Week 3- Freedom

Week 3 has been yet another awesome week here in Kona. Our teaching this week was all about finding freedom and our identities in Christ. This was a powerful week for both Jody and I and an area where we have both had a lot of breakthrough. Here are a few things from this week's teaching that stuck out to me.

1- God loves us with his perfect love all the time! Obviously God is showing me a lot about his love because I seem to write about this every week, but this week was just a deeper revelation of how perfect and complete God's love is and how he washes that over us all the time. He is not moody and he doesn't hold grudges or offences at us. When we sin, that doesn't mean that he stops loving us or that we are somehow on the outs with God. Of course our sin saddens God, but his perfect and complete love is still loving us even in our sin- wow, that is a huge revelation for me.

2- Repentance is a joy and a gift from God! I was so reminded this week that I have freedom in Christ to repent and move on. The cross has done all the work in redeeming my soul and making me right with God. Therefore, when I mess up I have freedom to repent and know that God has wiped it away and casts it away as far as the east is from the west! I have let sin cause me so much separation from God- but I am redeemed and the cross was enough and I am no longer separated from God because of the blood of Jesus! So when I make mistakes and have a bad attitude for example, I can simply acknowledge it, thank God  that he revealed my bad attitude to me, repent, ask God to change my attitude and move on in freedom. I no longer have to go to bed beating myself up about how I had such a bad attitude today, yet not repenting and feeling like I am getting farther and farther away from God.

3- I feel like God reminded me this week that he has given me spiritual gifts that he intends me to use to build up the body of Christ and that he wants to see me walking in those giftings. I was reminded that he has given me the gifts of prophecy and encouragment and it was amazing to walk in freedom of using those gifts this week. It is amazing to step out in faith and pray for someone and see how God begins speaking through you right to the person and telling them exactly what they need to hear.

4- God continues to increase my burden and love for Southeast Asia and the countries we are going to. I am SO pumped to be able to share with people about Jesus who may have never even heard his name before. As I learn more about these countries and their culture I am just so excited to emmerse myself in their culture and learn from them as we also get to share the good news. In case you're wondering, "Why the secrecy?" its because one of the countries we are going to is closed to the gospel so it is not wise to say that you are going as a missionary to this country. We will be going to this country on a tourist visa to volunteer in a children's home and also to do volunteer language classes and friendship evangelism at the university. The other country we are going to is Thailand and we are able to talk about that openly as it is open to the gospel. There are however, many places in Thailand where people have never heard the name of Jesus so we will be able to hand out Thai bibles and tracts and maybe even show the Jesus film in Thai. We will also be serving in an orphanage in Thailand.

5- Another huge encouragement this week has been to see Asa grow in his own walk with God. He is in a preschool class called Foundation School and he absolutely loves it. He is becoming so much more bold in praying for people and talking about God. I'm so proud of my little guy and how well he's doing with everything here. Jonathan and Jonah are also doing great and loving life here on the base.

If you are reading this blog and thinking, "Who is this crazy lady and why is she speaking so much Christianese?" I would love to talk to you more about Jesus and how amazing he is and all that he has done in my life. I understand that there are friends reading this blog who follow Jesus and those who don't. So much of this journey for our family is about learning to seek God, hear his voice, and follow his call to bring the gospel to the ends of the earth. This does NOT mean that we will ever force anyone to hear or believe the message of salvation in Christ. We are only going to be a blessing to people and love them whether they are open to hearing about Jesus or not. I also understand that missonaries have done horrible and culturally insensitive things throughout history and I personally appologize for any acts done in the name of God that brought shame or destruction to any people group. We seek to go serve other nations and peoples with love and with the understanding that we have as much to learn from them and their culture as we have to give. We desire to lift up and celebrate the nations just as God does! Love you all friends!!!

Jonah is now 6 months and here he is eating his first bites of solid foods :) 

Here we are on our weekly walk to church. Asa loves having so many adults that love on him. That is me on the right and our awesome friend Lindsay on the left who is also from BC.

Stroller update!!! Last I mentioned I had ordered new wheels for our Phil&Ted stroller in the hopes that it could be fixed. Well, the craziest thing happened and accidentally switched the shipping and billing addresses when I was ordering them and the wheels ended up getting shipped to Chilliwack >:( After getting over the frustration and praying about it, we felt that the phil&ted was a sinking ship that needed to die lol! So we looked online for used strollers in Kona and this awesome BOB duallie happend to be for sale. The lady came right to the campus to show it to us and then gave it to us for $100 less than what she was asking!!! It is such a sweet stroller and it is SO nice to be able to get around again! Thank you to all who prayed because we feel like we got a major uprgrade with this stroller from our last one and payed very little for it! Thank you Jesus for your provision!

Now that we have a stroller again, we can get to the beach much more easily!!!

We had many amazing prayer times during classes this week. Here are some staff and students praying for each other and anointing each other with oil.

Monday morning all campus worship. Here the boys are colouring with some of their friends. 

