Lord Prepare Me

 

I love Sundays. I always have and I think I am gaining a greater love for them even more and more as time progresses.  I think Sunday is the perfect day to rest, and worry about nothing. It’s the end of the weekend after a crazy long week, and the day before everything starts all over again. 

And the craziness never really stops going here at YWAM Perth. This last week, we were blessed with the Young People’s DTS , the Compassion DTS, and the Crossroads’ DTS returning back from their outreaches from all over the world. Some teams went to Nepal, France, Germany, Holland, Iceland, Indonesia, South Africa, and a few other places. The Young People’s DTS is a group of Christians who range from the ages of about 17-25, and are obviously Young People. Compassion DTS is a group of all ages that have a huge heart for people, and the Crossroads DTS is a group of any aged people from any walks of life.. Lots of older people and families will come and do this DTS here. Because they have all been on outreach I haven’t really gotten the chance to get to know them since I arrived. But this week, all roughly 85 of them returned for their report back to our base, and for a week of debriefing before they set home. On Tuesday, we all met to hear about some of the things that God did in their lives while they were abroad. Their testimonies were so powerful. One team from the Compassion DTS was in South Africa and they were on their way to the airport, but they had left early so that they could see baby lions. On the way, their van broke down leaving them on the side of the road, where they ended up meeting 3 prostitutes. So a few of them took the time to start talking with them, and they ended up sharing the gospel with all 3, and just as they were almost finished, one of the girls was taken away by a customer. The girls from the team started crying out to God and interceding for that girl. She ended up coming back and they were able to finish the gospel with her and the other 2. All three of them received salvation that day, and after they were done praying, someone said “Amen” and they opened their eyes and there was a new van there ready to take them to the airport. They definitely recognized this as a divine appointment that the Lord placed in front of them, and He used it to really minister truth into the lives of those women. The girls on the team really have a heart for those girls so they have continued to pray for them that they would be set in a place where there will be people to disciple them, so that they can actually grow. As I heard this story, I got chills because it’s almost always the least expected moments when God not just moves, He SHAKES things up.

Along with revealing Himself through amazing stories, God has also been challenging me within the last few weeks about reading the bible. I have grown up learning bible stories in Sunday school, and know Adam and Eve, Noah and the Ark, Jonah and the Fish, Joshua and the battle of Jericho, etc. But we had a teaching on the Pentateuch a couple weeks ago, and I was shocked at how much I still have to learn about the bible. I am a pretty daily reader of my bible, but there is still SO much that I don’t know. We had a speaker come in to talk to us and we spent some time looking into some specific areas in greater depth and detail to gain more understanding. I liked that we were able to do it together, because a lot of people here are in the same boat as me. They all have a passion and a desire to know God, but we need to know truth as well. She ended with this challenge: “How can you be a speaker of truth, if you don’t even know what the truth is?” This hit me like a ton of bricks. I am a missionary, and I know God but I need to know His word as well.  And it’s not that I don’t know quite a lot already, it’s just positioning myself in a place where I am like a child always ready to learn more and soak everything in. So that when the truth is ready to be preached, it will be fresh and alive, instead of stale.  So that’s my challenge right now. 

 

I have a really cool testimony from last week. One of the girls from my DTS was in the lounge as  I was walking by. She still needed quite a good chunk of money because she is about to leave for outreach, where she and her team will fly to Thailand and work with children at risk. As I was walking past her I thought about her need of finance, and I so badly wished that I could give her money. At this moment, I felt like God really clearly put in my mind $50. My thoughts in my head fought back saying “I live here because of people who are supporting me financially, and I don’t have a right to give from that”. But again I felt like I was supposed to give the money and I didn’t understand because it wouldn’t make sense for God to say that. But I felt like He said “Trust me” and so without second arguments, I walked up to her and I said “Katy, can I give you $50? I know it’s not much but I know God will multiply it.” And she said yes and was so thankful. The story doesn’t end here. The same night I was walking home with a few friends and one of them said “Hey, did you hear about the anonymous donor to the base? Someone gave every staff member $50 each”. My jaw dropped. I was in such awe of 1)That person’s generosity, because we have about 250 staff members right now here, so that’s quite a lot to give… and 2) God’s FAITHFULNESS. Did He not tell me a couple hours earlier.. “TRUST ME?” I was like “Wow, He is so good and so trustworthy.” Not that I didn’t know that already but to actually see Him move in an incredible way was affirmation for me in my own walk of faith. I could have just said no to not give that money to Katy. I probably still would have received that $50 from that donor, but I wouldn’t have been able to see God work and that’s worth more than anything to me. Now I can remember this the next time I am challenged with a larger test of faith, I will be able to go back to this story, and without question, say yes and know without a doubt that He is going to be faithful to His promise.

