I thought I'd write a quick update in my "free" time which is rapidly depleting. We've started to cram quite a lot into these last few weeks (by the way, I cannot believe we are in our last few weeks of lecture phase! phew that went fast!). Last week we started working on three different short dramas for outreach, and this week we'll be learning some more. We also have some fundraising dinners scheduled, spanish lessons, and other prep work. Somehow these things always ends up being at the same time : ).
Last Saturday was the Coatesville Christmas parade, which actually exceeded my expectations as far as quality and quantity (seriously, have you ever thought of a Coatesville parade?). We had a stand set up with coffee and we also walked up and down the street offering prayer for people and in some cases sharing the gospel. This kind of thing pushes me way outside of my comfort zone, but we've been learning about evangelism the last few weeks so now it's time to start acting on what we'ver learned.
This past week we also had a great speaker, Jimmy Nimon, who is staff at Gateway House of Prayer in Lancaster. He talked about walking in the spirit. He stressed the importance of having QUIET time everyday. Up until now, my daily "quiet" time has been me reading my bible everyday, but now we're all trying to add time to wait on the Lord and just listen to what He has to say. It's amazing how much this prepares me to face the day, no matter how crazy it is. I also think that this will be a key component for maintaining sanity in the days to come : ).
I would like to thank you for your continued prayers for us as we speed prep for the next three months. I will be home for a week around Christmas and we plan to leave for South America sometime around the 30th.
Monday, December 8, 2008
Wednesday, November 19, 2008
NY, new friends, and NyQuil
Well this week has found us on a great adventure armed with kleenex, cough drops, and lots of hot lemon tea. Yes, flu season has found us. It's probably a combo of the cold and being so sleep deprived from having a blast last week. Allow me to explain...
Last week our team headed to NY again, this time to a little town called Smithtown, for a YWAM conference with two other teams at the Metro base. The other teams were from Pittsburg and Manhattan. It was such a great experience for me because I got to befriend a whole bunch of awesome people with the added bonus of meeting some who were from other countries. In all, I think that 11 countries were represented: the netherlands, switzerland, the gambia, france, ireland, england, columbia, pakistan, canada, korea, and of course all over the USA. That's what I love about YWAM, making life long friends from places all over the world. This NY experience was set around teachings about the Holy Spirit, basically we followed the same type of class schedule, just in a new place. We spent a week discussing the nature and character of the Holy Spirit and why He's so misunderstood within the church. It was a very eye-opening time for me because there is a lot about Him that I never understood before (or even knew that I needed to understand). The sleep deprivation part came from staying up late talking about how amazing God is or how animal noises are represented differently in other countries over Oreos and milk.
On friday, we said some goodbyes then spent the rest of the day sight-seeing which introduced me to my first subway ride, on which i felt like the biggest tourist ever with my large camera snapping shots of EVERYTHING. We rode the Staten Island Ferry as well which was...very ferry-like.
This week, we have a new speaker who chose to teach about "Offense-Proofing Your Life" with side teachings on (once again) The Holy Spirit! This time more about the gifts of the Holy Spirit and what their purposes are. So far during this DTS God has continuously been showing me more about myself and the wrong ways I have thought for so long that need correction, mostly in relation to my interaction/understanding of Him. Besides that, He has also helped me understand more about my relationships with other people and why some of them need healing or why I need to pass on what I've learned to them. For one thing, I think the church in America would grow and thrive so much if people began to understand God's grace is meant to be accepted and then passed on. Too many times we get caught up in the cycle of looking for perfection within an imperfect world. We love being saved by grace, but struggle to extend grace. One thing we were taught is that often the closer you get to God, the more offenses from others you will have to deal with. If we want to be like Jesus we need to go through what He went through with the same amount of love for other people that He displayed. Impossible? Yes. On our own human understanding, but that's the point of relying on God right?
I thank you all so much for your prayers and support! I would like to ask specifically for prayers on our health right now, almost all of us have some type of cough, sniffle, or other various annoyance. Also in the general subject of safety as we get closer to our outreach date. I look forward to the upcoming holiday break when I can talk face to face with many of you!
much love,
amanda
Last week our team headed to NY again, this time to a little town called Smithtown, for a YWAM conference with two other teams at the Metro base. The other teams were from Pittsburg and Manhattan. It was such a great experience for me because I got to befriend a whole bunch of awesome people with the added bonus of meeting some who were from other countries. In all, I think that 11 countries were represented: the netherlands, switzerland, the gambia, france, ireland, england, columbia, pakistan, canada, korea, and of course all over the USA. That's what I love about YWAM, making life long friends from places all over the world. This NY experience was set around teachings about the Holy Spirit, basically we followed the same type of class schedule, just in a new place. We spent a week discussing the nature and character of the Holy Spirit and why He's so misunderstood within the church. It was a very eye-opening time for me because there is a lot about Him that I never understood before (or even knew that I needed to understand). The sleep deprivation part came from staying up late talking about how amazing God is or how animal noises are represented differently in other countries over Oreos and milk.
