It’s been 4 months now that I have been home. Boy how time flies. It seems like only yesterday I was in Costa Rica saying Goodbye to many dear friends who I consider my second family. It was hard leaving. Not really knowing exactly what being home would feel like or what God would have in store for me at home, but he is always faithful and this time home has been a time of organizing my life and seeking God for guidance in my next steps.

 

Back in the USofA

Its been awesome to be with my family so much. I missed spending time with them and being a part of their lives. Jon (my brother) is living at home now too, so its been fun to be together trying to figure out this post college life. I think it’s a problem of our generation that we seem to have difficulty finding purpose in what we have been taught is successful. The taught goal is making money and setting up a life based in materials and the right relationships, vacations, and elevated job titles. But I want a different life. Its been easier to find that kind of radial lifestyle away from “the land of plenty”, but I also know that it can be found here. And I want a radical lifestyle now. I just haven’t figured out how yet.

 

Jake and Ari

Jake and I finally met each others familes and friends. For New years I went to Michigan to meet all his family in little wonderful Hudsonville. It was such an awesome time to see where he is from and to meet the people who know him best. And also to see him in his own envirnment. I loved meeting his siblings and his parents, and everyone was so welcoming. Jake came to Massachusetts for my birthday in feburary. And I made it a point to try to introduce him to everyone I know. Haha. well except my grandma, older brother and bestfriend were away, so he will still have to stand to that firing squad soon.  But was awesome to show him boston, Andover, new hampsire a bit. It was kind of a joining of two worlds to have him here, and I loved it. I go back again to Michigan at the end of the month to be with him and his family for 10days. I look forward to spending more time with them and getting to know them more and more. They are an awesome family, like I had any doubt since jake is so awesome! We continue to pray about the next step for us. Whether that is him moving here or me moving there. We both have jobs right now, so we hope that it will be come more apparent what we should do as we pray about our plans for next year. I am hoping that the lord will give direction on that, and we can then ask what the next step for us is now. But we will see how God wants to play it out with us, but we definitely feel it will be together. We are going to start premarital/pre-engagement counseling once we are in the same location which will hopefully help us as we continue to deepen our relationship as we prepare for engagement and marriage.

 

 

Lifting my voice to the Lord

I felt last year a challenge from the Lord to try to get back into singing. I sang a little in high school but put it on the shelf thinking, well, I am not that good at it, so ill just sing to God and not bother anyone else with it. And also I am so fearful of having wrong motives for singing in front of people. If I sing, I don’t want it to be about me, but about the sharing my heart with God. So in anycase, I felt like God wanted me to use what I got. So I have been taking some voice lessons from Erin (our worship leader at church), and it has been so fun. I feel so blessed to be able to learn how to use my voice and I feel more confident that God really does want to hear me, and I want to sing to him. It’s a beautiful thing. I will start singing at church this Easter Sunday, and we’ll see how it goes from there.

Praying about Next Year

Jake and I are really praying about doing a School of the Bible though YWAM (the organization we were with). We both feel the Lord calling us to Missions in this season of our lives, although we are not sure just what specifically we would like to do in that realm. But we think it would be wise to get some good structured Bible education before getting more specified. So we are praying for direction from God if that is what he wants us to do next year. We are looking at a few different locations for the school, but I think I want Nicaragua, near our beloved Costa Rica. But we will see what God says. But you can say a prayer for us that God will make that clear and soon, so we can plan appropriately. But I guess wherever he tells us will be the appropriate time, but it doesn’t hurt to nag him for an answer… hehe. 

well thats it for now. ill try to keep up a bit while i am home and processing what the Lord has for me in the near future. i love you all. 

things are going great here in Panama! we just got back from an awesome week with the Embera tribe. it was so cool living in huts and cooking over fires everynight, and tons of spiders!!! also they do these tatoos that are out of a fruit that they grind and then cook and burn to make a black dy, and they paint their whole bodies in designs. the ywam base here has a highschool for their kids so they know ywam well. it was cool to go and share with the families, get tatoooed ( dont worry it comes off in about 3 weeks) and share Gods love with them. we spent a ton of time with kids and spent time giving a workshop for adults and gong to visit and pray for families. we did a lot of commuinity work also, working on a suspension system for their clean water supply, ¨washing¨sand to put in the water filter, making new stairs for the community and other smaller projects. it was a great week.

we are here on the base in chilibre again for a day or two to clean clothes and rest and then we head up to this mountain village called Wajaka, i think. for about 10 days. so ill try to keep you up dated. please pray for spiritual discernment, energy, and wisdom for  me. things are good, but i feel god has much more for us around the corner. love you all!!!!!!!

