"Every man dies, but not every man truly lives."

Am I really here? Every day I look around and have to pinch myself because I seriously live at the intersection of heaven and earth; dreams and reality. Blessed doesn't begin to describe my current circumstance. Spending every day of this precious thing called life with the people here is a privilege far beyond description. And then to think of every day I have spent with all of you...of course my life would not be what it is without you all!
God is so ridiculously in love with and pursuit of all of us. I have spent the last 30 hours just trying to understand the gospel. It's been insane. I have been reading about all the crazy specific laws and guidelines for the Temple in the Old Testament and talked about it with one of the School of Biblical Studies students here, and he actually gave me homework! Even weirder--I did it! I read all Hebrews last night and tried to break down the way Christ fulfilled prophecy and why God set it up that way.
Today the pieces that needed to came together and my world came crashing down. The love God has for us is so magnificent that He seriously chose the hardest thing He could think of to do and orchestrated all of history for the completion of that very thing...to not just let the most precious thing to him die, but to suffer...JUST to demonstrate His love for us--it's insane, living, burning, bleeding, causing our world to spin and our hearts to beat. And THEN He gave us the capacity to respond and participate in this Agape* feast with the same bloody, gory Braveheart intensity love.
One of the main reasons I came on this trip was to see what could happen when Jen Hillmann channeled ALL her efforts towards ONE thing instead of ten. Well, little did I know just what capacity my (and everyone's) heart has for full-fledge living-death 100% breathe, sleep, eat, LIVE commitment! Imagine what a wild creation the human heart is. Rarely is it afforded the opportunity to fully engage, but the itmes it does form the common component of all truly great feats of history. It is the well from which all of life springs and whose overflow literally forms our thoughts and words.
Today's exposure to the way God's heart bleeds for me inevitably evoked an eruption of blood and a passion-propelled pulse to break out of this long-awaiting and anticipating heart. Today I experienced a heart fully engaged. Only because it finally found THE worthy impulse. What is this Life we find ourselves in?!
And as far as the outreach goes...can I get a drumroll please...I am headed to Hong Kong, India, Oman, Dubai, Bahrein, Jordan, then Israel! Yeeha!!! We have already started contending in prayer for the people we're going to and our preparations , and hope to start learning as much as we can of Arabic and Islam!
So besides the normal lecture listening, bathroom cleaning, car washing fun and spending so much treasured time in the written Truth, we got to go climbing and caving last weekend at a world-famous climbing hot spot called Castle Hill and through a 45 minute-hike underground cave called Cave Stream. It was crazy beautiful. And a girl from the other school here and I hitchiked to the beach the next day. We rode with some high school punkrock locals, some wild food fest attendees, an Oxford team cricket player, and a member of New Zealand Parliament!! And we are supposed to go surfing tomorrow. Funny but this is actually the less exciting stuff compared to what I am learning and all the Truth I'm experiencing! But it is pretty SWEET AS to realize I am totally on an island on the underside of the earth hangin in treehouses and hearing accents from all over the world every day!
FUN FACT: New Zealand is the farthest place from Israel in the world...."From the ends of the earth they will praise your Name." Yeah baby! Heaps of love and blessings!

*Agape is the Greek word used to describe the highest form of their four classifications of love, a self-sacrificing love.