On friday, we said some goodbyes then spent the rest of the day sight-seeing which introduced me to my first subway ride, on which i felt like the biggest tourist ever with my large camera snapping shots of EVERYTHING. We rode the Staten Island Ferry as well which was...very ferry-like.
This week, we have a new speaker who chose to teach about "Offense-Proofing Your Life" with side teachings on (once again) The Holy Spirit! This time more about the gifts of the Holy Spirit and what their purposes are. So far during this DTS God has continuously been showing me more about myself and the wrong ways I have thought for so long that need correction, mostly in relation to my interaction/understanding of Him. Besides that, He has also helped me understand more about my relationships with other people and why some of them need healing or why I need to pass on what I've learned to them. For one thing, I think the church in America would grow and thrive so much if people began to understand God's grace is meant to be accepted and then passed on. Too many times we get caught up in the cycle of looking for perfection within an imperfect world. We love being saved by grace, but struggle to extend grace. One thing we were taught is that often the closer you get to God, the more offenses from others you will have to deal with. If we want to be like Jesus we need to go through what He went through with the same amount of love for other people that He displayed. Impossible? Yes. On our own human understanding, but that's the point of relying on God right?
I thank you all so much for your prayers and support! I would like to ask specifically for prayers on our health right now, almost all of us have some type of cough, sniffle, or other various annoyance. Also in the general subject of safety as we get closer to our outreach date. I look forward to the upcoming holiday break when I can talk face to face with many of you!
much love,
amanda
Monday, November 3, 2008
Sidenote for now...Please Vote!
I could write a very long entry about the last couple weeks-so sorry I have not kept this more updated, but I don't usually have too much time to use computers here...they keep us busy-but I think I will save a lot of that for later because there has been a more pressing matter on my heart lately. If you read the earlier entry you know that in New York our eyes and hearts were opened more to understanding God's heart about abortion. Well in light of these upcoming elections, I haven't been able to stop thinking about this. There is a definite distinction that has become apparent between the two candidates that has really been bothering me. It's becoming more and more clear how important tomorrow will be.
Today, my fellow students and I had a time of intercession by ourselves and we ended up praying for the elections the whole time. I've had the abortion issue heavy on my heart today, and one of the other girls brought up the topic of homosexuality. We've found that it's very clear in the Bible how God deals with sins such as these, and if that's not enough evidence for you, pay attention to what is happening to our country! We spent a large portion of our time together confessing the sins of the nation and praying for God's forgiveness to come once again. We also prayed against the strongholds of deception that are so prevalent in America right now. It's really scary. We've been praying that other believers would all join and pray with one heart for America today and tomorrow.
I also found a chapter in Psalms today that's been my prayer all day. It's Psalms 33, and it talks about how mighty and powerful God is. He holds the world in His hands, frustrates the plans of the nations, stands for what is good and just, and rescues us according to His unfailing love. We can put our hope in Him! This is comforting for me right now. We all have an idea of which candidate would best carry out God's will if elected. We pray for this candidate, but in the end God can use whomever He chooses.
So remember to pray without ceasing today and tomorrow. Research well whom you vote for, but in the end rest in God's sovereignty and trust that our hope is not in man, but in the God who created man.
(more about the past two weeks will be coming, because that's all great too)
Today, my fellow students and I had a time of intercession by ourselves and we ended up praying for the elections the whole time. I've had the abortion issue heavy on my heart today, and one of the other girls brought up the topic of homosexuality. We've found that it's very clear in the Bible how God deals with sins such as these, and if that's not enough evidence for you, pay attention to what is happening to our country! We spent a large portion of our time together confessing the sins of the nation and praying for God's forgiveness to come once again. We also prayed against the strongholds of deception that are so prevalent in America right now. It's really scary. We've been praying that other believers would all join and pray with one heart for America today and tomorrow.
I also found a chapter in Psalms today that's been my prayer all day. It's Psalms 33, and it talks about how mighty and powerful God is. He holds the world in His hands, frustrates the plans of the nations, stands for what is good and just, and rescues us according to His unfailing love. We can put our hope in Him! This is comforting for me right now. We all have an idea of which candidate would best carry out God's will if elected. We pray for this candidate, but in the end God can use whomever He chooses.
So remember to pray without ceasing today and tomorrow. Research well whom you vote for, but in the end rest in God's sovereignty and trust that our hope is not in man, but in the God who created man.
(more about the past two weeks will be coming, because that's all great too)
Monday, September 29, 2008
Welcome to the Potter's House!
