Hello everyone!
Just wanted to give an update of whats been going on during my DTS in Montana. I arrived on the 15th September and we had a week of orientation where we got to know the other international students and had a chance to recover from jet lag. We have students from South Korea, Germany, Taiwan and Brazil and two from England. The following week students arrived from all over America and Canada. We have had three weeks of lectures so far and each week is led by different speakers on different topics. So far it has been “The God Story” by Trent Sheppard, giving insight to God's character, how relational he is and His story revealed in the Bible. We also prayed about which outreach location that we should go to out of Thailand and Malaysia, Cambodia, India and Brazil. When I was choosing, Cambodia seemed to stick out for me, I asked God for a confirmation and the verse John 14v4 popped into my head, looking it up it said “you know the way to the place that I am going”, I was pretty encouraged by this and felt assured that Cambodia was the right location to go to. Another confirmation was the top I was wearing that week was made in Cambodia!

The Second week was about Relationships with Ron and Judy Smith sharing their experiences and lecturing on what a healthy relationships look like. They talled about relationships between us and God, us and our parents, relationships between partners and about singleness. Ron Smith helped set up the School of Biblical studies here in Montana and inspired us with different ways that the Bible can. One way, which I had never tried before, is to read a whole book in one sitting, so the following Saturday a group of about 10 of us read through Psalms from start to finish, it took about 6 hours! Pretty hardcore but a great way to get a grasp of the whole book.

(DTS Classroom)

Last week (wk3) Mike Philips spoke to us about “Hearing God's Voice”. This week David Graham, who founded the Montana base in 1985, is speaking on the “The Father Heart of God”. In between lectures we have tracks where we pick an area that interests us and can be used to reach out with the Gospel to others. The options were; dance, music, sports and art and photography. I chose sports track. We get to play different sports, learn how to coach them and also give our own testimonies so that we can do a mini kids sports camp in November with local Montanan Kids and perhaps go on to do more sports ministries in the future. So far we've played ultimate frisbee, frisbee-golf, relays, blindfolded soccer-baseball and basketball. We're also involved with reffing and scoring for the base volleyball leagues, so last week I had to umpire volleyball for the first time. Pete's teaching us cricket on Friday, representing the British sports!
We also have work duties in the afternoon to help keep costs of running the base down. For me this is cleaning the guys toilets, not my favorite thing!lol. We have small groups on Tuesdays and Thursdays where we can discuss what we're learning. I've visited different churches on Sundays and this week we have to pick one to go to, so that we're not “church hopping”. Other activities have included, Welcome to Montana night, where we dressed up like the local Montanan population, (See attached photo: my dungarees and blacked out teeth managed to win a $5 cafe voucher?!) Swing dancing, jumping in freezing lakes, trips to dairy queen-ice cream parlor, 15 aside soccer, cold showers, boutique fashion shows and community meetings with intercession times. So they're keeping us pretty busy!
I've got a laptop here now so can hopefully keep in touch a bit more, miss you all!
Love Emily
xxx

Prayer Requests
-Health-That my cough would finally go as I've been on two sets of antibiotics over the past month (the last one ended up giving me hives towards the end of the course!) and now my cough has come back.
-That I would settle into the routine- of lots of hours of lectures.
-Time to rest and get the essentials done.