Hi everyone, so I know I haven't updated my blog in about 3 months, haha, but I was on outreach and had very minimal wifi. Anyways so my outreach in Asia! It was so amazing. Thank you for everyone who supported me through my time there. My teams main ministry we did in Ch!n@ was friendship evangelism. We would go to the universities all over the city we were in and just sit down and make friends with university students. Over our three months we became really close with a few of the friends we made and just asked the Lord to be in our conversations and to lead them how He wanted. A lot of the time we ended up talking about religion or our beliefs as christians with our university friends we had made. It was so cool to see how open our friends were to hearing what we had to say! Another HUGE part of our ministry was during christmas we would host and put on Christmas parties! We got to do a skit and worship and tell the gospel and a teaching! It was really awesome and a powerful way to connect to the people who came. My team saw the Lord work in crazy ways we didn't expect at all. It was so amazing. Going into this nation I wasn't expecting to see too much harvest at all, I was just expecting to go and plant seeds which is still awesome, but by the end of our outreach we saw about 60 people or more salvations! Praise the Lord!!! All glory to Him! It was so amazing. My outreach over all was incredible. My favourite part was going to an orphanage once a week and getting to love the kids there and connect with them, each week creating a better bond with them. Those kids definitely stole my heart. I can't wait to see how the nation of Ch!n@ is transformed by Christ in the upcoming generations. He is definitely moving in great ways there. Thanks for everyone who supported me and prayed for my team while being out there! I couldn't have gone on this outreach without you guys!
God Bless!

Worldview and Competing Beliefs

The last two weeks of my DTS lecture phase have been a lot of thinking and intellectual weeks. Two weeks ago we had the week on Worldview by Rick Thompson. The first day of that lecture he destroyed all of our thinking by asking us "Can you 100 percent prove christianity" and by that he didn't mean can we personally prove it but can it be proven by anyone. Then he left the answer and didn't tell us and let us think about it for the next day. It really broke down why we believe it because the answer is no! No one can prove christianity 100 percent! So the next question is why do we believe it and why are we right, compared to all the other religions. That week was crazy and really made everyone think about why are we christian, is it just because our parents are, and if we grew up in a Hindu household would we just be hindu instead because our parents are. Or are we a christian because it is the truth and our God is the only God.
Rick broke that week into three topics, he talked about a biblical worldview and what it believes about how we were created and the main purpose of our creation, and then he talks about secular worldview, so atheism, and what they believe about worldview and our purpose. Lastly he talks about eastern world views which is Hinduism and Buddists. It really was encouraging because going through all the evidence and what all those other religions believe it really affirmed all of us why christianity makes the most sense and why it is the only true way.
This past week we had Competing Beliefs week which was very similar to that, but our teaching, Jason Carlson, talked a lot about evolution and cults. He went into a ton of depth about mormonism and what they believe, and how to answer questions to people who believe in mormonism, and also about evolutionism and how we as christians can answer them intelligently.
Both of these weeks were so amazing and really made me think, but it also really affirmed me why I am a christian and not any other religion. These two weeks also really prepared all of us for the conversations that we will be having in a week on outreach, because if we don't know how to defend our faith and explain why we believe it, why would anyone else want to believe it!
I'm so excited for outreach and can't wait for the adventures and things that God will do through my team on outreach!

Hearing the Voice of God

Three weeks ago our lecture was about hearing the voice of God, and we had a media fast to really focus on what God was telling us that week. Our teacher was Chase Cofer ad he was so awesome and taught us sooo much about how the Holy Spirit works and says to us and how to listen and hear His voice. Thursday of that week Chase really felt like that night we were supposed to do the Baptism of the Holy Spirit, but then Josh, our school leader, came up and said that he had been thinking about having water baptisms first and so he just asked who would be interested in that stand up. About 20 of us stood up and so we were all so excited we did the baptisms then and there, and I was included in that! So that thursday I got baptized!!! It was so awesome and I am super excited about that and just since then I've continued to learn about God and about his character!

It's been a full month I've been here at YWAM and it's been a crazy experience! So far I've had three weeks of lectures. The first week was Basic Christianity, just going over what as christians we believe. The second week was Father Heart of God which was an intense topic. We learnt about God's unfailing love and what holds us back from knowing that. This past week was the topic Identity in Christ, which was super cool just learning who we are, like children of the King and 4 other identities. Next week we are doing a media fast because our topic is Hearing the voice of God. I'm excited to see what we learn about this week and in the up coming weeks here in lecture phase! Some things I've done on the weekends that are really cool are going to bamboo forest and jumping off waterfalls! That was a cool experience and I recommend it for anyone who is in Maui!

First Days at YWAM

About a year ago I decided that while all my friends were going off to university, I would go to Hawaii instead. Not just for a vacation though, I was going to a program called YWAM. Youth With a Mission is a worldwide program that has usually 3 months of lecture phase where we learn from speakers around the world on God and what he does in our lives, and how we can spread that to the nations. Then we go for 3 months after on outreach phase. So in september I hopped on a plane from Canada and came to the great state of Hawaii. Arriving on the base was amazing and just mind blowing to see the difference between Manitoba and Maui. Our base is huge. My room has 3 story bunk beds, and 18 girls all in one room, its quite squishy but awesome. Luckily I don't have a top bunk, I have a middle one.
The first couple days were kinda scary. Not knowing anyone and meeting 20 people at the same time trying to remember all their names was very difficult. The first day was opening ceremonies! All the students got on a bus and drove to a church and we got lei'd and food and sang worship and all introduced ourselves which was cool. That night we all went around the bonfire and one of our leaders told us the story in the Bible were Moses goes out and fasts for 40 days to listen to God in Exodus. She told us that our YWAM group was going on an "Exodus" for an amount of days we didn't know, with a list of items we were allowed to bring and nothing else! The items included one shirt, one sweater, one pair of pants and one pair of shorts and 5 pairs of underwear and our Bible. No cell phones, no toothbrushes, no anything. We were all a little scared but we willingly packed our stuff and got on the bus at 6 am Sunday morning. Exodus started off with a scavenger hunt through Maui, then getting to the campsite and setting up our tents. Luckily we had a toilet but it was surrounded by no walls so just in the middle of the bush. As we settled in we all surrounded the campfire and waited to hear what was going to happen over the days we were there. We were on Exodus for 3 days, only ate ramen noodles and oatmeal for every meal, and all gave our testimonies. It was definitely hard but we all bonded so well over those three days and I'm glad we did it. Coming back to the base we all felt closer and more excited for the upcoming 3 months.
After Exodus, we heard all 4 places that we would pick from to go on outreach. We had to go off and pray which one God wants us to go to, either Bangledesh, Nepal, Ch!n@ or Indonesia. We all went off and prayed and came back with our choice or choices written out and handed them in. God told me which nation I should go to pretty clearly even though that was the one I really didn't want to go to, I still wrote it down. That weekend we all went to the beach for the day and bonded as a school and it was so amazing. I love Hawaii.