Wow this week...

So last Sunday morning my DTS left Atlanta and headed down to Orlando, Florida!!!  It was going to be an interesting week!  Our guys had to sleep in tents the entire week and the girls split up between two RV's.  The boys had to use outdoor showers while us girls got to use the showers in the RV.  However it just so happened that in my camper we had no hot water!!! So the freezing cold showers were a challenge.  There was also no running water for toilets, so porta potties it was!  It is crazy how excited you get when you go somewhere that has a toilet with running water after using porta potties so much!  These were our environment challenges for the week!

Classroom for the week!

On top of this it was also going to be a pretty intense week of teaching.  The message for the week was the Father Heart of God!!! Everyone said that this would be a really awesome week and I was super excited!  My week didn't start out on the best foot however.  I had a terrible night mare on Sunday night which brought my anxiety back from childhood.  I knew it was just the devil trying to get under my skin but it really rattled me.  I went on that next day a little shooken up!  The message on Monday was all about our teacher, Michael Berg's testimony and then we went to a church near by for a worship night.  This night was amazing! I received some strength and peace from the Lord that night and I knew I could lean on Him when I am faced with bad nightmares or attacks.  I also was prayed for and told that even before I arrived at the DTS the Lord told one of the staff that He wanted me to find out who I really was while I was here and be who He created me to be!  This was refreshing because I already knew He was working on that in me!!!  That night I had a very peaceful nights sleep!!!

Tuesday was pretty uneventful.  We had a great teaching that day about how much God really loved us and all that He had planned for each of our individual lives!  The awful torture Jesus faced on the cross was really put into a new perspective for me!  The lengths He went to because He loved us just blows my mind.  I hope to watch the Passion of the Christ someday soon to even try to grasp it further!  I chose to just relax that night and had another pretty peaceful nights sleep!

Wednesday morning I wake up with a sore throat!  Not exactly what I had in mind for the week.  I didn't let it get me down though I tried to be as positive as possible throughout the day.  We heard another great message from Michael Berg about how God created fathers on earth to represent His image even though it has been twisted over time!   We also had a little lesson on missions but I wasn't feeling good at all during that time so can't remember all that was said.  During the day some of us took a trip into town to McDonald's and on the way back we hit a huge bump in the road while I was sitting in the very back seat of an SUV and I bounced really far off the seat coming down and really messing my back up! I honestly don't know if my back has ever hurt as bad as it did that night!  Luckily I have some amazing friends that helped me out and really prayed healing over me!  I  went to a worship night that night in spite of being in pain and sick and I am so glad I did!  It was an amazing night with an awesome message too!  I felt rejuvenated!  That night I slept good and woke up to no back pain and no sore throat but a runny nose!

Thursday was not too eventful.  We had worship and intercession in the morning and in the afternoon and evening we had class.  This teaching was about the good God wants for us!  That He wants to set us free from lies that we believe!  To release them to Him and be filled with His truth!  That night we went out and got some ice cream at McDonald's!

Waiting for our friends to be baptized!

Friday was a pretty amazing day!!!  It was all about forgiveness!  We were given a piece of paper with a list of different people it was important to forgive.  We got in small groups, or all of us girls got together and started going down the list.  It was a very emotional/freeing day!! We tend to forget about things and move on but it is very important to say out loud to the Lord that you forgive someone and the things you are forgiving them for.  We only made it half way down our list so we still have some forgiving to do but it is amazing how much lighter I already feel!!! I was able to smile  bigger than I ever remember smiling before! After we finished half of our list we burned that half of the piece of paper making a commitment to live a life of forgiveness to those people! After this they gave people a chance to be baptized!  So it was super exciting to see two of my friends get baptized!!! We celebrated that night with Starbucks!  It was an incredible day!!!

Saturday we headed back to Atlanta!!! All the girls rode together and after a long 8 hour drive we made it back!  The amazing Korean family that lives/works at our base made a delicious Korean supper for us!

Joanna and I in the car headed back to Atlanta!

Sunday a few of us decided that we wanted to go to Passion City Church in Atlanta.  This church is a church Chris Tomlin attends (even though he wasn't there).  It was absolutely incredible!  The music was super amazing and the sermon was a really awesome!  If anyone wants to hear an awesome message on worry and anxiety I would recommend listening to it on their website!  After service we hung out at Centennial Park and then went to supper at Chili's!  At 8 we went to another service at Grace Midtown in Atlanta!  It was another amazing service!!! It was such a rewarding, fulfilling day! We got back to the base and had some girl time and prayed for each other and for financial support to come our way and went to sleep!!!


God is doing so much here! He has surpassed my expectations and now I am just letting His work be done in my life!  I am becoming a more confident, joyful person!