It was great to have my parents here, i think they had a great time. They did all sorts of things  like saw the Britt Coffee plantation, saw waterfalls, went to the volcano Poas, took a canopy tour through the costa rica jungle, and saw a few museums as well as other things im sure i dont even know. And of course they MET JAKE!! so that is so nice for me. it was so awesome for them to meet this wonderful guy in my life. after they left jake went home for about 10 days to see his family since he hasnt been home since january. He had a great time and came back having eaten his weight in meat. haha.

Well we had the last few weeks of the school, dealing with the topics of Destiny by Design, The Kingdom, World religions, and Evangelism. Its been an amazing time of getting to know God more and experienceing Him. The Kingdom week was the most impacting for me as well as most of the students. We had Kenny Peavy from the LA YWAM school of worship come and teach that week. God just blew me away in the way he worked through Kenny. It was amazing. God also really touched me life that week, i didnt realize just how hurt i was over the last outreach and even over things that i thought i was over, hurts from the past. God just lovingly wooed me even more. He spoke to me so clearly through all of my students, they were ministering to me!!! God gave them words to speak to me that just spoke so deeply to my heart. i just cried and cried, but God was healing me in a lot of areas i didnt even know werent healed. God is so amazing, so awesome, so loving, and i feel different now. i cant even tell you, when i think that God is too much too awesome, he just blows me away even more. and I want more, more intimacy with him, more being used by him to bring that kind of love and healing and hope. The kingdom is so much greater than i could concieve and i am so ready to jump into all that God has for me and those he wants to touch through me. ahhh, awesome!

Today was an awesome day, we BAPTISED 6 students and 2 staff members today. we headed out to the beach early for the day to make this a special event for those who hadnt been baptised and wished to be. It was a beautiful day and also a day of leaving those Old Lives behind and taking on a NEW LIFE in Christ. we have had our ups and downs during the school, but we move forward as God has plans for those students and he loves them so much. i am excited to lead them on outreach.

So that brings us to the next thing, i changed outreach locations from Mexico to Panama and Nicaragua. When we prayed about where to go the staff unianiously felt Mexico, but the money to go didnt come in, so we decided to change it to try to make it more affordable by eliminating a lot  of the cost in travel money, so we got it down to half the price, but still there are 4 students who dont have their money for outreach. and that means that they wont be able to come. its hard to understand why this is happening to our school right now. there has been a continual message from God of him wanting us united, and that has been one of the major struggles of our school. for this outreach to happen as i believe it should, we will need to depend on each other and support and love one another like we havent before. please pray for finances for these guys, and that includes 3 staff who dont have the money to go on outreach either which would be about 7 of them (half the school not being able to go). I dont really care where God is sending us , i just want to go with him whereever he wants us to go. i trust in his planning, and that as we follow him for instruction in this change of plans , he will lead us each step, we just have to rely on him more, trust him more, and walk out what he tells us to do.

so i head to NIKO tomorrow morning at 6am for southern Costa rica, where the last outreach , well part of it was held. i go down with jake and a couple other staff to prepare for the students arrival on saturday. so that is exciting, i am doing the niko again. hmmm, maybe not that exciting. its an amazing program, but every time i tell God, wow that was great, that’s my last one, but now this will be my 4th niko. crazy!

well keep in touch, i will do my best to give some updates when i am in panama, ill be there for 4 weeks, then come back to San Jose for 2 days and then head up to Nicaragua for 3 weeks then come back for the DNA conference being held by us YWAM SAN JOSE. its very exciting, the founders are coming to speak. sooooo awesome. Loren and Darleen Cunningham!! so cool. well i am falling asleep so, hope to talk to you all soon, thank you for all your love, prayers, and friendships!! GOd BLess!

