Friday, May 15, 2009
Well I am off!
In a little less than 15hrs at 5am tomorrow I will be leaving my home away from home, Oxford, and leaving for Thailand!! It is crazy! I am feeling a little overwhelmed but very excited about starting outreach and giving away what I have learned. This has been an amazing 3 months and I can't wait to see what God has in store for my outreach team. Oh by the way all of us in our class are going on outreach! The money came in by the grace of God!! So cool. I covet your prayers as I and my fellow classmates begin this journey for the next three months. I am not sure when I will have time or access to keep up my blog but I will try to as much as possible. I love you all and thank you so much for your support!
Tuesday, May 5, 2009
Bits and pieces
Well, I thought it was time for an update! It is hard to explain what all is going on because most of it is in the heart and not tangible but I will try and tell you about some highlights over the last couple weeks.
1)April 20th-25th was our Holy Spirit week. One of our leader's mom came and taught it. She is a leader of a healing room in San Franciso. She was so full of energy and how much she loves God just shined when she spoke. I learned a lot more about manifestations of the Holy Spirit and their place in the church. On Tuesday I got baptized in the Holy Spirit and started speaking in tongues! No I didn't fall over! Tongues is more of a prayer language between you and God. Once I realized that, it was easier to accept and be open. It just felt like a warm presence and once I started speaking in tongues it was like I had a clear connection to God. I didn't get distracted like I sometimes do during prayer. It is something I have done when I can't think of anything else to pray.
2) The next week was Marc Parker speaking about Lordship. Wow was that an intense week! Marc is so dynamic and animated that we had no problem paying attention to what he was saying it was amazing! All week he talked about making Jesus the true Lord of our lives and what that means. On friday we had a chance to do that. For almost 11 hours we had a "day of worship". We went through the steps of thanksgiving, praise, giving of a fellowship offering (an offering to God that is not a sin confession such as: laying down our futures, selves, money, plans ect and giving that all to God to do what He wills not us) a sin offering ( we all confessed our sins publicly in front of the whole school! when you speak it out, the shame and guilt lose their power on your life); I did speak out about sins I had been struggling with and I felt so much freer afterwards! After all of that we had worship and communion. By 7:30 we were all exhausted but joyful. We had all layed aside something on friday and in turn became very close as a class. On Friday I truely made Jesus Lord of my life. I had already excepted Him as my Savior a long time ago but now He is also Lord. I will go where ever and do whatever He wants of me. That is a scary statement because I really believe God wants me to be a long term missionary not just shortterm! ahh!!
3) I can't believe we are leaving on the 17th already for outreach! I am with 9 wonderful people. 2 leaders and 7 students. Please pray for them all! Our leaders are Lindsey and Shannon then the students are Heather, Phil, Carsten, Kari, Erin, Kathryn and me. We are going to Thailand first flying into Bangkok and then traveling inland to a village and working there for about 10 days, on the 3rd of June we will go to Kolkata, India and travel to Kalampong and Darjeeliing. We leave India June 26th and fly to Capetown to work with Mega cities ministry. On the 13th of July we go to Entebbe Uganda to work with an orphanage, then we fly to Cairo Egypt for team debrif on July 29th and then we land travel to Israel and our whole class has a debrif for 1 1/2 weeks in Jerusalem and surrounding areas. wow I am so excited yet nervous!! Please pray for us as we prepare for outreach, safe travel, for the contacts in each country and divine appointments with people in each country.
4) Unfortuneatly, today we are realizing that barring an awesome miracle from God, some of the people in our class will not be able to join us on outreach due to insufficient funds. My heart breaks because one of them is Heather on my team. This is such a woman of God and it is so incredibly sad that she will probably not be joining us on our outreach. I have to believe that God has something so special here for her and there is a reason the money didn't come in for her. Please keep Heather and Paige in your prayers as they transition to this developement.
Thank you so much for your support! I love you all!
1)April 20th-25th was our Holy Spirit week. One of our leader's mom came and taught it. She is a leader of a healing room in San Franciso. She was so full of energy and how much she loves God just shined when she spoke. I learned a lot more about manifestations of the Holy Spirit and their place in the church. On Tuesday I got baptized in the Holy Spirit and started speaking in tongues! No I didn't fall over! Tongues is more of a prayer language between you and God. Once I realized that, it was easier to accept and be open. It just felt like a warm presence and once I started speaking in tongues it was like I had a clear connection to God. I didn't get distracted like I sometimes do during prayer. It is something I have done when I can't think of anything else to pray.
2) The next week was Marc Parker speaking about Lordship. Wow was that an intense week! Marc is so dynamic and animated that we had no problem paying attention to what he was saying it was amazing! All week he talked about making Jesus the true Lord of our lives and what that means. On friday we had a chance to do that. For almost 11 hours we had a "day of worship". We went through the steps of thanksgiving, praise, giving of a fellowship offering (an offering to God that is not a sin confession such as: laying down our futures, selves, money, plans ect and giving that all to God to do what He wills not us) a sin offering ( we all confessed our sins publicly in front of the whole school! when you speak it out, the shame and guilt lose their power on your life); I did speak out about sins I had been struggling with and I felt so much freer afterwards! After all of that we had worship and communion. By 7:30 we were all exhausted but joyful. We had all layed aside something on friday and in turn became very close as a class. On Friday I truely made Jesus Lord of my life. I had already excepted Him as my Savior a long time ago but now He is also Lord. I will go where ever and do whatever He wants of me. That is a scary statement because I really believe God wants me to be a long term missionary not just shortterm! ahh!!
3) I can't believe we are leaving on the 17th already for outreach! I am with 9 wonderful people. 2 leaders and 7 students. Please pray for them all! Our leaders are Lindsey and Shannon then the students are Heather, Phil, Carsten, Kari, Erin, Kathryn and me. We are going to Thailand first flying into Bangkok and then traveling inland to a village and working there for about 10 days, on the 3rd of June we will go to Kolkata, India and travel to Kalampong and Darjeeliing. We leave India June 26th and fly to Capetown to work with Mega cities ministry. On the 13th of July we go to Entebbe Uganda to work with an orphanage, then we fly to Cairo Egypt for team debrif on July 29th and then we land travel to Israel and our whole class has a debrif for 1 1/2 weeks in Jerusalem and surrounding areas. wow I am so excited yet nervous!! Please pray for us as we prepare for outreach, safe travel, for the contacts in each country and divine appointments with people in each country.
4) Unfortuneatly, today we are realizing that barring an awesome miracle from God, some of the people in our class will not be able to join us on outreach due to insufficient funds. My heart breaks because one of them is Heather on my team. This is such a woman of God and it is so incredibly sad that she will probably not be joining us on our outreach. I have to believe that God has something so special here for her and there is a reason the money didn't come in for her. Please keep Heather and Paige in your prayers as they transition to this developement.
Thank you so much for your support! I love you all!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
