The Blessing of Obedience

I wanted to share with you all a very interesting experience I had this afternoon.  I had noticed a friend of mine was working on a paper, and she had asked me if I could answer a questionnaire. I saw it was a mass email, so I decided to wait and respond until after InsideOut.  

Much to my surprise today, I saw that the questionnaire was concerning our views on abstinence before marriage.  In the world we live in today, I realize that I am one of very few who believes in waiting until marriage.  Out of the few that believe in it, I was one of the even fewer who (by the grace of God), was able to wait.  

It was such an enlightening experience to be able to explain on my questionnaire the benefits of waiting until being in a committed marriage relationship to explore those levels of intimacy.  Working through her questionnaire, I really was able to see and explore some of the many benefits Matt and I have experienced due to waiting until marriage.  Even today, almost six months later, I'm so thankful we made that decision...and I'm even more thankful for the accountability of a few friends who stuck with us through our dating and engagement seasons.  Furthermore, I'm just thankful to God for giving us the grace and means (even if that meant living across continents) to live out what we believed was the right thing in our hearts.  

I can't even begin to explain to people the firm foundation that abstinence prior to marriage sets for couples.  Maybe this is something that people are familiar with, but for me, it didn't truly make sense until I was on the other side of the fence.  I wish that I could have understood prior to marriage the positives...I'm sure I would have been even more careful in guarding my purity...but I must say, God's Word is spot on in why it begs for people not to engage in what it labels as sexual immorality.  I can truly say with confidence that God wants this act to stay in marriage because it is such a blessing on us if we wait.  

I have a hunch that my experience with abstinence and purity will be similar with other commands that God gives.  They may not make so much sense now, but once I get to the other side of the fence, I will experience blessing beyond measure.  

It's moments like these that define my paradigm and relationship with God.  It makes sense that God credits our faith to us as righteousness...because, faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see."  If you love someone, you trust them, even when what they ask of you doesn't quite make sense.  What better way to manifest our love towards someone than trusting them over all others?  

To keep it organized (which I fail to do when I blog), I am going to number the big points of interest over the last month.  Then you can pick and choose what is important for you!

1) InsideOut:  It went really well!  We had it on the 16 of October and launched our small groups that week.  I am working with my friend Tamara with the grade 10-12 girls.  It was really awesome to get to know them a little better, and I look forward to working more with those girls in the coming years.  The crazy thing was that we had 23 grade 10-12 boys!  Typically, youth events have more females than males, but that hasn't been the case with us.  It's really awesome to see a significant portion of those young men excited about deepening their relationship with Jesus.  I can't even begin to imagine the positive influence these men will have on their future families if they continue on this road.  It's such a blessing to be the means that God is using to guide these teenagers.  

We also did a hip hop dance at InsideOut that my friend Brendon and I choreographed.  There were five of us.  We began working on this dance in August, so it was nice to see the fruit of our labor.  Lots of positive feedback came from that.  

The last thing was our fashion show that we did.  It was absolutely hilarious!  We had all the teens bring in their old clothing and we dressed our small group leaders up and paraded them through the building.  We're donating their clothes to an organization called The Warehouse.  It was a great way to help those who have little but also have fun in the process.  

We have our next InsideOut the 13 of November!

2) Books:  Matt and I have found something more engrossing than the internet or the television...Ted Dekker's Circle Trilogy.  They're just impossible to put down.  I just finished the third book in the trilogy only to find out that there is actually a fourth book (a prequel).  The books, although their fiction, really focus on the idea that just because one cannot see something does not mean that it is not there or that that unseen thing cannot have effects.  I love the line at the end when the protagonist says, "The battle over flesh and blood cannot compare to the battle for the heart."  For me, it helped me especially in considering the afterlife, since the concept of death scares me so much!  Anyway, they're not the most profound books in the world, but certainly entertaining!