My Parents are coming!!!
That is very exciting news, they come tomorrow. I am excited to have them see what I have been up to for a year and the people who have blessed my life so much. I am also excited for them to meet Jake!! Finally!! Jake and I have been dating for almost 9 months now, and so its huge for me that they get to meet him, especially in the place where we met and serve together. YAY!

DTS weeks flying by
I have been working with the June DTS for about 7 weeks now. Its been awesome. The students are great and have been learning a lot through our weeks of training. We have so far covered the topics of intimacy with God, Relationships, Worldview, Worship, Intercession, The Holy Spirit, The Father heart of God, and a week of classes on inner healing called Divine Plumbline. We just finished a week on Spiritual Warefar, wow, I learned so much about what the Bible says about the enemy and how through Christ we have authority to bring light and cast out darkness. Its awesome how God wants to use us in the world. i think we were all also challenged to look at the Bible with out a highlighter or eraser, and ask our selves good questions about difficult passages. Its been good for building my faith as well. Our teacher had some awesome stories about how God has worked in his life.

Outreach to MEXICO
As some of you know, part of the DTS is lecture (12 weeks) and then we have 8 weeks of outreach where the students can put into practice all that God has done in them and taught them in another country. We prayed as staff and we unanimously felt that God was calling us to Mexcio. It was so awesome to me to see how God really spoke to us as a group. So we are heading to mexico!!!!!! We will be there September 27- November 15 (about) then we will spend our last week at a national conference here called the DNA conference, more on that later. So we are starting to prepare contacts and set up ministry for us there as well as prepare in prayer and prepare our hearts and tools to go. So keep all that preparation in prayer, I am not the best in logistics so we need a lot of prayer. Haha. but we are lucky that Anabell my roommate and coleader in the DTS is from mexico so she has been working very hard to set things up for us. After a very challenging outreach in the last school, I have been praying a lot for healing in my own life about going on outreach. I am very excited but I also have a lot I am asking God to help me through, fears, preconceptions, and issues of wanting to be in control when a lot of time I cant be in control. So you can pray or that too of course.

Plans on the Horizon
As my year commitment comes to an end here after the DTS, I am praying what to do after my time here. I love it here and I do feel like I could see myself really taking hold of the vision they have for a university of the nations here (that is a YWAM university). I do feel like I need some time home for a bit. And Jake and I are praying about maybe taking another YWAM school in the spring. I know that God has put in my heart to continue in missions and specifically in YWAM, I don’t feel like my time is done. But I do want to walk with God step by step and not get ahead of where he wants me. so ill be home for a couple of months and I will go and meet Jake’s family in Michigan (YAY!!) and so I am still praying about what my purpose home is and what is the next step after that. God knows me well, he only gives me each step at a time in his loving mercy. So I follow.

New Lessons
God is teaching me a lot, and he has been so good to me this DTS. It has been very different, and I know that this has been a time of refining me and surrendering new areas of my life I didn’t even know I was holding on to. I am learning a lot about myself and how God loves me and wants to use me. and all I can do is say I want more! I want more of HIM, more love, more power, more of him in my life. In all sincerity, I am just blown away by God, I am in awe, and inspired to just be with him, want him nearer. Its been awesome how God is using my relationship with Jake to teach me about His Love too. As my heart fills with God’s love, my hope is that his love pours from me. I know I have SO much to learn and have so much to keep applying in my life. But im loving the journey, all the ups and the downs.

Well sorry its so long, hope to talk to all of you soon. Keep praying! Keep seeking HIM!! Its worth anything and everything!

Thank you so much for all your prayers and your support for this whole year that i have been here, your comments have blessed me and your prayers have encouraged me. i love you all very much, and i am so fortunate to have such an amazing group of people supporting me. thank you for all your friendships!

I am sorry that it has been so long since I have written. Outreach was a wild ride and I needed a while to recover as well. The Last 3 months have been great, with many challenges and many blessings. I wish I could have kept better record of the last months to share them in more detail with you just what God has been doing and been challenging me and the DTS with.

Well I think you all know that I am still here in Costa Rica.  For the month of April we began the Costa Rica phase of our outreach and we were in south eastern Costa Rica in an area called Talamanca. The students did a missions prep survivor camp called Niko, in which I was a staff since I did my own Niko in Puerto Rico and staffed there as well. So it was my 3rd time doing Niko, and its always an awesome experience where God stretches me and this time he really reminded me of how lucky we are to live the way we do, with water, with food, with bathrooms, and how much I want my life to belong to him, in the good and in the bad time.  It was great to see the students grow through challenging circumstances and to help them through bad attitudes at times. But the camp really did prepare us for the next 7 weeks of outreach.

