hello again!

time is flying by! in two and a half weeks al of the students will be going off on our mission trips! theres is a team going to vanuatu, samoa (also going to fiji), thailand (also going to the philippines), and finally nepal (also going to india). please pray for each team, that we would really press in during these last few weeks here, and that we wouldnt lose heart or become apathetic. i know that a lot of us are just getting attacked; so many students including me are getting really tired and stressed out. so please keep all 31 of us in your prayers! with that, please pray for safety and health, that no one would get sick and that nothing would keep us from spreading the love of God. specific prayer for me - i really need to love and care about the people of india and nepal. pray that i would be open to the Lord and what He wants from me. pray that i would WANT His will to be done, and not my own. i really want to go with a heart that TRULY cares about these people, as well as a desire to worship God for who He is and what He has done. i really want to focus on His love, and on the cross. i really need prayer that i would do that. AND that i would isolte myself from my team or people in general. :) thank you.

moving on! this past week, Ron Carlson has been speaking in our classes on apologetics. apparently not too many people talk about it? i dont know maybe i made that up. but it was really good! each lecture he touched on different religions and basically disproved them in a way. it was really interesting becuase he grew up in a Christian home, and when he went to college he took all the classes he could that tried to disprove the truth in Christ. he even went to college in jerusalem! it was ironic becuase this past week there was a conference for jehovah's witnesses in waikiki, and 30,00o people from around the world atteneded it. so of course he taught us the history of the religion, as well as what they believe. on friday night everyone went out to waikiki and evangelized to them. he spoke a few days last week , as well as yesterday and today. very informative! last night he talked about evolution vs. creation and he actually disproved it. he took us through the history of it and come to find out, it makes aboslutely no sense. i SO wish that everyone in the world could come and sit in on all these lectures and hear from all these speakers. they have a lot of knowledge, but they stil encourage us to search out truth for ourselves in the Word. i have gained TONS of deep insight here that i dont know what to say or how to even begin sharing it. i think when i get home i might do something where i talk about all the things i have learned. its kind of overwhelming!

this weekend my team and i hiked koko head. as you know, i am not an athletic person and i do not enjoy exercising of any kind. i actually despise it. i would never wake up and choose to climb 1,048 steps up a mountain. that just doesnt sound like fun to me. but it ended up being worth it, the view fromt he top was beautiful!! 

thank you for reading my blog! God is doing crazy things in my life, as well as the lives of every one here!! :) ill leave yall with a lot of pictures.

me on nations night, i was a texan.(everyone here thinks im hick.)

getting ready to hike KOKO head (behind us)i am not excited..

climbing the 1,048 steps to the top. i look goofy.

at the top!

the girls on my team for india and nepal!

on top of koko head.

more scenery..

i hope everyone had a great thanksgiving!! i was lucky enough to have it with a full hawaiian family! it was a lot of fun and i got to learn a lot about the history of hawaii as well as the culture. 

first let me tell everyone what our weekly schedule looks like so you can understand what i do on a day-to-day basis. everyday we have breakfast at 7, then the whole base has quiet time from 7:30 to 8:30. besides that, everyday has a different schedule:

mondays- we have base worship at 8:30, intercession at 9:30, lecture at 10:30 that lasts till lunch at 12:30. then i have my work duties where i prepare dinner. that lasts from 2:30 to 5:15. at 6:30 we have lecture again and that ends at 8:30. then we have the rest of the night off.

tuesdays- video time at 8:30 (watch insperational videos), at 9:30 we have reading time. (yes we have 3 madatory books to read and we also have to do book reports on each one) 10:3o we have lecture which lasts till lunch. then my outreach team (india and nepal) meets at 1:30 and we practice dances and prepare personal testimonies and sermons. (when we go to india and nepal we have to be prepared to give a sermon at any given time. im freaking out!!!) then we have worship at 6:30 and it ends at 8:30. 

wednesdays- we go to community outreach from 8:30 to 11:30 and help around the community. (i go to a preschool and work with the 2 year olds. they are so cute.) then i have dinner prep from 2:30 to 5:15. and finally lecture at 6:30 and it ends at 8:30.

thursdays- at 8:30 we have intercession ( we ask God whats on His heart and spend time praying ) then at 9:30 we have chapel talks (students individually go infront of class and talk about anything God's doing in their lives or talk about something significant they've learned) at 10:30 we have lecture till lunch at 12:30. then i have small groups at 1:30 ( the girls from my outreach team meet and talk about whatever, then we prepare for outreach by working out becuase were going to be hiking the majority of the time we're in india and nepal). after that we have the night off. 

