Eventful Times

This is a picture of a statue next to a war memorial in the village...I thought it was beautiful! :) Alright! So this week we have a guest speaker, Mike from Northern Ireland, who is teaching on the Father heart of God. Although...I wouldn't really call him a teacher, but instead a story teller :) This week has been so much fun! Mike has the most amazing stories about how God has provided, protected, and given him opportunities to minister(Sometimes all 3 at once haha). He was raised in Zimbabwe so most of his stories come from there and all of them are fascinating! He is brilliant at giving practical examples of how the Father loves us and it has been truly eye opening and a lot of fun. I don't feel like I'm going to class but instead to a fun story time :)
This last weekend we went out to Glasgow on Saturday and did some shopping and went out for pizza hut. On a side note, the people here have a terrible idea of what toppings on a pizza should be! We asked for pepperoni and olives and we got barely any pepperoni and one olive per slice. It was sad :( Not to mention that the pizza hut didn't have ranch...another disappointment for Kari and I lol. Then on Sunday I went into Largs by myself to go to the Charity shops. I didn't find much but while I was waiting for the train I got to strike up a conversation with a sweet lady, Rita, and talked with here for about 30 min. It was so awesome to meet a local and just chat with her :) And she told me I had a lovely accent which I found quite comical haha.
Other than that things around here have been quite normal. We have our midterm outreach coming up, and my team has decided to go to a place in Scotland called Benbecula. It is waaaaay in Northern Scotland and is actually an island. I am told it will take about 12 hours to get there. That was actually a moment where I realized the huge culture difference because all the Americans in my group shouted "ROAD TRIP!!! :D :D and the others said something to the effect of..."uuugghh" haha! I can't wait I hear it is beautiful there. Today we had our local outreach in Largs. Hannah and I went on a walk together around the town to try and meet some people. Hannah smiled at one man and he actually stopped and commented on what a lovely smile she had. We were so happy we stopped to talk to him, and then he asked where we were from. The moment Hannah said we were from the States this man had such a look of hatred in his eyes...it was shocking. He said that he was completely anti-America and if there was one rouge nation it was America and stormed off. We were so shocked...it broke my heart that this man could so quickly hate us after he was so willing to be friendly just because of where we were from. We wanted to find him again and ask for forgiveness for whatever or whoever made him feel that way but unfortunately we didn't see him again :( It was such an eye opening experience to be on that side of such a hateful prejudice. We spend some time after that praying for him while we walked around the town. Near the end of our time in Largs Hannah and I decided to go to the store so I could get some carrots for the ranch dip my mommy sent me (Thank you Mommy!) and we would up chatting with this older gentleman, James, for about 40 min haha! When I asked him if there was anything we could pray for him about he immediately started going off about how religion was a joke and if God loves us than why does he allow so much pain and actually went so far to tell me that my savior would not save me if I was about to be hit by a bus...which I thought was an interesting example lol. Hannah and I got to discuss this in a little detail but every time we would make a point he would change the subject. In fact Hannah and I said very little which led us to believe that James just needed someone to talk to...which was completely confirmed because we tried to leave at least 15 times (our leader was outside waiting for us to go back to the base) and he would just keep talking about the poor road systems and how alcoholism is a huge problem haha. It was sad we had to leave because he was such a nice man who just wanted time but in the end Susan(our leader) had to come and pull us away because James kept on talking even while we were walking away...it was sad but I'm glad God blessed us to be able to meet and talk with him. If any of you could would you please pray for James and the other man we met?
Well that has been my week so far :) Eventful and normal all at the same time haha. Missing you all like always and I will write again soon :) Lots of love and God bless!!!

-Kaitlyn