The grand summery of Lecture phase

Although I am starting to really miss home, these last three weeks have went by in the blink of an eye.  We had the privilege of one of the students in the very first DTS, come and teach us.  He was so inspiring!  As you can imagine,  we got to hear the most amazing stories of his history and about God's faithfulness, how to smuggle bibles into Russia, how to actually minister to people and not just shove Jesus down their throat pushing them away.

The next week we had two huge teams come in.  One was from a church in Red Deer and the other was from a school from the states.  They came all this way just to build houses with the Homes Of Hope.  It was also our School Of Worship's last week here before their outreach,  so they put on the best talent show I have ever seen.  They all wrote their own songs, and rocked this base.  That week was a hoot!

Last week we went camping in a small town in the middle of a jungle.  Every evening the fog would roll down from the top of the mountain, making it look like the enchanted forest from Lord of the Rings.  One day we got to hike through it.  It was so breath taking.  There were vines hanging everywhere, and huge bright flours blossoming everywhere you looked.  I was in paridise.  That hike really showed me how your attitude and the attitude of people around you will determine if your day is amazing or a nightmare.  It ment a lot to me to see how positive everyone was, even though hiking was deffinitly not everyone's thing.

Tomorrow morning I am off to outreach.  We are spending one week in Monte Verde, one in Nicoya, then off to Asia we go!  I am really excited to go,  but I am sad to leave some new friends behind. 

Bible Distribution and World Views

YWAM has decided to try to get one Country to have a bible in every home.  They chose Costa Rica because it is small and doesn't have too many languages.  So yesterday we joined up with the local churches, and we went door to door distributing bibles, talking, and praying with people.  

After talking with a lady, and passing her the bible, her son ran out, grabbed the bible from her.  Hugging it tightly he said "this is the word! I can't wait to practice reading with it!"  He was so excited.

This time we went to a rich urban area.  80% of the people were not home.  The people that were home, were not very open towards us.  In my group, we weren't ever invited in,  but we got to have a good talk with a security guard for one of the houses.  With about 150 people, we handed out over 1500 bibles yesterday.  

Our group leaders told us that in the rural areas,  nine out of ten houses will invite you in, want to know all about you, and give you a pop or something.  I hope we go to a rural area next time. 

This week has been great.  We got to see pictures of the start of YWAM, and the miracles that happened.   (We have been reading Loren Cunningham's books about how YWAM was started and some of the miracles that have happened.)  For me,  it made me see that these things are still happening today.  Those events all took place less than 50 years ago.  

Also,  we were looking at the "Biblical world view" vs "Animism and Secularism."  It was so helpful to be able to differentiate between the three.  I really want to go to Africa and get a better idea of what animism is.  I wish we would of had way more time to look at these,  we only got an hour.  But it was mind blowing! 

Animism is when they pray to 100s of gods and everything is about spirituality.  That exists in Africa and Asia and in many Tribal Groups.  Secularism can pretty much be defined with a bumper sticker, "The one who dies with the most toys wins!"

Do what you can today, and finish today well  ~ that is my quote of the week

Bring on outreach!

So much has happened!  I found out I am going to A$ia, and am very excited!  I am in an awesome group, and we work very well together.  Last night we mastered our first drama, and are working on another today.  This week we will be doing a lot of fasting and praying about details.

On Saturday night my group went out and talked with some homeless men.  We brought them bread and coffee, and we prayed with them.  I was surprised about how many knew about Jesus.  One shared his story of how his grudge against his father led him there.  I never knew how important it is to forgive.  "Unforgiveness is like drinking poison and hoping for the other person to die."

These last two weeks we learned some crazy things, especially during inner healing week.  I had no idea about iniquity, generational curses, or soul ties, I thought they were all an exaggeration.  We were all mind blown!  Look them up if you have never heard of them. 

Slow Down the Clock!

Wow these weeks are going faster and faster!

This week we had Venessa Pavely as an instructor,  she is amazing! And we get her next week to!  Anyway she taught on 'Intimacy with God.'   She really helped all that knowledge that usually stays in your head, to drop to your heart.  What stuck out to me the most this week is that if we have pride in our life, God cannot be God in our life.  If we say 'God take what you want, do what you want,' then God can be God in your life.

