Twilight

Australia!

Hey guys & gals!

I def. been super busy and have had little time to be online, which is probably a good thing. I can usually make it to the cafe we use the internet everyday, but I usually try to keep it to 20 minutes or less. But tonight (or this morning for you guys.... yeah the 14 hour time difference is pretty nuts) I got the chance to take my time and snag a laptop all to myself, without fellow teammates waiting to use it. :-) 

God has been awesome while I've been out here... actually He's always awesome. So far, we've seen two girls come to Christ and had other people show a lot of interest. It's been awesome to watch God move in people's lives. I'm def. pumped to get back to Central and go sharing and hopefully disciple someone this fall! I'm so much more comfortable with putting myself out there and feeling awkward, but striking up conversations anyways. I've made two solid friends at the Uni (what they call college here), their names are Brodie & Nin. Both are not Christians so please keep them in your prayers. It's my heart's desire to have the privelage of leading them to Christ or at least a lot closer. The Australians tend to be extremely apathetic towards ANYTHING, so that's made sharing a challenge. I've been rejected twice as far as trying to do a survey or just trying to talk to people. Which isn't bad compared to some of my other teammates are rejected daily. I had the privalege talking to two Muslim girls on Friday who seemed VERY interested in the gospel, but they had class and took the KGP with them... so that was amazing and I hope to see them again. 

Of course, I miss all of you terribly and I cannot wait to come home. Homsickness settles in when I have large amounts of downtime. I'm so glad they kept us really busy the first week because I had zero time to be homesick. 

I spent two days in LA which was a blast. I feel like we all knew each other for forever. There were never really awkward moments. We got to go to the beach and to Santa Monica the night before we left for Australia. We flew to San Fran and then to Sydney... 13 hours and 45 minutes! My ankles were freaking HUGE... they swelled up like no other. But I slept probably 10 hours of the flight, so praise God for that!!! I'm praying I can do the same on the way home. :-) We got into Sydney at 6:30 am and went sight seeing ALL day. We walked the harbor bridge and we got to be right next to the opera house, which was a dream come true. The next day we went to the Zoo and got to ride a ferry across the harbor. It was super cool. Then we headed to Newcastle and that's where we've been settled for the past week and a half. We stay here until August 17th and then get to go to a nearby christian camp for debriefing. The beaches in Newcastle are amazing and beautiful and it's so cool to have seen both sides of the pacific in a short amount of time. The Uni is basically a jungle with buildings in it. I'm so glad it's winter here because apparently the snakes do come out on campus in the summer... and I hate snakes SO much. Picking up an Australian accent is REALLY hard... there advice is to get really lazy with your words. Most of them love OUR accents and how nicely we tend to say things and the big words we like to use. Most of them want our accent which is odd to me. They have the best accents EVER. The Australians are pretty amazing and very helpful. 

I ate Kangaroo stir fry the other night... it was delicious but I felt sad that I was eating such a cute animal. :-(

This Saturday I get to go Sand Boarding (which is like sledding apparently) and I get to go to a petting zoo and play with Kangaroos and see Koalas! Hopefully I won't be sad about the whole eating a Kangaroo thing when I get to play with them....

Sunday a bunch of us are planning on going to the Hillsong church in Sydney...yup... the place all those awesome CDs come from. I'm SO excited! We had to leave at 5am... take the train 3 hours, catch a bus that's about an hour long and then we'll be spending most of the day in Sydney and then heading home rather late. So it'll be a long but awesome day! 

SO I think that's about it for now. Not sure when I'll get the time to do this again.... hope all is with you... 

<3

Sam

Reader's Digest Version of my Testimony

So we're supposed memorize our 3-5 minute testimony for summer project... so I typed it out. I did a half-hour version at my church last November so this is my super-short version.

Enjoy!

