Still not burnt !

Hallo hallo hallo!
I have now been here for over a week but it feels like so much longer! We are settling down into more of a routine and this summer’s theme is “At All Costs” and we will be studying the book of Philippians. It’s amazing how God answers prayer and meets our needs, I will be helping out here with media stuff, taking pictures, writing on the Project blog (http://stp.cominneapolis.org/blog/ ), uploading pictures and they have a budget for someone to do that so that is going to provide money for the rent here! So when everyone else is working I will be doing that and in the afternoons I am going to AiT (Athletes in Training) with some other students. We have been twice and at the start there is a short devotional and then we train (an hour of sprints, or agility and then another hour of lifting as they call it here (=weights)) and then at the end we have a time of prayer focusing on our teams back home or our own lives. It is making me realize that God is to be a part of all my life, including sports! So a normal week looks like this:
Monday: Work in the morning, AiT (2.00-5.00) and at night there is a talk on the theme (At all Costs)
Tuesday: Work AM, AiT PM, Team time (see previous post) and then the discipleship groups at night.
Wednesday: Rest in the morning, Evangelism training and beach evangelism in the afternoon and then time off in the evening.
Thursday: Work AM, AiT PM and the Project Social of the week
Friday: Bible Study Training in the morning and work in the afternoon and evening.
Saturday: Rest in the morning or evening and work in the afternoon and either morning or evening.
Sunday: Life Training and then Church, Rest in the afternoon and an optional time of praise and worship and then theology time at night.

Basically, we have been told that the teachings will be like us drinking from a water hydrant, you just have to open your mouth wide and gulp quickly and process things as much as possible here, but August will be a month of processing and going through everything. What has impacted me this week is the fact that the life offered to us by God is like a treasure, it is a banquet that we are invited to! But there are costs, our attachment to what we love (prestige, following your own impulses, your own “goodness” for example) has to be severed so that we will come to the banquet. But the cost of losing these things is not to make us miserable but to give us a life full of joy! Another illustration I loved was the idea that God’s grace and all he has done for us is like a swelling, overflowing river. What do you do with that? To try to impress God with how good we are is like lugging buckets of mud and pouring them as an offering into the river. God doesn’t need us, he bids us to come, stick out faces in the river and drink. He loves to do the rescuing and the giving – when we are happy in God, he is glorified.