A week of restoration...and revelation!

It is so hard for me to try and sum up all that I have learned this past week....but I will try and fill you guys in on all the highlights :) This week in lecture we were talking about "Love and Relationships"......At the start I was skeptial. I was expecting them to start off with topics like "evangilism" and other related topics.....but they started with the one thing that is truly the base to our relationship with Christ....yet we always try and fill that void that is meant for Christ with other people. He started with talking about our partents. He gave us some crazy statistics about what marriage in most of our world looks like...and they were pretty scary. One of my biggest revelations over the whole week was that we learn from example(aka our parents relationship) and we will one day be our childrens example. It was a great week and God revealed some awesome things in my life that have brought me closer to him :)
My schedule in the week consists of little to no free time which explains why I have not blogged.....!!!! But it is great because I am literally living and breathing Glorifying God! And there is nothing else like it! I feel like I have been transported into a world that my only calling and desire is to learn, seek and praise God. It is a little bit of what I feel heaven will be like one day...except fot the fact that we will be in the precense of God for eternity! When I am not studying or in class...I am dancing!!! It is the best combonation after sitting for about 4 hours then getting to release all my pent up energy through dancing! I am fully dancing at this point which I feel is awesome because I am learning how to use my dancing as a tool for Christ. I am learning alot of different techniques that I am not used to which makes is really exciting and fresh :)
This last Saterday I went on an island excersion with a few of my girlfriends where we visited a beautiful coffee plantion, where there were somany beautiful exotic flowers and pinapple plants!Then we got to sample the Kona coffee next to a beautiful infinity fountain! After thet we went to this little pink Hotel that was one of the oldest on the island. Then we went to a snorkeling beach where we got to swim right next to sea turtles!! I felt like I was transported into "Finding Nemo"!! We were swimming along the reefs where we could see all kinds colorful torpical fish! It was the highlight of my week pretty much :)
Thank you somuch for praying for me this last week I have been completly freed from spriritual warfare in my room and have now slept peacefully in my bed for the past week! Thank you somuch all of your support I truly feel your prayers and they are truly being answered :)
Another prayer request for this week is that God would continue to reveal himself to me, and also for strength just to simply get through this week....because there is rumor that they will be adding even more to our schedule next week! thank you somuch! and I will take any opperitunity to blog as much as I can! I love you guys!!!

And so another week begins!

After a rather eventuful weekend I am proud to say that I have successfully made it through my first week in YWAM!! It is crazy to look back and see how much transformation I have made in the last week. I feel as though I have been broken down...and rebuilt....yet I feel that this is just the start of a rigerous cycle that will continue for the next 3 months.
I am happy to say that I have offically finished auditions!! And we can start working hard on the individual techniques and focuses we willbe prefoming for the next 6 months. It is strange because I really feel that I am going to be doing more dancing then anything else in the show. Simply because there is more dancing then anything else in the show. Which I though was very effective simply because of the fact that dance truly is a 'universal language'. I am really excited about this because I feel as though I have always used my voice as a tool for Christ....and now I feel as though he is going to use my dancing as a tool for His kingdom! It is very exciting to see the turning of the tables :) We also did "Stomp" today which I initially thought was a form of dance..but to my suprise if is actually Korean drumming....and it is so COOL!! It is going to be performed in the final part of the show, and I am so excited about it! I think it is so cool how much culture is here and how I am able to try new forms of art, and be able to glorify God through these new techniques. Our team is becoming closer and I am so excited to have such a good support system in our team(despite the language barrier) :). Our staff is awesome and I seriously feel so close to somany of them and it is only the 2nd week! I cant wait to see what this week has in store and please continue to pray against any more spiritual warfare in our room, as well as my health for I have felt a little under the weather the last few days...:( Thank you all so much for your support! And I will update you later this week on how things are going :) I love you guys!!

God is moving!!

Having been here about a week I have already seen somuch transformation and renewal, in not only my faith but the way I experience and worship God. With the people I have met and the instruction I have been getting I know they are straight from the lips of God. I know thats cliche, but it is true. The people here excude the character of God and it is through them that I truly see his footprints. I am amazed, and humbled by how truly "Great our God" is!

Well I will take you through a little bit of what I have been taught through out this week so I will start from the beginning. The very first day of class we were being taught how to identify Gods Character and identifying Gods Identity. There is a big difference that honestly I never really thought about to hard. Our speaker asked us "Why do we believe in God?" And it was hard for me to convey it in words that would be appropriate for what I really believed. Another spin was that we could not use the Bible as a source of why we believed in God. Which I thought was a very effective excersise, because when we are ministering to people who do not know Christ they will not be able to relate to the words of the Bible and may not even consider it a credible source. This was awesome because it truly stretched me to find the words to speak, but it made me confident for the next time I am asked this question in reality.

