Loving God with all our strength

Wow! I am feeling an overdose of exhaust from today. Both physically and spiritually, but in a good way! This week we have combined classes with the fire and fragrance DTS in the ohana court. There will be a few different speakers, today we had Darlene Cunningham. And one day this week we will have HEIDI BAKER! Yes, the Heidi Baker. I'm stoked.
Here's a few pics to describe my day in a nutshell! Listened to the word, had life changing worship, made water filters under the boiling sun, more worship, and now homework! Weee what a amazing day. Tonight we had worship in the prayer room and God showed himself in a tangible way. I could feel his presence thick in the room. We couldn't help but dance and sing praises at the top of our lungs. I felt the joy joy joy deep down! What an amazing experience, and it's only Monday! Woo this week is going to be a good one.
Until next time-- XOXO

We might have finished last, but we finished strongest!! Definitely learned endurance with making these pipes today. We wanted to give up so bad, but we finished to the end! 

Working hard pumping hard. 

Let's get practical

This afternoon was our first session of justice water classes. Every week we will be learning how to build water wells and filter dirty water to be clean for drinking. This is a practical thing that we need to know so when we disperse into clean water deprived parts of the world we can teach the villages how to filter their dirty water to be sanitary for drinking. It's so simple, we used things like a pipe, sand, rocks, and a jug. More people are dying from contaminated water than in war. We learned the science of filtering water and the simplicity of how to build these filters. It felt so nice to lean something so simple yet genius that will save villages all over! Just a few simple steps and we can have clean water for these people. Next week we will get more into the building and practicing making these filters. So excited there's actually something practical I can do to help save lives!!

Growing Anticipation

TONIGHT. Tonight I had to make what seems like the most important decision of my YWAM journey. What was that decision? Where to go for outreach. For those of you who don't understand, when we students arrived here we had no clue where our mission trip options would be. They just revealed it to us tonight about an hour ago. They wrote the options on a large paper and revealed to us the options. When they did so, we were not aloud to talk to each other. They gave us 10 minutes to go pray and write down the location God tells each of us individually where to go. I wrote mine down immediately, hoping it was God giving me the unction. I will not tell y'all till Monday night what I wrote down, because nothing is set in stone till then.
Maybe keep me in your prayers this weekend... and if God speaks anything to you please feel free to share.  I am confident in the place I chose, and know that wherever God sends me it will be life changing. I'm so excited to find out which of my friends will be in my team.. I won't know till Monday night for sure who all will be going to the same place as me! It's a growing anticipation for this weekend. I'm not sure I will get much sleep tonight. But Lord know I need it because we have work duty at 6am tomorrow morning! We'll have to work in the kitchen for 5 hours on Saturday and 5 on Sunday. But other than that, my weekend will be mostly full catching up on homework, mandatory journal entrees, and mandatory reading assignments. I say mandatory, but I'm hoping to enjoy these books and writing reports on them.

PHEW! That was a lot to get off my shoulders. Time for some relaxation. I think Homework and any kind of THINKING can wait till tomorrow, haha.

Today: Restoring.

How God has moved today: this morning we all brought things to class that God is moving in our hearts to burn or throw away. I wrote names of people I was choosing to forgive and areas of sin in my life I needed to get rid of on a small piece of paper. We all wrote "forgiven" across the front and threw them in the fire. Afterwards we took communion and invited the Holy Spirit to move. It was a heavy class, but a good heavy. A relieving heavy. It hurt and most of us were brought to tears trying to let these soul ties go, but God really moved in our hearts.

A little of my day: Been struggling with sinuses this week so I finally went to the store and got some goods!! Definitely going to be feeling better now. :)
I went on a walk tonight and finally found the beasts that have been baa'ing outside the window....goats! Haha too funny and lots of them.
And right now as I blog I am sitting in a sermon listening to Loren Cunningham tell us stories and preach. He is so full of wisdom, and a very good story teller.
One word to describe today: restoring

FEARLESS-JOY-LOVE

So it's now Sunday night, 8:30pm and I am just going to skip the details of earlier in my day and DIVE into the prophetic words spoken over me tonight. It all started with a huge group of my friends and I going to getting frozen yogurt at coconut grove market street. After we got yogurt about 20 of us walked along the beach and found a good spot to sit and talk. I was fellowshipping with my friends teasing each other about our many accents as usual, when 2 guys (1 middle aged and 1 around my age) I have never met before walked up to me and asked if we were apart of ywam. So it struck up a conversation between the 3 of us and I soon found out they were also apart of ywam, but a different school. They were telling me about how last night their school was prophesying over each other and they asked if they could do the same for me. Of course I was happy for them to pray for me! So they began, right there aside the beach beside on-coming traffic and tourists walking about. God immediately started speaking through them. There were many visions they got of me here are the few I remember most:

1st vision: they saw me with long dreads (yes, the awesome hair style I've always said I like) and I was "whipping" them on people. It sounds funny, but they said that as I shook my hair that the love of God was splashing on people. All kinds of people. It was like a radiating joy and love spreading through my hair.

