My birFday card from my lovely friend, Alicia!



My beautiful friend, Angel and I laughing about....who knows what!



Alyssa (my roommate), Me, and Alicia on my birthday when we ate chips and frosting!


A fun day with me, Sally, and Alyssa at Macca's for 30 cent cones.

As the hair grows...

The past few months have been extremely crazy. I took a two week course in Newcastle, NSW for training and assessment. Now I have finished the lecture part of the course, but still am working on the on the job bit of the course. I am doing this so that I can sign the documentation for our students on the next school.

I also traveled with the current Beach to Bush to a country town called, Chinchilla. It's BY FAR my favourite place in Australia. The people are super nice, the town is adorable, and God is doing SO much there. While we were there we had lectures on worship by a girl on staff and also on the Holy Spirit by a local pastor. Both were excellent and challenged me tremendously. During our stay there the outreach teams split up into their teams and planned religious instruction classes for ages 10-18.

 One session in the highschool the outreach team heading to Saipan performed the life house skit and after they shared a bit about how the skit related to their lives. It was absolutely amazing. I have seen the skit being performed so many times but this time God showed me something completely different. During the part where the main "character" if you will is kneeling on the ground and "Jesus" is holding back all of the temptations and struggles the main character has experience it hit me that that is what we as leaders are supposed to do. We are supposed to fight battles that aren't our so that the ones we are leading can rest. Jesus took the shame, guilt, and sin and FOREVER cleansed us. He held back all the temptations, struggles, and lies that we have ever faced so that we can sit, untouched, rested and choose what we will follow...the crap...or Jesus.
link for the skit... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U3WBvbLDMmI

This season on the centre is a quite one...the Sports and Beach to Bush DTS's are on the road with the running tour and will shortly be leaving for overseas missions. We have taken advantage of only 20 people being on the property to do a little renovation! We have redone the staff room, the library, the cleaning closet, and a few yellow walls in the kitchen! There is also a team of people working on painting the outside of the building. (currently the bottom half is white and the top half is yellow...why was someone obsessed with painting things yellow?!?!) It's been quite some time that it's been needing to get done so it's good that we have a group of motivated and dedicated people who can carry out these work projects.

In the up coming few weeks the new staff will be arriving in Australia to start staff training. We have 5 weeks before the school starts and then it's a full 6 months from there. Our school is currently 10 staff and 16 students. We are praying for 25 students. (please join in on this and tell anyone/everyone to come to australia to do the beach to bush DTS!!) I am EXTREMELY excited about the upcoming school, staff team, and journey God has me on personally.

Last school was all about fighting to be open, sharing with people, and getting through the day...this year I feel like he wants me to go deeper, trust him more, and pour hardcore into others. I cannot even begin to explain the healing and excitement Jesus brings to my life. I feel different. People say that they can see the difference in my eyes and face of how much I am in love with Jesus. I believed them but one day....

I was walking in the grocery store and as I was passing the cheese a man who was in conversation with what appeared to be his son stopped mid sentence and stared as I walked by. For some reason I wasn't creeped out by this obvious action because I just knew he wasn't checking me out. I didn't think much about it and went to find my lost roommate. When we were using the self checkout the same man approached me and said "don't take it weird if I tell you that your face just beams. You passed me in the fridge section and I couldn't help but notice that your face is beaming. It's like you are glowing! I just had to look." I just stood and listened and thanked him...but as I walked out I realised that he had just seen Jesus through me. It was such a cool thing to experience.

This has been a random post but I wanted to let you all know I am still alive, enjoying life in this mission, and learning daily from Jesus!

I miss you all!

Shannon

P.S. I had a fun outing for my birthday with a few close friends. We went out for chips and frosting! I ate the whole tub of chocolate frosting...never again! (:

rivers, roads, rollers.

I am back in the southern hemisphere. It's getting colder at night time.

Around Easter time here in Australia there is a festival called....Easter Fest. All three DTS's (Music Art and Dance, Sports, and Beach to Bush) are away doing performances, serving chai, and evangelizing. There are around 10 people still on base and so this was the perfect opportunity to paint the bathroom. It's been 4 days of tape, rollers, scrapping,fumes, sanding, and loofas.

It went from a gross yellow to Organic rice. It's quite a project. I am covered in paint. I have really enjoyed working with a fellow staff member, Kale, and a mission builder (a 3 month volunteer) Taylor! We've had times to share about what God is teaching us, chat about movies, and reminisce about childhood! (haha)

This next week is going to be cleaning up from the mess I made in the bathroom, preparing a going away party, and planning a love fest. (Graduation dinner/ceremony.)

God told me in worship the other day that I will never wake up to him saying he doesn't have enough love for me today. That was life changing.

But now I need to go grocery shopping. I need to sit down and write a proper blog.

I miss you all. please continue to pray for cancer research and please consider donating on my website.

Bald is beautiful!

