During our time here we were able to attend a few churches and one of those was International Christian Assembly.  I was incredibly excited to be able to go to an Assembly church since those are the ones I typically go to at home!  I really thanked God for it because I know that He is slowly reintroducing to home back in the states and getting me ready for reentering the US. 

Also just being in church was awesome in itself.  A lot of times when we are doing ministry our team does not get to just go to a service and relax and be filled.  We are generally helping put on a service so it was really nice to just sit back and enjoy. 

While I was sitting in one of the services I heard the pastor announce the first meeting of the youth program that they are starting!  I was thrilled and showed up to the first youth meeting the following week.  I was able to meet with the young couples that were heading it up and pray for them and help them out with one of the meetings.  For one meeting I planned an activity that would help them begin to share about their relationship with God with their new family.  I used a bunch of photos from an outreach tool that Campus Crusade for Christ uses called Soularium.  There are several pictures and I had everyone point out the one that they felt described their relationship with God and share with the group.  It was cool because they all had different insight no matter which photo they picked.  This youth group got me excited; they are a phenomenal bunch of young adults who are going to impact the world!!

Working with them made me a 100 times more excited about coming home and working with our youth group at Eaton Rapids Assembly of God!! I am excited to come work with you all!! (Miss you guys!)

The Ukraine is definitely a different country.  When we first got here we all had culture shock just because we were in a big city again.  We are living here in Kiev in an apartment with both girl teams.  Yes there are 14 girls living together and it has been working out pretty well!!  When we first arrived here in Kiev we did not have any ministries set up but we did know a previous world racer that helped us out a ton!  He was able to arrange housing for us and he took us to a church service that had a lot of the leaders of missionary groups there.  Our search for a ministry began.  We ended up serving with a few ministries and pouring into people that we met along the way! 

One of our main focuses of ministry was helping teachers with their English classes.  Six teammates worked with two different classes and Renee and Jenni worked at a Christian early development school.  This month was definitely different with all of us doing different ministries.  God is also slowly getting me used to living at home again, well not with living with 13 other women but with everyone having different jobs and still living in community and fellowship! 

I taught English with Tonya and Stephanie and our first day was a little hard for me.  I kept having flash backs to all my tutors for English and hooked on phonics lessons!! It was kind of a weird crazy experience the first day.  After that I have a huge respect for teachers!!! Especially for my friends Leah and Matt, who both want to make a difference in the world through teaching, praise God for people like you!! You teachers our there are truly amazing!! God bless you all.  After a few days of English I got used to the students and their different personalities and the different ways of teaching them and it got easier.  I was mostly excited that we were able to help the teacher out a lot!! She thanked us a ton for helping her out.  At the end of our time there we were able to pray over her and that for me was incredible.  I really respect her and know that God is going to bless her!

We were also able to work with an YWAM team that works in a trade school.  We were able to go help them with their ministry.  The four that we worked with were from all over and they were putting on a café time for the kids that lived there.  At this school there are kids who have parents and just go during the week and there are kids who live there because they are orphans.  We just helped out that team and talked with the kids and made bracelets, played games and hung out.  That group of YWAM people really impressed me.  I was really blessed to see them in action with the kids.  I enjoyed just seeing other missionaries who care so much about the youth that they are serving!!

Yes, what you hear is true! You will travel to different nations and meet people from many cultures. You will meet little orphans and they will hug you and soak up your love. You will plan church services, preach, do construction, evangelize, pray and everything else under the sun! You will proclaim the truth about Jesus Christ and many will choose to follow. As you speak of God's freedom people will come against you but you will persevere. You will pray and intercede for the multitudes because of who God is. You will see people set free from the grasp of the enemy and turn to the light. You will see God's power as you do the good work that He has laid out for you. You will see the Holy Spirit move in ways that blow your neat little ideas of Christianity out of the water. Yes, you will see God's power work as you trek through the nations!

The thing that you would never expect is that the biggest change is you. I would have never expected to be transformed so much. Now at month 9 I am in Romania looking back at old pictures and I cannot even recognize that person anymore. Through it all God has sifted me, grinded me, put me through the fire, mended me, restored me, and THEN renewed me. The thing no one tells you or at least no one told me was that this trip will change YOU. You will NEVER be the same. Ever. Praise God!

Through this year God will move and you will see Him work. He will ask you to surrender those parts of your life that you hold on to so tightly. He will ask you to surrender your dreams for the future, your family, your friends, your (precious) time, your expectations for tomorrow, your past and most of all yourself. He is asking for all of you - every part of your heart. He is asking for it again and again. He wants to redeem those broken parts and mend those areas we tried to patch up ourselves. He is constantly filled with love and compassion for you, but He is ready to move in now and uproot those weeds that have entangled you. He is ready and waiting. Through this race you will be brought to a place of surrender. 

