week #11...one more week until outreach!

This week was our second to last week of teaching in the DTS and our topic was relationships. One thing we were challenged with this week was asking ourselves what kind of qualities we want in a relationship. Then the question was turned onto us…are we the type of person that we are asking others to be? One of the biggest relationship killers is selfishness. Selfishness is the root of almost everything that will kill a relationship (criticalness, demanding, manipulating, greed, jealousy, lack of forgiveness, impatience, etc.). I realized that many times I have some expectations of others, but I don’t necessarily follow those myself. I want to be a better friend. I want to really live out the scripture Matthew 22:37-39 which says “Love the Lord your God with all of your heart, soul, mind and strength. And the second command is to love your neighbor as yourself.” This whole scritpure is a challenge to do, but to love your neighbor (friend, family member, anyone really) as you love yourself can be such a challenge. It is easy to love those who are easy to love, but the Bible says our responsibility as Christians is to love those who are uneasy to love (Luke 6:32). I want to be a person who truly puts others before myself. This is what Christ desired for us…is to have friendships and relationships with others where the other person is treated with respect and love that is not demanding anything in return, just a pure love. This love is afterall not a feeling, but it is a choice that we make and demands action from us. My prayer is that God would grow my love for others and really help me to live that out in my everyday life, not only with my friends and family, but with strangers who God places in my path as well.

This next week is our last week of teaching in the DTS and our topic is Destiny by Design, which talks about the dreams and purposes that God gives us and how to follow those out. After our lecture phase, we will officially begin our outreach phase which will include Panama, Costa Rica, Honduras and El Salvador. The 2 other leaders and myself will be leaving in 2 days (this Wednesday morning) for Talamanca, Costa Rica (Caribbean coast) to do our NIKO training. NIKO, is a 4-day missions boot camp type of training that the students will be doing starting this next week (Monday, Oct. 4th). We as the leaders have to go down early for training and our students will be meeting us by bus on Saturday. I am feeling a bit overwhelmed by all that I have to do before Wednesday, but I am very excited for all that is coming up! After NIKO (which ends on Friday, October 8th), we will be leaving straight for Puerto Viejo and then Panama where we will stay until October 20th. Hopefully in Puerto Viejo I can update you on what God did on our NIKO, but after that we may have limited access to Internet in Panama where hopefully we will be working with some Indigenous people near Bocas Del Torro. Please keep praying for our outreach as we get ready to go. We truly want God to prepare our hearts and the hearts of the people who we will be reaching out to. God has been so faithful to provide for all of our students who needed money for Panama ($650 each), but we still have 3 students who are missing part of their money for the second part of our outreach (Honduras/El Salvador)-$700. Please pray with us that God will provide for these 3 students.

This last weekend I had to go with one of my students to Nicaragua. Here in Costa Rica all Central Americans (with the exception of Mexicans) have to renew their visas every 30 days and this student is from El Salvador and so we had to leave the country for at least 2 days to renew her visa. We went to San Juan del Sur, which is the border town on the beach. We stayed in a nice hostel and enjoyed resting and relaxing on the beach. This was a much needed restful weekend and I am so greatful for this time that I had before our outreach and NIKO start! Thank you for all of your prayers and encouragement! I will hopefully update all of you very soon!!

Week #10/How to Study the Bible

Hello friends and family! Well we are getting closer to our outreach..we now leave in 2 weeks for NIKO then Panama! The staff leaders (including myself) will be leaving the next Wednesday, September 29th for NIKO training and our students will meet us on Saturday, October 2nd where we will have one day to rest and then start NIKO, our 4 day intensive training in the jungle. After we have completed NIKO, we will head to Puerto Viejo, a beach community on the Caribbean coast to rest for a day or 2 and then head straight to Panama (Bocas Del Torro) to start our outreach with the Indigenous people. We are busy getting prepared for our outreach while finishing our last 2 weeks of classes.

Last week our classes were how to study the Bible. We were very fortunate to have the leader of the Biblical Core Course teach us the whole week. I am always so excited to learn more about the Bible and I definitely enjoyed the classes this week. We were taught the Inductive method on studying the Bible, which purposes to find meaning in the Scripture through oberservation instead of coming to the text with a predetermined meaning. As a class we studied the book of Philemon together just because it is such a short book and it takes a while to study a book of the Bible completely. I learned so many new insights from the book of Philemon which I had never seen before. One thing that I leraned is to put my confidence in Christ and not man. So many times we put our trust in a person, when we need to put our trust in God who is in control in all situations! Another important part of studying the Bible which is so important is knowing the process of application or applying it to my life. There are 2 steps to application of God’s Word: one is agreeing personally with the text in my mind, the second is to actually do what it says! Many times I can do step one and agree with a text that it is important for me to do, but I never get around to doing it in my life. This is one area that I want to recommit myself to after this week’s teaching.

The other thing that God is really been teaching me this week is to be thankful for all things. I realice that time is short and God gives us so many blessings every day: from the people in our lives to the things that He faithfully provides for us everyday. I want to constantly be thankful for the people He has placed in my life here in San Jose as well as my family and friends back home. When we have a thankful heart, it is hard to complain or be upset for very long. The Lord knows every need that we personally have and knows every desire of our hearts too. I want to thank each of you for your friendship. You are each so valued by me and I am personally greatful to the Lord for each of you in my life!

