Heading North

Hello Friends! I am excited to say that I have three and a half more days of this semester! Things are finishing up here and I am getting ready for a nice long break. I will fly back to Wisconsin this Saturday, the 16th.

However, right away on Sunday morning my brother will be driving me down to Iowa. Some of you know my dear friend Elizabeth (or have heard about her!) She will be getting married on Friday, December 22nd and I am going to go spend some time with her before her wedding. I am so excited to see her as well as some other dear friends I have not seen in years - it will be a very special time for all of us. I will come back to Wisconsin in time for Christmas Eve with my family!

I have a month off of classes and am very much looking forward to the break. I will head back down South on January 21st. (It will be so nice to return to warm weather!) I am looking forward to seeing many of you while I am home. I am glad I will have a month to catch up with you all :-) I look forward to hearing how God has been working in your lives over these last months and sharing with you what He has been doing in mine.

I will miss my friends here this next month. God has blessed me with such good friends so quickly. In the picture with me is one of those great friends! Linda is from Honduras and we have been called "twins" several times. We even had a man from India - in all seriousness - ask us if we were sisters because we look so much alike! We have had many laughs over that one!

It seems as if whenever I go new places I am worried about making friends. However, God always provides in such amazing ways. He has blessed me with great friends all over this world. I have seen that as one of the themes running through my life - the blessings of the Lord. I have realized this semester how truly blessed I am. I have a great family who has always loved and supported me, I have great friends who care about me, my needs have always been provided for at just the right moment, I have been blessed with great places to work and amazing ministry training. . . I could go on and on.

So I want to thank each one of you. You have all been such a blessing to my life. Know that I truly appreciate it and I pray that God blesses you as much as you have blessed me!

Have a very Merry Christmas as you celebrate the birth of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ!

Fun in Florida

Hi friends! Are you all busy making plans for Thanksgiving? I pray you all have a marvelous time with your family and friends and find much to be grateful for.

One thing that I am grateful for is my team. As you know I am going to North Africa this summer, Lord willing. Last weekend some of my team took a road trip to Florida for a conference. It was amazing! I learned so much about North Africa and how to minister there. God burdened my heart for these people in a new way. It is amazing how much you can love people you have never met. We went to lots of meetings, had lots of fun and got little sleep.

Five of us drove down together in one car and it was a great team bonding time. I got to know some of my other teammates much better and am so excited to be able to minister with them this summer. Of course we had to go to the beach since we were in Florida! Saturday night we drove to the coast and got to wade in the Gulf of Mexico. It was about 11:00 at night so we pretty much had the beach to ourselves. It was still warm out! (Sorry, I know most of you are dealing with snow and cold right now, but for this girl, it was great!) It was my first time on a beach that I can remember. I went to the Sea in Latvia, but there was snow on the ground so it wasn't quite the same. This was a fun first experience to share with my team! The picture above is of us at the beach.

Thanksgiving Break starts on Wednesday. I am looking forward to the much needed rest. Actually, I need to catch up on lots of homework! It is crazy to think that the semester is almost done. I am really looking forward to seeing most of you at Christmas! Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow!! (Then I get to come back where it is warm!)

I covet your prayers as this semester comes to an end. It is difficult to stay motivated when I am tired and know that I won't see my friends for a month when we are all on break. I want to hang out with them instead of doing homework! Please pray that I would finish well and keep a balanced life as I finish up these next couple of weeks.

“When God’s finger points, God’s hand will open the door.”

~Clarence W. Jones

Personal Prayer Retreat

Hello Prayer Warriors!

I want to share with you an experience I have had recently. One of the requirements for my Prayer and Discipleship class is to do a Personal Prayer Retreat, which I did recently. I spent eight hours in fasting and prayer and it was an amazing time with the Lord. I want to share with you some of the things I wrote in my journal that day:

I got up this morning excited to start my day with the Lord. I got ready and started out this day by taking a walk with the Lord down to the Pointe [a beautiful spot just down from my house that looks over the city and countryside]. It was such a beautiful morning. It is really cold out, you can see your breath and I saw people looking for something to scrape their cars with! It feels like home. J When I got down there, it was really foggy and I couldn’t see out at all. However, there was this spot off to the right where the clouds were low and you could see the tall buildings of Columbia rising up above them. Also the sun was shining and there was a pink hue to the clouds there. It was really quite amazing and spectacular! My first thought was that it looked like a city of God. So I spent a few minutes praying for the city of Columbia, that it would be a city of God. Then the clouds rose up and covered the city again. I feel as if God gave me a special look at how He sees this city. Even though darkness is trying to cover it, He sees a city that He wants to set apart for Himself.

Isaiah 61 is talking about Jesus (Luke 4:16-20). This is what He was sent to do so that we could be the kind of people it talks about at the end of that passage. However, it is also what Jesus has sent us to do. John 17:18 Jesus is talking to His Father about us. He says, “As you sent me into the world, I have sent them into the world.” After Jesus’ death and resurrection, He appeared to His disciples. John 20:21 tells us that, “Again Jesus said, Peace be with you! As the Father has sent me, I am sending you’.”

[Reflections on Psalm 9] God, there are people in this world who are lost without you and going to hell. There are people who are oppressed and need to hear about you so you can be their refuge. Yes people may persecute, harm, even kill me, but you will never forsake me and what you have done must be proclaimed among the nations – all nations.

As you can see, the theme of the day seemed to be God’s heart for the nations. As you know, God has laid on my heart the nations and the need to tell them about Jesus. I feel like during this day of prayer, God renewed the fire in my heart and the passion to reach the lost was revived.