Gotta end off with one more pic of the stroller since I seriously love this thing SO much lol! I can load all 3 on here and get anywhere!!! You become so thankful for transportation when you go without for a while! I miss my minivan, but I am also loving that we walk all the time here and how it seems to slow life down a little!

Week 2- The Character and Nature of God

We have completed the end of our second week of classes and it has been an AMAZING week. The topic this week was the character and nature of God. It was so refreshing to be reminded of basic truths about the essence of who God is. Here are the main things that stood out to me from the teaching this week:

1- God IS love. I find it is so easy to forget this, even though it is so basic and something I do "know" in my mind but I often forget in my heart. It is so much easier to serve and love others when my picture of who God is starts with love.

2- Our brains our wired to seek and find comfort and security, but Jesus in fact calls us to lay down our lives, count the cost, and follow him. We actually have to ask Holy Spirit to reprogram our minds so that we can fight the urge to live a life of comfort. Jesus has so much more for us if we would just step out in faith and follow him wherever he would lead us. Our speaker told a story about how he was a support raising missionary for years and years and had to constantly rely on God to provide for him and his family. He saw God move in amazing ways and was never let down by him, but also had times where he really had to wait on God and trust that God would provide- up to the 11th hour. Eventually he felt God was leading him to take a position where he would make a real salary and his first thought was, "Thank goodness I don't have to trust God anymore!" Whoops, he thought- that isn't right at all! We must always be reminded that we are to trust in God- trust him for his provision, and thank HIM for all his many blessings- never taking anything for granted.

3- This is something that God has been speaking to me about ever since arriving here on the campus: God really does want to speak to his children. The bible says "my sheep hear my voice" and I have been realizing just how much I have been over complicating this simple truth. God wants to speak to us, his children! He has given us his Holy Spirit and we need to trust that he does indeed speak and that he will do so in a way that we understand. This also comes with the responsibility of asking God to speak to us and leaving space in our lives to truly listen to him. This goes hand in hand with the idea that I believe God is also asking me to become more child like. To simply trust that he is my heavenly father, that he will speak to me and my family, that he will lead us where we should go, and that he will provide for us on the journey. It really is that simple, but we, in our adult thinking complicate things so much! These are basic bible truths, but if I am really honest with myself, I haven't been living my life as if I believed these things.

Another very exciting thing happened this week. We found out where we are going on outreach and who is on our team! I am so so excited for this because God has given both me and Jody a huge heart for these nations. We also have a fantastic team and I am so excited that we will be traveling and ministering with such great people! We are going to Southeast Asia! If you would like to know the specific nations I can tell you in a PM :)

A few prayer points- this sounds silly, but we could use prayer for our stroller! Right before we left I bought a used phil and ted's double stroller off of craigslist. I knew we needed something hearty that I could take on rough terrain and I found what I thought was a good used one on craigslist. Well, it turns out it had a ton of problems that I was unaware of- mostly that all of the tires are on their last legs and completely falling apart! Considering that we don't have a car here and use our stroller to get just about anywhere it is hard to not have a reliable ride! The wheels are all currently being held together with duct tape! We are waiting for new ones to come but if you could pray that no new problems pop up in the mean time and that these new tires make the stroller usable!

All of our stroller troubles have also illuminated a lot of Jody and my own weaknesses since we have had many a tif on the side of the road with a broken down stroller and crying kids in the heat of the day! It honestly is a good thing and a blessing since this is one of the huge reasons we wanted to do this as a family- to grow in God and learn how to truly have a Christ-like attitude in all circumstances. Well, we are certainly being challenged in this area so if you could just pray that God gives us amazing grace in stressfull circumstances to be loving and patient, to one another and the kids. I'm sure this is just preparation for some of the challenging circumstances we will encounter on outreach!

On a praise note, we are all getting more adjusted to the heat and learning that being hot and sticky all day is just a part of life here! This will definitely be good preparation for the even more humid Southeast Asia!

Love to you all! Grace and Peace :)

The amazing circle of nations. The love and honour for the nations is so strong here! 

Prayers for Kiwook on his birthday! Kiwook and his lovely wife Sohee are on our outreach team :)

Trailblazers DTS students and staff on family night!

Our awesome DTS leader was so thoughtful that he bought pumpkin pie for all of us at morning snack on Canadian Thanksgiving. Here are the 4 of us Canadians in our DTS eating pumpkin pie!

One of the many beautiful Hawaiian beaches. It takes us about 30 minutes to walk here and we try to go every weekend since it is pretty much the only way to stay cool here! God's creation is so amazing!

Jonah giving you the stink eye! Our kids are all learning to be such troopers!

We made it! An update of our first few days in Kona

We made it!

We are here in Hawaii on the YWAM base and have just finished our second full day of classes. What a whirl wind these first few days have been! Let's start with the plane ride...

Let's just say that flying with 3 kids 4 and under is not for the faint of heart!!! We have definitely learned a few lessons about flying now that that trip is over.

