Freedom

sorry i've been slacking. Like Colin said last week was quite an encouragement for the school. The week was lead by the "freedom team" here on the campus. The teaching is all about being saved by God, finding your identity in him and living free from sin (especially sins we don't necessarily tag as sin). The coolest part of this teaching (in my opinion) is when a group of the staff ask God what his original design is for each student. As a leader I got to learn and practice being apart of actually prayer for each student which was really cool. I was one of the people who prayed for Patch (Colin's roommate). It was hard at first doing something like that cause it takes a lot of faith and confidence that it is God who is speaking to you, but each time I did it my faith grew as the words I received was very similar to what other people in my group received. It was especially rewarding this week getting to see the students begin to really engage with God and take this time here seriously. Many students identified some of the things that were holding them back from getting closer with God and prayed for freedom from that.
On another note I am beginning to get really tired and kinda sick. We spent a lot of time outside this week, but we are officially FA level 1 coaches in football (soccer)!

Original Design

This week we learned about Gods original design for a person’s life and about the strongholds that hinder you from living the way God made you. I won’t get into too much detail but I would like to share with you two personal testimonies. One is mine. Growing up my mom continually reminded me of a prophecy she got while she was pregnant with me. A lady told her that I was going to be like John the Baptist. So she reminded me of this often and more than often I told her I think the lady got me and Keith mixed up. So this week we each had four leaders from around the base pray over us and ask God to reveal to them our original design as well as some strongholds in our life. For me it was awesome to see four people who don’t know me at all tell me exactly the kind of person I am and the strengths I have. It just really made it real to me that God made me the way I am for a reason and it wasn’t just by accident that I am the way I am. But the coolest part was one of the guys told me he was getting a verse from the bible for me about John the Baptist and how God made me to be like John the Baptist, that I would in a sense prepare the way for Jesus. Sparing you from what that means to me I found it to bet a major faith builder. You can write some things off to coincidence but things like that there is just no way.
If that doesn’t encourage you my roommate Patch got a word from someone a month ago while being prayed over at his church. The lady told him she saw him riding into battle on a white horse like Gandalf from Lord of the Rings. A pretty specific word if you ask me. Then when he was being prayed over by the people here someone told him they saw him riding on a white horse like in Lord of the Rings when Gandalf comes and saves the day at the end of the second movie. I love when things like this happen and God makes himself so obvious you know it is Him, which has been happening a lot this week. Anyway I hope you enjoyed that. We will try to write posts more often, especially some from Gina.

It's Snowing! 2-10-10

Don’t worry it hasn’t stuck yet. The school has been going for just over a week now. So far it has been great! Everyone clicked right away and everyone seems to get along pretty well. Our group consists of thirteen students, four girls, one from Switzerland, Samoa, America, and England, nine guys, two from America, six from England, and one from Rwanda. Then we have 7 or so leaders, Gina and Jeremie, two guys from England, one from New Zealand, one from Brazil and two other girls from England and Ecuador. As we mentioned before we have a sports focus on this DTS, which has been awesome. Right now we are in the process of taking a FA level one coaching clinic for soccer. Meaning when we come home we will know how to coach, we may even throw in an English accent. In case some of you are wondering this means on top of taking classes on topics such as intercession, honesty, forgiveness, humility, ect., we also play and learn how to coach different sports and how to use sports to love and outreach to people, especially young people. This is awesome because as we talked about in class today it is important to connect and relate to people where they are at and with what they like. Now if we think about it, people may not like going to church but it’s rare to find someone who isn’t passionate about some sport.
Another thing, in case you are curious, this is what an average day looks like, generally. We have morning workout from 7-8, breakfast from 8-9, class and/or small group from 9-1, lunch from 1-2, sport training or study time from 2-4, work duties from 4-6, then dinner from 6-7 and then finally depending on the day we have church, more sports or just free time. Obviously things change around depending on the day. For example tonight we booked a gym to play some basketball so we pushed dinner back an hour. Hopefully that gives you an idea of what we are up to. Gina’s schedule is a little different but she can share that with you in the text post.

Thanks again for your continual support in prayer. We miss you all!