3) Musings:  I've been thinking about pride a lot lately...where and how it manifests in my life, how to subdue it, how it affects my relationships with others.  Frankly, it's just mind-blowing how sneaky pride can be.  Pride can look like fear or insecurity, or it can look like something really good, too!  I was reading about Saul and his decision to disobey God and not kill all the animals in Amelek in 1 Sam. 15.  God had told him to "Go and strike Amalek and devote to destruction all they have.  Do not spare them, but kill both man and woman, child and infant, ox and sheep, camel and donkey."  But Saul decides to leave the best animals alive and sacrifice them to God.  Samuel comes in and sees what is happening and is just like "Saul, what are you doing?!  This is not what God told you to do."  After a little banter, Samuel says the line we've all heard, "Has the Lord as great delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices as in obeying the voice of the Lord?  Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, and to listen than the fat of the rams. For rebellion is as the sin of divination and presumption is as iniquity and idolatry."  I'd never really taken that in context before to try and understand it, but what I really gleaned from my reading is that on the outside, Saul's decision didn't look like a bad one.  In fact, it looked like a logical, wise decision.  It looked like he had the best intentions in mind (the people will be happy with my decision, God gets sacrifices, everybody wins).  But in fact, it was the opposite of what God had asked him to do.  And that all goes back to pride, because pride is thinking that we know better than what God says for us to do.  I couldn't help but think of all the times that I knew what I was supposed to do (be patient, rejoice, don't grumble, consider others better than myself, pray), and yet I try to reason with God and say, "But God, your commands are really illogical; I think my plan of how to deal with this situation is better.  In fact, it's probably wiser."  When I really got to the root of it, I realized that all of that inside of me was just pride.  So, I've been thinking a lot about this lately and praying that God reveals to me areas of pride in my life.  It's just not healthy to have that pride, and it really seems to hinder what God wants to do with us.  

Anyway, that's about it on this side of the ocean.  InsideOut, Ted Dekker, and pride.  And that, ladies and gentlemen, has filled my life for the past few weeks!  Hope everyone has a splendid day.  And all of my friends in America, go look at the trees as they change colors for me and enjoy them!

Update from Whale Hunting

After looking on the horizon for a few minutes, we saw an amazing show from a whale.  He was far away, but he was jumping out of the water and making huge splashes!  It was AMAZING!  We went to this awesome Deli called the Olympia Cafe and went window shopping.  I saw these really cute dresses for like R500, and I kept reminding Matt that I would like a new dress for Karis' wedding.  Haha, we'll see...I'm not sure how keen I am about spending R500.  The dresses had this sweet, vintage look; maybe I can make one for a whole lot less ;)

Anyway, today has been a day of cleaning.  Sometimes I feel like I'm Susy Homemaker meets Nancy Drew.  Like, I really have a desire to have a nice, cute, home, but I totally was cut out for something more mind-boggling, like solving mysteries.  But actually, I really like my style of my house.  It's very simple...no frills...just the basics.  It's easier to clean that way.  The less things you have, the less you have to dust.  Plus, I imagine there was a day where Nancy decided it was time to hang up the magnifying glass and go ahead and tie the knot with Ned.  It's just, as I so poignantly read in Ecclesiastes, that there's a time for everything...and it's my time to CLEAN and not solve mysteries.  

So...I'll keep you posted.  We're going on a retreat tomorrow, so I'll let everyone know how that goes!  

Have a delightful day!

I thought I'd share with you all a quite humorous story that happened yesterday.  

Sunday morning is the day that we have to wake up at 5:15am to set up for church.  Since our entire church is portable (meaning we don't own the venue; we rent it), we have to set it up every Sunday.  It's not like America where there's acres of unused land where you can just purchase, chop down some trees, and up goes a church building.  When one outgrows their previous venue, there's really few options available as far as expansion goes.  So...we rent, meaning we take about 2 hours to set up everything, run sound check, do a run through of the service, have breakfast, and then do the service.  Then, after service is done, we take it all down again and pack it away until the next week.  

That being said, it is quite important that we start on time, specifically in Matt's case, reason being that Matt has the only key to the store room where all of our decor and equipment is.  Well, as usual, Saturday night, we set our alarm, go to bed at the late hour of 9:45, and snooze away.  The next thing I remember was Matt's cellphone alarm going off, only it wasn't the alarm, it was someone calling him.  As I opened my eyes, I saw that the sun was up.  You know that horrible feeling you have when you put 2 and 2 together and realize, "Wait a second!  The sun isn't supposed to be up when I wake up!"  It's like the pleasantries of waking up to the sun only to realize two seconds later that you were supposed to be up a LONG time ago.  That all went through my head in about a half of a second, followed by Matt saying, "Rachel!  It's 6:15, we overslept!"  The guys from church were calling us wondering where we were, waiting for the key to the store room!  Oops!  Needless to say, we got ready at hyper speed, probably quicker than ever before on a Sunday morning.  

