God is so good! The last couple of weeks have been super crazy for me here. We finished our fourth week of spiritual warfare which was amazing! Our speaker was Kenny Peavy from the L.A. YWAM base and he was incredible. He taught more on fighting the spiritual battle within our own minds and overcoming our own spiritual battle before we can fight the spiritual battle for others. At the end of the week we were able to go to the beach for baptisms which was so exciting! About 12 students ended up getting baptized in the ocean with our speaker (the ones who were baptized are below in the pic)! They were all so excited about starting their new lives in Christ and it truly was a new beginning for everyone.
Immediately after the fourth week we started getting ready for the 50th anniversary celebration of YWAM in Central America which was held at our base in San Jose. The founder of YWAM, Loren Cunningham and his wife Darlene and their son David flew in to celebrate with our base and the rest of the Central American bases. It was great to hear the many stories and testimonies that Loren and his wife Darlene shared about the amazing history of YWAM and how God has moved in the last 50 years. I was in charge of working on the media for the speakers so I was REALLY busy for 3 days. I almost never left the sound booth where I worked tirelessly for 14 plus hours a day with breaks for food only! The celebration went really well, God’s presence was definitely here, but I was really glad when it was over so that I could finally rest! During this week we also did a local outreach in the streets of San Jose with the Panama DTS and I have attached a couple pictures. These were taken in the downtown area of San Jose while people just watched.
We then finished the week of the 50th with a teaching on worship. It was a really peaceful time as we mostly just did worship and then reflected on what God was teaching us about Himself. One thing that really stuck out to me on the teaching from this week was that we need to make sure that our cups are filled daily with His presence and Word or we will run dry and have nothing to give. Our daily quiet times alone with God are so important every day and in order to give something of value we MUST put this as a priority in our lives. I have felt very convicted of this and am trying to find that special alone time with Him, which is definitely a challenge in this busyness of life but I know that it is essential to my ministry here.
We are now on week #6 (1/2 way through lecture phase) and our class topic is character and nature of God. This last weekend we finally decided where we are going on outreach as well which is very exciting! We took the weekend to pray over where we felt God leading us to go on outreach and the decision was made to go to Central America (Panama, Honduras and El Salvador). I am very excited about this decision and sure that God is leading us in this direction. I ask for your prayers though as we are still lacking $9,070 for our outreach (as a group) plus an additional $5,000 challenge for meeting needs (clothing, food, etc. For the indigenous peoples we are trying to reach). We know God is faithful though when we are following His will, so we are trusting that the money will come in! We will be leaving in 2 weeks for Panama and will be staying for one week there to work with an indigenous tribe there. Please also pray for this trip that God will have His way through us! We each have a challenge to raise $100 since we are missing about $1,000 for Panama alone. If you would like to help towards this money, please let me know. God bless you and thank you so much for your prayers!
