The joy of the Lord is my strength.

This past week was interesting.

As of now, (its YWAM so it can change in a second), we have 4 people leaving our school. Two are getting kicked out for drugs, two are wanting to just give up, and one is confused on what he is supposed to be doing.

Looking back on this week I have learned more then ever that my attitude determines my altitude, if I want to let other people get me down then also I will be in the same boat they are with wanting to give up. I decided to do a juice fast all last week and at first it was because I wanted to see what my role was for my outreach team. But as the week went on I realized it was to stand in the gap for my fellow students who were becoming very weak in spirt, heart, and body. So the past three nights I have not gotten much sleep because God keeps putting different people in my head so I pray and pray into the early hours of the day. It has been really good though. I can only see the positives that are coming out of this. God knows, he has this plan that already has been worked out, he is now in the process of weeding out the people who are willing to go out and do what he calls, and getting rid of the people whos attitudes are just rotten. My team is down to 1 leader, and 5 students if the two that want to leave actually leave. At first I was like man I wanted a bigger team, but again God is not looking for numbers he is looking for the ones who are WILLING and able to go out and make His name known.

We are down to a week left here at the base until we leave for outreach. I am not sure how much time I will be able to access on the internet, but I will try my best to keep you guys updated.

Prayer:
I need prayer that my attitude is different, that I will always be filled with the spirit and the fruit that comes along with it.
Pray for the team, against the spirit of giving up, and for a new spirit to come into this place that is filled with encouragement.
Continue to pray that we have faith for God to provide the money almost all of us need still to pay for our outreach fees.
Pray that we begin to focus on the positives instead of dwelling on the negatives.
Pray for leadership that they become unified.

Nations 2 Nations, and Relationships

Update timeeeee.

Whooo alot has happened since the last time I blogged. Two weeks ago we did an event called, N2N (nations to nations) it was held in a couple churches around Jbay. Our base had another base from Cape Town that stayed with us so that was exciting, there were many new faces which was refreshing to see. Nations to Nations is an event where...well nations come together from all over to worship. We had some different speakers come and encourage us a lot, it had a focus on going out into the nations to make His name known which is awesome. My calling was confirmed almost everyday that week, which was incredible. This place, it is where I am supposed to be, this place is where I will have the opprotunity to go out into other places of Africa to do mission work. But now I am focusing on just being intimate with God. Being able to just go and sit at His feet, explain my problems, and to feel truley satisfied in His presence. It actually was a challenge to begin to go to Him before I went to other people, because I am so used to just running to someone else. But man has it been SO MUCH more rewarding, I have felt a peace that only God can give.

This past week our speaker was a couple from, East London South Africa. They are in the process of pioneering a base that focuses on restoring families, restoring people who came from broken families, and just helping new couples and stuff be able to bring up a good healthy family. Anyways they spoke on opposite sex relationships, which is always well needed. The main topics were courting and purity so it was really good. One thing that really stood out to me is when they talked about being 'mr right'..they said, stop trying to find mr or mrs right, start to BECOME mr or mrs right, so when the person comes to you they know you are right. Ahhh I loved it so much it was such truth. Like why keep worrying about finding someone when I should be the one finding myself and preparing myself for him. Hmm it was good. We also did a character test it split up 16 personalities in 4 main categories so that was really good. It was really nice to be able to see how all of us work, why some people we get along with better, and what our weaknesses are. I was a mix between a lion and an otter, my weakness was that of a Lion so I tend to run over people with my words and can become aggressive in my leading at times. But my strengths are leadership and also being able to mix with many people. Haha it was so good for all of us to figure out who we were dealing with. It was a long week, but such a rewarding week, we all had a bunch of laughs because the couple that taught us was ALWAYS making jokes. My friend Lisa said, “the class was so nice, now I know not all Christian couples are boring.” it was so funny, man you could tell that teaching together on this topic is what they were meant to do, it brought them so much joy to be able to prepare us for future relationships. It all starts with the family, that is how all of our influences start, if something goes wrong in the family it also goes wrong in the society.