We then were in Talamanca in 3 towns: Bambu, Margarita, and Manzanillo. We participated in all sorts of ministries, working at churches, cleaning up the base in talamanca, running church services, playing soccer with local kids, cleaning and working at the red cross, building a house for a woman and her 3 young boys, running children’r programs in churches and in schools, laying a fountation and pouring a cement floor for a sundayschool room, and doing our best to encourage and love one another on the team. It was awesome to see all our time in Costa Rica that each place we went to , people said we were an answer to their prayers. The pastor in Maragita told us that he had been praying for a group to come since its just him and his wife who have been there for 4 years. The woman we built the house for told us that she had been praying for a house for so long. And the Pastor in Manzanillo told us he had been praying for that Sunday school classroom for a long time and he felt we were part of that answer from the Lord. Wow, how amazing is God! We felt very humbled to serve God in whatever way they asked of us. And I hope that we completed God’s dreams for us during that time. And I think we all learned a lot through working so close as a team for the month, really how to have grace with one another. During such a close time, you see people’s strengths and you see people’s faults, even our faults as leaders. I felt like God kept telling us , that we must love each other first and then we are free to love others, share that love that he has given the group. But it all has to start with grace and forgiveness. So even in our internal conflicts God was faithful and good to lovingly teach us how to love one another better.

Then for the month of May I was in Venezulea with 6 studetns and  another leader, Isaac. We mostly stayed in Caracas area. I loved Venezuela the country. I had a lot of fear before I went and I prayed sooooooo much. I guess I felt as an American it might be really hard there for me, since president Chavez hates our president. But the people there could care less that I was American. In fact because they don’t have a lot of tourism right now since it is kind of politically uncomfortable right now, they were so happy to see any foreigners. So that was great. Everyone we met was welcoming and friendly. We spent about 10 days in one home for street kids, called Ninos de La Luz. Were we focused on one on one discipleship with the kids and we felt like God really wanted to bless the staff so we had a special night just for them, of dessert, fun, and loving messages of encouragement. I really hope they felt the love and pride that God has for then and what they are doing. We spent a few days in caracas also, doing dramas in a plaza and interceding in another plaza. We spent the last 2 weeks in another childrens home that YWAM caracas had just taken over about 18 months ago. It was a very challenging time personally and as a team. These kids had been abused by the last ministry that had cared for them, so they were not into hearing what we had to say about God. It was hard as well since you could clearly see with their bad behavior the effects of their being hurt in the past, and that they really haven’t had any healing yet from those experiences. We felt unequipped to help them, but we trust that we were their for a purpose. We tried to encourage the staff who are there right now as well. They are a group of ywamers from Brazil, who are there just for short terms until they can find long term staff. Personally the time was very challenging, I really pressed into God, but felt him somehow far away. It was hard to lead the team in such a place when I was feeling pretty defeated myself. I know that God was there each moment with us, and I know that maybe it didn’t go perfectly, but he was pleased by our hearts and it was a special time even in the midst of all the hurt around, his heart was near and feeling even more than we were. He was feeling our frustration with how people could have done those things to these kids, he was feeling the hurt of those kids, he was feeling the disappointment of the team, and he was there.

After Venezuela we came back to be reunited with the other DTS group that went to Guatemala. They had their graduation which was really nice, and then it was time for everyone to say goodbye and to go home. It was an amazing group of young people , and i feel so priviledge to have been part of what God was doing in their lives. other than God working in your own life, there is nothing better than seeing God transform the lives of others, and then in turn them going out and serving and sharing that transforming Love. and that is why i came back. at the end of the Venezuela outreach, i started having dreams about the next DTS. it was really hard for me to admit it to my self, but my desire was to continue working with the DTSs. so after talking to Jake , who was a little bit sad, but very supportive, i made the desicion to work with the next DTS which started in the end of June and runs until the end of November. so i will be here in Costa Rica until at least thanksgiving. so that is soooooo exciting for me.  well ill try to post again maybe tomorrow to let you know how so far the DTS is going. and ill try to be better at keeping updated. wel until outreach , depending on where we go and availability of internet. ttys!

