ozone here so I made sure to put plenty of sunscreen on. After we sat on the beach for a little bit we laid behind the beach under some palm trees. So every saturday night we do this thing called youth street. They bring in city kids and we have games, music, and drama. The kids love it and I met this like 16 year old girl named Holly. She was so full of energy and absolutly loved life. I took out my laptop and she saw my backround picture which is of my girlfriend and I in NY. She freaked out and said how beautiful she was and she asked how long we were together. I told her a couple couple months and she proceded to introduce me to her boyfriend. She said they had been together for two years... i was shooked but i heard that's how it is here. Nothing like in the states where kids date just to date lol. Today is orientaion day which means we are going to find out all the details of what we are going to be doing. Im very excited to getting this show on the road :)

Oh and I am pretty homesick. I miss my girlfriend, parents, cortney and her family, and friends. I think it's because I have a lot of down time right now. I am very excited for school to start monday but it is going to be intense im sure. I would have as much time as I do now for things like this but i will do my best. The staff here are very up front and idk "in your face" about asking and confronting you about where you are with God. It's not a bad thing at all and I dont mind it what so ever. Im just really excited to see how deep we go in our relationship with God in this first few weeks. Should be quite the experience :)

Slept well last night lol.... we had a time of worship and i had a hard time keeping my eyes open after like a half an hour.  It wasn't because it was boring though. Its was actually very cool, we sang about God opening up the heavens and raining down on us. No lie about half way through it started to storm... it had been the first rain in about two months I heard one staff member say. This morning I woke up around 5:30. I walked outside to brush my teeth and one of the staff members ask if I want to go for a hike to the top of Castle hill. I said I would and I didnt regret it. It was beautiful, we had a great view of townsville and I got to know more of the students. Everyone is so nice and we all have the attitude that we are going to get to know each other so well and have lifetime friendships with each other. After lunch some of the students and I will be heading down to the mall. After that we will be heading down to the "strand" which is the beach to all my American followers haha. Thanks again to everyone who is following and agian I am so excited for you all to follow me on my journey

God Bless, Colton

I Have Arrived!

I arrived in Townsville, Australia about 2 hours ago. I think I spent 22 hours on a plane in the last two days. We didnt have any layovers either so we went from one flight to the next. There is a lot going on here... there are other students here doing different DTS's.  Its in the high 80s, beautiful sunshine, and a great breeze. Some people might call it perfect.... I would be one of those people lol. I will be living in a house with about 20 other guys. I am on the first floor where there is aircondition. Greatt part about that is the staff had picked our bunk assignments out before we arrived so I guess I got the luck of the draw :). The staff members said we can really do whatever we want untill sunday at 3....then we belong to them lol. Everyone is super nice here, very laid back which I will love. It is about 4:30 pm here so we'll see if I post another tonight. I'm excited for all of you to follow along with me on my journey :)