Biblical worldview (week #9)

This last week for the DTS was a little difficult for us as a team. One of the girls from our DTS (one of the girls I personally mentor each week) decided that she felt like she should go home early. This for me was probably the greatest challenge that I have faced so far in the DTS as a leader. She approached me early in the week and let me know that she had been praying about this for a couple of weeks now and she felt like she should not go on outreach with us. It was nothing that she could really point out, she just felt like God wanted her to go home instead of finish the DTS. I felt really discouraged about it, but I thank God for the encouragement through friends and other staff on the base who have experienced something similar and walked me through it. All this to say, Sara flew home this last Sunday and the team is adjusting to life without one of our team members. I really am thankful to God because the team has started adjusting just fine and God’s peace and grace is with us.

Despite our difficult circumstances, our teaching last week was incredible. We had the base director Giacomo teach on having a Biblical worldview. As I learned more about the worldview in which we live I realized how much the secular worldview has crept into my life. One of the things that constantly is a reminder for me is how to God nothing is secular and nothing is spiritual, everything in our life is spiritual. When we work at our jobs, we are not doing something “secular”, we are working a job as though we are working unto the Lord. When we do anything it is in the presence of God. Colossians 3:23 says “And wahtever you do, do it heartily, as to the Lord and not to men.” God is not more present in the church than He is at my job or when I go to the grocery store. We were challenged to live not in a secular worldview, but to live in a Biblical worldview. The Biblical worldview recognizes that people are created in the image of God and people are of most value, rather than gaining more things. In this worldview we have a freedom and ability to choose within the loving limits of God. Our worldview is so important because it is the basis by which our beliefs are rooted. In the Biblical worldview, the Bible is our true source of life and our guidebook for how to live this life. This next week we are appropriately learning how to study the Bible, which is the perfect way to segment from Biblical worldview.

To finish off our week, I was able to leave on Saturday for Puerto Viejo (the Caribbean side of Costa Rica) for the weekend to enjoy the beach and watch 2 YWAM friends get married. I stayed overnight with some friends and a couple DTS students and we had a great time swimming at the beach and just relaxing. It was an awesome way to end an emotionally difficult week for me. God is faithful and won’t give us more than we can handle!

Thank you so much for your prayers for me and my team. We are leaving in 3 weeks for NIKO, a boot camp type experience in the jungle and then onto Panama for outreach. Seven of our fourteen students still do not have all of their funds for outreach, so I would ask you to please join us in prayer that God would supply their needs so that they can go on outreach with us (we are lacking $7,500 as a team and we need this money by Sept. 27th). Please also pray that God would continue to give me supernatural strength to keep going and that our team would be unified during this transition time.

I miss you all and pray God’s blessings on you! Thanks again for all of your continued support.

Week #6,7,8...sorry for the delay!

This week our topic was the character and nature of God. One of the things that amazed me so much about God is His greatness. Psalm 147: 4 says “He determines the number of the stars and calls them each by name.” If He knows every star by name, how much more does He know us by name and every detail about us? Matthew 10:30-31 says But the very hairs of your head are numbered. Do not fear therefore, you are of more value than many sparrows.”

This is so important to know the character of God in order to understand the God whom we serve and have given our lives for. He has so many characteristics about Him that are incredible: faithful, love, truthful, wisdom, righteous, patient, holy, humble, etc. The reason why we need to understand the character of God is because these are traits that He cannot help but express in who He is. We are called as Christians to become more like Him and so our character should start becoming more like His as we grow closer to Him. Your thoughts become actions and your actions become habits and your habits becomes your character which becomes your destiny (Thoughts-Actions-Habits-Character-Destiny).

Week #7 was about evangelism taught by one of our own leaders Morgan. One thing that stands out to me about the teaching was recogizing the need for us to not be concerned with the results, but let the Holy Spirit be the one who brings people to Himself. We read Matthew 10 and pulled out some major principles of evangelism which Jesus taught to His disciples. One of the principles which is so crucial for so many of us is not being afraid of what man says, but fearing what God says. Matthew 10: 32-33 says “Therefore whoever confessses Me before men, him I will aslo confess before My father who is in heaven. But whoever denies Me before men, him I will aslo deny before My fatehr who is in heaven.” I struggle with this in evangelism. I want to make sure people approve of me sometimes and really it needs to be about what God thinks of me. I think of a phrase I heard long ago…Live for an audience of One, meaning live in concern for God, not what anyone else thinks of you.

And finally last week we went to Nicaragua on our mini-outreach. This was an amazing experience for our group. We were finally able to apply some of the things that hte students have learned during lecture phase. We stayed at the YWAM base in Diriamba, Nicaragua (about 30 minutes from Managua). At the base, they don’t have running water or flushing toilets or showers and they live in the middle of a neighborhood far from the city. This was our first real experience together as a group preparing us for our outreach and the group did great. We were able to do a variety of ministries which was awesome: we went to the city dump in Managua where thousands of families live, we went into a local elementary school and did an assembly there for the kids. We also spoke at a local church service there. I am so greatful for the things that God did through us in Nicaragua. We met a local guy who was on our bus who we were able to pray for and now he is now interested in doing a DTS here in Costa Rica. I know that pictures are worth a thousand words so I will send some pictures with this so that you can see the impact we had in Nicaragua!

Thank you so much for your prayers for my team and me! Please continue to pray for us as a couple people in our group have gotten the flu and are sick. Please pray that they will be healed quickly and that the rest of us will kept from getting sick! We are preparing for our next week of teaching which will be on Biblical worldview. I apologize for taking so long to update all of you. I really do value all of you and thank you so much for playing a part in me being here. God bless you and much love from Costa Rica!
(Pictures are from the dump, children's ministry, one of the school assemblies and a group photo as we played the game Capture the Flag).