One last thing. This week, my team and I are getting ready and preparing the kick off to our Music Discipleship Training School, starting on the 3^rd of July. We are so excited as staff and we have been faithfully praying as a team for our students who will be arriving this week from all over the world. The reality of it all is starting to hit, and I am full of lots of feelings about it. Part of me is looking at the teams who just got back from all of those places I mentioned earlier (there were about 85 people total) and I think “There is NO way I could lead a team with someone else across the world to a foreign nation! What am I doing?” And also, with the mentoring that I will be giving to a lot of the girls with one on ones, I think “I have no idea how I will grow them and challenge them, and love them and encourage them all at once”. But then I remember that God called me to do this. And all I need to do is be completely looking to Him through this entire journey, walking in honesty, humility, and with a heart to persevere. I don’t know all of the answers, but the Lord does, and He will reveal them as we go. So that makes me really excited and almost relieved to know that I don’t need to have it all together, my heart just needs to be in the right place. And even writing this I am reminded of one of my favorite Scriptures,  Philippians 4:13 “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me”. Not just a few things, ALL things. And so I am really really excited for these next 6 months. I predict TONS of challenges, stories, tears, growth, fun times, and lots of things unexpected.

If you feel like you want to pray for me and my team here are a few key points to hit on:

-For God to push us to our limits as staff, and that we would all go above and beyond investing everything we have into this school and to each student who is a part of it.. and that only comes from the desire to build His kingdom and to know Him and love Him and be used by Him

-That we would know how to welcome and love our students as they arrive, and then start challenging them right away so that they gain a desire to see God move in their lives as well

-For grace to be upon us all as we will on most days be waking at 5 am and going to bed around midnight

-That we would know God’s voice in this time and all of us would be looking to Him as our guider for every step of the way

By the way, we have an outrageously weird staff group, so if you're interested in meeting them, watch this clip. We're quite the crew ;)

http://vimeo.com/24861242

Forever You Rain

God can show up in any given moment. He is unpredictable and I feel like that's what makes following Him so exciting. Especially when He DOES show up. On Monday morning May 30th, our base was having a time of worship, where we just sang songs and gave glory to the Lord. Adam Thompson, one of my leaders, was leading worship and He started talking about how he felt that the word for the morning was that God wants us to go after Him with all of our hearts, all of our souls, with all of our minds and with all of our strength. And so we took that and ran with it. We all started to get passionate in the place of prayer. We asked Him to come, and then proceeded to sing this song that had the lyrics "come like the rain" and we sang that over and over. We continued worshiping and not long after, we experienced massive pounding against the roof of our building. Not only was it raining, but this water came so hard that we needed buckets underneath a few spots because of leakage. This was no coincidence; God came, and as a symbol of the fact that HE reigns, he sent physical rain. So powerful and so moving. We all sat there in silence and just thanked Him for who He is. Moments like that do not happen every day, so when they do, it's really cool.

I really love times of worship. It's something I am passionate about making time for because it's such a great way of focusing my thoughts on Him and only Him. We had two other sweet times of corporate worship in the last week.. and I will share about one of them because it is just really cool. Yesterday, Friday, there was an event that took place throughout a few other countries at the same time. It's called ONE VOICE. A group of YWAM bases in places like Lausanne, Switzerland,  Kona, Hawaii, Denver, Colorado,  Perth, Australia, Ensenada, Mexico  all gathered together to worship the Lord at the same time. We were fortunate enough that this took place for us at 1 pm our time. We got the camera rolling and skyped with all of these bases and played the same worship songs together. What a cool sight to see. I feel like the view of that from heaven would have been pretty incredible, as people of every background on different continents raised their hands to their father at the same time. I felt honored to be a part of such a sweet event.

