The Great Loss

Our week this week was learning about the history and culture of the country we are going to on outreach. Since it is a security issue, I'm going to ask that you don't comment about the country. Thanks so much!!!

Like I said, we studied the history and culture and it has made me very excited to head out to outreach!!! We leave in a few weeks! It's so crazy that it's coming up so fast, but it will be an amazing experience.

You may be wondering about my title...well, we had a class on Friday about pirating music and movies. Harold taught about how there is a base rule about copyrighted information and that sharing CD's or songs through a USB is downright illegal and such. I hadn't really considered it much in the past, and I kind of thought it was stupid because no one gets in trouble and well, I never illegally downloaded off the internet, I just shared it with my friends. At the beginning of DTS I had heard about this lesson and God convicted me of my music. I had prayed about it and decided, yeah well I will delete some of it. So I did, but I left a lot of it. Then a few weeks ago, it came up again, and I was like, "ok God, I get it...I will do it" But I still didn't walk in obedience to Him. During the lesson, our staff admitted that they have done it too and that it was a hard process to work through, but in order to live in righteousness, it was something we had to take to God. And James 4:17 says "Anyone who knows what good he ought to do, and still doesn't do it, sins" That got to me, and I realized that yeah, I probably wouldn't get in trouble with the law and it doesn't really seem that big, but for me to go deeper with God I needed to do this. So finally I deleted all my illegal music. My itunes library went from about 2,500 songs to 539 songs. Ouch. It was very hard, but at the same time, very freeing. I am choosing to walk in obedience and following God's heart and I can't do that when I know I am disobeying Him.

I'm not saying this all to condemn you who share music and all that...It's totally between you and God. I completely understand how you may think it's not a big deal, and that's cool. It's just something I knew I needed to do since God has been telling me this for about 3 months. haha

Today me and my fellow students put together a ninja video :) One of our team members isn't going on outreach with us and he is really into martial arts, so we decided to make a funny video to tell him that we will miss him. I know, I know....we're dorks! But it's so fun!!!! haha Crazy stuff like this is always great bonding time :)

Hope all is well back home. Please continue to pray for us as we begin to prepare for outreach. We have a few people who haven't gotten all of their money for outreach yet, and will need their fees paid to be able to go with us, so if you could pray for them too. We have a team building week next week and we will find out how the teams are split for outreach. It will be bittersweet. It will be exciting to see who all we get to spend the next two months with, but also that means for two months we won't get to see the rest of the team. We have all made such great relationships that it's hard to split. I will probably have a couple more posts, but once we leave I won't be online. Thanks for all the prayers and support!!! God bless

There's So Much More

So this week we had speaker, John Hay. He spoke on World Views and religions. We learned about Christianity, Animism, Hinduism, Buddhism, and Islam. It is very interesting to look at these different religions from a Biblical standpoint. The people of these religions are all seeking Truth, and Satan has a great time twisting their views on what truth really is.

Not much else is new. This week I was a little homesick. I was just missing my family and my friends and all I wanted to do was just sit outside, under the stars and talk the night away. I mean, I'm not ready to go home just yet, but I do know that when June comes around I will be ready to come home and see what's next for me.

It's so hard to believe that we only have 2 more weeks of class left! Then we leave for outreach!!! I'm getting excited to use everything we have learned this far to advance God's Kingdom here on earth. Please be praying for our final weeks of class and for preparations for outreach. Thanks so much! God bless!!!

His Love is So Deep

How much deeper can I go? How much farther can God take me? Once again God's love has been poured out upon me. The more I encounter Him, the more I feel connected, and the more I want to go deeper and deeper. This week we had Jimmy Stewart come and speak on the Father's love for us. When I first started the week, I didn't know what to expect. I mean, I grew up in an amazing Christian household with parents that loved me and guided me in the way of Christ. I didn't think that this would be a huge thing for me, but on Friday something happened. God, the Father, came and spoke with me. We talked back and forth. I waited on Him and He spoke. I answered and He replied once again. It was amazing. He spoke such sweet things to me. He held me and called me His daughter. He told me He delights in me and thinks I'm absolutely beautiful. And He told me that all He wants is to just be with me. I don't have to do certain things and strive to be "righteous." If I just dwell in Him, it will happen. It's so amazing that God loves me, loves us, so much that it doesn't matter what we say or what we do, He just wants us to delight in His presence. And believe me, it is the most comforting thing.

