November Update

For some reason my blog site is not allowing me to copy and paste my newsletter onto the blog so I have attached a link to my facebook note with the update. http://www.facebook.com/note.php?created&&suggest&note_id=236489489151

Here are some pictures from the month that I wanted to share...
All of the kids we had during our VBS

Doing a drama called The Family

Ready for some clowning around
Our school at the Mayan ruins

National Pride Day

Every Wednesday we have a theme day to try to spice up our DTS. We have had some pretty good ones so far like Disney Character Day where I was Pocahontas, Bible Character Day where I was Elizabeth and one of my friends was Mary, and Super Hero Day where I dressed up as a "Super Chapina".

A few weeks ago we had a very clever day- National Pride Day- and since there are 6 nations represented in our school everyone dressed in their national colors. I must admit, I had a hard time choosing between the faithful red, white, and blue and my new favorite light blue and white. I had just got a shirt the weekend before that talks about being Guatemalan so I decided that I would go with the Guatemalan colors this time. This is a picture of my friend, Janina from Germany, and I

Then later that morning when we got to class we had a little surprise waiting for us... one of our leaders had found all of our national anthems online and we each got a turn to sing them!!!

Canada was first...
Followed by Germany...

Then Puerto Rico...


Mexico...


And Guatemala

I sang loud and proud along with my other United States citizens and after we sang, without even planning it, we all shouted "play ball!" It was a great day and a great reminder that God is using people from all over the world to do His will here on the earth.

Jericho March

We live a block away from a park that holds Mayan Ruins. Ever since we got here I have had the feeling that we should do some sort of Jericho March around the park. I didn't know exactly when we should do it, though, so I just casually mentioned it to a few people here. Then last weekend we had the chance to work with another DTS (the same school I am doing now) from Antigua Guatemala. They came without a real plan so we began to pray about what God wanted our group of about 30 to do for the day. I had not said much of anything because I wanted someone else to confirm if the Jericho march was what God wanted or not. I definitely did not want it to just be my idea. As we were sharing a few people began to share they felt like we should do something at the park... BINGO, I thought. So I brought the idea I felt God had given me up and everyone agreed they thought it was what God wanted us to do.

The DTS from Antigua had a speaker with them so we attached an ipod- a modern day trumpet- and put it on a dolly and started the march. Here is a picture of our group starting off...

We marched 7 times around the park, which was probably a little less than a mile around. It had been a cloudy morning and it looked like it would rain, but God held the rain off for us all day. Our first time around we stopped at a certain spot where you can see into the park and began to pray because we felt a heaviness there. Only later did we see this shaman performing Mayan acts very near the spot we were praying.It was an amzing time of spritual warfare and on the 7th round we could not help but shouting out and cheering for what God had done. Although it took us from 11:00 to 4:00, we all felt privelidged to be able to be a part of God's work.

update...

Most of our group in Antigua Guatemala


A boy named Angel and I at our weekly children's ministry



Hi, I am so sorry it has taken so long to update. Things here have been really busy as we prepare for our local outreach. Here is the update letter I sent out to Rosedale Bible Church for October. I hope to get another post up before we leave for two weeks on Sunday.

October Update

October has come and almost gone and it is hard to believe how fast time is flying by around here. We have been here for over a month now and had 5 weeks of class so far. All of our classes have been very relevant and applicable to my life. One of the topics that was my favorite was Hearing God's Voice. We had a speaker come from the great state of California and give us the lessons for the week. We learned that God created us for a relationship with Him and that He truly desires to have a dialogue with us. Our other class topics have been The Nature and Character of God, The Father Heart of God and Inner Healing. This has been an amazing time of classroom learning.

Also during this time of training we have started preparing for outreach. We have what we call outreach workshops twice a week. I attend the adult workshop on Monday nights. We have learned 3 dramas that are geared toward adults. One of them is a very powerful drama that tells the story of a broken home and how it affects each member of the family. We are also learning how to prepare a quick street testimony so that we can have that tool ready to go on outreach. I also attend the children workshop on Wednesday nights. There we have learned about 8 clown and puppet skits. We also learned how to give a testimony to children in "kid friendly" language. It is exciting to be able to prepare so many things so that when we go on outreach we will be ready and well equipped.

We leave for our local outreach on November 15. We are going to a small village called Tecpan. It will about a 2 hour drive from where we are in Guatemala City. It is a town that has a huge Mayan influence and as we have been praying we have sensed that it is a very dark place. We are going to be there for 2 weeks bringing the light of God, though, so I am excited to see how God is going to work. Then at the end of December we leave for Mexico City which is our main outreach location. Mexico City is also a very spiritually dark place. We know we will have a challenge ahead of us, but with God we are ready to face it.

Thank you for your continued prayers. I definitely appreciate them and as a school we can feel them. Here are some specific things you can continue to pray for:

+Outreach- both the actual time and our time here as we prepare

+Health- this is a constant prayer request as our bodies get used to the food, climate and living in community

+Team Unity- we feel that God wants to do big things through our team, but we know this can only happen if we are unified so please continue to pray for this important aspect

Thank you again for all of your support! I love knowing that I have a whole army at home who are backing me up!

Intercession...