This is pretty much the title for this whole DTS. All the subjects so far have had something to do with yielding to the Potter and letting Him slowly start to mold and build us into who He wants us to be. I know this update is late in coming, but I have been in such a whirlwind these past couple days that it's hard to find time to even check e-mails and such let alone write them. The main thing that I want to tell you all about concerns this last week, however in the interest of quick prequels I figured I should give you a glimpse into the weeks before.
We've been studying a lot of foundational things first off, such as knowing God's voice, learning true worship and intersession. Last week we had intensive classes on inductive Bible study. Every Friday we go out on the streets in the evening and worship, pray, and minister to people. These things all prepared me for this past week which I just had to write about!
This past Sunday, our group was preparing to leave for Washington DC, which is where the Justice House of Prayer is located. There is a YWAM team there that is solely focused on intercession, specifically for our nation and to end abortion. Anyway, we were planning on heading down Sunday evening and staying there for a week. However, we found out God had other things in mind. Jason Hershey, the head hancho of the DC team called and told us that he felt a very strong need to go to NYC and pray. So strong of a need in fact that he was there right now trying to find housing for his team and ours if we were interested in joining them. To me this seemed a little more than a leap of faith, it felt more like a dive of craziness, but God definitely had everything under control. We didn't end up being able to come until Monday night when Jason found an evangelism center in Brooklyn that was willing to house us for a night. So we all slept on the floor decently well, which was good because in the morning the owners informed us that they've had several incidents with mice! The next day we were told that a church in the Bronx had two community houses they would love for us to use. The apartment the girls stayed in was really nice and completely mouse-free (*praise Jesus).
The next four days are hard to sum up, they were so impactful and amazing, but I will try. On Tuesday we headed for Wall Street and prayed for the nation in front of the huge bronze bull which is near the stock exchange building. Then we sang worship songs right there, in the middle of a huge crowd of people. The center of the prayers were that Americans would stop putting their faith in money and turn back to God. We also spent some time reading through all of the Proverbs and praying them over the nation.
Wednesday was the day of the last presidential debate, which took place at HOFSTRA University which wasn't too far from where we were. We spent most of the day walking around the campus praying for the debates. A really cool thing that happened there was a professor from HOFSTRA was actually prayer walking at the same time, she met up with my small group and prayed with us. A specific thing we prayed for was that the issue of abortion would be brought up during the debate and that it would be clear which side the candidates stood for, which if you watched this happened. We want abortion to become even more focal than the economy, it's time for the innocent bloodshed to end! Again we worshiped and then spent the evening at church member's house to watch the debate.
Thursday we went to Times Square and broke off into small groups to pray for the media. We each covered a different broadcasting station, either ABC, MTV, NBC, or CBS. My group went to NBC. We all kept getting the same phrases and ideas to pray which has never happened to me before, it made me really excited. We prayed for the abortion issue to be talked about on the news and in famous talk shows, for major executives to take a stand for truth, and that moral values would again make their way into mainstream television. Later, we met up with the others and heard that many of their prayers were the same. A specific thing for the CBS group was that christian shows and news stories would be the new springboard for bringing CBS back to being a top station...more about that later. Then we stood in the center of Times Square and worshiped again. It's crazy how the presence of God can just manifest anywhere. I definitely felt it then. People milled all around us, but no one seemed to even notice.
Friday we visited the national headquarters of Planned Parenthood (there's one in DC too). We walked around the block and just prayed for the conviction of those that worked there and for the conversion of the building to be something completely opposite what it now stands for. Afterwords, we packed up everything and started for home, but first made an important stop at the Hudson River. Jason explained to us that many years ago, certain religious groups had placed curses on all the river bodies in America as a symbol of bringing death and destruction to all the cities in America. He said that recently he had felt called to send members of his team to pray over different rivers and "purify" them as Elisha did in the Bible. Not only did we pray for and "anoint" the river, we had communion on it's banks. It's hard to explain when something just "feels right" about what you're doing, even though it sounds weird all that we did just felt right.
Finally, on the way home we got a call from the DC team. They were super excited to tell us that CBS was talking about covering one of the Prayer House's friday night "rubble" sessions (which is basically an intensive night of prayer). None of us had expected to get an answer to our prayers that quickly! It was really cool. Not only that, but early we found out that FOX is interested in interviewing Lou Engle about the parable within the movie "Horton Hears A Who", which has the famous line, "A person is a person, no matter how small..." Needless to say, it was a very fitting end to an awesome week!
I loved all that I learned for these amazing people of intersession. They were all young and dedicated to spending a year or two of their lives to just pray for the country. It was so inspiring! Anyway, this is the majorly simplified version of the past three weeks, but I hope that you'll catch on to my excitement and join us in continued prayer that the nation would wake up to the awfulness of abortion and that discernment would be given to all the voters who will be heading to the polls in a few weeks.
