'Tis the Season To Be....Thankful.

A few weeks ago I arrived back in Perth, Australia, returning to the place that I have been calling home for the last couple years now. I’ve got to say, I have been given the gift of so many valuable relationships over here from people all over the world, and although they are not my family by blood, they sure love me a lot, and aren’t afraid to show it!

In saying that, I want to just let you know how incredible of a time I had at home in Minnesota. For all who I was able to see, it was such a special privilege to get to spend time with you!  On the plane ride back here, I had was realizing how much I love all the people in my life!! During the 6 weeks I was home, I was able to see old friends from high school, church, go to a bridal shower for a close friend, road trip with my dad, visit a friend down in Kansas City, spend the night at a few places, connect with many over coffee or lunch, spend time with my beautiful and fun little sister, shop with mom and visit with family and supporters I haven’t seen in a long time! It was wonderful.

Since I have been in Perth, life hasn’t slowed down at all…. In fact, I feel like it picked up another few miles per hour… We had a staff camping trip for all of our YWAM staff, so we took buses up north for the weekend and camped in tents at one large campsite. It was good fun… we played games, hit the beach, and had some teachings from two of our main leaders. I was impressed at how well we were able to transport about 300 + people up two hours and back all in one piece!! =)

For the last few weeks I have been involved in a variety of activities… helping get our base ready for Christmas by sorting out the food, and also getting trained in a 2 week course that will qualify me to be a leader on the Discipleship Training School that I will be a staff member on this coming January. The course finished Friday so now I will be helping fill in the gaps where help is needed until the School starts in January.. I will also be helping prepare for the School. YOUNG PEOPLE’S DTS is the name. And it’s geared towards 17-24 year olds! I am really excited for it!

A little story I would like to share is one from this past week. On Thursday, we went out into teams to do some evangelism – meeting and sharing with people in different parts of the city. Some teams go and provide practical help for families in crises, others do ministry with kids and my team went to a lower income, more segregated part of the city. In the park we had a time of worship, and then got into pairs and prayed, asking the Lord what we should do. The only thing I felt was to look for a family that is hurting and broken. My partner, Kristian felt to look around  the park and join a circle of people close by. We spotted a few groups of Aboriginal people across the park from us and thought it would be a good idea to go and see if we could meet them. So we did. We walked toward a group of about six and as soon as they saw me with the guitar (I had led our worship time so I was still carrying it), they called out to me and asked if I would sit and play them some music. They said their uncle had just passed away the day before and they were all sitting there mourning his loss. A few of them had alcohol with them to relieve the pain and I could tell there wasn’t full consciousness in some. Alcohol is a big issue with Aboriginal people – for the last 30-40 years at least, it’s one of the biggest ways they cope with their problems and deeply rooted pain. So I agreed and I sat down, thinking “what am I going to play…?” And then I felt the Lord show me I should play songs about God’s goodness and love and healing power. They just sat there and listened, enjoying the uplifting words and melody. I loved watching them enjoy it. After I couldn’t think of anything else to play, another Aboriginal guy came and sat down by us and asked to see the guitar. I handed it over to him and much to my surprise he whipped out songs from out of nowhere and got us all singing a long with him…. A couple of the ladies stood up and did a little boogie, too! It was a really sweet time just loving them and laughing with them --- I felt like God really brought us there to bring them his joy and remind them of his love for them. There wasn’t much conversation happening, just music playing… but for that occasion I felt like that’s what they needed. We prayed for them at the end of it….and left feeling like God really did show up and reveal himself in a big way =) Was thankful to be a part of that story.

Here’s a little video of our time with these lovely people…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bp3OAXhDZgg&feature=youtu.be

Lastly, talking about thankfulness…. I felt that was an appropriate title for this blog…. Yes, we just had thanksgiving, but more than that I feel like in the last little while my eyes have been open to so many of the real blessings in my life. The people in it are one of the greatest gifts I could ever get. I live in a beautiful country and I get to live everyday and see God move in people’s lives! Such a privilege.. We had a little thanksgiving dinner tonight (Sunday) with the Americans, but we invited our international friends as well because we are includers =) My friend Molly (not my sister, but she works with me!) and I made sweet potato casserole, and I also made my own concoction of pumpkin puree chai spice milkshake…. People loved it! I can give you the recipe if you want! We sat down outside on blankets and tables and just had a great time with one another. I was so happy to have had real celebration in honor of the special occasion. 

