Good News!

I have a  job! A great job in fact! It is such a blessing.


So, first the background story. I have been in desperate need for a job, so I can, well...survive, while I figure out my next step in life. I had been looking on the internet and around town, and nothing really popped out at me. My biggest fear was ending up at a job where I had to say "Do you want fries with that?" jk. ;) 


Anyways, my mom was at the local hospital dropping off some papers (she is in advertising), and a gal at the front desk asked her if she knew anyone who needed a job and gave her the details. Long story short, in a week I had a job working for a psychiatrist. The top psychiatrist in town! 


I am considered office staff, but I basically play the role of an MA, suicide counselor, prescription decision maker, appointment maker, etc... It is so fun, plus I have gotten to learn so much about different drugs, mental health, counseling and just the human mind in general. It is interesting how much the brain and our belief systems/spirituality coincide. Everyday I meet people who I can encourage and always have a name to go home and pray for.  To top it off, I have amazing staff that I work with. :) Thank you Lord.

Starting A New

Now that I am back to doing life in the states, it seems a little hard at times to get my bearings. Sometimes it feels like the last 6 month were a dream, and then I wake up. I am in the same place, but I feel different. What do I do with that? Well I guess that is the question that I'm waiting for God to answer.

So here is what I do know:

• I am supposed to serve, wherever the need, if that is where God intends for me to go. Whether it is cleaning poop or joining an organization...whether I'm in the background, or in front. I'm ready.
• I'm not going to continue to live in my mother's house unless I have to. Not because it is bad, but I'm ready to be fully independent. 
• I need a job :)
• I will be grateful for what I have, always be willing to give it away, and not want for material things. Continue to watch and learn how to be selfless with my most "prized possessions".
• I will not fall stagnant, or at least not stay there. 
• I will not lose sight of the God that I caught a glimpse of.
• I will try to run along side the active God I serve, no matter how difficult that trail is. 
• I will not go to church, and do my Christian duties, but I will find a way to open eyes about the Kingdom of God and do what I can to bring that Kingdom to the here and now, for those who have not yet experienced it.
• Learning is just as vital, if not more than teaching. 
• Listening is always better than speaking. 
• Brokenness and humility are the easiest ways to combat pride.
• I will sustain relationships with my family and friends, and those who reside far away, I will make it a priority to have community in any way shape or form. 

India

The last month of my Outreach was spent in Chennai, India (previously known as Madras) which is in Southern India. I had no idea what I was in for, but I had watched enough Bollywood videos before I got there to be super excited. I could have never imagined. People always ask me "How was it over there?" or they say "I could never go to a third world country, how did you do it?". But you know what? By God's grace, when we arrived in the Chennai airport, it was such an easy transition. Yes, it was exactly like you would imagine it in some ways. It was dirty in some areas, extremely impoverished, soldiers holding gigantic guns, thick aroma filled humid air, tons of people, and if they had a bathroom it was a squatty-potty. In other ways there was extreme extravagance, fine jewelry and linens, awesome food, the most vibrant colors I've ever seen, and the coolest people I've ever met. So if you truly want to know how it was in a third world country: It was AMAZING and I loved every minute of it. The pros outweighed the cons.

There were really hard parts of our time in India. I live close to the Mexico border here at home, and so a lot of these things I had seen. I still to this day have a hard time saying "no" to a baby begging for money, even though I know they are slaves. I have a hard time haggling a street vendor, even though I know I'm being overcharged. I had the hardest time not taking home all of those beautiful boys and girls who were orphans, gypsies, and enslaved. I cannot resist hugging a leper when they come up and pray for me, when I was are there to pray for them.  I cannot deny the power of the Holy Spirit when I walk into a small room of people praising, dancing, crying and singing to the Lord, in such a sincere way...like I have never seen. I cannot but help feeling dirty and greedy every now and again, realizing how little I needed over there, and how much I cherish my "things" here. While I was in India, I felt more like the woman God created me to be, than I have ever been in the United States.

India is the wake up call to the nations. A people group who has Nothing, provides Everything for others. They should me what selflessness looks like. It didn't matter if we went to a big church or a small church, a rich peoples house or a homeless house...whatever they had, they gave it to us. In a family of 6, in a 4 room house...the family we stayed with, opened up their rooms for 12 of us. The grandparents slept on the floors outside so we could have a place to stay. The grandma, Maggie, got up at 5am every morning to make sure we ate before a long day of work. It didn't matter who they were, when we came, they gave us the best they had, even if they didn't get to eat. How Biblical is that? Didn't Jesus say "Love your neighbors as yourself"? Exactly. They showed us how to do that.

