love. prevails: why hello there kona :)

so i made it to the big island of hawaii! :) whoohooo! Kona is beautiful and there is so much i want to do here! yesterday was mainly registration and standing in long lines waiting to get our ID pictures taken haha :) later at night a bunch of us girls walked to walmart..ended up being farther than we though my on the way back luckly we got picked up by some fellow Kona ywam staff and piled into their pickup truck. my teamates are awesome and its so fun to put faces to the names i've seen/talked to on facebook. we are already so close and like a family :) today then was more orientation. the hawaiian culture is so neat and i'm excited to lean more about it. this morning we had a hawaiian protocol and we had to "ask permission" to be on the land. all the students gathered and took off our shoes..at the sound of the conch shell we followed some local hawaiians across campus into the main meeting area (ohana court) and they had a ceremony of blessing over us and we presented them with our cultural gifts we brought along with us. and did some hawaiian chants. so cool! i love the culture its really neat and hopefully i can learn some more words other than aloha and mahalo :) after that was more orientation..meeting our PhotogenX school leaders and getting to know the other students.. with all the DTS's combined there are around 41 nations represented! so many different cultures and people gathered in the same place its so awesome..the base is also run in korean so we have a korean translator there anytime someone is speaking which is interesting..kinda makes everything take twice as long haha. tonight we had another ceremony where the hawaiians along with some americans and koreans did different dances from their cultures and a student from each culture represented on base held the flag from their culture. lots of cultural and orientation stuff going on haha. i'm still alittle jet-lagged and very tired so sorry if none of this makes sense :/ tomorrow we will be at the beach all day! thanks for all the prayers and support! they are defiantly felt! sorry i dont have more/better pics..its been so crazy and i havent had time..soon i will have more tho!