Thankfulness is an amazing thing. It brings perspective, it shows us how much we really have, and makes us realize that our lives are not our own doing, but God’s plan from the start. I will never wrap my mind around the gift of life and salvation that He’s given us through his son, Jesus. We did nothing to deserve this….absolutely nothing, yet, He said he wants us to know him and choose him.. so he made a way to do that. As we look to the Christmas season coming up, my hope and prayer is to explore message of truth deeper so that God will use it impact my life in greater fullness.  That’s my prayer for you, too! 

Blessings til the new year!

Much love,

Erika

…….. Oh, yeah and Molly came back to Perth from outreach on Friday!!!! She’s been in Dubai doing some work there with her team, so I’m pretty stoked to see her =)

"Because His heart is for the Lost."

This is why I do what I do. I’m currently working as a missionary, training in Australia and focusing on reaching people in Southeast Asia. It’s something I have been thinking about a lot lately… this particular calling on my life to go and share the gospel to all the earth. 

I just arrived back in Perth from a 3 month outreach to 2 nations in Southeast Asia, and a few country towns in the outback up north Australia. If you asked me 3 months ago, what I was expecting would happen during this outreach, I would have never guessed what I am about to share with you.

God is so much more committed to reaching people than I realize most of the time. We started out in one nation (that I cannot mention on this blog) where God led us to do a lot of prayer and worship, welcoming Him into the city. As we really asked the Lord to lead us in ministry, we felt to do a lot of evangelism, which is a big word for going out into public areas and telling people about Jesus. Because this nation is closed, we were not legally allowed to do this, but of course, we were not going to let that hold us back.. for goodness sake, there’s so many people that have never heard the good news!!  So my team (Ali, Faith, Pete – from Australia, Sandra – from Papua New Guinea, Venny – from Indonesia, Nathalie – from France, and Daniel and myself from the United States) would spend lots of time at the public parks, where lots of young people will come to hang out. We barely needed to make eye contact before the teenagers would flock around us because we were foreigners, and ask us questions like “What’s your name? Where are you from? Why are you here? Do you like it here?”….Etc. Most of them just wanted to use us to practice their English. It didn’t take long for us to start getting asked about our beliefs or make a connection in the conversation to tell them about Jesus. Most had little if no knowledge about Jesus. I was so shocked! We made it our goal to tell as many as we could about Jesus. One night I had 7 girls that were interested in hearing my story and as they huddled in close to listen, I did not hold back in telling them the gospel in a way they could comprehend. Some received and some didn’t, but God totally moved in our limited ability to communicate to the people. In our 3 weeks in this location, our team saw 5 salvations! Such a fruitful time! 

The second story I will share is one that I am most privileged to be a part of. In the second nation we stayed in, we felt like our strategy in reaching the people was going to be different than the first location, because it’s a different culture and way of life. Again we sought the Lord for direction and felt that he was giving us a heart for the Buddhist monks….