Hopefully I'll get a chance to expand on all this at some time, but for now...I miss all of you and wish you many blessings!
We've been studying a lot of foundational things first off, such as knowing God's voice, learning true worship and intersession. Last week we had intensive classes on inductive Bible study. Every Friday we go out on the streets in the evening and worship, pray, and minister to people. These things all prepared me for this past week which I just had to write about!
This past Sunday, our group was preparing to leave for Washington DC, which is where the Justice House of Prayer is located. There is a YWAM team there that is solely focused on intercession, specifically for our nation and to end abortion. Anyway, we were planning on heading down Sunday evening and staying there for a week. However, we found out God had other things in mind. Jason Hershey, the head hancho of the DC team called and told us that he felt a very strong need to go to NYC and pray. So strong of a need in fact that he was there right now trying to find housing for his team and ours if we were interested in joining them. To me this seemed a little more than a leap of faith, it felt more like a dive of craziness, but God definitely had everything under control. We didn't end up being able to come until Monday night when Jason found an evangelism center in Brooklyn that was willing to house us for a night. So we all slept on the floor decently well, which was good because in the morning the owners informed us that they've had several incidents with mice! The next day we were told that a church in the Bronx had two community houses they would love for us to use. The apartment the girls stayed in was really nice and completely mouse-free (*praise Jesus).
The next four days are hard to sum up, they were so impactful and amazing, but I will try. On Tuesday we headed for Wall Street and prayed for the nation in front of the huge bronze bull which is near the stock exchange building. Then we sang worship songs right there, in the middle of a huge crowd of people. The center of the prayers were that Americans would stop putting their faith in money and turn back to God. We also spent some time reading through all of the Proverbs and praying them over the nation.
Wednesday was the day of the last presidential debate, which took place at HOFSTRA University which wasn't too far from where we were. We spent most of the day walking around the campus praying for the debates. A really cool thing that happened there was a professor from HOFSTRA was actually prayer walking at the same time, she met up with my small group and prayed with us. A specific thing we prayed for was that the issue of abortion would be brought up during the debate and that it would be clear which side the candidates stood for, which if you watched this happened. We want abortion to become even more focal than the economy, it's time for the innocent bloodshed to end! Again we worshiped and then spent the evening at church member's house to watch the debate.
Thursday we went to Times Square and broke off into small groups to pray for the media. We each covered a different broadcasting station, either ABC, MTV, NBC, or CBS. My group went to NBC. We all kept getting the same phrases and ideas to pray which has never happened to me before, it made me really excited. We prayed for the abortion issue to be talked about on the news and in famous talk shows, for major executives to take a stand for truth, and that moral values would again make their way into mainstream television. Later, we met up with the others and heard that many of their prayers were the same. A specific thing for the CBS group was that christian shows and news stories would be the new springboard for bringing CBS back to being a top station...more about that later. Then we stood in the center of Times Square and worshiped again. It's crazy how the presence of God can just manifest anywhere. I definitely felt it then. People milled all around us, but no one seemed to even notice.
Friday we visited the national headquarters of Planned Parenthood (there's one in DC too). We walked around the block and just prayed for the conviction of those that worked there and for the conversion of the building to be something completely opposite what it now stands for. Afterwords, we packed up everything and started for home, but first made an important stop at the Hudson River. Jason explained to us that many years ago, certain religious groups had placed curses on all the river bodies in America as a symbol of bringing death and destruction to all the cities in America. He said that recently he had felt called to send members of his team to pray over different rivers and "purify" them as Elisha did in the Bible. Not only did we pray for and "anoint" the river, we had communion on it's banks. It's hard to explain when something just "feels right" about what you're doing, even though it sounds weird all that we did just felt right.
Finally, on the way home we got a call from the DC team. They were super excited to tell us that CBS was talking about covering one of the Prayer House's friday night "rubble" sessions (which is basically an intensive night of prayer). None of us had expected to get an answer to our prayers that quickly! It was really cool. Not only that, but early we found out that FOX is interested in interviewing Lou Engle about the parable within the movie "Horton Hears A Who", which has the famous line, "A person is a person, no matter how small..." Needless to say, it was a very fitting end to an awesome week!
I loved all that I learned for these amazing people of intersession. They were all young and dedicated to spending a year or two of their lives to just pray for the country. It was so inspiring! Anyway, this is the majorly simplified version of the past three weeks, but I hope that you'll catch on to my excitement and join us in continued prayer that the nation would wake up to the awfulness of abortion and that discernment would be given to all the voters who will be heading to the polls in a few weeks.
Hopefully I'll get a chance to expand on all this at some time, but for now...I miss all of you and wish you many blessings!
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