Jesus, thank you for the people in India. Protect them, bless them, and prosper them. Walk with them through the hard times, and spread your name and your Gospel through the land Spirit.


My time in India and Thailand brought my passions to life and to the surface. Many will say why did you go to University if you aren't going to use your degree? Many will see my choice to be a missionary and live out the Gospel as a failure or a "phase" I'm in. But I don't, because I know this is who I am and where I am supposed to be.

At the Leper Colony

Sari's

I will fight for those who can't fight for themselves, protect others from any/every injustice and love those around me like Jesus loves me.

The Gypsy Children

Beautiful Orphans

Preaching-I was terrified :)

Photos From Another World

After our time in Australia with YWAM, we spent two months on Outreach. 

First month: Bangkok, Chiang Rai and Chiang Mai, Thailand

The Largest Lounging Buddha

The Famous White Temple

We saw so many sights and learned so much about the culture, the religion and the food :)

But we did a lot of hard work and spent a lot of time with amazing boys and girls.


Did You Know? Thailand, especially Chiang Rai has the highest rate of boys and girls from the ages of 5-15 years old sold or kidnapped into the Human Sex Trafficking, slave trade. Chiang Rai is near the border of Burma and Laos. Most children are sold to "job brokers" by their parents who can't support them. They are taken to brothels masked as "massage parlors" and picked out like puppies at a pet shop. The details are gruesome and prison like. A few postings below there is a YouTube video that explains Thai sex trafficking.
Did You Know? There are more slaves today than there EVER was during the Transatlantic Slave Trade. From 1650-1900 there were about 10 million slaves sold. It is said that 800,000 slaves are sold or captured into the human slave trade every year. 70% of those slaves are sex slaves.


The children you see were the children that would have been sold...if a pastor of a church didn't create a boarding school for them to live, sleep, eat and be educated. These are the faces of the very children that would have become slaves..but instead have been given a hope and a future. We got to be a part of this and we had the chance to share the Gospel with them. We played with them, taught them stories, practiced English, prayed with them, fed them and taught them how to hug. :) But I think we left more blessed than them.

They LOVED hugs!

Let Me Catch You Up...

So, posting a weekly blog in Australia was harder to do than imagined. A lot harder. While Internet availability was difficult;  free time was even more scarce. I apologize to all of those who were checking up on me and wanted to follow the trip closely...but I am grateful for the disconnect in a way too. I was free from everything at home, every person and circumstance. God took me totally out of my element and into severe uncomfortability, but how else can you be "ruined for the ordinary" unless you are in an unordinary position? Let me catch you up on the rest of my lecture phase and time in Australia. The next posts will be about my Outreach Time spent in Thailand and India (September-November).

On my previous posts, I had covered the first 4 weeks of lecture. They were Evangelism, Hearing God's Voice, Father Heart of God, and Prayer Week. I loved my first month in Oz. Even with all my experiences with Campus Crusade, in the church and at Christian School...I discovered there is still so much left to be learned about God. In fact, I will never know it all; but I want to try. I want to pursue him and get to know him better so I can get to know myself better as well. One of the topics I've kept with me and utilized the most was Hearing God's Voice mixed with the idea of Intercession. I am amazed that in the past 12 years I've been a Christian, no one ever took the time to explain how to "hear God's voice" or explained to me the difference between prayer and intercession. But now that I know, I am challenged to teach it to my peers, friends, and other believers, because I believe it is a powerful tool and amps our relationship with God so much.

But onto the new stuff.
The next 8 weeks, I studied the following topics: Missions, Fear of the Lord, China's Church, Spiritual Warfare, Covenants, Outreach Preparation, Relationships, and Kingdom.

Missions: The highlight of this week was probably the teacher. While the topic was not a new one to me, our teacher was a pioneer of YWAM India. His name is Merv McDermand and I have never met a person with such a passion to share Jesus and be Jesus with the whole world. He is fearless because God is the foundation for his confidence and boldness. Merv, an Aussie native, has spent his whole adult life in YWAM, traveling all over the world and reaching people in different cultures, religions and hobbies (I believe 40 years). I learned so much from his character alone, plus the great tools and insight from his experiences really blessed me.