All was fine, but it was just one of those mornings where you have no idea how you overslept, but you did.  

Anyway, Matt and I are going to go on an adventure today to search for whales!  We saw some yesterday but they were very far away; hopefully today we get a better view.  

Also this week we're going on a retreat to learn about how to be better Small Group Leaders!  We're very excited about that!  And then next week, we start training our InsideOut Small Group Leaders!  Lots of exciting plans on the books for Matt and myself.  We will continue to update!

More pots later...I have some good ideas for posts brooding in my brain, and I'm sure I'll have some exciting stories after today's adventures!  

Rainy day in Cape Town

Well, today is yet another rainy day in Cape Town.  Winter is like that house guest that overstays its welcome, and just when you think it's about to get up and leave, it's actually only going to get another cup of coffee and sit back down for a while.  :Sigh:  

I've been blog hunting lately, looking for exciting blogs that exist out there.  The concept of blogs is so fascinating, I think.  There's so many sorts out there with so many different purposes, and for some reason, I find it just as fascinating to spend my time getting in the mind of these people that I hardly even know!  Lately, I've been looking at these new mother blogs (NO, I'm not pregnant, just to clear the air) just to kind of get a fresh perspective of what it is like for different people to take on the decision of starting a family.  It's quite interesting because my perspective has broadened concerning parenthood.  I found a quite interesting blog that chronicled the story of a woman named Angie (she's married to a guy in the band Selah), and her battle as a mother to decide whether to take her child to full term or not.  The child had an oversized heart among other problems, meaning that it would die at birth.  Anyway, she's a very colorful blogger.  I found her story quite interesting and thought maybe some of you all would, too.  Here's the link: http://www.audreycaroline.blogspot.com/

There's a link near the top that you can click on to start at the beginning of her story.  The first entry is just mind-blowing.  

Anyway, I've found that it is so important to use time in a way that would honor God.  When school, jobs, and other responsibilities aren't breathing down your neck and pushing me to go further, work harder, and give more, what am I doing with my time?  How can I use my gifts when I don't feel like anybody out there is really cheering for me, helping me, etc.?  Well, I've always liked music a lot, so I've been working really hard in that area.  Matt has helped me in the area of piano, first and foremost, and I'm playing a lot at church.  I'm not very good yet at this non-classical thing that I'm doing, but I'm certainly getting better.  Southpoint is a really awesome venue for that, because I'm better than just a novice, but I'm not a keyboard extraordinaire.  I have a place that stretches me, but I actually can make some valuable contribution.  

Secondly, I've been spending most of my free time taking up a new musical instrument.  It would kind of be stupid if one was married to an amazing guitarist with amazing, expensive guitars and didn't take their husband up on free lessons.  So, Matt has been teaching me guitar for the last week.  I'm having so much fun.  So far, I've learned 2 bar cords and I can play 3 songs well and I'm onto my fourth (It's kind of hard though because there are 2 bar cords in it, which are hard for my little fingers).  

Anyway, besides music, I've been reading quite a bit, and I'm trying to expand  my conversational Afrikaans phrases.  So, this is my attempt to use my time in a way that expands my knowledge and honors the Lord.  It certainly makes for quite an adventure!

I am so blessed to be living such an adventure of my life.  It is safe to say, even on the dreariest of Cape Town days, that life with Matt is more than I ever could have dreamed...

Thursday Night Cleaning Fest

A normal week for me does not consist of the time to actually clean, so when I do get the time to clean, I pretty much try to get as much as possible done.  

Tonight was one of those nights.  Matt had band practice, I wasn't playing, and I had no plans; therefore, the default plans of the evening were cleaning.  

You'd think that in an apartment consisting of two bedrooms, a bathroom, a kitchen, and a lounge, it would be hard for things to get dirty.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  It's almost like the dirt has nowhere to spread out, so I feel like things get even dirtier!