Throughout the week God just kept telling me to come like a child, like His child. He wants to hear everything that is on my heart, good or bad. He wants to rejoice with me and help me. When He told me that, I thought of my niece, Ryleigh. I had gotten a video of her and she was telling me what she would do that weekend. She was so excited to just tell me everything! And God wants us to be like that. To be so excited to tell Him everything. He also told me that He just wants to hold me tenderly and softly. The picture of my niece Joslynn resting in Tyler and Amber's hands came to my mind. So tiny, but so loved. That's what I imagine it being like in God's hands. Resting so peacefully in His hands and that His hands just embrace me with so much love. That no matter what, good or bad, He will hold me forever in His hands.

I miss you and I'm praying for you all back home. Love you and God bless

Sharing the Love

Hello! We had a great week this week learning about evangelism with Nancy Vallese, one of our base directors. She has so many inspiring stories about her outreaches she has been involved in. It really made me excited for outreach and for evangelizing to people!!! We had an outreach on Thursday at Star Ferry Pier. We did the dance “Sometimes” and a drama called “The Chair.” We were planning on doing it twice, but we had some issues come up with another lady working in the area. Obviously there was some spiritual warfare going on! We did just one performance and talked to lots of people and there were 4 salvations that night! Sandra, from Germany, and I were ministry partners and we were able to talk to and pray for 2 different girls. One of the girls, Phyllis, was wearing blue, which we had gotten in intercession. She went to church, but didn’t have a relationship with Jesus. She wasn’t too interested in learning more either, but she was ok with us praying for her. The other girl, Phoebe, didn’t know anything about Jesus, and she didn’t seem like she wanted to talk, so we prayed for her and gave her a tract. She read it pretty intently for about 5-10 minutes after we had walked away. Please pray God continues to reveal Himself to these girls.

Yesterday, Christine from the Philippines, and Rachel and Lauren from England, and I went to a beach and went swimming. It wasn’t super hot, but it was nice and relaxing to get away from the village for awhile. Then we met up with the other girls from the base at The Vine Church for the One-Eighty young adults’ church service. It was a great service, and they ended up praying for us for an outreach we did after church.

We went down to Wan Chai. In this area there are a few blocks that have several strip clubs and bars. It kind of reminds me of Bourbon Street in New Orleans. We took roses and carnations and gave them to the girls that work in these clubs. Katie from Canada and Arianna (staff) from California and I went around together. We met 4 girls sitting outside of a club and gave them flowers. They were very talkative and we were able to pray for them. Then we were able to talk to 4 other girls from a couple of different clubs, but the opportunity didn’t come to pray for them because of the madams. Almost all of the girls that work in this area are from the Philippines. They come here to work because there aren’t places for them to find jobs back home. They often come for about 6 months and leave husbands, boyfriends, or even their own children to raise money. It’s so sad that this is one for the only means for them to earn money. Please just pray for all of the girls we all talked to last night. Pray that they can see that they are special and valuable in God’s eyes and that He has good plans for them.

Thanks so much for everything! This week we have Jimmy Stewart from the States. He will be talking on the Father Heart of God, so it will be an emotional week again. Pray for open hearts for God to move. Thanks again! Love you and miss you all!!!

Freedom

This week has been a very freeing and emotional week. We had speaker Ken Bluemel and he spoke on freedom from personal strongholds. I honestly had no idea what to expect going into this week. I had heard the word ‘stronghold’ thrown around here and there, but I never really understood it completely. God can be a stronghold in our lives. When we are weak, we find strength in Christ. Strongholds can also be personal or even demonic holds on our lives. These can come from sins or traumatic events that occur in our lives. This week God brought up trust. In my life there have been situations where someone I trusted a lot has let me down or disappointed me. I subconsciously connected trusting people to trusting God, and that since this person had let me down, then God would too. Which is a HUGE lie! I really processed a lot of things and learned how to bring down strongholds layer by layer until I get to the root.

Once again God poured out His love on me this week. He kept just telling me how much He loves me and how all He wants is for me to receive His love. It’s hard to grasp that all of God’s love is for me and all of His love is for you. That no matter what happens He accepts me. The hardest part that I have faced has been making it a heart connection. Moving it from my head to my heart. It’s so easy to say, God loves me, but to believe and receive it can be so difficult. We had a time of prayer during one of our lectures and God continued to speak of His love to us, and at one point in time Ken came and prayed over me. God was just saying through Ken, “Receive My love, receive it.” That was a very touching moment and I finally made that full connection.

This weekend is the end of Chinese New Year celebrations, and our village, Shui Tau Tsuen, has been very busy. It is the oldest village in Hong Kong and there are many temples, so around 1000 people have been celebrating around the temples. There have been lion dances, concerts, and a lot of food. It’s really cool to learn about this culture and be immersed in it.

