Only 3 more weeks!?! (Week 9 & 10)

Sorry that i have not posted in 2 whole weeks now! We haven't been particular busy or anything, i have just been lazy. haha at least i am honest right? My past two weekends have been full of emails, looking for train/plane tickets online, studying french, and yesterday we went for a hike.  

I am FINALLY feeling very comfortable and at home here. The first month was definitely the "honeymoon stage" as they call it, where everything is new and exciting.  Then we all went through the "storming stage" where we all wanted to punch each other in the face...literally. I have no idea how many times i have used this metaphor, but when the going gets tough i say "iron can not sharpen iron without quite a bit of friction." yea? yea? witty huh? i wish i could claim it as my own... so i will. But finally i am really enjoying my time here, just being able to laugh and have fun with the other members of the training program. 

So week 9 We had three days of cultural studies! The lady who taught us was a lady called Judy who used to work with the tribes in Burkina Faso (it's amazing how God keeps putting people in our paths who have experience in W.Africa!). It was fun to hear stories of things that are going on over there, and just the possibility of many multifaceted opportunities in Africa.  

Then this last week was "Work Week!" Which was such a relief! Dont get me wrong i have loved the lectures and benefited greatly from the classes, but a man cannot be cooped up inside for 3 months or else he will punch a hole in the wall, or set something on fire or something. Therefore, you can imagine how much fun i had demolishing large wooden desks with a sludge hammer, and being in charge of the burn pile out back! Three days of total release! It was great! 

That leads us to now. Tomorrow we will be getting on the train to Southall London (where over 55% of the population is India/Pakistani) and spending 6 days doing religious studies. I will be leading worship for four morning devotions so i ask for prayer for that (it is my first time preparing/leading this much worship). Also, i ask you to pray for the impact of this skit that we are producing. I am sure that you have probably seen it at some point, but it is REALLY powerful and i know God can move in people though things like this skit. So i ask if you would please pray boldly and ask for the Holy Spirit to be present and active in the hearts of those watching. And ultimately pray that they would experience the gospel message through our drama, and come to Know HIM! (here is the skit that we are replicating: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cyheJ480LYA)


Please Pray! The rest of this blog is about prayer. Two quotes that i read that we should really take to hear are:
"The little estimate we put on prayer is evidence from the little time we give to it."-E.M. Bounds
"Talking to men for God is a great thing, but talking to God for men is greater still." -E.M. Bounds
Those two quotes hit home for me b/c 1) If i truly was convinced of the power of prayer, why would i do anything else!? haha so i want to come to a place where i am in consistent prayer! and 2) I talk alot. i speak about God. I can get up and lead a pretty solid devotion. But i dont want to just talk about God! i want to be the one interceding and praying for others. Asking God to burden my heart with the prayers of others. So today i ask you to pray with and for me. But if you do pray, pray in faith that God will not only hear our prayers, but that HE WILL ACT! 


PRAYER POINTS:
-Zack and i have an amazing opportunity to go to Chad in January for a week and speak/pray for/ and disciple a group of boys about our age. It is really exciting to hear what God is doing in Chad, and to hear how excited the leader there was when he heard that Zack and i might be coming. However, finances are an issue because traveling from Chad to Burkina (though only one country away) is VERY expensive. 
-I have a LOT of logistical things to work out during the next few weeks (visas, shots, contact with the couple in Burkina, ect...)
-Please pray for my French leaning! i have put in a good number of hours and still feel like i am getting nowhere. A supernatural gift of language would be nice... haha but pray that i wouldn't get discouraged. 
-Begin praying for the relationships that i will be building in Burkina. The Dutch lady i will be living with in Burkina is called Trudy, and her native husband is called Elie.  And just for the different ministries Zack and i will be involved in there. (ABC school teaching english, sports programs, evangelism, local churches)


Thankk you for your prayers! I look forward to seeing you all when i return in december!! I miss everyone <3 remember to bless someone today!

"The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom" (Week 8)

I am not the great 'I AM' (Ex. 3:14) "but by the grace of God, i am what i am" (1 Cor. 15:10)


The UK director of world horizons taught our classes this week. The course was called: "application of biblical principles." In other words "read something from the bible and apply it to your life." I was very excited to hear where Mike would lead us because this was a very broad lecture topic, but i knew that he was a great speaker, and had plenty of wisdom to bestow upon us.  The 3 main things that i took away from his lectures were:
1) Don't allow your self to be the victim! It is a personal choice. The #1 reason most missionaries leave the mission field is because they hold onto their "rights." As Christians we have no rights and therefore need to allow God to take over the situation rather than being deceived into believing that we are the victim.
2) Vulnerability. Absolutely VITAL to the growth and transformation of a Christian's life. We must ALWAYS be vulnerable to God, ALWAYS vulnerable to ones self, and sometimes vulnerable with one another. (God calls us to share one another's struggles and burdens, but we must also guard our hearts)
3) Identity in Christ! I love the quote at the beginning of my blog post. I am free to be who i am! God wants nothing less. Mike gave us a list of 20 bible references that started with "i am:" We chose the five that were most relevant to ourselves. My favorite was "i am: an enemy of the devil." (all the others are recorded in my video below.