I was saved when I was six. I went to a Baptist church for 18 years of my life. My church family was great but I didn’t feel like I really knew God or that He was even really “approachable”. From age 13-18 I went through cycles of being really excited about God and caring less about what He has to say about my life and where it was going. My family started going to a different church a few days before I started college. After attending this new church, for the first time I felt like I knew that I could have a PERSONAL relationship with God. I never got the concept of worshiping God before. I never felt like God was really there. Throughout my freshman year there were many trials, including two crazy roommates that made my life pretty miserable, many failed auditions, and feeling led by God to leave my boyfriend of two years. So for the first time I was radically living sold-out for Jesus! Last summer was a huge spiritual growth spurt for me. I went back to school in the fall and God led me to Campus Crusade for Christ. I made amazing friends that will last for a lifetime and found a place that I could continue to grow spiritual and have great fellowship. I also have a chance to really focus on pouring into other people and learning how to share my faith more effectively.

Rest Already!

Matthew 11:28-30

28Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.
29Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls.
30For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.

This passage is so true. I was just sitting here and verse 30 popped into my head as I was reflecting on the events of the past two days. Things got a little scary for me, I'll spare you the details, but I surrendered it all to God completely and it's already so much better! God's presence and guidance is so peaceful. Lately I've been feeling like He's wanted me to "rest" but I didn't know what He meant or how to do it. This verse shows me that surrendering all to Him is a form of rest and that's what He meant. I love revelations! Haha! He totally meant that my soul wasn't resting and I was overthinking this and trying to figure it all out by myself. He didn't mean a literal physical rest... that's why I was confused because I haven't done much of anything lately because I'm just at home, doing nothing... until 2 weeks when I leave for summer project.

Anywhos. That's all. Life is good. Rob and I have been together for 6 months and I love him more than ever. :-) Things are going good for us and God is working through us. It'll be cool to see what God does with us once I leave. I think it'll be all good.

That's all for now.

Attacks...

Being on the front lines of spiritual warfare sucks. I've felt that I have been on them a lot lately, because I have been rekindling the romance in my life with Jesus AND I'm going to do the Lord's work in a few weeks, so the enemy really has it out for me and is attacking the most sensitive areas of my life.

Roger Webb, the revivalist/evangelist who came to our church a few weeks ago came back today for the Sunday service. He said when you're in the storm to keep your eyes on the Lord and not the enemy... maybe that's my problem. I'm so busy fighting under God's authority, but I'm not always focused on Him as much as I am the enemy and defeating him. Yes, the enemy is a target and must be defeated, but every knee shall bow and every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord! I don't need to fight for Him, the battle's already won. I just need to know my place and keep my eyes fixed on Him... like a child learning how to walk, they keep their eyes on mommy or daddy and make their way straight to them. Sometimes they stumble a little, but they are determined to make it. When Jesus' calmed the storm in Mark 4 He asked the disciples if they had no faith. He didn't understand why they were afraid when God in the flesh was on the boat and just chillin. Nothing is different now. It seems like I've been trying to do to much, change to much and I just need to receive when the Lord wants to give me and just let Him do it already! Who knew it could be so hard to just receive... lol. I don't need to do anything but ask most of the time. If He needs me to do something, He'll tell me.

God been talking to me a lot lately and showing me things. He's been answering my prayers when I intercede for people, especially for my summer project group. It's just been awesome. God is so good and wonderful. There's no way that I'm going to give up and stop persevering. Nehemiah 8:10 says that the joy of the Lord will be our strength. Nehemiah wouldn't have said that if we wouldn't need the joy of the Lord and if we didn't need strength, which means following God isn't easy and through the valleys we need to remember what the Lord has done and take great joy in that. We need to remember the deposits He has put in us in the past and draw on those. When He tells you something, gives you something, imparts something, He doesn't take that deposit away and He wants you to continue to withdraw from that in the future. We need to hold on because breakthrough could (and probably is) right around the corner.

As always please keep me in your prayers right now... God is good, but the fight is tough. I can't wait to get to Australia and be over the "getting there" hurdle and onto the fight for souls for God's kingdom! :-) Then my hands will get really dirty!!! haha.