Thanks again for all of the prayers! This week we are learning about Evangelism and we will be doing an outreach on Thursday. The outreach will be similar to Christmas Outreach, and I will actually be involved in the dance “Sometimes” that I was in at COR. It will be lots of fun! Love you!

Reaching Out

Hello everyone! I didn’t get a blog posted last week, so this one might be longer. Last week we had Bill Payne speak for the week. He spoke on the character of God. It has been so amazing to look at how much God truly loves us. That it’s not just that He loves us, but that throughout all eternity God’s love has always been the same. Nothing we do or the failures we’ve had can add or subtract from His love because God loves us with ALL that He is. Bill talked about Jesus’ death on the cross. We all know that He was crucified and died for our sins, but you know about how the Bible says that He was speared and blood and water flowed out of Jesus’ chest. Well, when someone is stabbed first water would come and then the blood because the heart would be punctured last, but it says blood and water flowed out together, which means that a blood vessel or Jesus’ heart would have had to burst for it to be mixed. Jesus literally died of a broken heart because of His love for us. That just amazes me!!!

God has been continually pouring into us and reminding us of His love. He just keeps saying “I love you, and you are to love people like I love them.” He longs for everyone to love Him, but since love is only love if it is freely chosen, He gives us the free will to choose to love Him. When we choose to follow Jesus, we are commanded to love others. We learned more about that this week when Joe Rystrom, one of our base directors, spoke on missions. We as Christians are called to go out and spread God’s love with every tribe, tongue, nation, and people. This is God’s heart to see them all worshipping before Him (Rev. 7:9). God speaks of love around 559 times in the Bible. He speaks of reaching the nations around 559 times. Do you think there is a connection? God loves everyone, but He needs us to go out into the world and share Him with them. I never realized how few cross-cultural missionaries there are in the world. There are only 400,000 full-time missionaries in the world, and they are working to share the Gospel to around 3 billion people in the unreached nations of the world. The sad things is that our churches aren’t supporting God’s call to reach the world enough. Statistics show that a total of $330 billion are spent in churches a year, but of this money only .1% ($400 million) is spent on missions to reach the unreached people of the world. And only 5.9% ($19.6 billion) is spent of regular missions. How will every tribe, people, language, and nation come to know Christ if people are willing to go and to help?

We had a time to think about what we learned and to pray and ask God how He wants us to help in reaching these people. I feel that God placed me in Lincoln for a reason, but that I’m called to raise up students and take them out into missions. To open their eyes to reaching out to people around the world. I know that I just need to trust God and He will guide me to where I’m to go and who I’m to reach.

So I’m learning a lot, but I’m also having a lot of fun too! Last weekend was Chinese New Year so a group of us went to a parade in the city. Next weekend there will be a huge celebration in the temple area next to our village. It’s so fun seeing this culture and learning about it. We have also have been hanging out a lot and just being crazy, which is normal for us :) Last weekend a few of us climbed the mountain that is behind our village. It was quite a hike, but I pushed through! Sadly, it was cloudy on the top and we couldn't see mainland China, but it was still a fun and challenging adventure I enjoyed!


Please continue to pray for me and all of us here. Next week we will be learning about personal strongholds. If you could just pray for me to continue to be open and willing to learn and to let my heart be molded into what God wants it to be. Thanks so much! Love you all

Men are a sack of dirt without God's breath.

This past week we had Dean Sherman as a guest speaker. He spoke on Relationships and Spiritual Warfare. God revealed many things to me this week, especially in the relationships teachings. Luke 10:27 says: “Love the Lord your God with all you heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind and love your neighbor as yourself.” This is our greatest commandment. This is what our religion is all about because this is what Jesus did. God has been working in my heart to love myself and others as well. It’s hard to always choose love, but we are commanded to do so. Another thing was that ALL love comes from God, and no one can show true love to anyone without loving God. We must choose to love God and love others even when the feeling is gone. Love is a choice, an action. It’s one of those things that I have to remind myself to do. I have to choose to love people when I’m happy, tired, frustrated, or hurt.

Like I said before, we also learned about spiritual warfare which was very interesting. I hadn’t realized that our authority over Satan in Jesus name was so great. I knew we had authority, but I didn’t realize that God doesn’t intervene in spiritual matters unless someone is willing to be used. He can, if He wants to, but He loves us enough to let us choose to be yielded to Him. God won’t force Himself upon us. We as humans must yield to God and allow Him to work through us.

There are so many things to process, but it is so good to learn all of these things. Love you and I will update you next week!