one:i hope your reading. two: its 2!

As I turned my ipod up to max, trying to drown out the sound of Cale’s voice (I love the guy but sometimes…almost always he talks….and talks and talks and talks and talks and talks and TALKS….this is too much to put in brackets…oh well) I was taking in the amazing sky with punched out holes of brilliant light and an amazing half moon and Im just like GOD YOU A FREAKN COOL. This past week has just been the randomest, most dramatic, most bipolar week of my life. At some point or another something in me snapped and I turned into this angry frustrated, constantly onthevergeofyellingaslewofcusswords for no apparent reason kind of person. I don’t know when this happened or what really took place for this to happen. But it did. And it was horrible. I was not the most positive person to be around. I started question…more intensely…why I was even here in Panama and should I be going on the Track. Maybe community life was getting under my skin(sleeping a few cm apart, eating together, showering outside behind tarp (in our togs(can you put this many brackets inside other brackets?(oh well I just did it…3 times))) but I think more over it was attack from Satan. Of course I mean this isn’t a battle between flesh and blood right? Right. SO amongst all this anger and frustration I and a few other young ladies in our group, got asked to speak at a womens conference…on whatever we liked- Well to do with gender based injustice-This was supposed to be the 2^nd largest church in Panama. I was not feeling at all spiritual! We found out a day and a half before. I ended up writing on prostitution… the night before. When we arrived there it turns out it wasn’t as big as we were expecting(about 40 women) so I was kinda like, ah ok God…But after we all spoke I could sense and see a real change in these women. They really took in what we had to say, some where crying because they had no idea that this stuff was going on in their own city. They bought a lot of our books on injustice issues and even took an offering for us. It was such a blessing to see the love that they totally poured out to us. There were divine appointments and friendships made it was insane.

THEN that night after an exhausting but awesome day I find out we have been asked to speak at a church the very next night(Sunday night) SO that is where I have just come home from. It was awesome, this church is filled with young people/adults and the minute the service started the holy spirit just totally fell on the place. Their worship was so amazing, just seeing their desire for God spilt out in their praise for him. Then we got to talk and it went really well. A little bit of sound difficulty but that didn’t seem to faze them. Again God totally had prepared their hearts and spoke our message directly to their them. As I had been worshiping I just kept on wanting to lay everything I had prepared down to Him and I told Him “have your way” as I prayed I felt a stirring in my heart which I wasn’t sure what it was. I thought maybe God wanted me to share my testimony but didn’t know for sure (I know wheres the faith?right?haha) but I went up and said what I had to say then God added a little more. Just calling the people in the church to go out and touch, hug, hold and SEE these women in prostitution as Gods BEAUTIFULL amazing daughters. To pray for them and to meet them. To bring change to Panama. It was great knowing God was having his way in that place. So it went from a week of be being this yuck monster to God just being like “see, see what I have in store for you, see what I can do through you. I Am the God you serve. THIS is beauty” and I love it!

So back to me in the van drowning Cales voice out. Watching the crazy beautiful sky follow me home. I felt a great peace about Track and going. These things that have happened just made me see how we can bring change. How we can motivate people to rise up as we do the same. And how God can move through us no matter where we are at. How he has control and we can do nothing but rest in that fact and be ready to move when he asks us ever so subtly to GO.

So Im going. Two years. Two years of community life. Two years of shared EVERTHING. Two years to spread Gods love to people no matter what language we speak. Two years to discover the beauty in all these cultures. Two years to uncover the truth. Two years to bring change. Two years to start something in me that will never die.

If you want to come with me, to join in on this adventure, please do. Pray for our group. Support me monthly weekly…once off with your money (please please do! Haha) read my blog…go yourself. But I have seen the truth. I know the truth. I have felt and tasted the truth. And it has set me free. now I want freedom for others. Come with.

bend. stretch. break. breath. grow.

this past week we took an 8 hour drive/ truck ride to help out a part of the Ngobe tribe, with a medical team.the tribe was crazy and cool. i found it really hard going there i had little excitment for it. when we got there we found we had to sleep on the concrete floor(which i am already doing here at the church) however this ground is dirty and no matter how we swept it didnt clean up. none of us had mats to sleep on so we had to sleep straight on the floor. good character building but little sleep as we had dogs barking through the night then a few hours of silence then the rosters were crowing. we went with a medical team and helped them out as well as hung out with the kids. i have photos up on facebook. on the last day i helped out mainly in the kitchen...which consisted of holes on concrete that you burn a fire in with huge pots to put on top. so i got really grubby with the soot...
. AND there was no showers...and no drinking water for that matter...so we had to bring water and wash in a creek which was about a 5 min walk away.....dont know how clean that water was but o well. so it was an adventure. on one of the days we did a 45min hike to the same tribe but they live in pockets in the mountain area. some of these people havnt seen white people before so it was real interesting. they were shy but we got to pray for a few people.