If you know anything about Buddhism, you would know that it’s highly anti-Jesus. It incorporates a lot of idol worship and religious ceremonies and sacrifices made to the statue (that would represent a god, for example Buddha, or another god within the religion….) Their goal is to get to Nirvana, which is this state of nothing. There’s a lot that plays into it, but it’s totally anti-Salvation and there’s a lot of dark things that take place within their practices. This is a picture of a monk who has been practicing this religion for 14 years. Only males are allowed to join the monastery, and they can start when they are kids if they want to. The government gives them a deal on their education if they join, so many of them are going into the monastery with this incentive. One day our team was praying and asking the Lord where to go and I had a picture in my mind of a temple, while Pete had a picture of a monk standing under these flag poles. I remembered that there are flag poles right across the street from the temple, so we immediately thought this was where God was wanting us to go. So we went in faith and when we got there, we met a monk whose name was Loun. He spoke great English and wanted to chat with us some more so we took the opportunity to hang out with him. He led us to the large doors of the temple where they practice their religious ceremonies. As he opened the door, there was this large 12 foot Budha statue at the other end of the room and I almost peed my pants when I saw it. Even being there, made me feel uncomfortable, but I  knew this was what God was saying for us to do. So we stayed there for a long time that afternoon just learning from him and his religion. After a while, Nathalie shared with him about Jesus. She did this in a very non-offensive way, so that he knew she wasn’t judging him or his beliefs. I could see his face get softer and more open the more she shared. That day we prayed for him and gave him a bible, as he said he would like to read it. We found out a few days later as we ran into him on the street that he had been telling some of the other monks the stories in the gospel that he was reading. I was so stoked when I heard this! A monk, sharing with his other monk friends stories about Jesus?! No way! We could tell something in his heart was changing as we kept meeting with him and by our last meeting, he had a lot of questions about how to follow God and what he has to do if he wanted to follow God. Nathalie shared with him about the Ten Commandments, and told him her own journey with following and obeying God’s word. They went on and continued to chat, and finally she asked him if he wanted to receive Jesus. He responded in these words (I kid you not) “I wanted to the first day you told me about him”. As a Buddhist monk, he was able to recognize that his life now needed to change if he gave his life to the Lord. He understood this, as he allowed Nathalie to lead him to salvation. All glory to God. I love this story for so many reasons. God isn’t looking for us to be really good talkers so that we can persuade people into following him…. Quite frankly, that’s not the approach that Jesus took. Jesus loved. And God told us to go love these monks, and in our obedience, he opened a door where we could build trust with them through sharing our own stories… and God would lead the rest. I also love this because it is such a clear testimony of how God sees a broken life and wants to do something about it. He cares more than I will ever know about people I would never give a second thought about. He wanted to take a risk on this guy and show him who he is…. And look what happened! Such a privilege. 

God did so much on this outreach. I think the big thing I took away from it is that God really wants us to know his heart for people…. And to see a bit more of the brokenness of the world so that we can know how to reach it. It’s not pretty, and many of the people I met on this trip are in really depressing situations, but because He is so much bigger, stronger and so committed to reaching them, he has called me and you to take on this task and do the possible so that he can do the impossible in hopes that they would be set free!

            

                                                      Sharing the gospel in SE Asia!

                                    Hanging out in the Aboriginal communities in Australia!

                                                  I'm really good at painting Spider Man!

What a rush. I’m so excited to share more of these stories with you. Hopefully I can do so in person =)

Just want to thank all of you who prayed, gave financially and really back my team and I up! You can take these stories for yourselves, because you invested into them!

Does it really say that?

In the last 3 months I have had the privilege of getting to know and learn with these incredible people on the School of Worship.

Ephesians 1 says:

"For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. In love he predestined us for adoption to sonship through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will—to the praise of his glorious grace, which he has freely given us in the One he loves. In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God’s grace that he lavished on us...

....In him we were also chosen, having been predestined according to the plan of him who works out everything in conformity with the purpose of his will, in order that we, who were the first to put our hope in Christ, might be for the praise of his glory. And you also were included in Christ when you heard the message of truth, the gospel of your salvation. When you believed, you were marked in him with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit,  who is a deposit guaranteeing our inheritance until the redemption of those who are God’s possession—to the praise of his glory....     

I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that you may know him better. I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in his holy people,  and his incomparably great power for us who believe."