This weekend both teams started to do some fund raising, my team decided to sell clothes (our clothes) and food. We have been selling for two days and have made some good money. I was laughing because man I am coming back home with hardly anything I came here with. But it is good, its been so humbling being here and being able to bless people with the things I had been blessed with at a time. So we will continue to fund raise up until we leave and even while on outreach, because my team is the team that has no money. I am the ONLY white person on the team so it should be interesting hahaha I am going to love it, and sometimes be so frustrated I want to kill someone. But I know that God has His hand in everything, that I will really grow so much on outreach. I hope to come back an even more patient person. Hmmmm so that was kind of what has been happening. We have one more week left of lectures, I am not sure what the topic is yet but I hope it is spiritual warfare because that is one topic that needs to be addressed. After next week our last week we will be busy preparing dramas, dances, songs, teachings and activities for outreach. We leave the 4^th of December to do two weeks in Jbay (do not worry we wont be stuck at the base, we will be traveling around to different peoples houses) and then I think we will go back to Uitenhage for one or two weeks. Time is getting close, I am still 600 bucks short for fees, so if anyone of you guys would like to help support, just contact me on facebook. Or Write a comment and I can give you my bank account number.

Prayer Requests:

School fees for everyone, and for the faith that God can do all things.

Unity with each team, leaders included.

Against sickness, anger, and pride.

For a sense of humbleness amongst us all, that we can see, and serve before we are asked.

Pray for leadership, that they can really connect and begin to help us prepare for outreach.

Lastly pray for a renewed spirit, for strength, patience, and for a new passion to come alive for everyone.

I personally need some divine wisdom on how to deal with bad attitudes, conflict, and to see into situations that cant be seen from just a normal prespective.

Hope everything is going well, I miss you guys and love you all!

HAHAHA

ok so sorry about never commenting back, I JUST now realized that I even had comments, I thought they would be sent to my email...guess not. So thanks for commenting hahaha.

Our God is an awesome God

So last week our team went to Uitenhage in South Africa for a short mission. We were beyond blessed throughout the whole week. All of us were split up to live with different families from the church we were working with. And man that was an experience in itself, my friend and I ended up staying in a shack with a family of four. We shared a twin size bed and had a leaking ceiling hahahaa, it ended up raining so much we had to move out of the house to a different family so we would stop getting wet while sleeping. Both families wow they were so welcome and accepting to us. That was probably the biggest thing for me, how open the people were to us. We had women of the church cooking us all three meals for the whole three weeks, and we did not even have to pay for them it was all blessed to us. Our team learned so much about unity. God really broke us individually as well, for me it was my pride, which was long over due. We did a lot of door to door evangelism which was really awesome, any house we walked into would offer us everything they had to eat or drink it was amazing. There were a couple people on our team that literally slept in a horror movie house. They had to fight with demons for two nights straight without sleep, it was pretty intense. Overall it was very successful, we learned about our athority we have in Christ, and just in general how much we need to all be united in order for our ministry to be effective.

The week now that is just ending our speaker talked about Prayer, which was a very good topic for all of us. Its been really good to be able to practice prayer and to understand why God needs us in the first place to pray. We are getting ready for Nations 2 Nations which is a huge worship thing that is happening in JBay with our base and three other big churches. There will be speakers, and alll kinds of nations together worshiping in our own way. It will last a week, but man we have been cleaning this base like crazy. Its looking very very nice! Ok OK I almost forgot, wow ok on Thursday we did this activity where our speaker challenged us to pray about the things that were keeping us distracted from God and to give them up. He challenged us to find seven things that we could give away to other people to bless them. So we got an hour to pray about it. and well lets just say I don't have many electronics left. Its been something ever since I got here, like man I have wayyy too much stuff, more then I ever will need in my lifetime. But it was amazing how life changing this exercise was, it was really hard for some people to give up stuff. But I received this Gold necklace that was passed down from a Madagascan King, man the significance behind it was so great to the person who gave it to me so I felt so blessed to receive something like that. It was so crazy how much joy you get from giving things. And it was also crazy how much God was speaking through every gift. No one got something twice, and everyone got exactly what they were needing at that time. It was incredible. God is so good.

Prayer request:
Nations 2 Nations-just that instead of focusing on the event, we focus on the real reason behind it, God.
Patience
Our DTS unity
Just for our overall focus to be on our realtionships with God.
We have gotten our outreach teams and fees, so pray for money.
Many of us have the flu, all the girls do at the moment, so just that we can all get better.