He will ask you to forgive those who hurt you and allow Him to take over that area with His love. He will ask you to surrender the control, the pride and the stubbornness, that you so dearly hang on to, so that He can be your faithful master. He will ask again and again "Do you trust me with this?" and continue to say "Let go my child. I did not design you to carry such a heavy burden. Surrender it to me." Finally, when you find yourself weary and exhausted of your old self and you finally realize that every attempt that you have made to fix it or repair the damage has failed, you let go. You begin to realize that HE is the designer. 

Will you surrender? Or will you hold on to the past?

When you come to a place of true surrender and find your cup empty and say, "Lord, I am here, mend me." He takes you and romances your heart. As you trust Him with your broken, battered and bruised heart He goes to work. He begins to take off those man made patches that we used so desperately to patch up our own heart wounds and He meshes His heart with yours. He begins to heal those holes in your heart. Where your heart is weak His is stronger. Your hearts begin to beat as one. He strengthens your gifts and begins to reveal to you more of Him. He is going to bring up the bad and evil things that have happened in the past not to be cruel but to solely redeem them. He is going to show you how He designed you to work in those areas. Although this process is painful, vulnerable and messy He is good, perfect and faithful. Let's face it; He knows what He's doing.

He will show you the roots of the anger, envy, jealousy, selfishness, inadequacies and guilt that are surrounding you. He wants to tear those strongholds down so that you walk in victory in those areas that the enemy is trying to paralyze you in!   God is tearing them down to lead you to victory.

He is showing you what it means to be grafted in. He is digging deep to every lie that you believe about yourself. He is going after those generational curses. He is searching after every hurt people have caused you. He is looking for all those insecurities so that He can show you who He claims you as, who He says you are, what your identity is in His power and to show you the authority that you walk in. All of this is not by confidence in you but in Him, in His name and His glory.  He wants to show you what He can do. 

So when you go on this trip, remember that you are signing up for your hearts to be wrecked and broken and to love like God loves, You are signing up to be transformed by the designer. He will lead you, transform you, mold you, put you through the fire and make you new. Will you go? Actually, Are you ready?

Summary

Will you go?

1)     Brokenness- you will be sifted, grinded and put through the fire

2)     Trusting Him- Will you let Him work? Surrender

3)     Roots- tear down strongholds out

4)    Identity- Rebuild

5)     Victory- Walk in victory and in God's authority

This month my team found ourselves with an unusual assignment. We were asked to help in the main house with serving our squad. In my head I thought "Serving?!? So that IS our ministry? God what's going on here?!" Serving to me felt so foreign. I really had to take time the first night to process this hefty task. To some of you out there you are jumping off your seats to serve people, you enjoy preparing meals and seeing people satisfied by your hard work. Well I am on the opposite end of that spectrum. I really enjoy receiving. I enjoy allowing those who like to serve to serve me and I receive what ever is being served with great delight! Yeah I felt like God was just laughing at my thought process at the beginning of this month. He is pretty funny!

After the first night of serving I sat down with God and just began to ask Him why do I have such a hard time humbling myself to serve others. I began to write down all the lies that I believed about serving...and there was quite a list. Here are some of them:

ˇ        People who serve are seeking approval from others

ˇ        Those who serve are really perfectionists who just do things themselves because they will do it the right way

ˇ        That serving people is only cooking and cleaning

ˇ        People who serve do not take care of themselves

ˇ        People who serve do not receive well

As I wrote down a lot of these lies and more I realized that I really need to look at how Jesus served people. I began to go through verses of being a servant and how Jesus humbled himself to save us. 

"...even as the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many." Matthew 20:28

In 1 Corinthians chapter 9 verse 19 Paul writes "For though I am free from all, I have made myself a servant to all, that I might win more of them."

These scriptures really began to show me if I want to be like Jesus I need to humble myself FAST and serve people like He did. Throughout this last week as I have been serving people and looking up how Jesus served I have just been completely impressed with Him! He gave up everything to serve people because He loves us. I have met all kinds of people and there are some...let's say interesting personalities (you know what I am talking about) and honestly would be excruciatingly hard to serve yet Jesus died for them too! And Paul said that he would gladly make himself a servant to all to show the way to Jesus!

All in all I am learning A LOT to say the least. I am learning that I can serve in a multitude of ways that are truly enjoyable to me. I was able to help a woman pick potatoes (pic above) and I also made way to many donuts for our squad with Jenni (pic to left). I praise God for stretching me and allowing me to take this time in Romania to learn and really absorb what He is trying to teach me.

