Wednesday, February 22, 2012

Blessings from the week!

Monday, Feb 13th
This week we had the privilege of hearing from Danny Leeman, who is an Evangelist. He spoke on what it means to be a disciple which means “learner.” In order to be a disciple, we need to be disciplined!
Spiritual Discipline:
  1. Bible Reading 2. Bible study 3. Bible Meditation 4.Bible Recitations  5.Bible Hearing
-Be faithful to what God tells us to do. Ministry is doing the next thing that God tells us to do.
-worldview- affecting every part of our life.
There are 2 roads we can take: 1. broad road to destruction 2. narrow road to God.
When we go into the world, we are to not necessarily make decisions for other people, but we are to make disciples. Faith should be the thing keeping us going. Walk by faith and not by sight.
-Faith that is not tested cannot be trusted.
-Discipline yourself for the purpose of Godliness
-There’s a difference between being fired up and being on Fire for God.
-“You can’t make God known, until you KNOW HIM!”
-The Bible says we are to be concerned about the Lord’s affairs on earth. Kingdom of Heaven here on earth.
-Matthew 6:33 “Seek first His kingdom and His righteousness and all these things will be given to you.”
-Definition of love: willing benefit of the other person.
-At least 2 billion people have Never heard the Gospel. We are called to be the Salt of the earth (Matthew 5) and Lights of the world. God commands us to come under His authority, control and power. He will direct us in His steps.
-We need to go into the spheres of the community and ask God how we can influence and change the nation.
-“missionary”-one that is sent!

        Today we had our last day of Justice Water for Equipping Tracks! It has been a wonderful 5 weeks of being trained by Justice Water to make Bio sand filters, latrines, sinks, hand pumps, rain catchment tanks and how to purify water through Moringa seeds and the steps to purifying water. I have learned so much and we were all given opportunities to build these things that I just mentioned after being carefully instructed. Every Monday we spent 2 hours training in the afternoons on how to become effective in making different useful gadgets. When we go on outreach, we know are more prepared to bring our knowledge and understanding oversees to show people how to make water filters, sinks, latrines ect. We also were given packets with step by step instructions on how to construct these things. I know this is a very important skill to bring overseas when we go out to our different locations because contaminated water leads to millions of deaths each year. This upcoming Monday we will start our Health Care Equipping Track which I am very excited about! As I am here at YWAM, I feel as if the Lord is increasing
desire to pursue something in health care when I return. Please pray that the Lord will continue to reveal this passion of mine and lead me in His ways to either attending a college or attend another secondary school under YWAM called Introduction to Primary Health Care. I do believe that I will go home after DTS for a few months to work as a CNA (Certified Nursing Assistant) either in a retirement home or in home care. For those of you who don’t know, I took a CNA course and now I’m certified in Washington state. I would love to put this skill to work and serve the elderly and work within the medical field.

Tuesday, Feb 24th
Danny Leeman spoke on many things today. One of them was Biblical worldview and how important it is for Christians to be involved in the sphere of government. We need to keep with the Biblical worldview though. If we want to influence a generation, we need to get involved in the sphere of other influences. We are to do what God has called us to do within the sphere we feel called to.
2 Peter 1:10 discusses how we are to make our calling and election sure as believers. We are to do the next big thing that God calls us to do. Our calling is what we do to serve God. With the calling of God comes the grace of God.
“Delight yourself in the Lord and He will give you the desires of your heart.” Psalm 37
-Instead of focusing on what God is doing next in our lives, we need to focus on what God is doing NOW!  Trust Him even in the darkness.
-Our obedience to God can literally save lives.
-God created the world for Good (genesis 1)- we made the choice to sin and therefore brought evil into the world. He gave us the gospel and the choice to follow Him. Satan has come to steal, kill and destroy. God did not bring about evil. As humans, we chose to sin. (Adam and Eve fell into sin which lead to the fall of mankind)
Spiritual Discipline:
1 Corinthians 9:24-27
Luke 2:52
1 Timothy 4:7
Ephesians 6-we are not to wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers and spiritual forces of evil in the Heavenly realms.

Today we had prayer room during the afternoon. We worshipped and involved ourselves in intercession to pray for President Obama, the government, and that He would see God and become a follower of the Most High God. Praying for His salvation and for His choices. God did some miraculous things as people were seeing visions of President Obama, his wife and two kids.

Tuesday evening was such a blast because two girls from my DTS arranged a Valentines Day party! Everyone got all dressed up and it was the first time for the majority of us to take time to put on makeup, do our hair, and put on dresses! The two girls, Lisbeth and Macy and gone shopping prior to our party for food, decorations ect and had set up the classroom with streamers, balloons and had put a colorful peace of paper on each chair so everyone could go around and write words of encouragement for each person. Music filled the air as people snapped pictures. We all ate some yummy goodies consisting of cake, cookies, ice cream sundaes and other snacks.  We played interactive games just so we could bond together as a DTS family. Together we danced and sang. By the end of the night, everyone took home a big card of encouraging words and words of affirmation to put in their rooms.

Wednesday, Feb 15th!
Danny Leeman focused much of today on our prayer life.
ACTS: Adoration, Confession, Thanksgiving and Supplication
Psalm 100:4 “Enter into His presence with thanksgiving and His courts with praise.”
Get a hold of truth! Be honest with God.
Grace is an unmerited favor. We are to grow in the grace and knowledge of Jesus Christ.
-Faith that is not tested cannot be trusted.
-True Discipleship comes with discipline

As you can see, I am only touching on a few key points in his sermon but Danny was just an amazing speaker! He highlighted spiritual and Bible disciplines very well, including Evangelism and the best way to administer that. We each have different gifts and talents according to 1 Corinthians 12 and we are to use them to glorify God.

Wednesday afternoon we met with our outreach teams and broke up into pairs to share  what all we have been learning recently and what God has been revealing to us. We then got together as a team and discussed our highlights and lowlights of the weak and prayed over everyone.

At 5oclock, a group of around 15 of us pile into vans heading to a local middle school. We are fortunate that the middle school is just a 10 minute drive or so. As we arrive at the middle school, we all file out and began to make our way over to the playground where numerous kids were playing. Since we have to wait till 6 to serve the meals to the Marshallese kids and families for the after school program, we began to engage in conversations with the kids and involve ourselves in their hacky sack and bouncy ball games. Many of our guys were drawn to the little boys playing soccer and football as the majority of us girls played hacky sack and foursquare with other kids on the premise. Six oclock finally rolled around as we filed into the cafeteria. Half of us went behind the tables to serve the meal while the other part of our team got in line with the kids to eat the meal with them. Twenty minutes later or so, we switch duties and take turns engaging with the children.
     As I went through the line to get my meal, I sat down next to a group of little boys and Jordan, a guy in my India outreach team from New Zealand.  A little boy whom Jordan was communicating with immediately caught my attention. He was 8 years old and Jordan was asking the little boy to teach him Bible stories. Excitement filled the little boy’s face as he began to share Bible story after Bible story with Jordan. I began to ask questions for the little boy about his favorite Bible story and found out his favorite story is of Samson and he showed me how much strength Samson had- by lifting up his little arms and showing me his muscles. It totally made my night to hear him teach us his favorite Bible stories because he had such a fascination with Jesus and the stories he has heard in Sunday school. We are continuing to build relationships with these precious kids and am excited to see what happens next time!