Phase One Complete

Today we had our last day of lectures! My team leaves for El Salvador in 6 days and I couldn't be more excited! We will be starting out helping with the ministries that YWAM El Salvador is currently involved with in the country's capital San Salvador. We will be leaving on the 31st on a bus from Belize city... there are no bathrooms on board and they say it is a 12 hour trip! That will be interesting ;) I am so sad to be leaving the rest of the team that is going to Turkey, we have come a long way together and I will miss them all greatly!

  It's been a while since I have made an entry so I will show you what I have been up to through some photos!

Beth-Anne and our park friends that we played games with after dinner one night. Most of their parents are vendors that sell their home-made Central American food in the public park

Hunting for wild crocodiles in the swamps on the West side of the island behind our base (did I mention that we started our hunt at 6:00 in the morning! Thats 4:00 am back home!) And no, we didn't find any. But I still got to carry around a machete and look awesome

My friend Roberto teaching me the art of spear fishing out on the reef. The lobster in this picture we named "dinner"

Just another day doing school work  

This particular day we were assigned to write down verses on index cards that had to do with "faith". Later that week we had the opportunity to hand them out to various people that God led us to on the island. The many stories that my team came back with were miraculous. What an awesome experience that allowed us to build relationships in the community! 

Bekki, Walter, Sasha and I heading out to one of our various adventures to see what kinds of people we could meet in the community and pray for. Little did we know where and to who God would lead us to!

That day we were given a tour of the slum called San Mateo on the island. Our guide was part of the faculty of a wonderful Christian school located on the edge of the slum. Here she is explaining that the residents use trash underneath all of their bridges because when it rains they must walk across the boards to get anywhere and in some areas (like pictured) the water might be 30 feet deep! Can you believe it??

"keep clean" the post says... 

After being able to pray for one of the teachers at the Christian school (Holy Cross) Bekki is granted the honor to pray for the classroom. The teacher asked for prayers for strength and wisdom. He was so humbled. 

Sasha washing cups in the miniature sized kitchen while the students of Holy Cross rotated through the cafeteria. There are several schools on the island, but almost all of them are either maxed out or too expensive for families in the slum to afford. Holy Cross was created about 6 years ago to take the overflow children and unlike other schools, provides 2 meals for the children and is cheaper than most other schools in the area.  Sadly, they have reached their maximum capacity of 500 students and still more have to be wait-listed for their education

God led us to this man's house. He had just recently moved to the island seeking job opportunities and a new hope. We were able to pray for him and sit and hear his story. Simply amazing

The following week we surprised our friend with fresh doughnuts and he surprised us by inviting us inside to meet his cousins and to see the carvings they were working on together to be sold that weekend on the beaches and in town. They were all so talented!

The home of Olga and her 3 sons. We were greeted from far off by little 3 year old Albert screaming "HI!" to us over and over again. Olga's husband worked in construction and she loved watching "What Not to Wear"when she had a night off with her kids and could go into town with her friends. She was absolutely beautiful and so strong willed

We stumbled upon this small family on the edge of the lagoon. The grandmother insisted upon showing us all of her family albums and even gave us crocheted flowers as gifts of remembrance when we left.  We gave her some of the "faith"cards we made earlier and when she read one of them she busted out in a beautiful deep hymn about one particular verse. 

Anya and I on our way to New  Horizon Elementary school. Every morning for one week we would take the water taxi about 5 miles south to the Christian school where we were positioned (with 10 others from my group) in different classrooms as teachers aids

Pictured here are two of my new friends from the Standard II classroom (about 4th grade in the states) at New Horizon. The one on the right is Jonathan... he was my favorite :) He would always dance around and get really into the hand motions when the teacher would let me sing songs to them in the morning. He would also surprise attack hug me when I least expected it

Teaching one of my diving friends Sasha (from Alberta, Canada) how to sail on one of the Hobie Cats our school rented for the day. Some of my friends reported back that they had seen dolphins when they had gone out! At one point we saw something floating in the water and I climbed out onto one of the pontoons to retrieve it... only to discover that it was a slimy, child-sized, Croc shoe. Almost as cool as a dolphin, right?

Our large beetle friend, Jeffrey. Beth wasn't too fond of him however.

Just another morning goin on a walk with Jesus on the beach :)

Getting my advanced diving certification. Here I am practicing one of the 5 specialty dives required to move to the next level. In this dive we were to take fish identification cards with us and circle as many different fish types we could find. I found about 17 different types and one of my buddies found 33!