2nd vision: they saw things in my childhood and resentments and hurts that have built up over the years. Many things that I had buried away and "forgotten" about. They literally started naming them one by one and every one of them hit the bulls eye. For example, they spoke about resentment issues, self image issues, not feeling I have anything to give, and many many many other things. They said I would start seeing myself the way God does when I look in the mirror and also healing...etc. As they did I literally felt a lifting and releasings. It was relieving. Weight I didn't even know I was carrying was lifted off. I feel like I could fly! (well, you know what I mean..)

3rd Vision: they saw the word "FEARLESS" written across my forehead. Those of you who know me very well know how spot-on that word was! I have always let fear control everything I do in life, especially when it comes to spiritual things. He said he saw me walking into "scary" places of the world and spreading God's love. And that when I left those places people would ask me if I was scared because of the dangerous people I had just come from, and I would always reply with "afraid? it didn't even occur to me to be afraid." And he said that at those places I went to I was spreading God's LOVE and JOY to the people and they were receiving it.

4th vision: they saw me holding a baby. Then they saw me laying my hands on children's heads praying over them. He said God was using me to reach, love, and spread joy to children.

5th vision: they saw Jesus literally standing in front of me right there with His hands open. Jesus was wanting me to hand everything to Him. They also heard God saying how much He loves me, and how he is not ashamed of anything I've done and that everything in my life has been for a reason. They said that God was saying how when He looks at me He feels JOY. They said they heard God saying how much he "likes" me. That God likes everything about me! Everything! Even the things I feel week in, they were saying that God was telling me I am strongest in THOSE areas... Wow!

6th vision: They said they saw God giving me direction. They said that he was showing me who I am, who I truly am. And how God was showing me my path and what I'm supposed to do with my life and His plan.

There were 3 very specific words God was speaking over me through both of them and they said they saw these words written across my forehead: 1. Fearless 2. Joy 3. Love

Reminder: These guys know nothing about me!! They have never met me, they hardly know anything about my past. I'm am seriously tripping.

We all felt the spirit so strong and I couldn't help but cry. Y'all have no idea how much this meant to me tonight, it was exactly the confirmations I was needing. God was working very deep in my heart and all at once! He was bringing out EVERYTHING and it was so overwhelming and I don't even have the words to describe what I am feeling right now. To be honest, I haven't truly felt the presence of God like I did tonight in over 4 years. I am now excited to see where God is going to take me and what's going to happen next! I am in awe of His power. Trying to let it all soak in.
Goodnight friends!

...and it’s only the beginning

Friday January 6: DAY ONE

So here I am! It’s the second day and I’ve already made Godly uplifting friends to last a lifetime. Now for remembering all over 500 names! What else could I ask for than to be surrounded by people striving for the same purpose? Yesterday, (Friday January 6) we woke up around 6:30am to walk down to the an outdoor breakfast that consisted of 3 kinds of cereal, Oatmeal, Papaya, and Greek Yogurt. A nice variety. There are several different DTS schools, and I am apart of the one called Engage. I have 42 classmates that I have grown very fond of these past few days. After breakfast yesterday, we (the 42 of us) had class until lunch time. During those few hours we did brief introductions, went over island safety rules...etc. We went to lunch together, which consisted of sticky rice, some sort of chicken potluck, and PB&J for backup. It was filling, but most of all I enjoy fellowshipping with people at meal times. Looking for people I don’t know and sitting with them is so fun. Won’t take too long till I have met everyone that way! After lunch we met back in the classrooms, which is quite a walk with lots of hills from where my room is, good for the fitness, Not for the makeup or hairdo, haha. In our evening class we had some small group time and we prayed for each other, it was very bonding and it showed me that these people from all over the world are all here for the same reason. To learn about God, grow spiritually, and make a complete U-turn from dirty old habits. We’re all growing together, and cleaning up our acts together, which means lots of accountability and up-lifting! We did this until about 4:30 when we went to dinner. For dinner we had more sticky rice, chicken, and PB&J. After dinner we had the Hawaiian welcoming ceremony held in the outdoor covered arena sort of thing, where they presented all the flags of the countries represented here. You wouldn’t believe all the different cultures I am living with! There are people literally from everywhere, I love the diversity! At the ceremony, they also had hula dancers perform, and a man dancing with fire! After all the excitement of introducing us to their culture, Lauren Cunningham, the founder of YWAM got up and spoke about the founding and building of the campus and program. We ended the ceremony with heart-throbbing worship. After this, a few of my new friends (Saida, Destiny, Ben, and Ricky) and I walked to the nearest Walmart, my pepper spray in hand at all times, haha. It was about a mile up-hill, we had a good bonding time. After picking up a few necessities we walked back in the rain and stopped by the outdoor market-place on our way back to campus. We looked around and the sat by the water and listened to the waves for a moment. It was dark out, but still breath-taking. Saida is one of my 6 roommates, and we made it back to our room a little after midnight. But it felt much later keeping in mind the 5 hour time difference. Needless to say, I crashed on my pillow almost immediately. And that was the end of the first, very long yet exciting first day!!

