Walking By Faith

"Intimacy with God" was the topic for this week and what a great week it was!  It blows my mind how many Christians are in this world but don't have an intimate relationship with the Lord!  We had our own base leader teaching on this topic, which made it even better!  She has an amazing love for the Lord, which was very inspiring!  Through the first couple of days of the week I was feeling a little down and felt I needed to really take time to spend with the Lord.  So, Wednesday afternoon I felt that I needed to stay home from going to tutor the kids in Clarkston and just spend that time with God!  I spent around 3 hours that day reading my Bible and praying to God.  I felt so refreshed and so excited!  I actually enjoyed the time so much and couldn’t wait to make that a more regular thing!  Thursday afternoon I didn’t feel so much as I need to read but that I needed to worship!  I wanted to be able to sing but not ...

As many of you may have heard on the news there is a bunch of unrest in the Middle East!  In my groups intercessory prayer this morning we really felt God calling us to pray for these countries!  My home church back in Missouri has some missionaries in this area, one family being located in Beruit, Lebanon where only one mile away from their home there has been out of hand protests!  I just want to send out a prayer request for this family and the whole Middle East!  I know God can do amazing things to stop this but we need to intercede to make this happen!  It can be so easy for us Americans to just blow these problems off but there is a real problem in this area now and we have the power to do something about it!  Send your prayers to the Middle East! Here is an article by the New York Times that talks about some of the devastation: Middle East Unrest

DTS students and staff with out guest speakers! This has been a crazy but very fun week!  The week started off on Tuesday for us and flew by!  I really felt God stirring my passion for my orphanage in Africa one day!  We started it off with a couple talking about sexual identity!  This was an interesting topic in which the couple talked a lot about how different factors from childhood can really affect you as you grow up.  Even things from the time you were in the womb can affect you, such as smoking, being an unwanted pregnancy, and being the opposite gender your parents wanted.  I found myself really thinking about my possible future orphans during this teaching!  I realized that with all children coming from broken backgrounds that this would definitely be an issue that I would see.  I started to take notes on different things she was saying on how to deal with this kind of stuff and I got super excited that one day I will really be able to...

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 h...

 Well this week has definitely been a crazy one!! The teaching this week was on the Holy Spirit! A pretty intense topic especially for week 2 of a DTS.  Every day after the teaching I literally thought my head was going to explode because of all the information we were given! It wasn't all easy to take either! It is important for everyone to know that GOD FORGIVES YOU!!! No matter what you have done sin is sin and God forgives and forgets everything!  This for me is easy to grasp because I know God is good and that He loves me and forgives me!  However, I didn't realize that I had to forgive myself!  Our teacher Mike Esposito, made it very clear that we have to forgive ourselves or it will be very easy to give back into temptations!  This struck me like a ton of bricks! I had always known I was forgiven but I never forgave myself for my past sins!  This was a very hard reality and I knew I needed to deal with it right away!  So Wednesday was pre...

As I begin this week I am filled with joy!!! The first week of DTS was absolutely amazing!!!  We really got to know each other and connect to one another!  I have already felt a change in my life!   Inside Martin Luther King Jr.'s Chruch! On thursday we learned about intercessory prayer!! This was a great teaching on something that I had really never heard of before, much less put into practice.  It is an incredible concept in which we can call out to God to help others and make huge changes in this world!  This is about us as a group coming together to pray for a cause that God has laid on our heart to change others lives!  Joanna and I at Centennial Park! Friday, we took a trip to Downtown Atlanta!!! We visited Martin Luther King Jr.'s hometown and got to see his house, church and burial site.  It was really eye opening and really sickening to read what all went down in his time.  As a huge believer in equality between whites and ...