There is so much that happens its hard to know where to begin. Well I will begin with some sad news first I guess. Last week one of our students left. She was one of the girls in my own small group, and we have been working with her closely for the past 2 months hoping that we would see God bringing change to many areas of her life. I was close with her and it was very hard to go through this process with her. She could not see the areas in her life that God wanted to change, and that is what DTS is all about, allowing God to change you and transform your life so you can bring Jesus’s transforming truth to others. She is still here in Costa Rica but no longer on the base with us. I think it ended as well as could be expected. I feel like God wanted to do so much more with her, but she was unwilling to allow it. but she is often on my mind and in my prayers. Please keep her in your prayers that her heart does not harden through this experience but he uses it to make a breakthrough that he wants to give her.

We have begun planning for our DTS outreach. The two locations are Guatemala and Venezuela and we will spend a month all together in costa rica. So that is very exciting and will be very challenging. I will be leading the team to Venezuela. I have about 7 students and two other staff coming with me. So I will need TONS OF PRAYER. This is my first time leading an outreach like this and Venezuela’s president, Hugo Chavez is not friendly to Americans, and there is a lot of things going on in the country now with the conflict with Colombia. So I really ask for your covering us in prayer. We will be working with the base in Caracas and working with Children at risk and street kids, and evangelism from May 4th to June 2nd. I have a friend down there as well, she is American and was a staff here in CR from September to December. But has been committed to the base in Venezuela for a while, so I also look forward to seeing her as well. Our Costa Rica phase of the Outreach with start with a week in Niko, the survival camp, and then 3 weeks around the country serving in several different locations.

The Week before last, we had a 12 Hour Prayer Vigil. IT WAS AWESOME. we prayed thursday night from 7pm to friday 7am. all through the night praying for differnt topics each hour and having all this time of worship. it was super cool. and it was just such a blessing to be in God’s presence for so long just agreeing with his purposes in the world and worshiping him for who he is and what he was going to do . so awesome. the students loved it tooo. they were all super into it, and God really showed up bigtime. At like 7 when we finished , i just thought wow, there is so much to pray about, so much more that I could keep going all day. As I went to bed at 8am, my mind was just so used to praying that all I could do was pray as I was laying down. That night was really special to all of us. Its hard to describe, but I really encourage you to pray, and to pray knowing that your prayers have power and God wants to be involved with the world and he wants us to be involved in changing the world and the lives of the people we know and love. Amen!!!!

I also have been praying for jake and I as well, and i really felt like God was telling me that there are things he wants to do in each of our lives through one another, things like strengthen security and trust and learn new ways of loving one another. It was cool because God gave me the revelation of relationship development like community development that he wants to develop a wholistic relationship with him and with each other. so like we have to grow together in all 4 areas, socially, spiritually, intellectually, and physically. God has also been teaching me about sacrificial love, and personally, i was asking what things have i sacrificed in the past for God, what do i need to sacrifice now. and then i also started to ask God what things will i need to sacrifice maybe in the future. …. i have no answers yet, but im going to keep praying and trying to understand that kind of love better. and i wanted to share what God has been teaching me. especially through that prayer vigil time. wow. it was awesome. Jake is still in Mexico finishing up his outreach there, but I am very excited for his return April 1st.

I also am starting to think about what I will be doing in September. I committed here for a year and I still have another 5 and a half months, but believe it or not that will fly by as this first half has. So there are some options to really go to the Lord with, and I trust that he will make the path clear. He is so faithful, and he deals me one step at a time in his mercy.