fridays- 8:30 we have break-out groups. ( we got to choose 1 out of 4. each break out group focuses on something different, mine is the power of a focused life. we are learning about how if we dont set aside time to be in the Word, we will most likely never dig in on a regular basis. each break-out group lasts 4 weeks. last month i was in one that focused on fear of the Lord .) 9:30 we have Bible reading. (we go through certain books of the Bible in depth - go through the history, meaning, etc.) at 10:30 we have lecture till lunch. then at 6:30 we have launch, which is kind of like a church service for the communtiy. we have worship and a sermon. after that our dts goes and does evangelism. every student prays about where we feel God wants us to go. so we either go to Waikiki, hotel street (which consists of prostitutes, bars, homeless people, etc.), or we stay on base and pray for those who go out and evangelise. that lasts till around 11, and then we have optional all night prayer.

saturdays and sundays we have off.

so seeing that i hope you realize that i dont have too much free time! and im so sorry that i havent written in a long time. these past few weeks have been crazy and our schedule hasn't been normal at all.  so ill do my best to include all the cool things that have happened since i updated last! it might be long so be ready!

 friday the 30th we had launch, but it was at a different location and we just had worship all night instead of a sermon. the worship leader was lead a guy named levi from the YWAM base in kona on the big island. it is the BIG base where the founder of YWAM works at. its like an actual university with dorms and stuff. anyways, he was going to be speaking the following week . it was AMAZING worship. it was completely different then anythign i had ever experienced. this guy was SO in tune with God it blew my mind. He's part of  a prayer movement at the kona base. before he came i had no idea that people all over the world were praying 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, non stop. so yeah thats what hes apart of. and he doesnt do anything on his own, he is  COMPLETELY submissive to God and dependant on the Holy Spirit for guidance. so with that in mind, the worship service was filled with the Holy Spirit! God was literally speaking through him, just using levis vocals to speak His heart to us. if your reading this and dont feel comfortale and dont believe what im saying, im sorry, but during worship levi just completely sang prophetically and a lot of cool things happened! it was an experiecne that i obviously dont have words for. i personally was touched and God did alot in me that night.

the following week, (mon. 2 - fri. 6)  the school im apart of (discipleship training school) joined with a prayer school (they focus on personal prayer life/intimacy). it was just a one-time thing where we all had lecture together, about 50 people in all. levi spoke with a girl named sarah, who was also apart of the prayer movement at the kona base. they both kind of tag-teamed, each one taking turns speaking. they have AMAZING testimonies, and they both are IN LOVE with Jesus, literally. they spoke about intimacy.. and they went really REALLY deep. i wish i could have taken all the things i learned from them and baked them together so i could feed it to everyone back home! haha it was that good! the things they said completely gave me a new outlook on Jesus and His love for us. im overwhelmed writing this because i dont even know where to start or what to say. here are a few things that really stuck out!

1. God first loved us. i know we as a church talk about this all the time , but really think about it. the Creator of this world, of  everything in the universe, loved us so much that HE actually humbled Himself. He didnt have to do anything, but He wanted to. He created us for the simple fact that He wanted to be in relationship with us and so that we could EXPERIENCE Him on an intimate level. that blows my mind. the whole existance of mankind was for the purpose of love. and Jesus died on the cross becuase he LOVED us. yes, we are sinners and we do need a savior, but it was out of love that He died for our sins. it was a CHOICE. i cant get over that. it was for the JOY set before Him. He died for us becuase He knew that once it was all over, all of mankind was going to be able to know Him personally.. worthiness cannot be earned, it is the free gift of salvation.

2. just some cool facts.. in hebrew, Eden means pleasure. and a garden is a place of intimacy. so when you read genesis remember that. God's love is shown even after adam and eve sin. in gen. 3:9, God called to man saying " Where are  you!". the first thing to notice is that God is all knowing, so He didnt need to ask this question becuase He already knew the answer. But He once again goes out of His way to show us His desire for us. how cool is that?! 

3. true love is a choice. if we didnt have to choose, we would be robots, and our love for God would not be genuine. 

4. associate with brokeness, but do not identify with it!

5. love has to be reciprocated, it will grow stale if we recieve yet dont give it back. 1 John 4:18

i have sooo much more i could say but it would take hours to write. so thats what we talked about in lecture on mon and tues. then wednesday night levi felt like God wanted us to worship, which was good becuase there was an outpour of freedom. throughtout the night so many people got set free from numerous things. including me! it was insane. its just another example of me not having words to describe what happened. but, the Holy Spirit was VERY present and it was cool to be apart of something so radical!

i have to go to lecture but i will update more about the past two weeks and some pictures later tonight. 

i love everyone!

DONT stop reading! im going to update later ive been soo busy!!

i love everyone