PHASE ONE:

For the last 2 weeks I have been taking a class called Phase 1 which is a training course that will qualify me by Australian standards to staff this next Music Discipleship Training (DTS) and it will actually be recognized and official. The course itself has certain things it covers, and one of the things we are required to do is teach a skill because we will have to teach a skill on DTS. So for this course I taught how to properly kick and dribble a soccer ball. It seemed like such a simple thing to teach, but it actually showed me that everything takes a little preparation, and teaching isn’t just a walk in the park. So to all of you teachers of any kind, I got a little taste of what you experience. That was really cool. Now granted, I was teaching soccer so it was fun for me, but I found teaching to be very fulfilling. I loved being able to show other people how to do something that they didn’t yet know how to do, and to demonstrate it in a way where they felt encouraged and actually able to do the skill.

Aside from those two things, I have one last thing to share. Like I have mentioned earlier, our base does community evangelism every Thursday night and my team goes into the city and serves the people there for a couple hours at night. I know that evangelism is a routine at YWAM Perth because we do it so often, but I am ALWAYS blown away by what God can do in such a short period of time with such a small amount of people. So we set up a soup table, and I somehow volunteered myself to dose it out when people came by and just feed them warm soup.. which by the way smelled so nice. Being that this was my job for the night, I made sure to be intentional about making people feel welcomed into our little community fellowship we had going on around the patio area. It ended up being so cool for me to meet such a variety of people from such an array of cultures. There was a large number of aboriginal people that came through asking for soup, and these are people who almost seem like they aren’t good for anything, and they have just begun to settle for the life that they have always known. I saw this as my friend Alicia was painting one of aboriginal women’s nails. I looked over and I saw Alicia telling her that she is a beautiful woman of God, and just speaking life into her, so that she could catch a tiny glimpse of what how God actually views her. It warmed my heart to see that, and I can only pray that woman could receive all of that truth. Another group that came by was a few Aussie teens, who happened to be homeless. They seemed like they were in a pretty rough state, and from what I could tell, had gotten themselves into some trouble (I think stealing.. things like that). They kept coming back for more soup, and every time one of them would ask, it was always in a way that they didn’t think they deserved soup or something. I don’t know how to explain it, but I was beginning to see a pattern with just how people let their circumstances and their past define who they are, and all that they are worthy of. I could just see that all these people wanted deep down was to be shown genuine love. And I almost felt bad that all we could offer was soup and a bit of conversation. But I remembered this scripture: Matthew 25:35 “For I was hungry, and you gave Me something to eat; I was thirsty, and you gave Me something to drink; I was a stranger, and you invited Me in” And that’s exactly what we did. And I know that God was honored by this small act of mercy that our group was able to show the people of this city. My spirits were lifted as another couple came by. They were both from London actually, and I’m not even sure why they came to Perth. They came by our little “salvation station” to tell us that two weeks ago after some of our group prayed for them, that everything in their lives instantly started to take a turn. They said as soon as they turned the corner that night, they found a place to stay, and the man found a job I believe, and they just were so overwhelmed with gratefulness that they wanted to come back and share the good news and thank us. Of course it wasn’t us who did any of this, but God. I am just so encouraged that they were able to see the Lord move in such a powerful obvious way. And I hope that they both start to open up a little more to the idea of a God who LOVES them and loves the ABUNDANTLY. That was a really really cool night and we can only accredit all of those things to the One who gave us the night.

Life is such a beautiful gift. It really is, and this is a glimpse of what I have been learning more and more as I have continued settling in here in Perth. We have so much to do on a day to day basis and I many times forget to just enjoy myself. So these last couple weeks that is something I have really been intentional about doing, is just enjoying each moment I'm a part of. It's amazing what such a simple concept, when put to good use can show you. 

Ecclesiastes 5:18 “Here is what I have seen to be good and fitting: to eat, to drink and enjoy oneself in all one's labor in which he toils under the sun during the few years of his life which God has given him; for this is his reward.”