We just got back from Nicaragua on Tuesday night. Many of us Americans and several other non-Costa Rican latinos had to renew our 90 day visa’s. so we had a mini missions trip to the YWAM base in Dijiumbi Nicaragua (I think that’s how you spell the town). It was neat to see another latin American base and how they run things there. It was basically a 12 hour bus ride. Wow. But we were so blessed that so many of us had to go we ended up renting a big bus, and it had AIR CONTITIONING, that is huge! It was such a blessing. We had a great time on Sunday at the beach, just enjoying our time all together, and then on Monday, we were able to spend the day in ministry. The base in Nicaragua runs an elementary school, so we gave a short presentation to the kids. Then we all worked on the base in the morning and then spilt into groups, one group when to visit neighbors in the surrounding barrio, and then the rest of us went to a local hospital to talk and pray with patients. It was a great time, I spent time with 3 elderly women, with various sicknesses, but all believed in the Lord and were thankful for our prayers for their healing, comfort and provision. We also got to spend some time with the kids in the hospital, I think this really impacted many of the students who were with us, since 2 of the mothers couldn’t pay to take the bus to bring their kids home from the hospital. It was a powerful time and a fun time just smiling with them.. I was surprised by how poor a country it is. All I could think about what all the things I had learned from the community development school as we drove for hours through the country side, and how much they need community development. It was a bit of an eye opener even for the short time I was there. But it was a great trip, and sometimes with all the theory we hear in DTS its good to have that kind of eye opener. And now I am back in Costa Rica legally for another 90 days to get some more ammo before more outreach.

Hmmm, what else can I share, well I have a new good friend who comes to the chinamo now. Its ethan, Jorge and Rachel’s son, he is about 5 years old. He is soooo funny. He drew me a picture for my room, and amber, who is also 5, decided she better do one for me to, so I have both of them up on my wall in my room. They are sweet, but ethan can be a bit mischievous too. But he is really cute, he asks me all the time to come over and be at his house, and he asks “are we friends?” really cute. So the kids on the base are good. And I am totally in love with baby Jude, but of course you can imagine the ridicule I get for that. every time anyone sees me holding the baby they think about jake. Please, I am soooo far from that thought. They can tease me all they want , I just love that baby, he is so cute. And so good natured. I love having families on the base. Its just fun to be around kids all the time. Maybe my brothers can get married soon so we can have some Kidd kids in the family soon. Hehe. ( just kidding dave and jon, not yet please)

classes have been good as well. We have had a number of speakers since my last update: John Davidson, Giacomo, Jorge, and Rick Allegretto. John is from the LA base , he was a pleaser to have here. He shared on many topics: prayer, spiritual warfare, father heart of God, trust in finances, and slightly on relationships. He is a great guy and it was really a pleasure to serve him breakfast in the mornings. As part of my hospitality duties I make breakfast for the speakers in the second house and it really is a privilege to get to chat with them one on one during those times. John was such an encouragement. Giacomo taught on worldview, which I had in the community development school and in my own dts. But it was so cool to see the students really understanding that many of the problems in communities and individuals is at the level of their beliefs and that is the level we have to deal with first to see lasting change in their lives, not just with behaviors or programs. Jorge taught on worship, he is staff here directing the school of worship that is going on now. It was great to have a worshipful week and get back to the foundations. We just finished this week, wed and Thursday with Rick Allegreto. He is the reginal director of Mexico, central American and the carribean in YWAM and he is part of the YWAM Gobal leadership team. He taught on Leadership, and for me it was so good to hear. I really feel this is an area God is developing in my life and I need all the help I can get. Haha. but it was helpful to hear that good leadership starts with our character. So I am going to continue to develop Christlike character and just trust in God with each thing he puts in my hands and try to manage it as best as I can with his help.

well thanks for reading all this. Hopefully you can feel part of this adventure as well. Thank you for all your love and support and prayers. I pray that God blesses you tons and tons!

Hello all,

The DTS is going well, its hard to believe we are starting our 5th week of classes. I feel like I am just getting ot kow the students a little bit better and its been awesome to see how God is challenging them and growing them individually and as a group. It’s a really special group of students and they have been such a blessing to have.
The week before last we had a week of teaching on the topic called “the divine Plumbline” it is based on a vision in Amos 7:7-9. It is about alighting ourselves to how God created our hearts to be. So the students are giving a big list of “blocks” of sin that can be in our lives that aren’t according to how God wants to construct our lives. They got an opportunity to seek God and ask him what blocks of sin where in their lives, how they got there and who helped to put them there. We then had 3 days of an awesome time of outward confession, repentance, forgiving and asking forgiveness. It was so awesome to see students really giving everything from their past to God and allowing light to come into the hidden areas of their lives. So that is how I spent my birthday, seeing students being freed from sin. So that was pretty unforgettable. It has been so awesome to talk to them and her how much God is just weeding out the bad things in their lives to fill them up again with all the good. someone told me its like defragging a computer, allowing God to take out all the unneeded stuff, to serve him better. so yeah, wow.