I am shaving my head for Children's cancer research on the 11 of March around 1400. I would love for you to come out and watch and please consider donating!!! I have thought and prayed a heap about this and have decided to go with donating my hair and time towards this foundation. https://www.stbaldricks.org/members/profile

Please read more/donate on this website above!

As for being home, it's COLD! I love it! It's been really good to hang out with friends and family. The women's retreat was absolutely amazing and God is continuing thing He was teaching me in Australia through women in America! He is so good. I will update more later, but know that I appreciate all the support I have from yall!

Shannon

The start of something new, feels so right to be here with you.

I am coming home for almost 4 weeks! This will include: visiting friends, hanging out with my family, going on a women's retreat, reporting back to my church, surprises, laughter, and eating. I have come to realization that I love my home/hometown. (weird)

When I come back to Australia in March I will be returning to the position of Hospitality. So far it's been amazing. I made pretzels last week, it was quite an amusing process, but they turned out alright. Some of the staff on the centre have made their own production company and are currently working on their first feature film! With that happening there are long term guests staying in our dorms and guest house along with a DTS of 60+ leaving on outreach AND 2 DTS's start this upcoming Wednesday. Lots of sheet and towel washing for this kid!

There is alot of transition in the air around here. In fact the other day I was feeling as though my heart was going to explode because of nervessness, things to do, and a sense of detactedness. It was so interesting because I didn't have anything to be nervess about or feel detacted about. But I spent some time with Jesus and then asked a friend if I was going crazy! (: It's so cool to experience His peace in times you're freaking out for no apparent reason.

I'm ready to be home but it's a teaser visit, so please keep this trip in your prayers. I would love to see as many people as I can, but my priority is my family and church.

AND...........when I am home I will be shaving my hair. It's down to my waist so I would guess 2 1/2 feet?. Somewhere around there. But around March 13th it will be all gone. I have wanted to shave my head since I was 16 but different things came up and if I'm honest with myself I probably would not have had the guts to rock it. Then when I came back to Australia right before DTS I was going to do it but talked myself out with the typical girl thought "what if I get married, I don't wanna be bald." Then God said to me, "do others have a choice to have hair in significant life events?" Which got me thinking why do I want to keep my hair? God has blessed me with thick,fast growing and beautiful hair, why not donate it who doesn't have that?
After sharing that with a few close friends they suggested "Why not have a fundraiser to shave your head, but also sell it afterwards to make a wig." I asked God about it and he wants me to donate it, but He's okay with a fundraiser.

Why have a fundraiser for shaving my head? Because God has called me into life missions. "Life missions" may be a scary term but in reality that means treating whatever field of work you are in like a mission field. Be that light in the fire department, Doctor's office, or government contracting building! That's what he wants me to do. After the commitment of Basic leadership school there are a few options all which he has given me a passion for...just a few are: going to a birthing attendance school(to be a midwife in developing nations), learning french for a possibly few years in Africa, and going to a bible school for the nations to help develope the ability to share and explain the bible verbally to english second language people.

All of those things cost money so why not combine the desire to donate my hair and the opportunities he has made aware to me?! The money that is raised from shaving my head will go into a savings account to help fund tickets,pay school fees, and provide launguage books.

If you are interested in watch or donating email me at: hugmemore08@gmail.com

I will update pictures of what my hair and life currently looks like! Thank you for reading!

Find Truth from Him, not people.

Graduation of Beach to Bush August 2011!
Sport's ministry in Indonesia!


team bonding in August 2011.

Beautiful Indonesian children!
Chinchilla, Queensland, Australia





Team Borneo on Graduation night! Flood repair in Chinchilla!

Lagi, Lagi, Lagi! (more, more, more)

Hello Folks!

I am back from outreach! I got back into Australia on the 10th but then left for school debrief for a week. Now we are back at base and just had graduation last Friday. It was truly amazing to see a bunch of 17-29 year olds completely transformed! The best part is that God used me and my fellow staff to be apart of that!

I will just give you a brief overview of outreach from my perspective! We were in Indonesia for 4 weeks and Malaysia for 2 weeks. While we were in Indonesia we played with the kids from a local orphanage, did many house visits, traveled into villages, and ran church services.

While we were in the bush villages we had the opportunity to work in a rice field. For about 4 hours we were hip deep in mud pulling weeds and the occasional rice plant on accident! We quickly learned how to avoid falling over and to identify the rice! The rice farmer felt to bless us so we all ate lunch together and during that time he shared that he was a new christian and once he dedicated his crop to Jesus his rice grew more and faster. He shares that with all the fellow rice farmers as a testament of how great our God is!

In the same village the first day we arrived we were walking around the village and went to look at the local church. While we were there children just started showing up by twos and threes. Soon we had probably 20-30 kids sitting around us! We had a guitar with us and so we started singing songs in English and they would sing some in Bahasa Indonesian. We also showed them a skit and played some games. At team daily debrief all the students commented about how even though there was no "planned" ministry for those children they were touched and Jesus moved.