After the 2 day session Mike had us 'apply' one thing that we had learned by making a presentation of some sort. I really liked what we learned about deriving our identities from scripture so in the hour he gave us i made a short clip about who i am in Christ.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZIdCSXJmHxU

Then Wednesday morning i was in charge of leading a 30min devotion for the 10 of us trainees. I wasn't in a super spiritual mood and I found myself feeling obligated to put something together, when all of a sudden i caught myself. God really convicted me that this morning devo was not my time to entertain the others, or to impress them with how great a devotional i could come up with.  But rather a time for God to speak truth through me and to use me to bless the others. After talking about vulnerability, and finding my identity in Christ alone (the past few days in lectures) i decided that i would share my testimony.  Not the "Yay i was born as a PK and grew up in the church, and these are all the amazing things that God has done in my life" testimony, but the testimony of brokenness. I never came to a place where i turned from God, i never lost faith. Instead, He persistently calls me back to him, each time i fail He woos me back to himself and therefore i can do nothing but fall more in love with him.  I used to struggle a lot with verses like 1 John 3:9 "No one who is born of God will continue to sin, because God’s seed remains in them; they cannot go on sinning, because they have been born of God." Or another verse in 1 John 5:3 that says, "In fact, this is love for God: to keep his commands." And others just like it. After much frustration God revealed some things to me. 


LOVE is NOT following the commands of the Lord. LOVE is NOT having the fruit of the spirit. Those things are what love looks like when it is played out day to day.  When love walks and talks, so what IS love....??? Love is PASSION! Love is DESIRE! Do you have a passion for God?! Do you long for Him?! That is how i can have assurance that i am in Him and that He is in me, even when the devil tries to deceive. 


God has not only been challenging me and molding me through His word, but also through the Holy Spirit's undeniable activity! Friday i have my community placement during the day, and then street evangelism at night. I am going to try to explain my experience on Friday night, but honestly i am not sure words can do justice the presence of the Holy Spirit at work. We (Me, and two other girls on the training program) usually do street evangelism with our church, but on this particular night they canceled it. The girls and i still really wanted to go out and at least walk and pray for the city. So we left at 9pm expecting to do one big loop around the city and be back by about 10pm or so.  


We prayed that God would provide opportunity for conversation with at least one person as we walked into the downtown area. It was the quietest i had ever seen the city... "well at least i will get a good night sleep" i thought.  I saw a few people down one of the streets and said, "lets cross here." as we approached the group of teenagers Debs and Kristen recognized one of the boys Daniel.  They had talked to him last week and he had really opened up to them. We stood there about 20 feet away praying for an opportunity to open up for us to talk to Daniel. He looked over and made eye contact with us and immediately came over to greet us! He was not nearly as drunk as he was last Friday night. we talked for about 20min and then he even allowed us to pray over him. Right there in front of his friends! We walked away from that conversation satisfied that God had used our words to challenge Daniel. The night was already a success. But He was not done with us yet!


We walked down station road (a really rough area) and as we came near a very notorious apartment complex we recognize a man at the bus stop. It was Michael (a man, about 50, who comes to the church drunk every Friday night to talk and have coffee with us) with a group of other drunk friends. Michael is a back sliden Christian. He knows scripture like a pastor, and preaches to his friends all the time.  He knows God's word and wishes he could live the christian life again, but is really struggling. All that to say we approached him and he came over to me with a smile and said, "God is changing me. I have only had 2 drinks in the past 3 days." i said, "Hallelujah!" The three of us prayed for him and then began talking to different people around the bus stop. 


I saw Michael was standing by himself so i went over and asked if he was alright. He looked at me and asked "please pray for my stubbornness." I WAS BLOWN AWAY. This was God's conviction of sin in his heart. I prayed. I told him to picture a heart. His heart. It had a very hard, crusty outer layer of calluses, but that i could just see God taking a hammer and smashing away that outer layer to expose the soft, sensitive, wounded heart inside that is crying out to Jesus Christ. At that picture Michael began to weep. I said, "Michael Jesus is standing right here with open arms waiting for you to come back to Him, waiting to hold you in His arms." At that i took hold of michael and he me. This was by far the most impactful part of the night for me. Because i knew that Michael was sincere. 