My Family

 Every 2 weeks we were to practice public speaking. Sometimes that would look like giving a 5-7 minute oral book report or sometimes we would give a short presentation on one particular word subject (my topic was loyalty). Other times we were asked to lead morning devotions with worship songs and sharing a short testimony and whatever else is on our hearts. Pictured here, Sasha (with the help of Tessa, Sarah, and Myla) is giving an oral gospel presentation skit where she is role playing what it might look like to share the gospel in a certain setting. She pretended to be a counselor talking to a cabin of girls at a summer camp about their fears and how God can be our protector so we don't have to be afraid. I did a skit once pretending to be sharing the gospel to a woman at the drive-thru of "Burgeropalis"  through the speaker box! It was pretty funny :)

Each Tuesday night we have leadership lectures led by our amazing base leader, Chris Toney, who is spectacular at engaging us in deep discussions and encouraging us to study certain books such as "Leadership is an Art" by Max DuPree (the CEO of Herman Miller, one of the most successful companies of our time)

Thursday nights we have what is called Community Meeting where we invite everyone from the community to come and visit our base and hear a short sermon from whoever our guest speaker was that week. We had 3 different teams that took turns each week in leading the group in worship. We have so many talented people in this school!

Last week we were visited by 7 students from a school similar to YWAM schools in Punta Gorda (southern Belize) and at the end of the week we were blessed to be able to participate and encourage two of their team-mates when they decided to get baptized!

         Again, thank you for all of your support! Please continue to keep me in your prayers as my El Salvador outreach team heads out on our new adventure! Prayers that God will prepare the hearts of those who we will come in contact with over the next 2 months and for continuous team unity!

(El Salvador team pictured below: Sasha, Macall, (some random guy from Punta Gorda who decided to jump into the picture), Bethany, Joy, Victoria, Dana, Myla, (bottom row) Lucilla, me, Ulrike, and our staff leader Megan)

Save the Turkeys!

Hey all, I know its been a couple weeks since I have posted, but I plan to leave a more thorough update sometime this week. Today I just wanted to ask for prayer support for my team. As I mentioned before, we now know out outreach locations and I was blessed to have enough funds. There are 5 girls however who are still far away from their outreach fees total and we are all stretching our faith and our resources to trust that they will most definitely wont be left behind. We have seen God do some insane things here this week (I'll explain what I mean later) and almost all of us were incredibly overwhelmed when we found out how much more we had to raise... overseas...but God has pulled through and we know He wont let us down. We just finished up a 24-hour prayer type relay and extensive prayer and fasting this weekend and we are all pretty worn out, but I am amazed with the support and encouragement of our team. I have no doubt that God is gonna blow our minds, and I can't wait to tell you about His miracles when they happen! Please pray for strength for my team and the power to overcome fear, finances, and doubt. You can pray specifically for Tessa, Beth-Anne, Alexa, Myla, and Bekki.Your support is what keeps us out here, thank you.

Shout Out...

To all my OCS peeps! Your comments made my day! I miss you all so much. You rock my socks.

El Salvador!

     Our outreach destinations were announced today and God called me to El Salvador! (On this map its the little red country surrounded by Guatemala and Honduras) There are 6 others that will be on my team and two leaders. The rest of my DTS friends will be going to Turkey and I cannot even begin to describe the excitement in the air! Our leadership staff are still praying about what we will be doing there and where exactly we be staying, but they determined that I need $1,475 to get there and I am so blessed to announce that I have enough!!! Thank you all so much for your support! I am so thankful for everything you have done for me and I ask that you will continue to keep me in your prayers! I can't wait to share more stories in the months to come!
    In other news, this week we had Jeff Pratt as our guest speaker and he talked on the father heart of God. I cried every day. Haha. Really truly! I broke myself apart for God and vulnerably and obediently emptied my heart of lies and worldly mindsets and now we are working on filling ourselves with all of his glory! What a powerful week! my favorite learnings were that 1) we can only have as much love for God as we realize he has for us. 2) That He want's to be fully known, not just intellectually, but that its a head AND heart experience. 3) That when we worship God it must be base on his worth, not on how I'm feeling that day. And 4) That spiritual disciplines are how we receive life transforming grace and power that we can't have unless we walk the way Jesus did.
Cool, right?

God is Good, All the Time. All the Time, God is Good.

It's 6:37am and the orange sun is bursting into the little student library where I am sitting. Another great day :)
Last week we had our base director, Lynn Toney, as our speaker. She was incredible! And not to mention one of the funniest people I have ever met! Her lectures focused on fully understanding God's love for us and how to get out of the spiritual fog and into the life He wants us to have. First we had to make up a mission statement for ourselves. This was mine:

Love. I will love. I will recognize being love. Others will recognize my love and seek the same love that was given to me. Seek. I will seek God with my whole heart and soul (Deut. 4:29). I will not be abandoned because my God is a faithful God who keeps his promise of love to a thousand generations (Deut 7:9). Trust. I will trust in God with all my plans for I know that he has a prosperous and hopeful life planned before me (Jer 29:11) I will remember that everything good comes from God (always) and that he has my best interest at heart. Serve. I will serve. I will serve my God by serving others and do so with the joy God gives me and with unconditional enthusiasm. And above all, I will adore and worship my savior and friend.