Tip #1- make sure you confirm your flight 24 hours in advance even if the app crashes after 25 minutes of you trying to scan your passports from a smart phone. OK, if you have no idea what I'm talking about, let's just say that united airlines has an app that lets you check in the night before your flight. It involves using the camera of your smart phone to scan passports but this is one of those annoying technologies that is just a little bit ahead of its time and doesn't quite work as smoothly as it is supposed to. I was trying to scan all 6 of our passports the night before and just gave up when the app finally crashed and wanted me to start all over again. Well, I should have persevered because when we went to check in at the airport we discovered that even though we had selected our seats when we originally bought our plane tickets, you must confirm them 24 hours in advance otherwise you just get randomly placed somewhere on the plane. This is not ideal when two of the passengers are a two year old and four year old who clearly cannot be in some random seat by themselves on an air plane! Luckily right before we boarded each flight a flight attendent took pity on us and even though the original airline people assured us this was a full flight and that nothing could be done, she rearranged our seats so we at least had 3 seats together and 2 seats together.

Tip #2- Make the children practice watching movies with earbuds before the plane ride. Oh my...that made for a few screaming fits when neither of the boys could keep the earbuds in and watch their show. Eventually we just gave up and used our tablet with a bluetooth speaker we had brought. Although it is "against company policy" according to the flight attendant to watch a movie over a speaker, we figured a very low volume movie was better than the constant screams of a two and four year old who had no idea how to handle themselves in an airplane for 5 hours!

Tip #3- give each other grace and understanding. I think Jody and I really learned how much grace we needed to give each other and the kids as we were running from place to place in the airport and dealing with screaming kids on the plane. That day was definiltey so hard as we had to wake up at 1:30am to get to our flight on time and our connections were very close so it felt like we couldn't catch a break the whole time. I think Jody and I both asked ourselves a few times on the plane "what were we thinking taking 3 kids on a huge trip like this?!?"

But now we are here and jet lag is gone and we feel so so blessed to be here. Hawaii is a place filled with so much of God's beauty and so many beautiful people. The YWAM base is such a special place filled with people from all over the world coming to seek God and serve him with all their hearts.

A few of the big things that have stuck out to me in these first few days.

1- there are SO many families and children here! It is so encouraging to see that we are not the only ones and that God calls families to missions ALL the time!  Even the leader of our DTS (who is SO awesome) has 3 young daughters and another little one on the way. Their kids are so amazing and have grown up traveling around the world and interacting with adults and other kids of all different cultures- what a blessing!

2- YWAM is an amazing organization that is serving the nations in so many more areas thanI could have imagined. On orientation day we learned about just a few  of the ministries that come under the YWAM umbrella. There are mercy ships that sail to remote locations that can only be reached by boat bringing doctors, nurses, dentists and supplies to people who may have never had access to health care before. Our base here in Kona has an aquaponics farm to train missionaries how to farm in this way that uses no soil but only water, fish, and fish manure to grow amazing, nutritious food. They can then teach people around the world to farm in this way which is highly cost effective. There are also schools of midwifery (that sure  got me excited!) and primary health care that teach essential medical skills to students who  can then bring healing and health to people who have never had health care or materity care before.

3- Living in community is so wonderful! Back in Chilliwack we have an amazing community of friends who support us and love us in our journey with God. But there is something unique in this place about the fact that everyone who is here has taken a time out of normal life to sacrifice a comfortable life to come and seek God and serve others. It is so amazing to have corporate worship services with hundreds of people all worshipping God in their own language from many nations around the world knowing that we are all here for a season and a reason. I love seeing Korean subtitles under the english worship lyrics and having our lectures translated into Portugese for one of the students in our class who speaks Portugese, Korean, and is still working on his English. I love hearing the incredible testimonies of how God has brought people here against all odds.

Well, I could go on and on, but I will stop for now. Jody has taken the kids to the aquaponics farm (one of their favourite places) and will be back soon. I didn't even write about the heat, but if you think about it, please continue to pray for us and adjusting to the heat. I am so far from a heat lover and I am a little sad that I am missing my absolute favourite season of fall in Cananda. I long for a sweater and a cool, crisp morning. Hawaii is HOT and we don't have any AC as electricity is extremely expensive here and we are missionaries, not tourists lol! I am still occasionally getting headaches from the heat but it is getting much better. Please also just continue to pray that our hearts would be completely open to recieve whatever God has for us. We are still in the early stages of diving into what exactly God has brought us here to do! Love to all of you my dear friends :)

This is Ohana Court on registration day. Ohana is the Hawaiian word for family. This is where we have all of our big campus meetings and worship times.

Jonah napping Hawaiian style- always gotta have a fan!!! He has gotten so good at sleeping through just about anything! 

Here is our classroom and the names of everyone in our DTS. That is one of the staff holding his 3 week old baby son! Awesome mama and dad doing missions with a newborn :) 

And here I am at my "blogging station." My tablet set up with our bluetooth keyboard and of course a fan!!!