Fear of The LORD: taught by a New Zealander (Kiwi), Mark Parker was an amazing speaker. He was very passionate, vulnerable, straight to the point guy. He had ideas and ways of viewing God that totally shook my previous ideals. He taught me:
-True worship is a sacrifice and commitment. It is in the Spirit and truth, not a feeling or experience.
-If Ido something for God, do it with passion and do it with zeal, don't worry about tomorrow.
-The easiest part of Christianity is salvation...the hard part is living out Kingdom with help of the H.S.
-I will never mature if I do not recognize that He is Lord and I am not.
-My generation is so quick to repent and so slow to obey.
-God will never make me do something that He hasn't given me the desire to do.
-Jesus is not a meek Savior but a roaring lion of a ruler!
-Don't be overwhelmed by the sin in the world...overwhelm it with his love and power.
-Remain consistent, forgive easy and don't give up!
-On the contrary to what John the Baptist said, More of Jesus=More of me (as God created me to be) and less of the crap.
This was huge for me:
1. Who is your Master? Once I experience Jesus as Lord and experience his manifest presence...I will receive my mission.
2. What is your Mission? Once I know my master and my mission, I'll be ready to get married.
3. Who will be your Mate?
*I think as an American culture we get our priorities out of order and this was really insightful for me.

Also, Mark explained to us that every person has a  Spirit, Soul and Body; and he defined the differences between each one.

We spent the week discussing: what the Fall means for us as humans, what true Salvation looks like, Fear of the Lord vs. fear of man, and finally Preparation for the Tabernacle.

On Friday, we spent the entire day (8am-7pm) walking through the steps of Tabernacle like in the Bible. It was the most amazing thing I've ever been a part of. All I can say is, that was my first introduction with how big and amazing the Holy Spirit is. I experienced the manifest presence of God and it was so thick and so heavy. I have never felt so much, as I did in that room that day. I could go on forever, but I won't. Just ask if you are interested, I'd love to share more.

Spiritual Warfare: I think it is only fitting that during this week, I happened to undergo spiritual warfare with my health. I was diagnosed with Epilepsy 5 years ago. I had done so much testing, and all the doctors in Las Cruces told me my tests were negative...there was nothing wrong with me. Yet, during strangely coincidental times, I would have an episode (once a full on seizure, but other times I would just forget what I was saying or thinking). I went to the best, the Mayo Clinic, and the neurologist there found a nerve bundle in my brain that may be causing the problem, although it is hard to tell. I've been taking medication consistently and have had no problems for a year...until this week. I was having an intense conversation with my discipler, Fleur, and totally forgot what I was saying, and then it happened again later with my other leader, Callie. Also, all this week, everyone in my house had been abruptly awakened during the night by loud unexplainable noises. People were struggling with unusual fear and anxiety. Needless to say (and sorry if you disagree with me) but Satan was on the move.
The man who taught us this week, Glen Vines, was a missionary from Tibet, and a counselor and pastor dealing with Spiritual Warfare. While some of what he taught was intense, everything he taught was Biblically based. Spiritual Warfare, Satan, demons, strongholds, generational "sins"...we just don't like to talk about that in America. Everywhere else in the world, they know that the Spiritual World is alive and well.
The one thing that was interesting for me this week was something Glen said. He said in the middle of his teaching that a lot of young people with unexplainable epileptic symptoms have one big similarity...they deal with abandonment issues with their father. In the Bible and in his experience, epilepsy is sometimes a result of Spiritual Warfare and demonic strongholds...especially when addiction in parents is involved, and that it is a very tough stronghold to break. One of the biggest symptoms is the "deaf and dumb spirit" which is characterized by a loss of thought or inability to verbalize a thought temporarily. Now Glen knew nothing about me, and this made my ears perk up a little. I did go and seek counsel and prayed about it. I met with Glen separately and we prayed that I would be released from any strongholds and prayed against Satan in this and other areas of my life. Now I'm very logical and I received my degree in a medical field so I know the implications. I will not stop taking my medication, but I do have faith that I am free from seizures, and I continue to pray against that, because I know God is the ultimate authority in both the Physical and Spiritual realms.

Covenants: This was like being in a college lecture all over again. The teacher, Neville Strachan, is a pastor and a teacher at a Bible College in Australia. He is as Aussie as you can get...and man he is well read when it comes to God and the Bible. I loved just sitting and having lunch with this man. I probably took 50 pages of notes on just his lectures. I have never looked at all of the Covenants in the Bible between God and his creation, until now...and I will never read the Old Testament the same again.

Nev taught us the difference in meanings between: LORD, God, and Lord.
It was amazing to see all of the Covenants and how they all point to, foreshadow Jesus. He "paid in full" all of the previous covenants. It is AMAZING!!!

Kingdom: This was the most applicable week for me, because it changed my entire outlook on life and how I experienced my Outreach time.

