7 DAYS LEFT!!!!

This DTS Lecture phase has flown by! Wow. I think I say that about every time I talk about DTS! It must mean I am getting old! Ah man! Oh well. 

Last week was Prayer Week. We split up into groups and prayed from 6am-12am each day (18 hrs of prayer a day) It was awesome but an exhausting week. We did lots of worship and intercession times, personal time with God, corporate time and everything in between. 4 of our students got the gift of tongues!! SO COOL! One of our speakers talked about how he has his staff pray in tongues each morning for 3 hours before they do ministry. I was like, "wow that is a long time".. The bible says that when you speak in tongues that is edifies your spirit. So I thought, why not. So one day I prayed in tongues for 1 hour and it WAS AMAZING!!!! I felt so good. I prayed about so many things, God showed me some crazy stuff in the spirit, I laughed, cried... and by the end I felt so light! Ya so that  was prayer week.

This week we are learning about differing worldviews. We have a speaker named Neville. He is Aussie and super smart. He taught us about Hinduism, Buddhism, and Islam and why they do certain things based on their world view. We are learning all of the misconceptions they have about what a "Christian" is and how to show them what it really means to follow Jesus. Neville has so much information that in 4 days one of our girl students, Cari, took over 21 pages of notes!! Wow... 

We are doing a fun team building exercise... trying to get our whole class from one side of the tarp to the other without anyone touching the ground.  Good times! It helps you see who is a leader, who is a follower, who is a strategist etc...

I thought this tree was super cool! 

Us and the two Norwegians, Solveig and Juliana 

One night all of us staff made a surprise dinner for the students. We catered a three course meal and washed their feet and gave them words of encouragement. It was so much fun!

One weekend we decided to have a BBQ on the bluffs by the beach. So of course I wanted to do Veggie kebabs!

Beautiful Australia!

For one week we went down to Byron Bay and did evangelism. Byron is the hippie mecca of Australia where thousands of backpackers travel through weekly so it's a great place to chat and talk with people from all over the WORLD!! It's amazing. Here we are getting ready to drive down with all our stuff!

Kevin, the YWAM leader for Byron Bay taught us about evangelism and took us out a few nights where we put into practice what we learned.

We did free BBQs, had live music and just chatted with the people down there. It's so fun to love people with Jesus' love. I met a german girl that just looked so troubled and lonely. I just listened to her stories and loved her. Each second I was with her I could see her hardened heart growing more and more soft. I love how God does that! If we truly knew how much he loved us we'd JUMP into His arms!

While we were in Byron we stayed at this church and slept on the floor. But one night the church needed their sanctuary (where we slept) for their youth group meeting so we were put back in the kids room for about 3 hours. And boy did we have fun! You wouldn't think a group of 18 year olds could have that much fun in one room for that long.. but oh we found stuff to do alright. Check out our video!

This is Colleen. She is one of the girls I disciple. She has come from a hard past and really wanted to be free from the guilt and shame she has felt before. So we wrote down some major things she did in the past and gave them up to Jesus. We burned the paper and left it on the beach as a declaration that they are dead and GONE!! and that she can now be free! When we did it she felt SO much better! I love that God is a forgiving God. He loves us so much! He will take anything we are willing to give up to him.

Okay this may seem crazy to some of you and it was crazy to us as well, but I help lead worship at this ministry called the 24/7 Burn Prayer House. Once a month a lot of churches get together and people pray and worship for 24 hours. WELL while we were doing this, one of the ladies that runs it started praying for miracles and in faith she started placing coins on the wall and asking God to defy gravity... AND IT WORKED!!!! YES these are the coins. I didn't believe it myself until I came over and put my own personal coin on the wall and it stayed! Don't ask me why, its just amazing that God can do anything!! 

One weekend we went to this family's house and helped paint because the husband is very sick and dying of cancer and cannot finish the house. So we all pitched in and helped them out. We actually just found out today as I write this blog update that Fred (the man with cancer) went to be with Jesus. Please pray for their family as this is a tough time for them.

 THE BIGGEST EATING CONTEST OF THE YEAR!! Well for us at least. Luke thought how fun it would be to challenge the "big eaters" of our group to have a pasta eating contest. We had three guys and one girl (champ) sign up for it! The rest of us just gathered around and cheered them on. We did it late Friday night and boy did they pay for it the next morning. 

One guy, Jason who looks like Luke's twin, was doing push ups getting ready for the contest. They all took their shirts off getting ready for the sloppy mess.. and we counted down... 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 GO! They had 5 minutes to eat as much as they could... 

 Jason, the push up guy, WON!! Luke tried but his twin out-ate him. 

Andrew was disqualified as he threw up half way through eating his bowl of pasta! Ya GROSS! But it was hilarious! He was a good sport!

They were SO FULL afterward! 

Well that's it for now. Luke and I went on one last nice date before we head to the jungles of northern Thailand, and the slums of India. God is so good to us! And we are SO THANKFUL to our supporters for blessing our lives, our marriage and allowing us to take students to the nations to touch people with the love of Jesus Christ!!  

Team Thailand/India

Jason, Jenna, Fleur, Ali, Cari, Me, Lyndzie, Cassie, Solveig, & Luke

We have ONE WEEK LEFT! 

Please pray: for our VISAS to come back from the India Consulate for they are taking longer than expected. This always happens and when we pray God always comes through so we'd love prayer for this. Also for team unity (it's actually really good now but Satan always attacks in this area so we'd just love some pre-prayer for that to stay strong).  For our marriage to stay strong as we travel and lead the team, and for staff unity with the other girl Fleur who is leading with us as it can be a challenge with three people leading. 

Thank you SO MUCH!! 

We love and miss you and will get you an update when we get there!