Talofa Family

I am so excited to be connected to wifi so I can update you all. For the past 3 and a half weeks me and my team of 6 girls have been in Samoa! This time has been so sweet learning about Samoan culture, practicing Samoan dances, making new friends from the nations, bringing the light of Jesus to everyone we meet, and so much more. God has been so good to bring me to this beautiful nation where I now have gained more family. Let me just give you an update of our time in Samoa.

Week 1:

The first week we arrived we were coming into the last week of a 3-week celebration.

The YWAM Samoa base was celebrating their 50th year anniversary as a base. We had the opportunity to celebrate with them, watch cultural dances and practices in celebration, worship together, get to know some of the many people there, and try to serve wherever we could.

At first, it was a little difficult trying to help serve when the Samoans were trying to serve us. But with time and building relationship, they understood we wanted to lift the stressful load of serving all week, so they let us. It was very sweet to be able to work alongside the Samoans and partner together to celebrate 50 years of YWAM Samoa.

Week 2:

The Samoans from the base were very exhausted from all the preparing and serving they did the last 3 weeks, so this week was their rest week. It was amazing for them, but difficult for us because there wasn't any ministry planned for our team. They told us to rest, but we were there to help wherever it was needed. In this culture, they would never tell us we needed to help with this or that, but we knew God called us there to help, not rest (for this time). We decided to just start deep cleaning the house we were staying in because it's the place where many teams stay.

We wanted to bless the hospo team on the base, so they didn't have to deep clean anything after we left.

We also showed up to the kitchen because the people on base still had to eat, tried to help cook or clean in the kitchen wherever they needed us. Again, they said they didn't need help, but we could see they were drained. With the direction from the Holy Spirit, we helped anyway. We found jobs to do and through dedication and showing we were willing to wake up at 5am every day to help them, they started to give us jobs in the kitchen. BREAKTHROUGH! My favorite testimony from this week was one day we were helping in the kitchen, and the girls were having a little bit of a hard time seeing the fruit in this type of ministry. We were then helping and one of the Samoan girls that became our friend through this type of ministry asked us if we could help her chop up raw turkey, bones and all.

So, we were hacking and slicing this turkey, but it was slippery, difficult to cut through the bone, and it hurt our hands to chop this turkey up. I was so full of joy, in pain from this turkey because I looked around the kitchen. Some of our girls were outside helping with something else for dinner, and 3 of us inside chopping this turkey with Agnes, our Samoan friend. If we weren't there, she would have to go through this pain of chopping this turkey all by herself and she would've had to do so much more. I saw the beauty in the ministry we were doing to lift this load in the kitchen. And finally, another ministry we did during that week was evangelism. There are 3 other teams on the YWAM Samoa base, so we partnered with them to call some taxis to take us into town for an afternoon of evangelism. We made the students intermingle and get to know the other people of the other teams. They went in teams of 3 (one student from each team) and went into town chatting with people on the street. More on that next week.

Week 3:

This is the week after the rest week, so we were back in motion. This week every morning after breakfast we hopped in some taxis and headed to town for more evangelism! It was very fun and fruitful speaking to people in the streets.

People were very receptive and open to receive prayer. What I love about Samoan culture is they are all about relationship. They love talking and making conversation and us just sitting with people, not worried about the time. The students continued to partner with the other outreach teams, and they all just went for it. I am very proud of my girls for the way they were eager and excited to shine the love of Jesus to all the people they encountered. This week, we continued to clean and bless the base wherever we could. We also had the opportunity to speak and preform a skit at a youth night, Sunday church, and an open-air market. During evangelism we met a girl who was working in a store in town, and we just started chatting with her and she wanted us to then come speak to the youth and that's how we were able to speak there.

God works everything out and plans such amazing things! Hallelujah! At that youth night, the kids were worshipping Jesus with so much love, it was SO beautiful to see, and it really encouraged the girls on our team. The girls spoke at all the events, and they absolutely killed it! Their words were so anointed, and Spirit filled, I'm very proud of them. We performed a skit called "He Lives In You" and it's basically about how God lives in us, and we can share that with others to help other people realize that too. And finally, we learned a Samoan dance with the song title "E Lelei Leova".

Before we left (Monday-Wednesday):

We continued to clean wherever we could and ended up deep cleaning their classroom scrubbing the floors, washing the walls, wiping the windows, scrubbing the tables and chairs, etc. We continued to build more connections with the Samoans through one of their favorite games, pickle ball.

Every night since week 2, I would go out at night to the pickle ball courts and watch them play pickle ball, I was too scared to play. But by week 3 since I had made good friends, they encouraged me to try and play with them. I finally did and was very bad, but it was a way to connect, make jokes, and laugh with them. By this week I was good enough to win (with a good enough partner). Through the weeks we took many taxis into town, and I used those opportunities to chat with the drivers and build connections with them too. They love a good chat and a laugh and prayer towards the end. Monday, we had the opportunity to do hospital ministry. We had no direction from anyone, so we just showed up and started walking around. I felt to not only pray for the patients but also for the workers of the hospital. We prayed for the 3 security guards sitting out front and they were pleasantly surprised we wanted to chat and pray with them. Then on Tuesday we had a debrief with our team.

The 6 of us girls went to a cafe from 1030am-330pm and we still debriefed some more when we got back to base. We were reflecting of our time, what we felt God did during this time, and what we wanted to leave behind and pick up in our next season in Fiji. There were many questions to reflect on but those were just a few. That night, the base put on a celebration for us as a goodbye. There was lots of dancing and laughing, it was a lot of fun. They wanted to give us gifts as a thank you, but they said we could only accept the gift by dancing with the guy that would give us the gift. So, we danced to receive our gift, it was absolutely hilarious.

I'm truly going to miss all the people we met while in Samoa, but I know that this is not goodbye, it's see you later. I loved the culture, dancing, people, and the love that is so evident in this country. But now it's time for a new chapter in our outreach, Fiji! I will write another update either after each location or at the end of our time before I head home. Stay posted, I love you all.

Fa,

Destiny Gentry