In a different village called Commando, one of the students shared about how God is teaching her to trust and how his is good out side of our situations. Afterwards we had a ministry prayer time and the pastor invited people up who needed healing, 25+ came. people who needed forgiveness/needed to forgive, 35+ came. people who wanted to come back to Jesus, 50 came. We prayed for each of them as a team, but because there is only one translator we had to just trust God we were praying for the right thing. It was very encouraging to trust God and then communicate with the people that they were healed! It just goes to show it's not us who heal but the Lord!

After spending three weeks in the villages we came back to the house we were staying at just outside of town. There we celebrated a team mate's birthday and Christmas on the 24th! On the 25 we surprised the time with small things from their families and some team family time. After a short time we headed off to church for the service and a meal! After the church service we visited 5 more house and had fellowship by eating and talking! The last meal of the day was at the Governor's house. We sat in VIP seating and talked to a heap of people in the social area.

The next day we ate at 6 houses and talked to well over 150+ people. The neat thing about having so many house visits is that the people are from all different backgrounds. Families open up their homes and have food prepared ALL day. One women we visited said a visitor woke her up at 0730 to eat! Back home this would be a problem but in Indonesian the host families feel blessed. It's a very humbling and eye opening experience.

After our 2-day Christmas feast we traveled 8 hours on a bus to Malaysia! There we stayed with a family that hosts YWAM teams quite frequently. We did not have any official plans for the two weeks in Malaysia but almost immediately we saw where we could jump in and help...our host family's (Frank and Belinda) roof! It was leaking and in Malaysia's rainy season this is not helpful. So my handy co-leader set out on a mission for us to finish this project before we left. In the mornings we would clean the house and work on the roof, in the afternoons we had time for Intercession and worship as a team at the house and in the city. We also went into two schools to talk to kids and did 3 youth groups. We attended a Mandarin Chinese church service, where we got to sing in Chinese!!!

As our two weeks rounded up in Malaysia we had a few days to debrief our time in Asia. Some of the highlights was the personal growth in Jesus. One of the students completely fell in love with reading the bible. Every spare moment they would be reading! Another one kept walking out in trust that God has the perfect plan for our lives. Still another walked through a hard, but worth it process of worshiping God in the hard times. And last but not least, this student started believing truth about who his is and where he stands as a child of God! It was incredible to watch this process of growth in each of their lives. The tears, the frustration, the giggles, the joy, and the encouragement from each person on our team was just phenomenal. It warms my heart. (mushing, I know)

Personally, the hardest thing I learned on outreach was trust, both in Jesus and my co-leader. Jesus walked me through believing he loves me. HE. LOVES. ME. Obvious, right? But no! I know I love him...but HIM, the LORD of ALL CREATION LOVING ME, SHANNON BAXTER!?!?! I don't get it. It's been a really cool thing to fall in love with him with none of my girl friends around to go to when I've had a bad day. To spend time with him, to laugh with him, to just sit with him. To enjoy every aspect of life and relationship with him. Coming back to Australia the biggest thing I feel different in from before outreach is my security in my relationship with him. I feel the same comfort-ability and reliability as you do towards someone you've been dating for years. I just really like him. (you're called to love everyone but it's a choice to like them!)

That about sums up our time in Asia! God is moving in Indonesia and Malaysia. Pray for these countries, they need it! They are becoming more influential. Pray that people start to recognize Jesus in these countries because he's already there. (that whole omnipresent thing)

Before I close I would love to give a bit of an overview of the next step. The next 4 weeks I will be working logistically on the YWAM centre in Brisbane. A few of the jobs likely for me to get are, hospitality, kitchen (cooking for 100+), and reception. Along with having a book report and a personal growth plan for the next 5 months.

Then towards the end of February I will be flying home. As of right now I have a ticket to LA. I do not have a ticket from LA to VA though.(which is where I live!) At home I will be sharing/updating my local church, doing some fundraising, and visiting with friends and family. I am the most excited about seeing my family. God has shown me how much I love them and even like them! (:

I am currently in need of approx. $1200 for my ticket from LA to VA and back to Australia.

A few prayer points would be:

a drive to go after Jesus even though it's not "spiritual time"

rest; physically!

clarity for specific areas that need worked on

wisdom and boldness

Thank you so much for reading about my crazy quest! If you have any questions please feel free to email me! I love you all and truly appreciate your support. I will see most of you soon!

Shannon

If you would like to donate you can send check/cash to:

58 Arrowhead Drive

Stafford VA 22556

or pay online directly by:

Bank Name: Commonwealth Bank of Australia

Branch: 240 Queen Street, Brisbane

Account Name: Youth With A Mission Brisbane Inc

BSB: 064 000

Account Number: 12196816

***Please use my name in the reference field and email accounts@goywam.com to advise YWAM Brisbane of your deposit.

or if you would like to write me a letter/send me a package send it here:

YWAM

c/o Shannon Baxter

671 Samford Road

Mitchelton QLD 4053