As a Christian, I thought I knew my place. I thought I knew what it meant to call God “Father” and to pray to my Father in heaven knowing that he is really listening…But it turns out, I was created to know much more than this! This last 3 months I have been learning alongside this small but powerful crew of great people what an absolutely mind blowing privilege it is to be called a daughter of the Living God. A daughter of the King of Glory. A royal princess to put it in other words. HE IS MAGNIFICENT. HE IS MARVELOUS, GLORIOUS, AMAZING, AWESOME, BETTER THAN ANYTHING I’VE EVER KNOWN! And it says here in this scripture that God predestined me for adoption to sonship through Jesus Christ. God PICKED me. He chose me. I don’t know about you, but that gets me. It stirs up all these questions like Could it really be that God actually made me? That he actually wanted me…. In the form of being that I am today to be here on earth…. That he may actually have planned for MY life specifically all along?” This reality hit me in a whole new way after weeks of teaching on the truth of adoption and what God invites us to be a part of. It’s so much more than getting saved… I actually bring glory to God in a way that Molly, my sister can’t. Because of my uniqueness in my body, my personality, and my spirit, there is nothing like God’s glory coming through me….and the same goes for you. I never realized it was this in depth and that God even cared for us to understand this. But he does! We just have to look a bit further. We have been made to receive destiny, to receive inheritance, to be a part of a kingdom. And he’s given us authority to take up when we reach certain areas in our lives.

 One of our outreach locations is a Buddhist nation in Southeast Asia.Ok. So this was not God’s original intention for this nation. He wanted its people to know him because he knew how to best disciple and help this nation to become all it’s meant to become! But somewhere along the line people chose to believe in something that was not the truth, and because of that, Christianity is scarce in this region of the world. They are very “spiritual” people, but the Holy Spirit is not involved in any way shape or form. They’ve taken on this false god to get to something they’ll never reach, which is nothing. It’s so meaningless, and people’s lives don’t really mean much to them as an effect of this deception.

 So, back to authority. God has made a way to get into these places and be prayer warriors to find openings through opportunities to talk with people speak truth into their life. We are gonna take authority over these nations... meaning we are going to speak forth the truth because we know we've been given the power to speak it. Not in a controlling way, but in a righteous, God-giving way! We may not be able to go in and transform a nation, but we might be able to have the opportunity to change one person's life... and a nation is changed one person at a time. You see, God predestined these people to be his sons and daughters too.. and he so desperately longs for them to know this just like we do. I can’t wait to see how God will move! We are his heirs! We are able to do exactly what Jesus did! It says in the bible that we will do even greater miracles than Jesus. Well, I don’t know about you but I am incredibly encouraged by that scripture and I wanna see to it that I do whatever I can to let God use me to take back what originally belonged to us as citizens of heaven! Imagine the possibilities of what might go down…

 

This is just a glimpse of what I have been learning about. And I’d love to share more with you if you’re interested in understanding it a bit more.. just e-mail me! 

OUTREACH: It’s time to take you on again. ---> TO THE NATIONS WE GO!!!!!

Love,

Erika 

Look what He's done!

So after Cambodia, our team went to THAILAND for about a week and a half to help with the Bangkok International (Rugby) Tournament. This tournament hosts teams from all over the place; we had lots of people from the UK, New Zealand, Australia, and a few locals. The tournament is put on to raise money for a Christian organization called ARK (At Risk Kids). It’s incredible what they do – taking kids off the streets in the slums and teaching them life skill, English and sport (Rugby) which helps them grow into adults with purpose. So we helped facilitate this tournament and saw over $3,000 come in, which is awesome! 

After a great time in the scorching heat of Thailand, we headed out for our last leg in another part of Southeast Asia (which I can’t say the name of for security reasons) to FINISH UP OUR OUTREACH.

We arrived in the morning, only to be led by foot through a long path with all of our luggage to the underground sub station. We were excited to be in cold weather, as it was around 50 degrees Fahrenheit . It took about an hour and then some on this subway, and we made friends quickly as we were shoved up next to foreign strangers until we got off – it was a battle to keep all our things together as people were still getting on and off and things were flying every which way. Finally we arrived and had to lug our things once again up to the place we were staying. “Finally….!” We all thought. We were pooped out. Because our team was such a large group of foreigners,  we had to split our team up. This made it look less like we were a group on a mission- So I took 6 and Luke took 5 and headed out to a different city. My team stayed in the city we flew into and did ministry there for the final 3 weeks. Our ministry consisted of lots of prayer walks where we would go to a specific location of the city and just really pray over the things that we felt God was leading us to pray. This was cool to be a part of as we recognized hopelessness being a huge weight there. We just really prayed for God to keep bringing hope in and light to be shone.

