This is the team that is going with me on outreach. We are headed to Turkey and Russia for three months. I know I was supposed to be going to Colombia, but God apparently had other plans :)
Hey everyone....I really need a computer. The nearest one is literally seventy-six stairs away and down a couple of blocks! Oh well......
So this is one month in. We started our fifth week today, and WOW....I can't believe all that has been happening. Ok...so all of our students are amazing! I am blessed an honored that they are loving Jesus and sinking into His love and all He has for them during this time. It is not of course without flaws, but round two has been a light burden compared to last time. We did have to send one student home last week which was really rough, but God is good and hopefully she will be back to do DTS in the spring after some counseling. I am going to give you a run down of life over the past few weeks.
Week 1: our speaker was Andy Byrd and the love of God (which most of you heard about, and if you didn't please contact me, I would love to share his wisdom and challenges)
Week 2: our speaker was a lady named Gwen who taught destiny by design and how God has placed in us desires to accomplish the work He has set before us, and those things are not stuff that we hate or necessarily make money at, but passions He has put in us since childhood. Amazing. I am not really sure what my destiny is, but there are several things that I played as a child, so I am looking forward to the things I am going to do in my life that I thought were my weird quirks, but are really things God wants me to do. The same goes for every one of you.....so think hard about what you played as a child and what you have always wanted to do. God is going to fulfill that destiny He has placed in you.
Week 3: we did this thing called coporate week. For the first two days of class we met as Compassion DTS and me and some of the other staff members taught on hearing God's voice and purity. I hate when people speak stuff over me, but apparently I am a good communicator/teacher. I don't want to be a teacher, so people need to stop telling me I am a good one! Then a man named Dave Gibbons came in and said some revolutionary things about living life. He talked about pain and how our authority comes from where we have experienced healing from pain. He also talked about who our neighbor was and that those are the people that are completely different from us. God told us to love our neighbor and it doesn't mean those who are like you, but ones that come into your life...like it or not. Dave also talked about sucess as the world sees it and sucess as God sees it. Sucess in mans eyes is usually up and to the right, as we grow older, we have more wisdom, more training, higher paying job, ect......but Jesus started at the top and moved His way all to the bottom and then it became a journey not of making it back to the top and doing it perfectly. (if that needs more explaination just let me know...it made sense in my head) He also talked about how healing is a process it is not a sprint....sometimes it takes awhile to be healed. And there were so many more good points, but this post is already long enough.
Week 4: we had a teaching on "the Kingdom" and worldviews, so we went over all the different worldviews and then what Christians should be living out. In the new testament gospels the thing Jesus talks about the most is the Kingdom (117 times in the gospels). So we talked about what it was not....the church. And how we have torn out the pages of forgiveness and going to heaven and left the rest of the book out. The church has not come with a message of life, but a message of how to get to heaven and we have neglected the lifestyle teaching that Jesus preached so much about! Think about it......I had to.
Good news. All my outreach fees are paid for this first installment and my staff fees are completely covered for this month as well! Praise God. We had a day to just pray and give and our class needed to raise a little over $20,000 to pay the first outreach payment and within thirty minutes of students reaching into their pocket books, all of that money was covered! Including mine, plus extra! GOD IS GOOD!
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