Week 1 of my YWAM Journey

The girls you see above are my roomies: Courtney, Maria, Christina, Jacqueline, Me, Sarah and Hannah. ^.^v

My YWAM program started last week. For those who dont know/remember, i am in Denver, Colorado. We've just been gettng to know the staff and each other in this past week. THE students and à few of the staff live here on base in à dormitory style environment. Im pretty sure my friends have started putting pictures up on Facebook. :)

They have a number of schools that run at the same time here. Total number of people running around the base here would easily add up to 100 at the moment. That includes the little kids of the married staff. Keep in mind there are other teams on outreach at the moment too :) The Discipleship Training School (DTS) that i am doing currently have a total of 60 people (students + staff). We will be splitting into 3 differrent groups for THE outreach. I am in THE Around THE World (ATW) team and we Will leave for our outreach trip Around 8 weeks earlier than the others, 1 team to South Africa and Mozambique, the other to the Phillipines.

Our outreach destinations have been confirmed but not concrete. Currently the plan Will be for us to go travel to Orange County, California as à whole YWAM base for an outreach ministry around THE middle of August. From there, THE ATW team Will travel down to Mexico while everyone else travel back to base in Denver. Im not entirely sure at this stage how many days we Will be spending on each country but after Mexico, we Will be going to: Hong Kong, Xi An (and maybe Beijing too) China, Thailand, Jordan, Israël, and Holland before returning back to Denver early November. :)

It's been àn amazing week getting to know THE group, learning about worship, intercession and relinquishing things for God. It is going to get more intense next week onward as we begin formally our lecture phase and our assessments begin to pile up ;)

Prayer Request:
1. For God to open my heart and ears to be sensitive to His voice and surrender to His will
2. For the grace & strength for me to be able to relinquish (put aside) the things that God has asked of me during this time
3. For to enlarge my capacity to just LOVE people the way Hè does without being judgemental

Pre-YWAM lesson learnt in LA

I had been staying at a relative's place in LA and she asked me if i mind coming along to her church's prayer meeting as she's been absent in d last couple of wks.  I was quite interested and so decided to join them...There was a guy (David Tong, son of Stephen Tong if d name is familier to u) that shared a little before we prayed. He brought the word from the life of Jonas.

Jonas received the word from God to go to Nineveh but He ran away. He caused God to send a great wind upon the ship he boarded and the ppl on the boat ended up throwing him overboard so the raging sea would calm. Jonah was then swallowed whole by an aquatic animal for 3 days. Inside the 'fish', he still felt the presence of God such that he can still call and pray to God even though he was experiencing what can be termed as 'merciful wrath of God'. He returned to that presence of God even though he was in the 'pit'. He quoted what is parallel to psalm 18:(6)7.

At the end of the day, the story follows a pattern where God's primary purpose is still being fulfilled even though Jonah's suffering point was a process of chastisement. You see at the end of the story that Jonah was being called again by God to fulfil the original calling Jonah was given.

What amazed me was the fact that i never realised how similar this story was to what ive been living in the past 2 years. How God had called me to do this YWAM program in 2009 but under the  circumstances, i didnt follow it through enough to go then. This lead to a rollercoast of a ride.

My point of chastisement came and I paid the price for not being faithful to Him. But what I didn't realise was the fact that our Sovereign God had a better plan beyond my imagination. The past 2 years has served as my time to experience God's merciful wrath through my personal life as well as my family life. I am proud to be serving a faithful and graceful God that was with me even when I strayed out from His plans. He was the one that rescued me, restored me, mended my relationships with my family, called me to return to His plans, provided for me, and again made the way for me to join an even better, greater and more exciting YWAM program that Will allow me to literally circle the globe in 12 wks!

The lesson learnt:
Sometimes in life we go astray from God's plan. It may be due to our stubornness, fear, lack of faith, insecurities,etc, etc (the list is endless!) But His ultimate plan will always be fulfilled in His perfect timing along with His primary and secondary purposes. THE timing does sometimes depend on how long it takes us to humble ourselves in repentance and return to God for guidance. ^.^

Preface....??

Hai....

This is my test page.... Please forgive me for any spelling errors made in the near future. I Will be using my iPhone and my Dutch roommate's iPad. :)

So..... The purpose of this blog is to keep those people that are interested, updated with what is currently going on. Obviously i may not be able to write religiously but if I find à good lesson that I've learnt/observed, and any testimonies that may be able to bless others, Id like to write it up for others to read. :)