AN ATHEIST NATION: The main “religion” of this country is actually atheism, so there are a lot of unbelievers. The thing is - a lot of these people don’t even know why they don’t believe in God. They have just been brought up that way, and have not really considered the reality of God’s existence, much less heard the good news about Jesus. Well, let me tell you, as we took time to get to know some of these people, we saw 3 of them get saved! How amazing! One of them is an incredible story. This girl called Sarah was walking near my teammates Amber and Emma to meet her friend. She was introduced to my friends and Sarah noticed that Emma was wearing a cross necklace. She said “I’ve seen that before… I know a lot about Christianity” She was very good at English. She went on to tell that her English teacher was a Christian and he has had her and her classmates over for dinner before and has shared a lot with them about Christianity. This was cool because not a lot of people in this country are taught anything about Jesus, but this girl had some previous knowledge of God from other Christians. Emma and Amber got the chance to talk about their own relationships with God and then asked Sarah if she wanted to have relationship with God as well. And she said yes. It was that easy! So they led her in prayer and she received Jesus that day. They also shared with her about how you need to turn away from sin to really be connected with God because God is holy. She was so excited.  The next day, I went with Emma while Amber met another girl that she saw get saved about a week before that. Sarah and Emma and I went out for lunch and Sarah had so many questions. It was really cool. We brought her a bible and told her to start in Matthew in the New Testament because it would be easier for her to understand the bible as a whole once she knows the gospels. I also told her about the book of Esther and how she was a very brave Jew who stood up to the King and saved her people because she obeyed God. She was fascinated! She also could not grasp the fact that God really loved her. It blew her mind! We also shared with her about how we can talk to God and pray and she said she didn’t really know how to pray but she prayed the night before and said that she tried to think about it like talking to her friend. I told her about hearing God’s voice (not audible but in the word and through different senses). She couldn’t believe it when we said that God can speak to her, just like He can speak to me.  We sat down on a park bench and I asked if we could all pray together and see if God would tell us anything. And she said “Ok.” A little apprehensive, she closed her eyes, and Emma started to pray. She asked the Lord to come and show us each something. I felt like God was just affirming who Sarah was and that she was a real light to the people around her. Emma got an encouraging scripture for Sarah. Sarah said, she didn’t hear Him say anything, but she just felt warmth inside her heart, and we said “that’s the Holy Spirit” and then she went on to say “I’m not sure, but I feel like God is saying we should hug”. If you know me well, you’d know that I’m not big on hugs – only if I’m really close to someone, so you could imagine how I normally would react if someone suggested such a thing. But for her, my heart was so big I would have probably kissed her. All three of us sat on that bench and hugged and it was one of the most precious moments I’ve ever been a part of. We spent the rest of the afternoon at her university looking at her dorm room, just walking around and it was so much fun. It was our last day to see her, so and it was really sad to say goodbye. I thought to myself later that day, what a privilege. This girl had just gotten saved the day before and I felt like I was learning from her faith.  

