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.