 The next day she taught us the importance of forgiveness. We learned that forgiveness is simply not forgetting and moving on and it is not waiting for others to ask first or even waiting for feelings TO forgive. It is a choice, and when we ask God to convict us and open our hearts to see what we need to let go of, it is incredible how He will work in our lives. Not only forgiving others for how they wronged us either, but also repenting for holding anger against them in our hearts. It's so freeing when we step out and stop saying "I can't" and start saying "I will." We also learned how to differentiate our own thoughts and what God is trying to tell us and also how to tell the difference between condemnation (from the evil spirit) and conviction (from God's Spirit). My favorite acronym was B.U.S.Y. (Being Under Satan's Yoke) and we learned to live free of our burdens by taking Jesus' yoke (Matt 11:28-30). Lastly we talked about fear and how perfect love from God drives out all fear (1 John 4:18) and how to receive that love. Basically, everyone cried all week (good crying though). There is a difference in everyones posture this week. God is moving and transforming our lives... our speaker this week is Jeff Pratt and our first lecture was yesterday and he already had everyone crying before the first break. Haha. I love YWAM.

Study, Study, Study!

Hello all!
Last week was our first week of lectures. Our speaker was Jon Peterson from Snowqualmie, WA. He taught us how to effectively use our Bibles to obtain greater understanding and to build our relationship with God. He taught us the importance of context and how to ask three questions every time we open the Word.
First was WHAT (to find the historical context and to read through the passage to comprehend the general purpose of it's placement in the Bible. We were taught to first seek to recognize and understand who the original audience was and what the original author intended for the original audience to get from the passage)
Second was SO WHAT (to apply the knowledge gained to our own lives and seek its meaning in how we ought to live our lives)
Lastly was NOW WHAT (to put into action our new knowledge and understandings)

Each day we were asked to read the book of John in a different way, followed by a 10 question quiz the next morning. We were told that whoever was first to get a perfect score would receive the "Pen or Power" (a 4-color changeable pen to use for Bible marking) and that if the entire class got a perfect score the same day that he would treat us all to DandE's ice-cream (the best ice cream in San Pedro... and the world). We had to read it all the way through 5 times! Forwards, backwards, in a different translation, prayerfully, and out loud in groups, which a few of my friends and I decided to sing improv style passing around a guitar and our lyrics book (John) and singing in several different genres (country, folk, rap, and tribal drumming). It was quite a challenge to read it through the very last time, but my entire class got 10/10 the last day and we were rewarded our promised prize! What a great accomplishment! Jon also taught us the difference between existence and life. What a revelation. It would take me about 5 days to explain it all though :)

When I had a gap of time between studying, forcing myself through John for the millionth time, chores and cooking, I enjoyed exploring the island more. The people of Belize are beautiful and kind. They speak English and accept US currency (with a $1 BZ to $2 US ratio). I went biking on the road to town (about 5 miles away) and rode on the beach the way home. I only fell down in the sand 6 or 7 times :) So embarrassing. Almost every day I make time to explore the reef too by kayaking as close as I can get and snorkeling around. I have some great underwater pictures, but our internet is iffy here so I will have to wait until I get into town to post some.

Other than that, things are going incredibly well! God is moving here and we are all going through some major heart-surgery. I can't wait to tell you about all the amazing things that happen in weeks to come! Thank you again for your support. I am always in need of more donations and prayer. Anything helps. Miss you all!

Under The Sea...

Today was our first official day under the sea! For those of you who don't know, I was certified with PADI during 11th grade (in chilly Puget Sound) and I am the only girl in my program that has a head start. OH MY GOODNESS... what a difference 80' water makes!!! We spent about 30 minutes in the pool being instructed over the basics (it was FREEZING!) and then we went straight out to "Mexico Rocks," a five minute boat ride away under about 10-15 feet of water. It felt like bathtub water after being used to the cooler pool water. I was so amazed that everyone else got to actually do it on the FIRST day! I had to do so much bookwork before I was unleashed 3 years ago! According to our base director and dive instructor, Chris Toney, the other girls should all be certified in about a week! So cool! Chris' son (and my good friend) Cameron and I are working on becoming rescue divers in these 3 months. How cool would that be?