My favorite part in this location we spent working at an orphanage (welfare center) where we’d focus on the people with special needs, and little babies with clef pallets who have been left abandoned with no one to take care of them. I wish I could post pictures cause these babies were precious. Straight away on the first day we could recognize the atmosphere here was pretty depressing and sad. It seemed like there was not a lot of hope. I was really out of my comfort zone already working with people with special needs (some with down syndrome, some with cerebral palsy, some just badly emotionally wounded) as I’d never had experience before. And the fact that I also did not speak the same language made it more challenging, plus this place is not a Christian orphanage, nor do they really want us coming in here to share the gospel either.  In the beginning of the week I personally found myself asking God the question “Why am I here? Why in the world am I here to work with these people who I can’t even connect with? And I knew my heart wasn’t in the right place. I had the wrong attitude. I was looking at God and saying where is your goodness in all of this? Where is your justice and love here with these people who have no one and nothing? These people are so hopeless and I can’t do anything for them and I’m not going to be able to change anything for them.” I was challenged!  But I felt like there was an answer. The next morning we had a time of worship and prayer, and one of the girls who helped lead us there was praying about God’s mercy and goodness and justice, and all of a sudden BAM! She said it. “Oh Lord, it IS your justice that you would hand choose your people from all around the world and fly them to be here at this very place and time to meet and love these people. It IS your goodness that you’ve done that. It IS your mercy that you’ve done that.” And I physically felt a shift inside my heart as she prayed that prayer. It was like everything made sense, and I had the reality check I needed- realizing that God cares so much about these people that he asked me to come and be a part of their lives. And that I’m here to do something so much greater than what I could think up myself! It blew me away and I got excited again. I wasn’t gonna let anyone else tell me that this week would be hard. After this day, things just started to change. The fact that we weren’t allowed to sing or talk about Jesus didn’t stop us from bringing a guitar and playing worship songs. Every morning after that we would pray and ask God to give us ideas of things to do with these people and ended up with quite the plethora of activities; Foot washing (this was symbolic), nail painting, putting makeup on the women, making cookie necklaces, and coloring to name a few. Our other assignment was to paint a mural down the hallway of this place – the mural was beautiful. It was a make up of different colored people doing a different action. Each one said something different, like “I am useful!” or “I make a difference!” And it was for these precious ones to walk by and read these sayings and agree with as the truth. One of the words we felt came through for the week was from Jeremiah 29:11 “’For I know the plans I have for you,’ declares the Lord, ‘Plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future’.” And we spent a lot of time praying that they would feel special and valued this week. The workers don’t really treat them well. So I could tell it meant a lot to them that we were there. I got to share with a woman that God loves her (I had to be careful doing this). I told her about what Jesus did for her and how much He wants to have a relationship with her. She seemed really happy when I told her this. I underestimated God and His power for sure this week because you could literally feel the difference by the end of the week when you walked in there. It was like color and life had entered back into this place.  I was sad to leave, but I found out another team would be coming the following week to do something similar as us and so I trusted God that He’d finish the work He had started in this place. If you ever think of this orphanage, please pray for them, as they need so much hope and healing.

Incredible, hey? The last thing I learned over my time away was simple but so true. “I am capable”. I am. I have often been in positions of leadership in the past, but never pegged myself as one. I don’t have a loud booming voice and I’m quite content chillin’ in the background not being front and center. I’ve been seeking to figure out how I function as a leader, and I’ve been seeing more and more that I am gifted to lead, and fully capable. It’s my humility to be myself, and to let God take control. And it’s a learning curve for sure, but I was surprised how great things ended up turning out, especially in the last location where I was leading alone. God is so good and so faithful to show up exactly when you need Him. I can testify to so many things that I’ve seen Him do over this last period of time. It’s been an honor and a privilege to get to serve God in the nations. And you’ve had your hand in making this happen!!

Your support has been such a key in allowing God to do all that He’s done.

This is what you’ve supported and been a part of through your prayers, encouragements and financial contributions:

In Cambodia:

               -Teaching kids of all ages how to speak English

               -Fixing up a school that needed some work done

               -Preaching the gospel to people who haven’t heard

               -Educating young adults and kids about how to follow Jesus

               -Loving the unloved and disabled children

               -Mercy ministries

               -Embracing the orphans and showing compassion

               -Reaching out into the community and making friends, and praying for   them!

In Thailand:

-Supplying the needs for children who will now have an opportunity in their future to learn English, play sports, and learn the skills of life

               -Encouragement for ministries running in Thailand

               -Minister to people who haven’t seen what Jesus looks like

In our last location in Southeast Asia:

               -Seeing 8 people in total saved!!

               -Distributing bibles to people who’ve never owned one

               -Lots of prayer for local people

               -Teaching new Christians about who God is

               -Worship

               -Mercy ministries

               -One on One evangelism – lots of seeds planted!

               -Light brought to dark places (literally that you could see the differences!!)

This is what Jesus means when He says

“Go therefore and make disciples of all nations…” 

Thank you for saying YES!