The boys through us the best valentines day!  They got the staff to put a rose and a puzzle piece of a trresure map on each of our pillows.  Anyways, after a many riddles we found our way to the kitchen were they had ice cream for us!  The craziest part was  that they stayed out of it, and made it a big bonding time for us girls!  This was the sweetest valentines day ever.  They have deffinitly raised the bar for any of our boyfriends or future boyfriends!

We have oficially found out our outreach locations!  We are having 2 teams stay in Costa Rica, and 1 is go into Asia...   We are suppose to pray and find out where God wants us,  I have no idea personally, so please pray for me in that regard.

My first taste of the supper-natural

This week I had my very first encounter with the suppernatural!  It was so amazing!

Last thursday everyone was woken up by a blood curdling scream.  My friend Nina was doing the soccer warm up when she fell and tore a ligiment in her ancle, her knee, and her arm.  She went to the hospital and got a sling and two wraps and one crutch to hobble around on.  Anyways needless to say she was in a lot of pain and people had to carry her up and down stairs.

So Tuesday morning in the start of class our whole class prayed around her, then she got up and took off her sling and started jumping and dancing and laughing and crying.. It was so exciting!
Praise God!

On the school side we are learning a lot about interceeding and what our roles as christians are and how to be a good example. 

Week 5

This last week we have been looking into the father heart of God.  I have been learning so much!  We had Jack Kody our teacher.  He had a unique way of teaching.  So, his first lesson was that we should try to be more like kids, then the next class he took us bowling so that his message could drop to our hearts. It was neat!

My group did our first local outreach.  (On our first adventure we got lost...)  Anyway, they put these huge signs on us that said "free hugs" or "free prayer" and we went around to random people to pray for them.  People were a lot more open to it here then I expected.  I went to about 10 different groups and got turned down only once.

Week 2.5

So much has been happening at our base this last week. The mexico DTS outreach is here in Costa Rica, and the September DTS from here is back here, so there are 30 more people here! It is exciting to hear all about their outreaches and how things are going.

Class has been really exctiteing. We get a new topic every week, this week our theme is knowing the charactor of God. So we are going through Jeremiah and finding out how God feels about us, and how he wants us to pray to change the outcome of many situations.

Also, this week we got to go zip-linning and repelling over a waterfall. The waterfall repelling was scary! It made me realise how God is our rope. We had to really lean back and trust, otherwise you would fall into the jagged slimy rocks.

End of week 1

Hey Guys!
So much has happened in just a week! In our second class the holy spirit taught it, it was crazy. Testimony after testimony everyone got up and revealed their faults. I feel like I have known everyone for a long time. We are all so close its like having fourteen best friends and ten really good friends and ten older brothers. I love it here.

The classes are really interesting, we get a new topic every week, last week we were learning to hear Gods voice. So we went to a huge park of undeveloped land and all prayed by ourselves for 3 hours. Then we would discuss what we heard or images we saw. It was really neat how somebody would get an image and someone else with talk about it without even knowing. Its like all our thoughts are connected.

We got to go downtown yesterday! It was so busy. On main street there are no cars allowed, it is just one really wide road for people. There were police everywhere but, people would set up a blanked full of black market things in the middle of the street as soon as the cops passed. They would sell pirated DVDs and games, a bunch of wallets and belts, hats, candy, everything but clothing. The stores on both sides were huge. The mcdonalds was three stories and it was a 15 minute wait to get anything.

My trip here was good, I got the window seat, and they did not loose my luggage!  Thank God.

It is really neat being in a latin country.  We went to a small church  today, the pastor greeted us all with a kiss on the cheek (this is the local greeting from male to femal.)  Everyone was very dressed up, and they all sung with all their heart. 

Our base is in an old coffee processing building, and our property (like everything else here) has a fence around it.  We have two banana treese in our yard as well as a basketball court.  We are 20 minutes from down town San jose

There are about 100 people here, 35 are in my DTS.  Everyone is friendly and everyone came here alone. I share a room with 14 girls,  I wonder how much longer it will stay somewhat clean. Everyone has their own accent, it is really neat.