Apologies, apologies... this is wayyyy overdue!

Hello everyone!

The staff has been really encouraging us [like everyday] to really TAKE IT ALL IN because DTS is over before you know it. I can definitely start to see why… this week just flew by!

So, where to begin…

Well, Boris was just sheer entertainment and he did and awesome job at really challenging us to think about A LOT more than just hearing God’s voice. We talked about personalities and the way we relate to each other and how that relates to the way we interact with God. To pretty much sum up how Boris feels about our relationship with God is: Keep is simple, and keep it real. Don’t get into all the hype. How’s that for to-the-point?

So, I’m sure you’re all wondering…

I’M GOING TO INDONESIA!
In just 8 weeks I will be heading off to a little island of Indonesia called Nias [pronounced knee-os]. And I am so excited. God definitely revealed to me some major things, good things, about myself and what gets-me-going, so to speak.

So I'll start from the beginning... On tuesday night the leaders of each outreach team presented their locations and details about what their teams would be doing, then we had fifteen! minutes to pray about where God wanted us to go. The options were Africa, Cambodia, Philippines, or Indonesia.

With all this hearing the voice of God business, I sat there and prayed feeling quite 'under pressure'... you know, for something cool and exciting and like supernatural to happen, haha :)

But God simply imprinted ‘sacrifice’ in my mind. And so, the awesome Christian thing to do is look up the word sacrifice in the concordance and go from there… so that’s what I did. And, it wasn’t there. [I’m sure you’re probably all asking what kind of weird Bible I have…]

Then I just felt like God was telling me to go back to the book of Hebrews [which I had finished reading just two hours before we went to the church that night], but I went to Hebrews regardless of my 'know-it-all-attitude' and God gave me this from Hebrews 10:26:

“If we deliberately keep on sinning after we have received the knowledge of the truth, no sacrifice for sins is left, but only a fearful expectation of raging fire that will consume the enemies of God.”

Through this verse [which I’m sure most of you are like, “okay…...”] God just revealed to me the times when I am the most on fire, and yearning for more, and growing into a deeper relationship with Him, and it is definitely when I am reading my Bible [not just for a key scripture here and there, but really READING it to learn], when I’m teaching [like in my small group, shout out to my Mizpah ladies!], when I’m reading other books from people who have thoughts to share [Rob Bell! who is just amazingly intelligent] and when I can share with people and talk and debate about the things I’m learning at the moment. That’s when I grow deeper with God.

So how does this relate to Indonesia?

Well let me tell you. Indonesia is an Islam nation. However, a couple of Dutch men started a revival on the small island of Nias over four hundred years ago, which led to the entire island to Jesus. To this day, Nias is the only island of Indonesia which accepts Christianity. So, you might be wondering what we’re going to be doing then huh? Well, at this point, the churches of Nias are similar to the Corinthian church. They most certainly accept what Jesus stands for, but they are just having a horrible time living their lives for Him. The churches (of which there are many) fight and argue about the 'small' things like, how to baptize, who can preach, etc. So our awesome and mighty task is discipleship. Which, at first thought, really freaked me out. But isn’t it awesome how God revealed to me that that is when I’m doing my best work for Jesus!? By learning and sharing and growoing with others. I realized that I need to be probed and questioned and thrown into things to really dig in deeper with God.

How awesome is that! I am super super excited.

So, can you guys please start praying;
For our team [that is Jeremy, Reba < our two leaders! Kodan, Bree, Rebecaa, Paul and me!] that God would prepare our hearts.
For the Indonesian people we will get the chance to grow with.

From now until the day we leave, we meet thursday mornings with our outreach teams to pray and work out details, etc. So I’ll be putting up more specific prayer requests soon!


Well, on a lighter note, here's another thing I’ve learned in the first two weeks… girls can eat!
Each week, YWAM staff [Miss Pattie, a native Texan, to be specific] buys us staple groceries like bread, butter, milk, yogurt, cereal, some fruit, etc. And let me tell you, it does not stick around for long… And let me tell you something else- The way to a woman’s heart may be her stomach too! These girls are getting territorial over some of the goods. haha. Living with these girls is still awesome though. Challenging but fun. :)

There are sooo many things I want to share. But I am seriously beginning to think I can start writing a novel! With that being said, I honsetly want to apologize for the lack of posts. I am going to make it a point from this day forward to at least drop a few lines each afternoon after lunch. So pray for me to be disciplined enough to prepare posts in advance and my laptop [charged!] and keep me accountable... yell at me! :)

<3 and miss you dearly,
Jade