Heaven tastes like chocolate cake to me

Alas, sadly this lecture phase is drawing to a close, and in 5 beautiful days I will be leaving this paradise in San Pedro, Belize for El Salvador to embark on the second phase of my DTS called outreach! Woohoo! I will be with 8 other gals and one guy along with an amazing leader doing some ministry with kids, the poor and people needing the love of Jesus! We are going to start off our El Salvador outreach partnering with YWAM El Salvador who will be also hosting our team for a good chunk of the time. As the bits and pieces of what we are going to do become revealed one by one, I just am getting so excited. This past week we have really been tackling the question: What is the gospel? It is such a simple question, yet it has taken about 3 hours every day of discussion for 5 days to really explore the topic. I am learning how much more important it is to live and be the gospel and simply love on people than merely try to get converts. Words are important, but they are dead without the demonstration of them in our lives. So this is why I'm getting so excited!

You might want to know if doing this DTS was really worth it? Did it meet my expectations? Would I recommend it? Would I live it again? The answer to all of those questions is absolutely yes! I've learned so much that if I were to write them down, they'd fill volumes.....and I probably have begun to do that with my blogs, huh? I really do enjoy all of my wonderful readers and partners with me on my journey! I appreciate all the support back home so much! Your prayers are doing amazing things. So, thank you again.

Today has been one of those amazing experiences, which if possible I would freeze and relish in the moment. Sometimes it's like I feel like I'm getting a little taste of heaven down on earth, and honestly I believe I have. This morning we had debriefs where we talked about our expectations coming here, and how this experience has been different from that. We also talked about what we could do differently, and shared praise reports of what God has done. As I looked around the room....I couldn't help but smile at every one of the students. We have become so close, so intimate, so trusting....and these relationships are so precious....we've watched God reach into one another's hearts and radically transform them before our eyes. But it wasn't the easiest thing. It was challenging, grueling at times and even exhausting. But it was all worth it. Then the afternoon came along, during which I read The Case for Christ. (great book by the way). However this evening was my favorite part of the day, of the school actually. We all were cordially inviting to a formal dessert banquet, and of course we got all dolled up, and all the guys finally took a shower! Thank Jesus! Yeah all 2 of the male students. Did you guys know that? We have 16 girls to 2 guys here? Ok, done with the rabbit trail. The dessert banquet was amazing, and the staff transformed our dining room to a candle light resuraunt! During dessert the staff read these beautiful letters written personally to each of us students, and it was so....um what's the word? eloquent I suppose fits, but I'm sure I was thinking of a different one. Anyways, you get the point. It was awesome and we listened to Michael Bublea....I think that's the wrong spelling. So, yeah....the day was like a taste of heaven.

Sniffles.....we are leaving Belize....so sad. But I just hope that we will remember nights like this and when outreach gets hard and we just remember that God wants us to bring heaven down to earth to the people we minister to and that it would help us put our all in what we do. So my instruction to all of you devout readers is, thank God for every little taste of heaven, and remember that it's a reminder that He loves you and delights in your happiness, but when things get tough, just remember those moments and let him carry you through it.

a bunny running wild in daisies....

I have learned so much this week and feel so much more free that I can barely crunch it down in a short blog....but I'll try okay? So this week we had speaker Tiffany Thompson and amazing, dynamic woman who travels around with Life Promotions as a public speaker with Life Promotions speaking and various topics. The theme she chose for this week was P.I.N.K. An acronym about the promises of God in scripture. P stands for Precious are Your thoughts toward me Oh God...if I were to count them, them would outnumber the grains of sand. Psalm 139: 17-18 I is for Immeasurably more than anything we could ask or imagine is His power at work within us. Eph 3:20, N stands for Never will I leave you, never will I forsake you. Hebrews 13:5 and K stands for Kingdom of God is not of this world. John 18:36. You might think this all just sounds pretty cute and sweet, but these messages I found really powerful. On Monday, we all started out our lectures by walking down the beach and find a secluded dock where we could all sit in a circle and ask God to give us His thoughts of encouragement and insight about each of the 18 students here. When we began the process we asked God to reveal to us what he wanted to say to each student. A lot of people got similar mental pictures and words of encouragement for each individual which we verbally shared with them. For nearly every student I felt like God was speaking so many different words and pictures to me...they just came flooding in my mind and just about everything I shared seemed to really resonate with each of them, that I was certain God must have been giving me insight beyond my own. Go God!!! It was so beautiful to see how God loved each person here and was in desperate attempt to reveal more depths of how He saw and thought of everyone here!