Thanks for reading!!

On September 3 we are headed to Romania to find out what is going on there and help some churches out. So far God has shared with me that there will be a lot of intercession and a deeper dive into the bible. I really feel like a lot of people who are quiet and those who study scripture the most are going to be used a lot in Eastern Europe. If you could all pray for those people that would be incredible. (This pic was in Lesotho but I wanted you all to see how beautiful it was!!)

Also I would like those who are reading this to pray for all the people on the squad's hearts to be here in the present and to not just look at the rest of this race as "only 3 months until home." Your prayers are very powerful and we need them to stay focused on the here and now and constantly looking for what God desires for us to do in these next cities. Thank you so much for your continued support, prayers and encouragement!!

 

Soon after that Stephanie got a lot of scripture about unity and the body of Christ and how we have a responsibility to help each other. God just began to work through everything. After I had that meeting with the team it just felt like something began. I called it the Beginning to the End in my journal. From then on at the end of each day of ministry we shared about our day and what impacted us. We shared our hearts to everyone. Whatever God was doing we shared. If we needed to cry we cried. If we needed prayer we received it. If we were angry we talked about it and prayed. We fought for our unity. We dove into a lot of scripture and a lot of people pursued different things that God was calling them to head up like bible studies and laying on of hands. Our openness and vulnerability completely crushed any disunity Satan was trying to attack us with!! We became a church then a family. Completely open to bring up any issue with confidence that we will always love one another no matter what. (Pic below: A physical picture of the light conquering the darkness)

I had a big focus on 1 John and Ephesians. But James 3:17 really spoke to my leadership this month. "But the wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, open to reason, full of mercy and good fruits, impartial and sincere."

This verse just helped me understand what wisdom meant. I began to listen more and became slow to speak. This was a crucial lesson that I am so thankful I was able to learn.

That was my last month of leadership. For the next three months our new leader is Stephanie!! Please be praying for her. I have full confidence in her leadership. I know in all things she will seek God and not be afraid to make decisions for the team. I am really excited to see what God does in her and through her!!

Lesotho is pronounced Le-sue-two. It took us a while to get an understanding of this country. We heard so many things. That it was cold, mountainous and snowy and comments like "why would you want to go there?" I also noticed a sign at the boarder that said "Fight against Xenophobia." Xenophobia was defined as hate or fear of foreigners! Yeah we felt invited. Praise God every person we met was incredible and did not fear us.

We began our ministry going up the mountain to a village that we could see. We hiked up and tried to communicate with people and quickly realized that we needed a translator but we still spent the whole day just sitting with the woman in the village. Next we prayed for a translator and a day later a man walked off of the bus with us and he spoke English and the local language Sosotho and he was a Christian! We asked if he would help translate and he said yes! We went and talked to more people about who Jesus is and we discovered that most people are Roman Catholic. The first day we had our translator, Bernard, we were invited into a hut and about 20 adults and children surrounded us. We shared with them about Jesus. Our whole team spoke up and just began to talk about who Jesus is and what his purpose was to make sure they understood. Then one of the men that we prayed for asked "Is there something I can read about what you told me?" We were so overjoyed and said "YES, of course the bible!!" We later bought them bibles. The rest of the community proved to be just as open to hearing about Jesus and prayer.   (pic above first hike up moountain; Pic below when we handed off the gospel picture scroll)

One morning while we were praying I felt that it would be cool to draw out a few bible stories on this roll of paper that I had and present it to them to help them understand the bible that we got them. I told the team not really sure how it was going to happen but they took the idea and made it happen. Part of us researched the bible stories and we did about 15 people in the bible. We ended up making a really long scroll that had pictures and verses and at the end presented it to them!! (Pic below Steph presenting the scroll)

We also participated at Bernard's church and preached there. We prayed for them and I received a vision for them. That was exciting for me because I did not know anything about this church and the vision I had lined up exactly with what they were going through!! My vision was the Holy Spirit plowing a new path from the main road and asking them to follow and trust God even though sometimes there are thorns and thistles along the path. I just wanted to reassure the pastor to trust what God was leading him in for the church. After that I found out this church was a church plant and just broke off from the main church the day we came! We also let them know about the gospel scroll we made and they are planning on using it!

This month we just saw God work in our own lives as well as the people that we prayed for in big ways. People heard the truth. We prayed darkness away from huts and areas. We fought spiritual battles. We saw people healed. We asked God and watched Him work!( Pic to left: Cameron met some boys in the village; the pic below Jenn is ministering to the Chief).