Orientation Day at YWAM

Today was Orientation Day for Shane and I here in Kona. Yesterday all the students arrived and today we were welcomed in a big way! The Hawaiian people know how to welcome! The Ohana, meaning family, is very important here and we all were welcomed into the Hawaiian ohana and the YWAM ohana. All the talk of family made me think that they were going to make everyone homesick =)

In the morning we had orientation with all 600-700 students. It was a packed crowd! In a few weeks when all the guests arrive to celebrate the 50th anniversary, there will be 4-5 times that amount of people! This place is going to be packed!

Some highlights from this morning were:
- the marine biologist who talked briefly on water safety. My favorite story that he told was of the DTS students who went diving together. One of the girls stepped on a sea urchin. They have venom and the antidote to it is.....urine! Unfortunately, she didn't have to go to the bathroom! She asked her fellow students and only one person had to go to the bathroom. Unfortunately that was a male! So, everyone shut their eyes and did what needed to be done =) 2 years later those two ended up married! That sure made me laugh!
- the worship team was good! We're going to enjoy Monday morning corporate worship of hundreds of people worshiping together each week!
- the talk on preferring one another. It was great that the leadership was so honest and open about the differences between cultures. We have a ton of different countries here which makes for wonderful relationships, lots of learning and some difficulties I'm sure!

In the afternoon we went to our first meeting in our classroom specific to our DTS! There are 35 students in our DTS (from 9 different nations), which is one of the smaller ones and I'm thankful for a smaller number so we can hopefully get to know each other a little better! I think our times in there will be good!

This evening was a big Hawaiian party called The Aloha Welcome complete with Hawaiian dance and all! The best part of the evening was the honoring of all the different countries. They had a video which was of a map of the world and it pointed out all the different countries represented by present students one at a time as a student or staff came up with the flag for that nation. There was fun music and when your country came up, you got to stand and cheer! Shane and I did our best to holler for Canada when it was our turn =) There is a number of Canadians on base here! It was so fun to join together as the Bride of Christ welcoming and blessing one another from so many different countries!

I cheered hard for New Zealand because they are blessed with my sister right now and I got the most emotional about the country of Haiti which I wasn't expecting. It brought tears to my eyes =)

And that's a wrap! Orientation Day complete!