Every Tuesday and Thursday we have base intercession here. I did not really know what intercession was before I got here so let me just explain a little bit about it in case you are in the same boat I was…

Intercession is basically standing in the gap for someone or something and praying for them. We always start and end our times of intercession here on the base with worship and then we spend some time asking God what is on His heart. He always shows us, in one way or another, because He desires so badly to have that kind of relationship with us- a relationship where He can share what He sees and feels with us. So when we feel like we know what it is God wants us to pray for we begin to do just that- we pray. We have had some amazing times of intercession and God has shown us to pray for this base, the drought in this country, our outreach and various other things.

This past Thursday God showed some of our school leaders that He wanted us to go pray over the soccer park we have right next door to the base. This park was filthy. It had glass and trash all over and the grass was thigh high. Not only was it dirty physically but it was spiritually dirty as well. Most of the weekends you can find at least one group of youth at the park smoking marijuana and there empty alcohol bottles all over. So it is no wonder God wanted us to pray there. So we all walked over and began to worship. I started feeling like God wanted me to pray for unity for our group because I felt like the message He was giving me was that if we didn’t have unity we couldn’t do anything outside of the base. So after I prayed for unity I prayed that the spiritual strongholds of the park would be broken and that the physical mess would be cleaned up. After a time of prayer our group gathered together to talk about what God had spoken to each one of us. There were a few people that felt they were being asked to pray for unity as well. Others felt the need to pray for God to use us to help overcome the spiritual strongholds that were in place at the park. One girl even saw a vision of the walls of the park being pushed down and the love of God flowing in. So we finished our time at the park with a worship march around the walls and left for class.

The next day we were up in our classroom on the second floor of the house and someone said, “Look everyone!!!” We all ran over to the windows where they were and looked over at the park. There were a group of city workers with an edger, a lawn mower, and trash bags. They were cleaning up the park the day after we had prayed there!!! It was so amazing for us to see God’s faithfulness to our obedience.

I wish I would have taken some pictures of the “before” so that you could see the dramatic change from the “before” to the “after”, but here is a picture of what the park looks like now.

Update of the Week...

So, here is an update about last week and there are just a few amazing things that happened here, but seriously, God is moving!!!

Wednesday we broke up into groups to pray for different people who felt like they needed prayer. One of our leaders was having pain in his shoulders and as soon as he mentioned it I felt so strongly that I should be the one to pray for him. So we all prayed and then everyone just started talking. I had been complaining all morning that I had this burning in my right arm and I didn't know why. It wasn't like painful, it just felt like it was on fire. So then I got an idea and asked Efra, the leader who I prayed for, what was specifically hurting him. He said his shoulders were so I asked him if I could just touch him with the arm that had been burning. So I put my hand on his shoulder and suddenly I felt the heat leaving. He said that he felt the heat in his shoulders, in fact he said that my hand was so warm. I touched the other shoulder and he said he felt the same thing, heat, coming from my arm. After I finished my arm was cool again and he said it felt like there was icy hot on his shoulders... AMAZING!!!


One more story from the week... Friday we did what Ken called a treasure hunt. We each prayed for specific things, like color of clothes, names, locations etc of people. We wrote them down on a piece of paper individually and then got into a group of 5 people. My group headed out in search of our "treasure". One of the things that stood out so firmly to me when I was praying was gold jewelry so as we were walking we saw a sign of gold jewelry. That was not exactly what I was thinking, but it was definitely huge in front of my face. Then someone else in our group got power lines and the picture of the jewelry was right under the power lines. Someone else in our group got a black dog and there was a black dog in the house right next to the other two things. Someone else in our group got the color fuchsia and there was a plant with fuchsia flowers right next to the house with the dog. Someone else got a person with an orange shirt and blue pants and right by all these other things there was a man talking on the phone and guess what he was wearing... yes, an orange shirt and blue pants. So we were thinking this was a HOT SPOT and we were right. A few of the guys in our group went up to the guy to ask him how he was and if there was anything they could pray for. He said he was separated from his wife and that he really wanted his family to be back together again. It was so cool to feel like we were exactly where God wanted us doing exactly what He wanted!!! We had a few more encounters on our treasure hunt and they all turned out really amazing. ahhh, I love the way that God is moving!!!


Please pray for me for this week. I know this sounds like a silly prayer request, but I keep getting bitten by bugs here and they are not your average mosquito... they leave scars and itch for like 2 weeks. I have like 5 bites on each leg and today I got one on my face right under my right eye... BOO... also if you could pray for health. I am feeling a sore throat coming on, so I have been stalking up on my vitamin C hoping that I can prevent it. Also please keep praying for our school in general, that we would stay unified and that we would see things with our supernatural eyes instead of our earthly eyes.

Zona 3

Today we had our second week of going to do our local ministry. I am part of the children's ministry that goes to a community outside of the dump. It is amazing to see the change of scenery just a few minutes away from our base. Last week when we went I immediately fell in love with a few of the kids. I was glad to see them back this week. I was up to tell the story so I told them about the Good Samaritan and then we had some songs and since it is Children's Day here in Guatemala (kind of like Mother's Day or Father's Day for kids) we had one of the YWAMers dress up as a clown and pass out candy. It was cool to go back and see some of the same kids two weeks in a row and I especially connected with this precious little girl named Abby. We were just hanging out today and all of a sudden she pulled a pair of blue sparkle star earrings and said "here, these are for you". Obviously I put them on right away and took a picture...



I love the way that this culture shows God's giving spirit!!!