Now, granted, I don't mind a dirty house...never have never will, but our "situation" makes things a little more acute.  We have white tile floors all throughout our kitchen, hallways, and bathroom.  White tile floors pretty much are magnets for everything gross, nasty, sticky, and everything else.  It doesn't matter how careful you are, it doesn't matter if you haven't been in the house for a week straight...the floors inevitably get disgustingly dirty.  

So, the first thing I did tonight (after I made a batch of banana muffins to surprise Matt) was mop.  But I have this thing about our mop.  I really thing mops are the most disgusting cleaning appliance ever.  Who honestly thought, "Hey, I have an idea!  Let's get a stick and attach big pieces of cloth to the end of it.  Then we'll put it in gross water and use it over and over again to clean our dirty floors! What a sanitary idea"  Now, fellow Americans under the age of 30 who read my blog, I know what you're saying, "What's a mop?  Don't you have a Swiffer Wet Jet?"  The answer in short is, No.  There are kitchen appliances that are rip offs of the Swiffer Wet Jet, but they do not come close.  So, a good, old-fashioned mop it is.  It sits in my bathtub after it's been used, and then when guests come over, it gets moved to the shower.  What else can you do with a mop?  

Anyway, I was not about to go get the disgusting mop, wipe it all over my floors again, just spreading disease every which way, further perpetuating the disgusting damp, filthy, disease-ridden situation.  So, I decided to try something different.  

I don't know if it was any more sanitary, but it certainly was more entertaining.  Basically, the process worked like this.  

1)Throw water all over my floor.

2)Run around my house, sliding around bare foot to spread the water out.  

3)Use my little rubber broom thing to squeegie the water off the floor.

4)Get the disgusting water/hair/crumb pile up with a dishtowel and flush it down the toilet. 

And to dry the floor?

1)Put on a pair of socks

2)Scootch around the floor until it's dry.  

It's quite an invigorating experience.  You almost chuckle to yourself, thinking, "hehe, I probably shouldn't be doing this, but I can, because I pay to live here and no one can tell me what to do!  I'm such a rebel."  This is the extent of my rebelliousness.

And just wait until children.  It will be the most sought after chore in the Hastings Household after I show them how Extreme Mopping is done.  

Anyway, hope everyone is enjoying their week.  If you're bored, try this alternative cleaning method to brighten your day!

InsideOut number 2 and a nice weekend

We had our second InsideOut this past weekend, bringing in 22 new kids and bringing the total kids who attended on Friday up to 55!  Matt is on his way to getting his head shaved.  Everyone who volunteered was very excited about the positive reaction that we've received from IO.  It's a great environment for teens grade 7-12, and not to mention, it's an awesome place to volunteer.  I think our volunteers have had a great time thus far!  (Correct me if I'm wrong :)

One difficult thing that I've found about Cape Town is that Google doesn't bring up as many options of fun things to do as when you're in America.  So, for example, if I type in "cool coffee shops in the Western Cape", I get few cool websites.  So, we kind of have to go by word of mouth to find cool places to go.  Well, today it was 330 pm, and we hadn't left the house yet on our day off.  We saw online that there seemed to be a few cool places on Kloof St.  so we decided to give it a go.  We found this awesome health shop called the Wellness Centre (or something like that), and they have this really cool organic coffee shop in there.  They have this great deal of a slice of cake and a cappuccino or tea for only R20 (which is like $1.50).  So, I got carrot cake and a cappuccino, and Matt got cheesecake and a cappuccino.  It was spectacular and we talked in the little shop for like an hour and a half.  A wonderful way to spend the day.  

We're finally at a point in life where we can begin to explore Cape Town, which has been nice.  When I first got here, I was so busy trying to just emotionally survive and get comfortable in my own skin, I didn't even really want to explore.  Now, I'm just starting to get the itch to see what is all around here in the Western Cape.  

In other news, I got lost in the Waterfront mall and didn't have my phone with me so I couldn't call Matt. Luckily, I saw Johan and Miranda from church and they let me use their phone so I could call Matt and find him.  I got really scared and confused and ended up on the completely wrong side of the mall from where I was supposed to be.  Oops!

Well, if any Capetonians have any cool suggestions of other coffee shops/bookstores/cool places to go and browse around where we won't spend a lot of money, please comment on my blog and let me know!  Otherwise, I'm sure my future posts will be about my exploration adventures!