Another highlight of this week was a lecture about "Why the Word of the Lord" is so important". What I love about all the speakers so far is they all have such a humility about not only themsleves but also about their knowledge and express there need to know and understand more about this huge God we serve. In a nutshell he was asking us what the Bible was to each of us. And I said that to me right now it was a textbook. Not because it was boring or stressful, but that I was learning more and more from it and he was continuing to teach me more and more about his Character and his will for my life. He then decided to compare the Bible and the Koran. He gave evidence to both sides and there was one piece of evidence that I thought was very interesting. He was saying that in a court case, witnesses are brought to the stand and asked to tell them their side of the story. When witnesses come and tell the exact same story....the Judge becomes hesitant of their stories. Yet, when witnesses come and tell different perspectives to the same story it makes them more credible. He then asked how many people wrote the Koran....the answer is one if you didn't already know. Then he asked how many people wrote the bible and we said "Alot" all from different periods of time,and all from different places and circumstances. The Bible is truly an amazing love letter from God to us, and I feel that we as a culture have to come to take it for granted. There are hundereds of rural nations that don't even have a Bible translated in their native tounge...and many of us have copies sitting on our shelves collecting dust. I am sorry if this all sounds a bit all over the place...but I have seriously been learning somuch I am just trying to convey the highlights that really touched me.

I do have some prayer requests as well :)

If you could please pray for protection from spiritual warfare....not just protection, but that the fear I have for it would be cast out. I am not the only one that has experienced activity....but it only affirmes the God is moving and molding me into a new women and the devil is trying to do everything in his power to stop it.

If you could also pray that my relationship with Christ would continue to grow deeper and deeper...and that I would be given a boldness to confront issues I have within myself. Also pray that God would truly fill me up and send me out, and that everything I do will be completly for the Kingdom of Christ and not for my own pride or selfishness. Thank you somuch for the prayer support and feel free to comment if you have any advice or guidance :) I love you guys and I am so glad to have everyone of you behind me :)

Aloha!!

Let me start off by saying that I apologize for how long it has taken me to write a blog....our internet here is very inconsistent and sometimes even nonexistant so I apologize for the wait. But I have indeed arrived very Safe and sound :) The flight over was suprisingly pleasent. I was overwhelmed by how smoothly the transfer went and how great everything went. I had a really nice seat partner who ended up sleeping the whole time as well as getting most of the window to look out of while we were in the air. I entertained myself with scrabble and writing blogs that I somehow can not get to copy and paste to my blog page do to copywriting issues....:/ After I landed I was warmly welcomed by some of the YWAM staff and also met some really cool people who were on my bus with me :) I am so relieved to find that everyone is so welcoming and friendly. The campus is beautiful and conventiently located about 5 min from dowtown Kona. For some reason I thought that our campus was going to be farther away from everything but it is so beautiful and close to some local shops and beaches. The first day I arrived I spent most of the day registering and getting settled in my room. I have 5 lovely roomates: Hannah from Arizona, Danella from New Zealand, Andrea from Napa Valley, Betty from South Korea. They are all so sweet and none of them snore!!! although one does sleepwalk so that should create some fun times in the future :)

After I got to know my roomates better I started to branch out a little bit and get to know some more awesome people on campus....I already feel so at home here and it has only been a few days!

On Friday it was our orientation day which meant sitting most of the day and getting familiar with the people on our DTS :) The real treat of the day was the Hawaiian ceremony that took place later that night. We met in the Plaza of Nations(see pic above) and were formally welcomed onto the island by the local Hawaiians. Then we were asked to take out shoes off and walk bafefoot from the Plaza of nations to the Ohana court (see pic above) Then waiting for us in the Ohana Court was a group of Hula dancers who were doing traditional dances to authentic live Hawaiian music :) It was so awesome to see the Hawaiian cupture and get properly introduced to them and their land. I felt very welcomed and loved :)

Saturday was orientations day for our DTS. It began at nine in the morning and ended at 5 in the evening...lets just say I was not prepared to have it take that long, but that does not mean it wasnt awesome! They started out by intoroduding the staff and some of the things addressed in our hand book then they told us that we would be getting up and sharing a little about outr faith and why we were called to the Prefroming Arts focus DTS. They then gave us all a a fresh Lei and prayed over everysingle one of us! I was such an awesome experience to feel all the hands of your fellow friends and feel the Holy Spirit move through out their prayers.

My dorm room :)

Am I really leaving on Thursday?

The time has finally come...the moment I feel like I have been waiting for is finally upon me....and what do I do?......procrastinate......

It doesnt matter if I am trying to pack or trying to get myself ready in the morning...
I am simply overwhelmed with the fact that I am about to begin the biggest adventure I might ever imbark on in my life.....

I am so excited....nervous....curious and sometimes even alloof about what my life is going to be like in two short days...

These past few days have been tough because of the realization that I am leaving everything and everyone behind..... I have never been good at saying goodbye and this proves to be an especially hard one because many of the people I am saying goodbye to may not be here when I come back....which is a very hard reality to have to dseal with in such a short amount of time.
I have said goodbye to my best friend my boyfirend and pretty much anyother friend for what could be just months or possibly years. It is a very overwhelming reality especially if you have no idea what your life could be like in the next few months.

I am overwhelmed with excitment about what my life could be....and there is an incredible sense of freedom in that...and also a little bit of fear. Yet I know that it is when you put yourself in situations that are completly out of what you are used to that God can truly work and restructure your life around his will...and it is because of this that I am so incredibly excited to see what God has planned :)

So I will end with an incradible verse that a dear friend gave to me as an encouraging word before I left......

"He gives power to the weak, and to those who have no might, he increases strength."
- Isaiah 40:29