Hannah's Barreness

I finished the 1st Chapter of "Prophetic Evangelism" last night and one (of the many) eye opening point really caught my attention. Desperation. We need to be desperate for Jesus. And I don't mean wishy-washy only sometimes need Him desperate, I'm talkin hardcore desperate! The example the author used was from First Samuel 1. Hannah's (mother of Samuel) womb had been closed up by the Lord. Hannah was the wife of Elkanah, but he had another wife, Peninah, who was a baby making machine. This provoke Hannah and made her want children even more. Elkanah increased the amount of blessing he gave Hannah and even said "Am I not worth more than ten sons?". This whole bargain deal didn't slow Hannah down. So she got desperate and prayed and fasted before the Lord. She then made a covenant with the Lord, that if He opened her womb, she would dedicate Samuel's life to Him. So the Lord opened her womb and she bore Samuel.
I agree when the author says that God more than likely used Peninah's over-active baby maker to draw something out of Hannah. The same could be said about our possible spiritual barrenness! I know when I see someone else who is spiritually fruitful, I wonder if I'm doing something wrong and I feed of off that sort of thing. I think God let's certain things provoke us so that we get desperate and run to Him with questions and for help. Hannah was so determined!
The author suggests that there are 4 stages of desperation.
Stage 1) Awareness: This is when you first realize something is missing, but at this stage, you more than likely have little to no motivation to figure it out, let alone fix it.
Stage 2) Embarrassment: This stage is when we feel a slight negative feeling about what we are lacking. We see what other people have and are self-conscious about what we are not doing.
Stage 3) Frustration: When that nagging feeling is consistently present. You start to get more distressed about your situation, but many people who get to this stage do not push through and never make any change.
Stage 4) Intolerability: This is when the above feelings release an "momentous change". You get to the point where you can no longer go against the feelings. Desperation like this releases fresh intimacy, inspiration and a much needed impact. Change will not occur without a high sense of urgency! This desperation can be looked at as a divine way that Christ is trying to make you go one step further.

All of that makes a lot of sense to me and has shed some light on why I feel the way I do sometimes. This was only the last 4 pages of the chapter. There were so many other awesome and encouraging things in the first chapter, but this is one I though I should share and dive into deeper. :-)

The Valley of Dry Bones

So I started to read the book I got yesterday called "Prophetic Evangelism: Empowering a Generation to Seize Their Day" by Sean Smith. I just finished the prologue... yeah, I know, exciting, right? haha. Well it had a good amount of info in it that I need to process so I'm going to do that here.

After reading the prologue once, I decided to read Ezekiel 37 in it entirety so I could really understand the full version. After doing so I re-read the prologue and grasped everything a lot better! God was showing Ezekiel the dry bones and asked "Son of man, can these bones live?" And Ezekiel's reply was like "Only you can pull off that one big guy!" So Ezekiel seemed to realize the impossibility of himself trying to make these bones live again. He knew no matter what he said or did as a man would do nothing to these bones. So God tells Him what to say and do under God's authority! So he tells the bones what God said and the bones came back to life. Ezekiel become an "divine agent for 'dead' humanity". God could have brought the bones back to life without using Ezekiel, but He DESIRED to use Ezekiel as a vessel for His grand plan! In John 5:19-20 Jesus says
"...I tell you the truth, the Son can do nothing by himself; he can do only what he sees his Father doing, because whatever the Father does the Son also does. For the Father loves the Son and shows him all he does. Yes, to your amazement he will show him even greater things than these". God wants us to get with the program, jump on board, join in on what He's doing and pay attention to what the Holy Spirit is saying and pointing out specifically! We can't do anything without our Heavenly Father, so why even try to? We should be abiding in Him and being more focused on growing His Kingdom!

I highly recommend that you read Ezekiel 37 if you haven't recently. It is a great example of Prophetic Evangelism and just all around inspiring!