Thanks to everyone for the awesome birthday wishes! I felt so loved by everyone. Its hard to believe I am 25 now. That is pretty old. hehe. Or at least to some. But I am excited to see what this next year will bring. I am so happy to be here, now. I remember last year, just longing to be back in YWAM, and it would have been hard to imagine this place or these students, but its amazing to see God’s faithfulness in giving me the desire of my heart this year. so I feel superblessed, I just wish all of you were here with me to share it with.  I think 25 will be a good year, well I guess any year with Christ is a good year, so Ill just hold on to that.

We had our first local outreach where we went to a slum that is called Las Tablas, which means “the Boards”. There is severe poverty, lots of drugs, child prostitutes, bad sanitation and tons of trash everywhere. We know the pastora there who had us work in the mud digging a trench by the contaminated river. The land is falling into the river and they need to put up a cement barrier to hold the land back in place so more doesn’t fall into the water. So it was a great start for the DTS to see how some people in this world live, and to get down and dirty for Jesus! We will continue to work in this community I am sure through our time with the DTS and with the short term teams that come in the summer.

We just finished a week of teaching on the Character and Nature of God with the YWAM Nicaragua base leaders Don and Barbara Johnson, it was great to get to know them a bit and have them here. This teaching is always good, and helps us to grow our hearts more for who God is. It has also been such a challenge for me the past two weeks with translating. I had to translate part of the week last week and this past week. So that was awesome to be able to serve that way, my Spanish understanding is great. So I am able to translate from Spanish to English, but my speaking Spanish is still way behind. I blame it on sally (hehehe) if my mom just made me speak it growing up maybe …just maybe… haha. But its great that I am learningso much. I am sure I will get a chance to translate more in the furture since we are always in need of translators here. (so if anyone wants to come to serve as a translator, here is your invite).

It has also been awesome to be working more and more in the hospitality department. Hospitality is one of YWAM’s values, so we really put a lot into welcoming everyone and making everyone, speakers, guests, teams, students and staff at home. So its been great learning and working with Zulma in that, but it could be a full time job just on its own. So I have been feeling a bit over tired with all that we want to do, but I think that just might be the way things will always be. There is always more do to than time. But its good, I just wish I could keep the costarican coffee on IV. Haha.

This next week we have a speaker, John Davidson, he is from the YWAM base in LA. And he will be teaching on a mix of topics including the father heart of God, which in my DTS was awesome. So I am excited, and since so many people really do view or relate to God like how they relate to their earlthy father. So its important to either strengthen or correct that view. And give the Father a chance to shape our thoughts on what that relationship really means.

I am learning so much, about being a leader, myself and thankfully God continues to refine my life gently and lovingly. Over all, as I say time and again, it has been awesome to be here even in the struggles. There have been ups and downs for sure. God is challenging me in the area of intimacy with my relationships to have better relationships. He is also teaching me how to rely on him, for wisdom since there are so many times I have no idea what I am doing or what I should say in a situation, and also in serving. Since a lot of times I just get really tired of working all day every day, with little rest. But he is teaching me to stop doing things out of my own strenghth and how he wants to sustain me. He has given me great friends here as well. Well I hope that makes sense to any one. I really do feel like I am just were I am supposed to be. Its amazing what God wants to do with us as we submit all our lives to him. Its very cool. Haha.
Well I miss everyone, I hope you all are good. Jake is now in Mexico, he is doing well, working on his Spanish and enjoying his bucket showers. Hehe.  We are at our half way mark for being apart, so he comes back in about 50 days. Not that I am counting or anything.

But please don’t be strangers, comment or email me. I have felt so encouraged by your comments and hope that you are encouraged by what God is doing here in costa rica.

Please pray for finances of the students, staff, base.
I am praying for a couch on the base, so if you feel lead to pray for that too,  I know it’s a bit silly, but I think God wants to bless us even in the details.
Pray for energy for the staff, and that we can keep our hearts focused on the Lord in the midst of all that we need to do.
Pray for the students that God keeps molding their lives as they surrender them to him.
Pray for Las Tablas community
Thanks to God for all that he did during plumbline week