i also joined in on the prayer team..we prayed for all the patients that either had seen a doctor or who were about to. some of them were really moved by it. one lady was saying how she wasnt sure if God could really heal and after the end of our prayer she was crying and all she could say was thank u God thank you God. (we had an interpretor) ....on the second to last day i was standing outside exhausted from cooking and cleaning and my arthritis had flared up so i was a little sore and this little girl came and plonked herself down next to me and just beamed up at me so i sat down in the dirt with her and gave her a big grin so she copied me haha it was so funny you know how adults over express their faces to kids well she did the same back...AH i fell in love with her like that. i cant speak spanish though i was hoping God would give me the gift of tounges at that moment to speak it....woulda been shweeeeeet. but no cigar. so we played with her we bouncy ball...she would hide it and then hold her hands out with a huge grin and say no?no? till i found it then id do the same.....haha her photos are on facbook. so she stole my heart.

this is so long. as always. you will just have to suck it up and read it! :D

I got a really encouraging email from a guy a friend and I had met at the hostel when we stayed in the city. I had given him my irrisestable revolution book before I left. In the email he explained how much he was thankful for the book because it had made him see "religion" in a different way. He had always just discredited anything to do with religion. but through talking ot me and my friend britany and reading the book it made him start to think about what he was doing in this world and more about God. I had tried to explain that all this whole thing is about is Love...thats it. once we understand that everything else will carry on. after reading the book he got what i meant. so now he is looking more into this and God etc. its exciting.

Alright. The end

rise up

Its mid day and me my leader Anne and one of the other girls on my team are doing a trash clean up down our street, when all of a sudden 6 heavily uniformed men climb out of a truck. They all look like SWAT team of some sort. Then they start walking towards us. All of a sudden they pull out a point and shoot camera "photo?"

It was a very funny moment looking at these tough uniformed men wanting a picture with us. We ended up talking with them for quite a while and invited them to church which was cool. though they did tell us some sobering news about the area we wanted to reach the prostitutes in. "they will kill you for 25cent" they said. I know the devil doesnt want this to happen. At the moment I think he is trying to use fear..so its going to be very interesting.

listing of suprises in Panama:

bats

scorpians

larger than life cockroach

larger than face hairy gross spider

killer bee's

eartquake

storms

..."Jesus never talked to a prostitute because he didnt see a prostitute. He just saw a child of God he was madly in love with"

When I read this it hit me straight in the heart. Revelation. THIS is how God looks at his sons and daughters, this is how I need to...how WE NEED to see our brothers and sisters and to love them.

Over the past two weeks I have been trying to figure out how we are going to reach these woman, how we are going to uncover the issue of human trafficking. how are we going to bring change? Then God spoke directly to me. This is how I love my children, now go do the same. I know this has been true from the start. Us wanting to love these people. to show Gods love but i guess amongst us trying to find the stats and figure out action plans, the simplicity gets lost.

In our small group of 12hearts we decided to stay a couple of nights in the inner city. So after a adventerous bus ride...in which the bus got pulled over by the police, who then made us all get off the bus and we had to get on another one...we then walked what was supposed to be a 10min walk and 25mins later we arrived at our hostel. The next day we split into groups and went to different parts of the city that we felt led to. My group caught an amazing taxi(who played Michael Jackson) to a part of town we had been in the other day. We walked the streets, met people talking in our broken spanish, took photos. We got to pray for one man who had been living in the centre of the square for 3months in protest to the distruction of the land where his tribe lived. I have no idea if he understood our prayer but I know God used it to impact his life. and that is enough.

We then got to visit a lady we met the last time we were in the city and had prayed for before. This time we sat down and listened to her story. It was amazing, tragic, broken....but beautiful. She is a strong woman who has lived and life with many hurts. But I can see Gods redeming hand in this and I cant wait to see what God wants to do in her life. Whether it involves us or something crazy wonderful.

The last night my friend and I stayed up and talked with a bunch of people in the hostel. One guy was really interested to hear about what we were doing and we got to share our testimony and to just speak truth into his life. It was mean as. I left him my irresistible revolution...and Im praying for him.

So anyhow we are back in the church once again and tomorow we are leaving early in the morena to go to the tribe. These people are malnourished, they are pushed to the fringes of society and they are desperate. So this could be an intense week. to show love.

The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.