Saturday January 7: DAY TWO

I woke up with morning around 5am due to the jet lag, so I laid in bed and rested until 7. We went to breakfast and waited in the longest line I have ever seen, luckily it moved pretty quickly. After a short breakfast my class met up and went on a scavenger hunt! We broke up into teams of 6 and were given a list of 19 pictures to take at different places in creative ways. I had a blast! My team was awesome, we had 5 girls and 1 luck guy;). So basically we had some pretty fun a goofy stuff on our list, for example-- take a picture of the whole group IN the campus fountain, a picture jumping off the pier into the water, and climbing a tree..etc. It was so fun, but very hot! I’m hoping I got a little sun on my negative vitamin-D skin. We finished our game at 12:30 and went back to our rooms for a little free time. I took a refreshing shower, although the power went out while I was in there, of course! My class met again at 4pm to go grill-out on the beach!! Thess few days have been fun and full, but I know starting Monday things will get more intense and even crazier! It’s just the beginning of a long spiritual journey that I am so blessed to be apart of. I know I am where I’m supposed to be, and God is already beginning to soften my heart towards Him and bring people in my life that are in the same season as me. I couldn’t be happier.

Why am I attending YWAM?

 WHY am I attending YWAM?

     I know that I am just one person… And I honestly don’t feel I have much to give. But all I do know is that I’m broken, used, confused, and very much damaged. I do know that I want to help people and I also know that I have a calling bigger than merely focusing on “me”. And I do know that joining YWAM will help me to get my focus off me and on others. I got accepted a few days ago. When I had applied they were already full for the January team, but they prayed about it and also felt I needed to be there, so by God’s grace they pulled a few strings for me! 

Fun story—last week when I was packing up my dorm room at the University of Mary Hardin Baylor, I found a fortune cookie fortune behind the dresser. I thought it was weird considering I hadn’t eaten any Chinese food all semester! It read: “There is always time to find a new path in life”. This was comforting and sort of a unique conformation for me that it was okay to leave school and join YWAM. I had been a little nervous about it bearing in mind this will be my third year in a row to switch colleges, and thought maybe I should just settle down. But this cookie made things a lot better. ;-) 

What’s NEXT?

     I leave for the main training base in Kona, Hawaii January 5th! I will be there for three months working on my degree as well as training for the mission field. I took a sneak peak at the schedule, and they are keeping us very busy! Breakfast in the early morning, bible studies, small groups, numerous classes, and in the afternoon we will do some sort mission work on the island. After the three months, my team and I will take a three-month missions trip to a foreign country and do ministry work. I will keep you guys posted on all that is happening and where I am. I want all my friends and family to be involved in what God is doing in my life and those around me. 

How can YOU help? 

    Your PRAYERS are most appreciated. Lord knows I will need them. Being overseas for such a long time away from my family and comfort zone, your prayers and support will be most appreciated. I will post my exact address before I leave so if you’d like to help out in any way you feel led and send me letters I would love to hear from you! I enjoy hearing from my family and friends and want more than anything to stay in contact.    

Like I said, I will keep you all posted on where I am and what’s happening as often as possible! 

    

“I have but one candle of life to burn, and I would rather burn it out in a land filled with darkness than in a land flooded with light.” --John Keith Falconer