A Whole Lot Of Change!!

Hey Everybody!!

Tons of huge things have been happening over here lately, it's hard to express it all in words!!

Fisrst, its getting warmer and warmer here everyday, but its still as gorgeous as ever!
The last couple of weeks have been AMAZING, and we have had life changing speakers. Since my last update, Josh Cole came with his friend Marty Emmet and taught us on Intimacy with Jesus. It took pretty much every piece of knowledge I've ever learned and completely blew it away. That was a week of alot of breakthroughs, and not only for me. There was TONS of crying (which I found out isn't a bad thing) and a lot of forgivness going around. One of these times that really stuck with me was when one of the girls was struggling with forgiving the guys in her past. All of the girls gathered around her, and of course we were all bawling. :) Then every guy in our DTS got down on their knees and asked for our forgivness on behalf for every other man in our lives that might have hurt or wronged us. I don't know if i can explain it right, but the feeling of unity that we had was so amazing. A lot of us were healed of anger or self hate that we have been hanging onto for years. Then to top it all off, the guys did the Hakkah (it's a traditional New Zealand war dance. Look it up, its super cool!) for us girls and it sounds corny, but it was so awesome because because it was their way of saying that we were worth going to war for, and it helped all of us to find some of our self worth again. So in short, that week pretty much hollowed me out of everything so that we could start all over. It was so AWESOME!!

We went on a Friday night outreach to Christchurch and split into groups of 4. Me and the girls I was with went to a dance mat where we could hook up an ipod to huge speakers and started blasting worship music while holding cardboard signs that said "Need Prayer?" I confess that I was super skeptical and nervous about it, but after a little bit people started to walk up to us. It was soo awesome to just talk to people about the weather, their day or things as deep as marriage and the future. I got to pray over a bunch of people and it totally opened my eyes to the need and desperation for God all around me. It was so awesome and I'm so excited to get out there again!!
Last week our speaker was Mark Parker. A short description of him would be the craziest, bluntest, most amazing 57 year old man I've ever met. He taught on the lordship of God. Probably the biggest thing that I learned from him was the difference between your spirit, soul and body and going from a personal relationship with God to a King/Lord relationship (ask me to explain when I get home because it will blow your mind). Then on Friday we had a Tabernacle experience, which was a day that I will always remember. We started at 10 in the morning and finished at 11:30 at night, but the whole day went so fast! The very general order of the day was thanksgiving, praise, Burnt Offering (which was laying things down like your family, future, etc.) guilt offering (repenting, laying things down that make you stumble...), baptisms, holy spirit, communion, and some more worship. Some highlights of the day (the whole day was a huge highlight though...) was laying A LOT of things down that was holding me back, getting confirmed in the coldest water I've ever been in, and dancing around in a field with flags praising God. Also, the Holy Spirit overwhelmed me like never before, and through me, God healed my roomate's back problems. I've been checking up on her almost daily since then and she hasn't had even a smidge of pain since!! It was one of the best days of my life and I can say that I came out of it a completely different person than when I went in.

 Right now we are learning about the Holy Spirit, which is sooo crazy!! My mind is being blown all over again! The speaker is Josh Menning and he is amazing at it! Holy Spirit (I feel like I can call Him by his name now, instead of THE Holy Spirit :) ) is definately becoming more real to me every day and I feel like now that I am beginning to understand Him, God and Jesus feel more relatable also. If that makes any sense.
Last week we also finally found out our outreach location options!!! There will be four teams, each with 6-8 people in them. The options are..... Thailand, Bangladesh, New Zealand or Nepal!!!!! And just tonight we found out what country we will be going to and what our teams are! I will be going to BANGLADESH in December until March!!!! God blessed me with an incredibly amazing team of 5 other students and the most amazing leader I could ask for!! I am soooo stoked to get over there! I will keep everyone informed once I know more about what we will be doing and where exactly we will be. I'm SO excited!!

And next week we will be gone all week with our outreach teams for Church Service Week. We found out today also that my team will be going to Nelson, New Zealand which is about 6-7 hours away. It will be an awesome time to serve the people of New Zealand and to start bonding with my team!!
I thank God all the time for everyone at home who is praying and supporting me over here. Its so amazing to know that i have such a great support group. So thank you all so much!! I was talking to my mom the other day about how it will be weird in a way to come home because I am already a completely new girl than I was when I left. And it's only been one month!! God is definatley wrecking me for the ordinary and I'm loving every minute of it!!

This was at Castle Rock which I talked about in my last entry.