Now, I have to tell you something that during this my whole life I have struggled my whole life with a fear of rejection. I haven't shared this with very many people at all. But I have been feeling this rejection a lot.....even here at DTS. Not that anyone rejected me, but I felt like they did. I feared they wouldn't like me if they really knew my past, my mistakes and some of the foolish things I've done. I was really careful about sharing stuff about me, for fear that if they knew they wouldn't respect me as much. I even carried myself around in the fog of believing not everyone really cared to get to know me. "Is something seriously wrong with me that makes me not as fun to hang out with?" I thought....and as I went along my life, it seemed like when others did reject me, break up with me, ignore me or simply not initiate hanging out with me, it was because I just wasn't worth it. And even though I knew that God loved me, I just dumbed myself down, and hide who I really was. So, as each other student got a chance to be encouraged...all 17 of them, I realized I was the last. After about 4 hours went by and everyone got so encouraged, my turn came...and I was so used to it....that it barely phased me, but my heart sunk a little and I didn't really know why...maybe it's because "I'm always the last....but I guess that's just the story of my life." I listened as the devil lied to me....and I believed. I figured I'd get the last leftovers of insights, the least amount of time and everyone was tired. But what soon took place utterly blew my mind. Every single one of my class mates fought for a chance to share with me what God had revealed to them and to encourage me. Myla shared how she looked up to me and was sooo glad that we lived close to each other and was looking forward to hanging out with me when we got back home, then another shared with me how she saw Christ in me every single day wanted to be like me when she grew up, still another shared a picture of a bunny in a field of daisies, running around without a care in the world. Only did I know that my favorite animal as a child was a bunny and that I love daisies. Then about 5 others shared how much they loved how I radically worship God and saw me as such a role model. By this point I was sobbing and laughing, completely overwhelmed that anyone saw me like that. Oh, how much I long to show Christ every day, and here was someone telling me that she saw Christ in me? That I glowed? That I was a woman after God's own heart like King David? and to have everyone unanimously tell me that I was a leader? I don't feel like a leader! I want to be but I don't feel like one. After about 15 minutes of listening to these words, I felt completely broken, like my heart was like a bunny in a cage, fighting to be free.....and then it happened!!!!!!!! The door of the cage opened and I saw myself as that bunny running wild in a field of daisies without a care in the world. Surely God revealed just a few grains of sand amongst the vast beach of His precious thoughts towards me!!!! I pray that God would reveal to you His precious thoughts! Because, even if you don't feel it, He has a lot of them....and He's dying to whisper them to you!

Why suffering?

How would one truly know life if one didn't know death? How would one know love if he didn't first know hate? How would one know freedom if he didn't first know bondage? Sometimes I wonder why there is pain in the world, do you? Sometimes I wonder why there's so much suffering. Sometimes I wonder why those who are good and love the Lord experience so much pain and loss. I think it's okay to wonder these things. I've often fought with these questions, and somewhere down in me I wanted to have the chance to really hear a first hand testimony of someone who was persecuted for their faith, and see how they triumphed....that is if they did. Well, this past week I had the wonderful privilege to meet the author Dan Baumann who wrote the book Imprisoned in Iran and hear him personally teach our small DTS school of 18 students. Dan directs a DTS in Kona Hawaii and worked for many years as a missionary to Afghanistan and other middle eastern countries. But when he followed God's leading to go to Iran he was immediately imprisoned accused of being an American spy and a missionary, which was only half true. He was beaten, persecuted and isolated in a small cage of a prison cell for 9 weeks, and even struggled with the feeling that God had abandoned him. But God surely had not. Sometimes when accused in court before the judge, God would fill him with boldness and he would start preaching to the judge. But at other times, he would feel so much depression and anguish feeling so alone. At one point Dan attempted suicide and Jesus appeared to him in a vision promising to carry him through his hard time, and God began to give him love for his enemies and give him the strength to forgive them. Several weeks into his imprisonment, Dan had gained favor in the eyes of his beater, the judge and the president, as well as several of the guards, even bringing them to a saving knowledge of Christ. After 9 weeks Dan was released from prison through a string of arrangements which can only be explained as a miracle. When Dan tasted freedom after being in bondage for so long, it gave him a completely knew perspective on life. It was like he was experiencing the beauty of life for the first time. It was so much easier to be thankful when he got out of prison, for the things that I experience every day and yet I take such little thought for. Hey, I can see the sky every day! I can go for a walk at any time I feel like it, unless I'm in the middle of work that is. You're suppose to laugh. Anyways, my point is that, so often I'm not very grateful for what I've got, and I'm always wanted something better, and nothing is ever enough for me. But after hearing Dan's talk, I decided to go for a walk with Jesus to talk to Him. I started thanking Him for all He's done, and it was like I opened my eyes to what God has really given me for the first time. I mean I get to be on the beach every day! There's not a day that goes by that God doesn't forget to paint with new colors in the sky! I get to see all these amazing creatures like iguanas, birds, starfish and mosquitoes....ok, I'm kidding about the last. But you get the point, right? God has gifted so many of us with stuff we forget to be thankful for. And yet the exercise of thanksgiving itself will bring so much freedom to us that and it itself will fill us with so much more joy that nothing else can. So, to go back to those questions I raised, about why God lets good people experience suffering. I think that it reminds us of the fact that we are living for something so much bigger than this life. If everything went exactly right, we wouldn't need God. Secondly< I think that when we experience loss, we remember the one who gave it to us and learn to be thankful once we experience something better. But overall, I don't think that God likes suffering at all, but it exists, and it sucks...it really does. And Jesus doesn't like it either, which is why He died for us, because He loves us and He wants to take it away as much as He can. Oh how much I need Him!!! And the world needs us to show His love and compassion. We are his hands and feet. Let's do something about it ok?