7 weeks.

7 weeks.
7 weeks since I have laid my feet on American soil.
7 weeks since I have hugged my mom and dad.
7 weeks since I have spoken to my precious nieces and nephew, or laughed with a sister.
7 weeks since I have lived in the mindset of the old Joanna Marie McCormick.

Deep breath. Exhale. Sometimes I feel like I have to remind myself to do that. It feels like the past 7 weeks have gone by in a matter of days. Almost too hard for me to believe that I am far over half way done with the lecture phase of my DTS. Almost impossible to imagine the girl I used to be, but still desperately hard at times to not choose the mindsets I used to live in. New level, new devil - as our speakers have said. Jesus has become so much more to me than I ever imagined He could be, or wanted to be. He has called me out of deep waters, drawn me out of dry deserts, loved me into His presence. It's almost too hard for me to fathom.

Last week our speakers Adam and Shane spoke on the topic of Original Design. Basically this means, teaching us who God made us to be and actually praying over us individually for words from our Father about who we are. Back to basics. Removing all of the wires and bumpers the world has put around us to keep us blocked into a certain perspective and mindset. It was SUCH a blessing.
I won't go into HUGE detail about everything that Adam and Shane spoke over me, but I will highlight a few things to go into.
- They really pinpointed healing hands that God gave to me. I don't know if this necessarily means the gift of healing, but I think a big part of it is the way I love to speak healing words and truth into people. They spoke about how the enemy came at a young age to shame and slap my hands away, but in this time Father is putting His healing hands over mine. I never really realized how past relationships and times in my life have caused me to pull back my hands and stop reaching out, but it was so spot on. Being here has been such a healing time for me to learn how to start speaking into people and letting Father throw the shame the enemy has put into my life out.
- They spoke about how God created me with a personality to rally the next generation and a joyful spirit to make others feel welcome. God has really been pouring joy into my heart since I have been here, really explaining to me about the reasons I have certain emotions. It has been so relieving. The pressure is off of me SO much to have to be sorrowful or cry in certain situations when all I feel is joy! I LOVE THE JOY OF THE LORD!! He has embraced me and remade me!

OK, so that is just a tiny taste of what has been happening. I really want to share with y'all the AWESOME weekend I had two weeks ago here in south island New Zealand.

Kingdom weekend. Sounds legit right? It was. Basically, it was Thursday to Sunday, and two of the schools here headed out in groups of two or three with 30 bucks, only to be used to bless others, no food, no place to stay. You had to hitch rides to a certain location, rely on the Lord for food, shelter, etc.
Catherine and David were my two teammates, so on Thursday we headed out. Previously, our group had prayed and felt that the Lord was leading us to head to the top of the south island to a beautiful city called Nelson. It is about a 6 hour drive, more or less, and that's without stopping. So on our first day, we had two hitches, and we made it all of about an hour away to Amberley. A HUGE portion of the time was spent with a beautiful woman named Mandy. She had a huge heart and the most free spirit I have ever encountered. She was very into spiritual healing, getting in tune with your body, stuff like that. She picked us up, and with a huge grin on her face, she told us she was simply out for an adventure and if we would like to join her, she would take us as far as she went. So the three of us hopped in and headed out for a very unexpected afternoon! She took us to a few beaches, just did life with us. At one point at the first beach, she asked me for a song of thanksgiving, as I had my ukelele with me, and we stood on the shore of the pacific ocean as I had the amazing opportunity to sing her one of the songs I have written with Jesus. SO COOL. David was able to share the Gospel with her (YEAH GOD) and she really received. I could probably spend a huge amount of time talking about her, but for lack of time I will just say this: this precious daughter of the most high King was a DELIGHT and an answer to prayer, and I truly hope that she encounters the amazing love of her Father.
After that, our team felt that we were simply supposed to hike, no hitching. So from Amberley our group set out towards... North. Haha, we honestly didn't actually know if we were even going the correct direction. A man stopped on a dirt road ahead of us, who just so happened to know exactly who we were, what we were doing, how much money we had. He had housed a group of YWAMers the year before and has lived in NZ long enough to know that a group of 2 girls and 1 guy were either YWAMers or poor Kiwis. So he picked us up (right across from a field I had had a picture of the day before) and took us on an errand he was running to an elderly couple in the community, which just so happened to be home to one of the first sailors on the Anastasis, YWAM's first missions ship, and the ship my sister was on at one point! AHHH. From there, we went to the man's home, which housed 7 beautiful bilingual children and a delightful mother! They were of German descent and they were seriously HUGE blessings. They fed us AMAZING German bread and we got to cut down a tree at their house the next day with all 7 children. God really does give some AWESOME opportunities in life :)

The next day our team stood in the middle of Amberley and tried hitching for about a half an hour. After a while, Catherine spoke out a prayer that would turn out to be VERY important and hilarious.
"God, we know you have someone for us specifically to ride with, so would you just make them HURRY up!"
About 5 minutes later an Asian couple visiting from Beijing pulled over. The man was a first time driver on the left side of the road(oh my gosh.) but he was excitedly ready to roadtrip with our group the 2.5 hours it would take to drive up the coast to Kiakoura. People, listen. This man, God bless him, was the SLOWEST driver I have ever ridden with. There were points, driving around the tight curves that take you along the coast, that there would be a line of 5 or 6 cars behind us honking, and I would be fairly certain the car was completely stopped! That's where Catherine's hilarious prayer came in. No wonder it took so long for him to drive and pick us up! He was the SLOWEST driver on the planet!
But the REALLY cool part of this was that Catherine was able to share the story from Genesis to Jesus' resurrection with the couple. He admitted that he had heard a version of the story before, but he figured that because it had passed along the generations for so many years that there must have been huge changes made to the story. Catherine and I spent the rest of the trip really speaking into how much God loves us, just really pouring the love of our Father over Him. He told us that was completely new for him!! After the trip he was very interested in YWAM and Catherine gave him her Bible. IT WAS SO SO COOL! GOD IS SO SO COOL. He received it so well and asked us questions. What a divine appointment, eh?
 I could probably go on and on, like when we prayed all day for a big fish dinner and then our hitch home randomly stopped and bought us all an abundance of fish and chips for our dinner, or when we got to sleep in a church when we were completely homeless because of a random bout of obedience in saying no to a manipulative person who tried to get us to come into a bar with him. But honestly this blog post would be entirely too long so you can ask me personally for some really cool God stories.

I guess more than anything, I want you all to know the change that has taken place in me because of my encounter with Father's love. Because of the abundance of His mercy/grace/love/etc. I want you all to know how good my Daddy is. Having a great Earthly dad can change your life, but man, when you encounter the love of a perfect heavenly father, it changes your eternity. I am so thankful to be here and I want you all to know how much it means to have the support of my loving friends and family back home. I deeply treasure my relationships with you and I am so excited to share more stories of God's faithfulness with you soon, because believe me, there are some big ones coming.