I think that this topic is commonly misunderstood, it is a word said like "Gospel" but yet no one is really sure what it means. What was Jesus talking about in Matthew, Mark, Luke and John talking about in the Gospel? The Kingdom of God. The Kingdom of God is not focused on how we can escape earth to get to heaven, but how we can bring the Kingdom tangibly to earth.
Salvation was not the goal of the Gospels, living the Kingdom is...salvation is just the beginning
Christians in the Western World are guilty of thinking agnostically and enlightenment rather than Kingdom. The Bible tells us "how to think" but not "what to think". The difference between what we do and what we are capable of doing would suffice to solve the world's problems.

Something that stuck with me about "Fair Trade" amongst my retail purchases was: "If you are going to enjoy jeans, shirts and shoes made by developing neighbors...then these people are your neighbors"...and doesn't Jesus say one of the most important commandments is to "love your neighbor as yourself"?

Well those were just some brief highlights of my lecture phase.

I am so overdue in my posting...time to catch up!

Okay well for this post, since I have been SO delinquent in my past weeks I thought I would catch you up on all the hard work we've been putting in and all the fun we've been having. When I say "we", I mean my team. Would you like to meet them? Okay. Here are my mates!  This is all of the students and a few staff running the school here in Maroochydore.

The gentleman with his shirt off, Ethan, just got baptised!

In our family. There are 12 students including myself. 7 are Americans, 2 Canadians, 1 Swiss and 2 Danish. Amongst the staff there are 5 Americans, 1 French and 1 Aussie. We are a melting pot for sure.

For a more personal intro, here are some more pictures.





Christine, (Canadian) is a very skilled songwriter,
 and she will be leading worship for our team on outreach.

Over the past 9 weeks these amazing people have become like family to me. They are my encouragers, challengers, and best mates. Please keep us in your prayers as we embark September 18th to Thailand and India for 2 months.



The dates are off a little. We will be in Thailand Sept 18th-Oct 14th and India Oct 16th-Nov 12th.

Week of Prayer and Intercession ~ Part 1: Jesus is my LOVE!

   After spending a week learning how to see God as not only GOD, but as my Father, God started to show me himself in a new way. Yes, another "new" way. :) He wanted me to see him as my love. I was well aware of the metaphor of a marriage that goes on in Christianity. The church (believers) are the Bride and Jesus is the Bridegroom, anxiously awaiting to be united with us. I know John the Baptist talks about himself being just the friend of the Bridegroom, helping prepare for that "special day". I have heard all of that, and I was satisfied with the idea of myself as the Bride, Jesus as the Groom...until I really thought about it and realized that wasn't enough. Let me explain.
  
   I'm not sure how long ago it was, 6 months or even a year ago, I had a dream. Which is odd for me because I hardly ever remember my dreams, but I remembered this one in great detail. I dreamt that I woke up the morning of my wedding day. I was greeted by my mom and my friends with big smiles beaming as they exclaimed "It's your big day!". I got up, ate breakfast and tried to grasp what exactly was going on. It was the setting of my dream wedding (you know, the one you have had playing in your head since you first thought about getting married). It was on a beach, all of my family and best friends were there. The dress was perfect, the colors and the bridesmaid dresses were flawless and the flowers were gorgeous. It was designed to be the happiest day of my life but I was overwhelmed because I had no memory of being engaged, or planning the occasion.
  
   Everyone just kept coming up to me and telling me how lucky I am. I heard over and over "What a perfect couple", "He is such a man of God", "You two are going to be so happy", "God really blessed you with such an awesome man", and "You guys will have such an amazing marriage, I'm so excited for you!". There was so much love, smiles, encouragement and just joy everywhere. I distinctly remember my mom, brother and best girlfriends emphasizing how much they loved my fiance and how they couldn't pick a better match for me. The only problem was, I had no idea who I was marrying. I remember walking down the aisle and seeing an average looking guy (whom I have never met) and having an anxiety attack because I was about to marry someone that not only I didn't love...but I didn't even know. Everyone said he was an amazing man, perfect for me in every way...but I didn't know him well enough to agree or disagree, and I wasn't in love with him. How could I have a relationship with someone I was not in love with? 
  
   So I posed the same question to myself: "How can I be Jesus' bride if I barely know him, and I am not head-over-heels in love with him?" I can't. And so, my great desire and focus has been viewing Jesus as my love, my first and greatest love. Slowly, He has been showing me how much He cares about me, and how unconditional his love for me truly is. I am only able to love Jesus in this way because He first loved me, but it is also two-fold. I have to be able to receive love in this way, in order receive it from others. Does that make sense? Me being able to love Jesus as the love of my life allows me the ability to love and fall in love with someone else. Without that, I will not be able to have a God-glorifying and lasting relationship with my future husband. I know God wants to awaken something in me so that I will search desperately and passionately the mysteries of Him who loves me and wants to romance me. I am so ready to skip Christianity and go straight to my relationship with Jesus.