 To make a long story short we all had individual conversations for about an hour (in that time i talked to these 2guys who were about 30 and 35. After a bit of chatting he said "you know i would love to have a real conversation with you sometime when i can think properly" i said "how bout tomorrow lunch?" and he was very enthusiastic. However the next day when i showed up at noon he never came.) until they all started to leave. 


One girl that Debs and Christen were talking to stayed at the bus stop. I walked up just as they were about to pray for the girl. I found out that she had had a miscarriage but really wanted to have kids. We laid hands on her and prayed for her. The devil then tried to intercede. A group of teens were walking by and all of a sudden i heard them start yelling and i saw two boys just start going at it. It was really traumatic to experience as the two boys tried to beat in one another's face literally 20ft away from us. Debs was not distracted, and she continued to pray for this girl. All of a sudden Karri looked up from the prayer and said, "do you hear that?" i thought maybe she was talking about the boys, but by this time they were long gone. Then she started breathing deeply and said, "do you feel that!?" Debs told her that God was working in her. The girl claimed that her stomach pain was gone, and that her abdomen no longer felt hard. She gave us all hugs and was filled with the joy of the Lord.  


I have never been one to experience the power the Holy Spirit so blatantly, but it was obvious that what Karri was experiencing was not of this world! We asked if we could walk her home and all the way home she was beaming! 


We ran into one of her friends outside a pub and she was crying.  We talked to Cindy for nearly 30min hearing her story of how God had always been real to her. He healed her when she was young, and gave her children even though she was not supposed to ever have kids. However she was raped when she was 10 and now she was married to a woman. Karri said to her, "have these people pray for you, i have never felt like this before." The woman kept saying, "i want that. i want to feel like that. i want prayer. can you pray for me?" 


"There is nothing that we can do" we said, "it is God who is at work." I began to pray for Cindy, and almost stopped because i felt like i wasn't saying anything of worth. I was about to let one of the girls take over but then all of a sudden the woman said, "How does he know that?" "Did you tell him that about me?" (she asked Karri). She must have been hearing from the Spirit.  


As we finished praying i looked over at Karri and was surprised to see her staring blankly behind me. I was standing with my back to a wall of bushes and felt quite nervous because of the way she was staring. I asked if she was ok... no response. i touched her arm and she jumped. She quickly glanced at me and then back to the same spot in the bushes. Again i asked "are you alright? is there something there?" i looked behind me and saw nothing. Again when i touched her she jumped, but this time she ran across the street. It was midnight by this point, and we should not have been out that late on a friday night. So we said goodnight to Cindy and went to follow after Karri. As we approached we asked, "you alright?"Karri just looked at us and said, "there was something in the bushes." This is the girl who was just overflowing with joy after we prayed for her, and now she was petrified. Debs went to give her a hug and started praying protection over her, but she pushed her away and ran off down the street.


WHOA... What a night. I would not say that i am one to have many spiritual encounters, but there was no denying what we had experienced this friday night. The three of us looked at each other and were so confused as to what had just happened. I wanted to shout with joy for being used, but at the same time i was so terrified of the devil and his hold on the city of Llanelli. We prayed all the way home. That is literally all we could do! I was mentally and spiritually exhausted. I needed time to process. I needed to sleep. GOOD LUCK. haha. eventually i did fall asleep. 


I really debated whether to write all of this in my blog or just to keep it as my own experience. But i really feel that through my friday night experience God can teach all of us some things. 
1) Evangelism is not just a thing that missionaries do. Anyone can do it. 
2) The spiritual realm is no joke. The devil and his demons are as real as God and His angles. We are called to put on our full armor of God and then to go out and share the gospel, however we still must be aware that the devil does not want us to succeed, and must constantly pray against him. 
3) Also, i have never been so scared of the devil and the hold that he has on people's minds/lives. But at the same time God is SO MUCH more powerful than Satan! For the first time in my life i can say that i have a legitimate fear of the Lord for his power is far greater than anything of this world. A reverence and awe of Him! "The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom" (prov. 1:7)


Thank You SO MUCH for reading my blogs. I hope this is encouraging. Know that He is at work here and that your prayers are what is fueling the ministry here. If you have any comments of questions please contact me :) 


If you havent heard which country i am going to as my placement MUST WATCH:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sBszKAxgU68